A transformed individual is one who awarefully experiences his truth
and is free of constraint to speak it.
and is free of constraint to speak it.
A transformed environment is one where truth can be heard
and willingly accommodated.
and willingly accommodated.
Before launching into the body of this enquiry, let me make one thing clear: I don't see "transformed/untransformed" or "aware/unaware" or "conscious/unconscious" as either "on" or "off" states, but as extreme ends of a constantly shifting continuum. As individuals we all have moments of "got-it", and other moments of deep darkness, and the same goes for any structures or systems we join and identify with, either voluntarily or out of an accident of birth. We both know that real life ain't as simple as black or white, but I examplify the extremes for the sake of simplicity and clarity in the hope that you might, as I did, find some enlightenment from looking at our social behaviour from another perspective.......
Relationships and institutions, at any given moment, are either creating space or restricting it. Those that predominantly restrict have a limited life span; they carry within their nature the seeds of their own termination. If you are opposing one of these restrictive structures, however, you may have to be very patient. Nature isn't always in a hurry to re-balance itself. There are lessons available in imbalance and strife. If you go to war on structures and organisations that restrict your freedom, you will only reinforce their self-perceived validity and prolong their existence. For example, let's take the so-called "war on terror" -- a political device that keeps people afraid for their safety and sanctifies socially sanctioned murder. In the short term it may seem like the obvious solution. From a mid-term perspective it just creates more and better-resourced terrorists. In the long run, I suspect our grandchildren and great-grandchildren may look back at us and ask "How could they have been so blindly stupid?"
FUNCTIONING IN A STATE OF "MIND"
When individuals, relationships, families and other institutions are untransformed, they manifest themselves in the Mind state. They come from, and generate a Survival attitude, and they operate from Positions and Oppositions that they have to be right about. They restrict.
It is my experience, both as a trainee and as a trainer of others, that individuals who have experienced some transformation may well strike difficulty when returning from training to normal life. In the main, they will be returning to family, social, cultural, religious and work environments where open expressions of truth may not even be comfortably tolerated, let alone encouraged. The chrysalis may experience a restriction that can be deadly dangerous to his/her transforming.
All human social structures are created by people who share certain basic, predominant mindsets of ideas and attitudes. Wherever people get together for a purpose, no matter how well-defined or vague it might be, they are attracted by a thought, an idea, or a feeling that they are all contemplating. Mind being what it is, the social structure will do whatever it deems necessary to foster and protect its mind state, even to the extent of eliminating any of its members who transgress or threaten the validity of that mind state. At the first sign of threat, members will close ranks and attempt to "de-brief" the awakening individual. If that fails, the recalcitrant will be ostracised. The level of manipulation and control exercised over the breakaway, or anyone who may be tempted to support him, can escalate to levels of physical, mental and emotional cruelty and viciousness. I don't care how enlightened we think we are, neither your mind nor mine happily tolerates any ideas contrary to its own. Mind will do whatever it needs to kill those ideas including - if needs be - the person harbouring those ideas.
This is serious stuff. At a personal level, some of the things we have to be right about can seriously damage our own minds and bodies. Couples, families, cultures, religions and whole nations go to war for generations, just to protect the socially agreed mind sets that its members identify with.
This phenomenon, by the way, is not limited to human social structures. It is natural.
RELIGION, STATE AND FAMILY
In an untransformed state, societies and their members sell and trade Aliveness in return for a promise of basic Survival. Governments, religions, families and education systems ultimately fail to do what they were set up to do. This is not a criticism: it's an observation that, once untransformed individuals clot into a coalescence of like-minded individuals, the days of that grouping are numbered. They can buy additional time -- perhaps centuries of it (eg. the Roman empire) -- by becoming very skilled at hiding, justifying and perpetuating what they are not doing, and using Fear and outright coercion to maintain dominance.
Like the individuals who create and maintain "the system", social structures conspire with each other in the Mind state, pretending unity but fostering division; pretending openness but fostering secrecy in the name of "security"; pretending to champion independence and freedom but fostering acquiescence; pretending progress but entrenching fear of survival. Instead of being activities to generate healthy physical, mental, emotional and spiritual life, politics, religions, teaching institutions and family "values" become self-perpetuating ends within themselves.
Conscious individuals within restrictive and restricted social environments lose space to freely or fully express their individuality. The environment doesn't validate them; it's support is negative. For example, the Roman empire's persecution of the Christians actually reinforced their survival instincts. Now, it is true that we shouldn't NEED positive validation, but after a while chronic, persistent opposition can get to us -- we are only human!
It's a sad reality that less consciously aware people are not friendly to the idea that life works, and that, from another perspective, their lives actually are working, and that they are within a whisker of experiencing relationships that are meaningful and nurturing. They're often not even receptive to the possibility that there is perspective other than the one they're stuck on. And there's very little you can do about that! It's far more popular to buy into a social reality of Scarcity and Lack -- ("Everyone knows that.........")
The same limiting social environment, grants plenty of space for being slick and clever, manipulative and successful. And if you're not, it will hook you onto the public teat for being socially incompetent, stupid, and a total victim. It gives classes and awards for one; and rewards the other with "special-needs" status and support, debilitating themselves and the support system. If you're in the middle, you're expected to work hard, support the system, and cop whatever titbits the system throws your way.
Social consciousness is largely supportive of both extremes. Unfortunately, such an environment is not a very healthy place for transformation. Conscious Awareness is ultimately very threatening to any Mind state, including Social Un-consciousness. People who choose to think and feel for themselves tend to be freer, and less likely to be manipulated or controlled. They are a threat to the gossamer of social fabric.
So, if you bring your consciousness into conflict with an unconscious relationship, institution or environment, don't be surprised when it automatically generates survival behaviour from threatened members. We all identify with clubs we join -- and take it personally, to a greater or lesser extent, when someone doesn't play by the rules. If you find yourself under fire, it might be worth your while considering moving out of range. As I said before, restrictive social structures are dinosaurs that just haven't laid down yet. Quantum leaps in evolution don't ever emanate from any safe centre; the best you can hope for from there is incremental change. Transformation origin-ates from the renegades -- those individuals who step outside the boundaries of social agreement (cf. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull) Moreover, the ultimate survivors in all of evolutionary history have been those who adapt best to change, not those who resist it. Existence is not kind to resistance (haven't you noticed?)
LIVING BEYOND SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
We are a lot of things that need a "Yes" from us, and "social beings" is one of them. To be all that we are, we're looking for a way to incorporate our need for social interaction, without compromising our freedom. Strangely and ironically enough, saying "Yes" to our limitations is the way to go. Anything we deny being, and being part of, makes us less than what we are, and keeps us stuck there until we get that we are "this, too".
And then there is more.......
EFFECTING SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
Social change is fine, as far as it goes. The problem is that it doesn't go far. Change usually comes as cosmetic tinkering, another lean-to, more incremental addenda to the staus quo, often imposed as part of some political wheeler-dealing, without a groundswell of revolutionary energy to underpin it. The cover and the cast may alter, and the decor may look different, but the story turns out to be "more of pretty much the same."
Social transformation can be well described as "an idea whose time has come". An example of what I mean might be the appearance of "fire", or the "wheel". In the light of observations like "The Hundredth Monkey", it's highly unlikely that one single being "invented" the wheel; rather that wheel-like objects appeared in use more or less simoultaneously across the planet: "wheel" was an idea whose time had come. In more recent times, I'm reminded of the break- dancing phenomenon that swept through the ghettos of New York and Chicago in the 70's and 80's. Break-dancing had been around in a very minor way in mid- 60's Harlem, but at the height of nationwide deadly street-gang warfare a decade later, it suddenly appeared en masse to revolutionise life on the competitive ghetto streets of a whole nation. It was an idea whose time had come.
What needs to happen before social Transformation will take over from social change? Large-scale breakdown. Breakdown comes before break-through, I think the question could be --
How bad has this got to get
Before we'll open up,
Fire the caretakers,
And allow the architects to take over
And let , first, the wreckers
And then the builders to move in?
Sometimes we get lucky. Nature gets in ahead of us with some kind of "catastrophe", forcing us to creatively re-think the whole deal from the ground up (eg. a) Sicilian peasants living near Mt. Etna. b) My wife leaving me.) And sometimes our stupidity knows no bounds (eg. a) rebuilding New Orleans right where it just got drowned; or b) appointing someone to fix a problem who is actually part of the problem). We'd do well to re-think our attitude to "disasters". If it were not for cataclysmic earthquakes and volcanoes, you and I would be breathing with gills -- there wouldn't be a skerrick of land left above sea level by now.
Any state of being arrived at through transformation is naturally expressive and expansive. It demands transformed relationships between the people involved, and a transforming environment within which to thrive. Breakdancing broke upon an environment and a generation that was eager to open itself to anything that would break the tyranny of street warfare. Only in such freer conditions can a person adequately express his/her transforming individuality.
This is where the impetus for true social transformation arises -- from individuals, relationships, or families, who have first transformed themselves. That is the first requirement for social transformation.
The second requirement for social transformation is that the transforming individuals or groups must engage creatively with the society in which they exist. Skiving off into a cave for decades on end may help their personal progress and shield them from the adverse reactions I spoke of above; it may even be something beautiful to watch and experience, but it isn't going to produce social transformation. There's a helluva lot of wasted holiness tucked away in safe crevices all over the world. If you want to make a difference, you have to stick your neck out. If Mother Theresa had stayed in the nunnery, or Jesus had claimed his permanent parking spot in the temple, Calcutta and the world would be none the wiser.
There's a third requirement for any transformation, social or otherwise. A siege must be laid on Mind, both individually and collectively. An open space, a context must be created in which enlightening individuals can experiment and live fully. And it is up to the enlightening people to do it -- we are the ones with the awareness of what is required and what is against us. A basic prerequisite of all creating is to firstly create space for it. In the case of social re-formation, it must happen at all levels --- individual, family, in partner relationships, organisation-institutional, and cultural-societal.
What are the most significant areas where socially sanctioned restrictions manifest themselves, to the detriment of social evolution?
- Communication - mass and interpersonal
- Relation-shit
- Family openness and connection (lol)
- Education -- the process of exploring and discovering our inner intellectual, emotional, and spiritual resources.
- Industrial relations
- Legal proceedings
- Spiritual expression
- Morality and ethics in all levels of endeavour
- Politics of all kinds
- The way we treat our less-advantaged, our minorities, and refugees
- An inability to communicate what we think and feel
- An inability to experience intimate heart-connection
- A social acceptance of pretence and deceit, sometimes in the name of "tact" or "diplomacy" or "pragmatism" -- socially sanctioned forms of lying
- A denial of the withholding of information as Dishonesty. (Trying to get the truth out of a politician can be like pulling teeth without anaesthetic!)
- The assumption in bureaucracies and corporations that their function is to control or "massage" information, rather than provide it.
- A pathological fear of acknowledging mistakes.
- Avoidance of accountability
- A phony, soul-less facade of "correctness". (Have you ever attended an inter-departmental enquiry in a government, or quasi-governmental bureaucracy? The room drips with "polite niceness")
- A reliance on emotionally manipulative concepts like obligation, duty, moral imperatives, expectations and "shoulds" in order to control the behaviour of others.
- Rampant free-lunching -- all the way from the queue at your nearest Centrelink office to the Town Hall, to Parliament House and Government offices. There are now more people with their snouts in the trough than there are people replenishing it. To use another simile, the horse is riding the jockey!
One result of a socially sanctioned Mind-set is a phenomenon we call "bureaucracy". When "social" creates a structure to assist its members and puts people living in Mind in charge of it, it will not be long before the structure, just like the egos that created it. will hijack the process. Everyone -- staff and clients included -- soon becomes required to serve the resulting bureaucracy, and woe betide those who don't toe every line.
A hallmark of bureaucracy is a lot of "ritual busy-ness", behaviour which goes through the motions, but does not serve the purpose of the endeavour. I have a story to tell which nutshells why Change is not going to work -- why Transformation is desperately needed.........
I was tour-managing a theatrical show around Tasmania. At 9am one morning I fronted up as expected to the theatre in New Norfolk. This theatre happens to be on the campus of, and run by, a local university. I was there to set up the stage and lighting for the performance that evening. I was introduced to the caretaker who opened the lighting box and fly towers for me. No stage hands? No. And then he informed he was about to depart to take care of other duties, and that he would be going off-duty at 5.30pm and would return to lock up. I was taken aback. "But we have a show tonight," I protested. "Yes, I know," he replied. "You set your lighting, and I'll show you the switch backstage where you turn the lights on and off." I tried to explain to him that the show was actually quite complicated, with something over 150 lighting cues in the second half alone. I needed to use the lighting console during the show. He couldn't see why. Neither could his superior.
Bureaucracies were created to serve. In reality, they restrict and control, often in quite obscenely ludicrous ways (a camel is a horse, designed by a bureaucratic committee). Bureaucrcies develop systems that, in turn, create busy-work (work that keeps people occupied but not productive), efforting, struggle, red-tape, complexity, and output that fails to generate satisfaction for anybody. People who cannot be significant settle for being "special" and get themselves into a bureaucracy where they can position themselves in such a way where nothing can move without their say-so. It has been noted that God created the world in 7 days, but he had the advantage of working alone.
The "care-taker" (a misnomer if ever I heard one!) at New Norfolk was "just doing his job", without any broad concept whatever of the Context and Purpose of his job. He had sole technical responsibility for a theatre, but working office hours!? He was one prime example of someone way out of synch with the Context of his role. He was more intent on designing his job so that he could comfortably keep it, rather than DO it; he had no Intention in what he did every day, other than to fill time between 8.30am and 5.30 pm five days a week with as little input as possible. and in this university, he had found the ideal environment -- for him. He was not DOING what was required, only what his job description prescribed as the bare minimum. As we say in the acting game, he was not managing the theatre; he was playing AT managing a theatre. In a commercial venue, he would have been sacked on the spot. At this university, however, it was a "small matter" (his superior's word, not mine).
Over here in my space, small matters "matter"(and, yes, I'm being very positional about this!) When people claim they are "just doing their job", I have to ask "And how do you see your job in the light of the gap between what you're offering and what's actually required here? Who, have you decided, will fill that gap?'
The caretaker's superior was not interested in hearing about "my problem". The theatre had been hired "with lighting", and in his Code Book, lighting was being provided. The fact that I wanted access to more than just an on/off switch to operate it was viewed as an unreasonable expectation on my part. I got all his justifications about overtime and penalty-rates -- his realities -- which I suspect he had not factored into his costings with the tour organisers. But what truly astounded me (silly, wet-behind-the-ears me!) was his bone-headed insistence that everything was working well, and as it should be: I was an unreasonable trouble-maker. (PS. He eventually got off his arse long enough to give me the name and contact number for an "approved" lighting operator to come down from Hobart for the performance -- at my expense).
Bureaucracies mirror the minds of the people who set them up and run them and, at their worst, provide havens for incompetent bovine morons and disillusioned minimalists.
Back in 1989 I was working with kids on a self-esteem awakening programme we called "I'm Special". One afternoon, after a presentation to 200-odd kids at Wanneroo High School, a teacher confided in me quite self-righteously that "From now on, I'm just going to go through the motions. At 3.30, that's it, I knock off." Then I got several minutes of reasons-why she felt totally justified. And her reasons were all very "reasonable", and emotionally very strong. She was hurting! I could have given her sympathy; I could have given her agreement. But I had recently learned a lesson about empathy: I listened in silence, thanked her for sharing her pain, and walked away.
When we, as individuals or in groups, act out of a state of Mind, we are vulnerable and, deep inside, we know it. That's why the urge to tell and justify our story, over and over again, is so strong. And no amount of social agreement will make that nagging go away. We are secretly afraid of being unmasked, exposed, and having to face the reality that, with the deeply entrenched attitudes we've got, everyone is going to lose -- especially our selves.
This dread of "losing" is one of the drives behind a lot of social ganging-up -- for the comfort of like-minded agreement (Oh, you're so right, dear. [Now please tell me I'm alright, too!]) A free-minded person who won't give agreement is set upon by the rest of the group in a version of the Right/Wrong Game that goes "You're wrong, therefore we must be right." But even when the group "wins", everyone knows within his/her secret soul that something is disturbingly wrong. If they're not aware of it yet, they will be -- it's called the Mid-Life Crisis.
[A mid-life crisis happens when the accumulated weight of years of being "right" and ignoring the creeping feelings of the "wrongness" of our rightness, tips us over the balance point. We capsize. Mid-life crises are not confined to individual people; they manifest in partnerships and larger groupings. Un-addressed, they can progress into mena/andropause]
For what it's worth to you, here's my Ruthless Rule of the Right/Wrong Game ---
If you win -- you lose.
If you're right -- you're wrong.
It's a manifestation of the reality of Polar Opposites.
(And don't bother to go to your mind for an "explanation" of this riddle -- you won't get it there. You'll only truly get it in real-life experiences of winning and losing -- awarefully.
I don't know many people who aren't wary of being found at fault, and I don't believe those who claim they don't care. We all live and function in environments of low tolerance to fault and/or telling the absolute truth. Look at all the posturing, the huffing and puffing, and the finger-pointing we've had to endure from politicians over the last couple of months. Half the people are right, and half are wrong, but which is which? If you can stand far enough back from it, it's ludicrously funny watching the clash of very stupid, mean, unimaginative, self-righteous minds trying to sound intelligent by sprouting catch-cries and slogans; each one insulting the intelligence of just about everyone within earshot, trying to be right by proving the others one wrong. It's absurdly infantile behaviour because, outside of Mind, right and wrong do not exist. If you're looking to any party hacks or factional leaders to lead us out of the mess we're in, forget it. They're just as lost and deluded as we fear we are.
The Transformation you and I desperately seek lies in a direction no-one seems prepared to publicly entertain..... Push the "systems" in the direction they're going, hell-bent for failure. Tell the pollies what a good job they're doing -- they'll believe you. They'll always listen to what they want to hear. Let them destroy what they've set up. Let the whole thing blow up in their faces. Out of the rubble and lava of destruction will emerge new life, a new vision, and new way of doing things that will represent a clear break from all that has gone before.
-*-*-*-*-*-
Everyone has stories like mine about falling foul of minimalist, inhibitive bureaucratic mindsets. My point is that, being mind-based, they mirror at a social level characteristics that we all harbour at an individual level. We exhibit similar characteristics towards our selves and/or others in our personal, relationship, family, work and social lives. To cite one simple example -- look at the penchant of social structures to limit and control access to information and wider truths and possibilities (Don't tell me what I don't want to hear!) We all have hidden personal values and traits that we simply will not put up for review (I don't want to talk about that!); we censor ourselves -- with ourselves and with others, sometimes protesting "too much information!". As that university bureaucracy and that disillusioned teacher were with me, so am I with myself and with others, except sometimes. (But that's just me, isn't it? You're not like me -- are you?)
Social structures and behaviour are an extension of ourselves. To transform society, we only need to transform our self.
But we get caught in a vicious downward spiral. Our internal environment is reflected by the social environment we swim in; and the social environment reinforces our internal mood. When we find ourselves in a family or social environment, or a relationship that is failing to nurture us and our needs to connect, communicate, adjust, learn, expand and express our selves, we get tired; we get sick. We get sick and tired of it. But reacting to that by just going through the motions is not nurturing ourself; withdrawing emotionally and Going-Slow is slow suicide on a no-deposit instalment plan.
The problem I see is that social structures become a dropzone for people who have opted to dis-engage themselves. People who've decided to quit on living and, instead, go through the motions of living, will seek out employment and other protection from institutions that tend to tolerate a philosophy of going through the motions. And there seems to be no shortage of those. Under their fluffy protection, we can find plenty of like-minded teat-suckers who regard anyone who comes to work on-purpose as a "sucker".
The spiral doesn't end there, though. Because there's no gut satisfaction in living life down this road, the individuals keep demanding more and more in return for less and less. Every under-challenged, disillusioned piece of flotsam, from members of parliament downwards on the social scale, wants to get paid more for doing less, thinking "Then I'll be happy!".
But that doesn't work either. Finally, the level of productivity and morale gets so low, the institution itself stops working. It has long since ceased to function on purpose. It's purpose has become secondary to the selfish concerns of those who suckle and get fat and lazy from it. Eventually, the structure either implodes, or is exploded by a community that has become so fed-up with it that it is forced to make changes. Unfortunately, "change" isn't enough, and it's not long before the community is saddled with more of the same, just under a different name.
From the vantage point of life's thumb-suckers (and I know this because I spend time in that space), it's actually an achievement to just get by in the face of "unfair" obstacles. Any attempt to transform either them or the system is met with howls of protest. They will not entertain anything that threatens their "hard-won conditions". They see themselves as bullied, oppressed and victimised, even by people who are simply holding them to account for their (in)actions.
From my years as a theatrical and TV producer and events organiser, I know that any idiot can press the big buttons. The success of any endeavour lies in the focus and quality of attention given to details. The Details Principle applies just as much to transformation as it does to organising a major festival -- any overlooked or unfinished business can bring you unstuck and force you to start all over. And Murphy's Law of Enlightenment states that "If it can bring you undone, it will, and at the least convenient time." Enlightenment and transformation are both universally eruptive and exquisitely subtle.
HANDLING CORRECTION
So, social transformation begins with one's self......
For most of my life I've had a problem with being corrected. In the first 17 years of my life, correction equated with punishment -- there were no intermediate stages. It was always loud, painful, abusive and sometimes life-threatening, I have an instant, automatic, visceral terror of being bailed up for screwing up.
But in later adulthood I've luckily been blessed by some good mentors and teachers who understood me well enough to be patient with my slow progress through the defensive wall of horror.
From the day I got free and left home. here's how it used to be for me....... Can you relate to any of this.....?
Whenever I did anything wrong and failed to acknowledge it, I would dramatise it. I'd get tired and depressed (I still do at a serious threat to my equanimity). I'd get too busy, or get a headache. I might get bitchy with someone (still do - inside), and I'd have a long string of stories, reasons and excuses why things didn't turn out the way they should have........ anything but simply admit that I blew it. Then I'd go on out of rampant defensiveness to make more and bigger mistakes, until I'd finally make one so dramatic that someone had to either haul me over the coals or, in some cases, fire me.
Similarly, social environments and structures are not normally ready to cop to responsibility for mistakes, nor do they encourage it (at least publicly) from the people who work within them.
I had a good boss at Channel Nine in Perth -- an ebullient bloke called Laurie Kiernan. One day he patiently listened to my long list of reasons-why, justifications, mitigations and excuses for something I'd done. When the torrent finally stopped, he looked at me kindly for a moment, than said quietly, "Mr.Barkla, that's one helluva list of reasons. There's only one thing wrong with it; you ain't on it." I've never forgotten it.
Laurie taught me that when we fail to acknowledge our mistakes and our role of responsibility in them, we're doomed to repeat them, doing harm to ourselves and others. He was taking responsibility with his Board of Directors for having hired me; all he wanted from me was self-responsibility.
Social organisations are not normally conducive to that level of integrity. In hindsight, he was not the first truly responsible man I'd ever met, but he was the first one I recognised. I guess that said something for my growing maturity. I am indeed fortunate and grateful for having known him.
Instant correction -- calling it straight -- is true support. Social-ites may call it disloyalty, negativity, abruptness, rudeness, and even abusiveness. But then, social consciousness would rather call a spade "A hard, metallic implement for cultivating or burying something...", rather than "a spade".
Correction is an application of the energy of Love. How you choose to experience being on the receiving end of correction says more about you and the breadth of your definition of "love", than the person who's sticking their neck out for you.
Going through the motions, withholding truth and ducking responsibility are debilitating and exhausting. Real work -- working on purpose and taking full responsibility -- is invigorating.
TOWARDS A CONSCIOUS SOCIETY
Individuals becoming personally aware and growing in consciousness are already having a transformative effect on their social milieu. Without proselytising, transforming individuals naturally transform relationships; transforming relationships naturally evolutionise families, organisations and institutions. The manner in which people relate to each other and to the universe they live in is being regrounded. We may falter, get lost and make mistakes along the way, but the old ways are at last disappearing as the world undergoes radical renewal, from the bottom upwards.
That's the good news...
The bad news is that social structures and environments are still imposing influence from above and within, from mindsets of positionality and right-ness that ultimately do not produce anything more than compliance, conformity and occasional surface change. Revolutionary movements against totalitarianism, for example, have rarely - if ever - produced anything more than a differently flavoured totalitarian regime. Tsar Nicholas was replaced by Joseph Stalin. Chiang Kai Chek was replaced by Mao Tse Dung. The King of Thailand will be replaced by Thaksin Shinawatra, or one of his cronies. The "change" usually means even more rules, more restrictions, more limitations to freedom, more govern-ment. We change leaders, we change governments, but nothing gets appreciably better because neither the leaders nor the institutions through which they function know how to escape Mind. They may offer goals, and promise rewards, but they lack Purpose and Vision beyond their limited imaginings.
My commitment is to a world that works. And it works when my world is working for me and your world is working for you. It works both ways. It cannot be that my world can work for me, and yours can lose out as a result of that. The world does not work that way.
A "world working" doesn't mean quite the same for me as it does for you. We each have a different view of what constitutes workingness, and that is as it should be. We don't have to agree, or to all be the same in order to get along. But we DO need to Allow the differences between us. Neither personal ego nor social consciousness are renowned for their ability to allow for differences.
A synthesis of diverseness is how the world works. It's complex, but maybe I can use a simplified example ...... take the co-existence of lions and impala. Lions don't eat grass. Impala eat grasses; lions eat impala. That's how it works. It could be said that the impala support the lions. But there is more..... the fitter, stronger and smarter impala tend to get away from the lions, who are quite happy to make do with the weaker, sick or older impala, thus culling "weak" strains out of the impala gene pool. That's healthy for the impala. So it can also be said that the lions are supporting the impala. The whole thing balances: it works.
I want to see the world actually DOING what it is designed to do -- nurturing and supporting the experience of all being. I want everyone to get that they are empowered and nurtured. What I want is not "revolutionary" in the normally accepted meaning of the word. Revolution is habitually equated with social change, revolting against something, resisting something. It predicates on something being "right", and something else being "wrong". My kind of revolution transcends conflict. It transcends change; it is not looking for change. Change is the transition from young caterpillar to fatter, smarter and older caterpillar; Transformation is the switch from caterpillar to butterfly. I seek to provoke and empower transformation.
Social change has some value. It is one aspect of evolution, just in ultra-slow-motion. But I'm impatient; I like quantum surprises. I'm not going to live long enough for "change" to do it for me. Left on its own, change quickly loses impetus by chasing its own tail. Social change produces only incremental improvements. The world at large still doesn't work any better for all but a select few, just a bit differently.
My kind of transformation focuses on creating space for Possibility here and now. The past is for forensics. The future is for soothsayers. The only reality is here and now. Even while you're trawling around the remains of the past, or entrancing your way into a fantasised future you're doing it here and now -- always. There is no other time or place!
Mind-scientists tell us, quite rightly, that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. From within a mind perspective, that's very true. But we are much more than mere Mind, and outside of Mind a here-and-now moment of transformation can break that nexus between the past and the future -- forever.
That break can only happen, though, for individuals. Transformation happens socially when enough individuals get the transformative "a-hah!" to tip the balance of critical mass over in favour of the new paradigm. Australian politicians in the last few weeks, in the context of a hung parliament have coined the phrase "a new paradigm". We wish!! It isn't. What's happened is not a new paradigm. The pollies haven't transformed, and nothing much has even changed. There may be some cosmetic tinkering with existing policies and some debating rules, but basically we get the same old people sprouting the same old jingoistic slogans and doing the same old things the same obnoxious ways. If there had been a new paradigm, few - if any - of them would have been re-elected. We'd have an entirely different bunch of newbies in Canberra now experimenting for some new, more effective way to get the national housekeeping done.
A new paradigm is certainly what's needed, but before that can happen there's a lot of personal transforming to be done, and that can only be addressed in the here-and-now.
While I often sound warnings to others about the possible pitfalls of taking a certain direction in life, and recommend healthier alternatives, my responsibilities and rights end right there. I have no idea where you ought to be going or what your goals should be. That is no-one's business but yours. And I decline invitations from others to tell them what to do. On the contrary, my stand in life is one of "self-responsibility", and I create you as able and authorised to make your own choices, and go responsible for the consequences (It's your life; you live it.)
An idea that transformed me, and can transform you, is that it doesn't matter so much to know exactly where you're going, as it is to know where you're now coming from. Starting from where you are is a lot easier if you know where you actually are (as distinct from where you think you are or where you think you ought to be.) What opinions, beliefs and ideas are you carrying in your baggage, and how are you feeling about your present condition. What do you think is wrong with it? What's right with it? What have you learned from it so far? Is that learning going to expand, or contract your possibilities for the next moment? What is your model for survival? What do you agree with, what do you disagree with, what are you OK with, and what are you not OK with? Get your positionality, and know that whatever you resist from here onwards is going to show up in your face.
Social structures and behaviour are an extension of ourselves. To transform society, we only need to transform our self.
But we get caught in a vicious downward spiral. Our internal environment is reflected by the social environment we swim in; and the social environment reinforces our internal mood. When we find ourselves in a family or social environment, or a relationship that is failing to nurture us and our needs to connect, communicate, adjust, learn, expand and express our selves, we get tired; we get sick. We get sick and tired of it. But reacting to that by just going through the motions is not nurturing ourself; withdrawing emotionally and Going-Slow is slow suicide on a no-deposit instalment plan.
The problem I see is that social structures become a dropzone for people who have opted to dis-engage themselves. People who've decided to quit on living and, instead, go through the motions of living, will seek out employment and other protection from institutions that tend to tolerate a philosophy of going through the motions. And there seems to be no shortage of those. Under their fluffy protection, we can find plenty of like-minded teat-suckers who regard anyone who comes to work on-purpose as a "sucker".
The spiral doesn't end there, though. Because there's no gut satisfaction in living life down this road, the individuals keep demanding more and more in return for less and less. Every under-challenged, disillusioned piece of flotsam, from members of parliament downwards on the social scale, wants to get paid more for doing less, thinking "Then I'll be happy!".
But that doesn't work either. Finally, the level of productivity and morale gets so low, the institution itself stops working. It has long since ceased to function on purpose. It's purpose has become secondary to the selfish concerns of those who suckle and get fat and lazy from it. Eventually, the structure either implodes, or is exploded by a community that has become so fed-up with it that it is forced to make changes. Unfortunately, "change" isn't enough, and it's not long before the community is saddled with more of the same, just under a different name.
From the vantage point of life's thumb-suckers (and I know this because I spend time in that space), it's actually an achievement to just get by in the face of "unfair" obstacles. Any attempt to transform either them or the system is met with howls of protest. They will not entertain anything that threatens their "hard-won conditions". They see themselves as bullied, oppressed and victimised, even by people who are simply holding them to account for their (in)actions.
From my years as a theatrical and TV producer and events organiser, I know that any idiot can press the big buttons. The success of any endeavour lies in the focus and quality of attention given to details. The Details Principle applies just as much to transformation as it does to organising a major festival -- any overlooked or unfinished business can bring you unstuck and force you to start all over. And Murphy's Law of Enlightenment states that "If it can bring you undone, it will, and at the least convenient time." Enlightenment and transformation are both universally eruptive and exquisitely subtle.
HANDLING CORRECTION
So, social transformation begins with one's self......
For most of my life I've had a problem with being corrected. In the first 17 years of my life, correction equated with punishment -- there were no intermediate stages. It was always loud, painful, abusive and sometimes life-threatening, I have an instant, automatic, visceral terror of being bailed up for screwing up.
But in later adulthood I've luckily been blessed by some good mentors and teachers who understood me well enough to be patient with my slow progress through the defensive wall of horror.
From the day I got free and left home. here's how it used to be for me....... Can you relate to any of this.....?
Whenever I did anything wrong and failed to acknowledge it, I would dramatise it. I'd get tired and depressed (I still do at a serious threat to my equanimity). I'd get too busy, or get a headache. I might get bitchy with someone (still do - inside), and I'd have a long string of stories, reasons and excuses why things didn't turn out the way they should have........ anything but simply admit that I blew it. Then I'd go on out of rampant defensiveness to make more and bigger mistakes, until I'd finally make one so dramatic that someone had to either haul me over the coals or, in some cases, fire me.
Similarly, social environments and structures are not normally ready to cop to responsibility for mistakes, nor do they encourage it (at least publicly) from the people who work within them.
I had a good boss at Channel Nine in Perth -- an ebullient bloke called Laurie Kiernan. One day he patiently listened to my long list of reasons-why, justifications, mitigations and excuses for something I'd done. When the torrent finally stopped, he looked at me kindly for a moment, than said quietly, "Mr.Barkla, that's one helluva list of reasons. There's only one thing wrong with it; you ain't on it." I've never forgotten it.
Laurie taught me that when we fail to acknowledge our mistakes and our role of responsibility in them, we're doomed to repeat them, doing harm to ourselves and others. He was taking responsibility with his Board of Directors for having hired me; all he wanted from me was self-responsibility.
Social organisations are not normally conducive to that level of integrity. In hindsight, he was not the first truly responsible man I'd ever met, but he was the first one I recognised. I guess that said something for my growing maturity. I am indeed fortunate and grateful for having known him.
Instant correction -- calling it straight -- is true support. Social-ites may call it disloyalty, negativity, abruptness, rudeness, and even abusiveness. But then, social consciousness would rather call a spade "A hard, metallic implement for cultivating or burying something...", rather than "a spade".
Correction is an application of the energy of Love. How you choose to experience being on the receiving end of correction says more about you and the breadth of your definition of "love", than the person who's sticking their neck out for you.
Going through the motions, withholding truth and ducking responsibility are debilitating and exhausting. Real work -- working on purpose and taking full responsibility -- is invigorating.
TOWARDS A CONSCIOUS SOCIETY
Individuals becoming personally aware and growing in consciousness are already having a transformative effect on their social milieu. Without proselytising, transforming individuals naturally transform relationships; transforming relationships naturally evolutionise families, organisations and institutions. The manner in which people relate to each other and to the universe they live in is being regrounded. We may falter, get lost and make mistakes along the way, but the old ways are at last disappearing as the world undergoes radical renewal, from the bottom upwards.
That's the good news...
The bad news is that social structures and environments are still imposing influence from above and within, from mindsets of positionality and right-ness that ultimately do not produce anything more than compliance, conformity and occasional surface change. Revolutionary movements against totalitarianism, for example, have rarely - if ever - produced anything more than a differently flavoured totalitarian regime. Tsar Nicholas was replaced by Joseph Stalin. Chiang Kai Chek was replaced by Mao Tse Dung. The King of Thailand will be replaced by Thaksin Shinawatra, or one of his cronies. The "change" usually means even more rules, more restrictions, more limitations to freedom, more govern-ment. We change leaders, we change governments, but nothing gets appreciably better because neither the leaders nor the institutions through which they function know how to escape Mind. They may offer goals, and promise rewards, but they lack Purpose and Vision beyond their limited imaginings.
My commitment is to a world that works. And it works when my world is working for me and your world is working for you. It works both ways. It cannot be that my world can work for me, and yours can lose out as a result of that. The world does not work that way.
A "world working" doesn't mean quite the same for me as it does for you. We each have a different view of what constitutes workingness, and that is as it should be. We don't have to agree, or to all be the same in order to get along. But we DO need to Allow the differences between us. Neither personal ego nor social consciousness are renowned for their ability to allow for differences.
A synthesis of diverseness is how the world works. It's complex, but maybe I can use a simplified example ...... take the co-existence of lions and impala. Lions don't eat grass. Impala eat grasses; lions eat impala. That's how it works. It could be said that the impala support the lions. But there is more..... the fitter, stronger and smarter impala tend to get away from the lions, who are quite happy to make do with the weaker, sick or older impala, thus culling "weak" strains out of the impala gene pool. That's healthy for the impala. So it can also be said that the lions are supporting the impala. The whole thing balances: it works.
I want to see the world actually DOING what it is designed to do -- nurturing and supporting the experience of all being. I want everyone to get that they are empowered and nurtured. What I want is not "revolutionary" in the normally accepted meaning of the word. Revolution is habitually equated with social change, revolting against something, resisting something. It predicates on something being "right", and something else being "wrong". My kind of revolution transcends conflict. It transcends change; it is not looking for change. Change is the transition from young caterpillar to fatter, smarter and older caterpillar; Transformation is the switch from caterpillar to butterfly. I seek to provoke and empower transformation.
Social change has some value. It is one aspect of evolution, just in ultra-slow-motion. But I'm impatient; I like quantum surprises. I'm not going to live long enough for "change" to do it for me. Left on its own, change quickly loses impetus by chasing its own tail. Social change produces only incremental improvements. The world at large still doesn't work any better for all but a select few, just a bit differently.
My kind of transformation focuses on creating space for Possibility here and now. The past is for forensics. The future is for soothsayers. The only reality is here and now. Even while you're trawling around the remains of the past, or entrancing your way into a fantasised future you're doing it here and now -- always. There is no other time or place!
Mind-scientists tell us, quite rightly, that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. From within a mind perspective, that's very true. But we are much more than mere Mind, and outside of Mind a here-and-now moment of transformation can break that nexus between the past and the future -- forever.
That break can only happen, though, for individuals. Transformation happens socially when enough individuals get the transformative "a-hah!" to tip the balance of critical mass over in favour of the new paradigm. Australian politicians in the last few weeks, in the context of a hung parliament have coined the phrase "a new paradigm". We wish!! It isn't. What's happened is not a new paradigm. The pollies haven't transformed, and nothing much has even changed. There may be some cosmetic tinkering with existing policies and some debating rules, but basically we get the same old people sprouting the same old jingoistic slogans and doing the same old things the same obnoxious ways. If there had been a new paradigm, few - if any - of them would have been re-elected. We'd have an entirely different bunch of newbies in Canberra now experimenting for some new, more effective way to get the national housekeeping done.
A new paradigm is certainly what's needed, but before that can happen there's a lot of personal transforming to be done, and that can only be addressed in the here-and-now.
While I often sound warnings to others about the possible pitfalls of taking a certain direction in life, and recommend healthier alternatives, my responsibilities and rights end right there. I have no idea where you ought to be going or what your goals should be. That is no-one's business but yours. And I decline invitations from others to tell them what to do. On the contrary, my stand in life is one of "self-responsibility", and I create you as able and authorised to make your own choices, and go responsible for the consequences (It's your life; you live it.)
An idea that transformed me, and can transform you, is that it doesn't matter so much to know exactly where you're going, as it is to know where you're now coming from. Starting from where you are is a lot easier if you know where you actually are (as distinct from where you think you are or where you think you ought to be.) What opinions, beliefs and ideas are you carrying in your baggage, and how are you feeling about your present condition. What do you think is wrong with it? What's right with it? What have you learned from it so far? Is that learning going to expand, or contract your possibilities for the next moment? What is your model for survival? What do you agree with, what do you disagree with, what are you OK with, and what are you not OK with? Get your positionality, and know that whatever you resist from here onwards is going to show up in your face.
The first step in transforming where you are going to is to get straight on where you are and make peace with where you are coming from. Then drop every attachment to how you think the next moment ought to turn out.
Know what you want,
Put out for it,
Release it to a creative force (whatever you consider that to be),
Do whatever tilling needs to be done,
Then engage creatively with what you get.
That's how it works. Individually and socially.
(I have tried other ways that do work -- goal-setting, time-managing, positive thinking, praying, affirming, chanting etc., but found that they don't work for long, because all I got was small change -- no real transformation. I found that, the more things change, the more they stay the same. But I'm sure you're going to find that out for yourself, and that is as it should be. All I ask on your behalf is that you be aware, and when you come to your next experience of "not-working", just remember what you've read today).
SELF AND SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Self is not the same as "selfishness"; in fact they are in some respects polar opposites. Self is the level of awareness we have of what we are at the deepest core of being. Self is infinitely allowing, which is more than can be said for "selfishness". Self has nothing whatsoever to do with accidents of lineage, biography, geography, culture, appearance, attitude, health, intelligence quotient, achievements or possessions -- anything that comes and goes. These, and more, are all available to Self for the purpose of human experiences, but they are NOT Self itself.
Self has no opposite. It is the ultimate absolute. There is nothing that is not Self.
Selfishness -- in the negative sense of the word, is what results when we identify with any of the above artifices. Selfishness has opposites, which might sound something like "altruism" or "consideration". Selfishness arises from ego, which hijacked the term "self" unto itself in order to camouflage itself and guilt-trip us away from deeply exploring "Who am I?" When we really question our Am-ness, we eventually get to a point where our ego gets busted from the CEO's chair back to where it belongs -- in the mailroom. Ego, just like its offsprung social consciousness, has a vested interest in sabotaging any effort to access true Self.
Self is that which has created and is aware of and available to all experience. There is nothing narcissistic about creating and transcending the things that lead to narcissism.
We are Self, loaded down with, and limited by all the things we add after "I am......." That includes being social animals. Social is selfish, for as long as the individual Selves that make it up continue to behave so that they can experience the giving and receiving of "selfishness". That will continue until each person-ality realises that he/she is short-changing himself, and gives it up. When enough people give it up, society will stop being selfish and become Itself; it will return to its original purpose.
What do you think were the original reasons our ancient ancestors socialised themselves inside their caves and trees? Make a list.
Now look at each item on that list. How well are each of our present social structures -- family, state and religious -- fulfilling those purposes?
Now look at each item on that list. How well are each of our present social structures -- family, state and religious -- fulfilling those purposes?
What, do you think, are the causes of their failures? Make another list.
Now, looking at each item on that list in turn, how do those failures and causes show up in your being?
If you want to change your society, that's where you go to work right now.
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