Hello Wonderfool,
There are situations that call for courage.
These situations are happening presently and evoke in each one of us reaction, even if it is unconscious.
When we hear about tragedy we grasp at whatever ways of making sense are available and provide some explanation. When we encounter a decision to make in our lives we try to give ourselves the best chance of knowing what to and how to proceed. When we hear the world is in crisis, we do our best to live in the ways that support us to continue without total collapse.
We can look at all of our lifestyle choices in this way. Whether our life is made up of activism or retreat, includes a focus on wealth or status, has led us to ways of seeing such as stoicism or nihilism, or is something completely our own; each choice is often a way to make something more certain of a life appearing seemingly from nowhere.
But what if trying to make the future certain is the wrong approach?
What if we were better off approaching the future with curiosity and openness?
What would be possible then?
To begin, we might look at what is actually happening.
Which is, that despite the myriad of uncertainties we are faced with, there are things that we can know without doubt. There are things we can know from our direct, present moment experience, that allow us to take action in ways that shape the future towards what we want it to be – but only when we have the courage to turn towards what is here now with responsibility, curiosity, and care.
Our Interconnection
By attuning to ones present moment experience, it doesn’t take long to realise that we are helpless in our interconnection – that what I do impacts you, and what you do impacts me. The existence that we share presupposes this. Living as beings of space; we cannot escape our interconnection; as we cannot escape space.
We are made of it, move through it, and unfold from it.
We can know this without doubt. Our experience is happening completely in space. So is that of others. Therein, we are felt, known, and sensed by others, whilst others are felt, known, and sensed by us. This is apparent whenever we walk into a new setting, or whenever we share a meal, or bus.
This space we live in together is our space. We are inseparable from each other in that sense. Whilst we may be separate beings, we cannot help but be influential in each others lives. We are beings of space – a shared space.
This is the reason that I am here and writing. I am writing because I want to realise something in our space. I want to communicate into our space; that there are futures that need our creativity, that there are futures that need our responsibility, that there are futures that need our care. And I believe that more of us could realise what we truly want if we take that proposition to heart.
Individually, we are each incredibly powerful.
Each one of us is a universe of experience and agency; capable of imagining, feeling, sensing, and acting. Whether our actions be small or large, our sensing gross or subtle, our imaginings distant or near, our feelings intense or diffuse; they are existent within a space we are part of, and radiate through it whether we like it or not.
This is the price and our power in: interconnection.
We can affect our lives and eachothers.
However, it is not like everything that I think is available to you to read or hear, and it is not as if my feelings are yours to take ownership of. We are distinct in our interconnection. Your experiences, memories, and feelings are your own. You have access to parts of this space that I cannot truly fathom, nor you mine.
We are both the same and distinct. We rely on each other in many ways and in other ways we are totally responsible for our own experience. It is necessary for us to acknowledge that we are distinct but it is also without doubt that we are connected. Alone, we are powerful, but we are not simply alone. Together, we are able to do things we cannot do alone, because there are limits that our distinct beings are comprised of.
This is why language is useful.
We communicate in language because together we are even more powerful than we are alone and we need each other to achieve certain things. Collaboration is not only fun but the genuine combining of forces that offer distinct qualities. In combination, our individual powers are not only additive in force, but also expand the possible creative outcomes we can manifest. Our separate experiences, in meeting, are allowed to create something new together where there are the conditions for what we might call true communication.
True Communication
In true communication, we find ourselves exploring the gap between. This is where my experience and your experience can meet, without one erasing the other. An openness to receive co-exists with the sense of ones power as a distinct being. Whilst my being may be changed by our exchange, it need not diminish my experience or agency. I am a free being. As are you. The gap between provides an adequate space for communication to occur between distinct experiences.
True communication, however, is rare.
A number of conditions are required to make true communication possible. Conditions of the whole context, of you, of I, and the gap between. The most important conditions need nothing from us; our interconnection is pre-ordained, space helplessly ensures it; and we are continually being, until we are dead. Then there are the conditions that ask things of us.
The conditions that ask things of us are those that require courage and depth of the heart – the ability to say yes and no.
Here is the hard part, the part that takes practice, and the part that we are all learning to live. To be interconnected and to have distinct preferences, is to experience conflict in space. We are not always automatically in agreement. The challenge is in how we move through this dissonance; and integrate it into what we want to be. When what I want to be meets what you want to be, there we may discover the generative tension of conflict.
Important to understand, is that our habits can quicken our reactions in ways that cause harm.
We may be habituated to having to express ourselves aggressively in order to be heard or attended to. We may be habituated to needing to withdraw in order to survive conflict. We may be habituated to avoiding the admission of mistakes in order to avoid humiliation. We may be habituated to distracting ourselves from the movements of our own mind in order to avoid discomfort.
Whatever our reactionary habits may be, ultimately they are not who we are, and are malleable to change.
Spiritual traditions, educational institutions, and sports teams have all developed different forms of training, that through practice, can change our habits. When we practice a new way of showing up, responding, or being we begin to re-habituate our tendencies. Over time, we can find ourselves free of the habits of the past, through the practice of new ones – such is the momentum of habit.
For instance, where tensions arise, we have the opportunity to make a habit of taking on a curious, careful, and responsible orientation.
Through a shared commitment to curiosity, supported by the strength of our hearts, we create the conditions for connection. What connects our ideas, visions, and actions to each other is inherent and we need only open ourselves to discover it. The resultant outcome is a space where our ideas, visions, and actions can mingle and dance together; intimating a world that includes all that is important without abandoning ourselves or each other. Such a world is a world where we flourish together and every life is recognised as inherently valuable.
I wish to live in this world where life is valued and supported to flourish abundantly. We can transcend the world where domination and control is the primary mode of interpersonal conflict and into a world where each one of us has the patience, ground, and heart to meet one another in the gap between.
To do so, we must engage the truth of our interconnection honestly . We must know that the wellbeing of others is influenced by our own wellbeing. And we must know that our own wellbeing is influenced by the wellbeing of others. We must admit this truth and it’s energy; and what it communicates about how we must live.
There is no way that we can expect to take care of our interpersonal relationships if we do not take care of our relationship to ourselves. If we speak harshly to ourselves we will speak harshly to others, such is the momentum of habit. If we are gentle and honest with ourselves we will be gentle and honest with each other, such is the momentum of habit.
It may just take some practice.
Ultimately, it is the courage of the heart that offers dignity to our choices in service of both ourselves and others. We must honour our own preferences and cherish our own bodies, whilst living in attunement to the equal preciousness of others. Each being is a rare occurrence, a singular one-of-a-kind, to know them without abandoning ourselves is the great gift of being yourself. Remembering that your heart is courageous you will discover depths of patience, care, and resolve in allowing others to be themselves too.
A place where everyone is cared for and allowed to be themselves – this is the more beautiful worlds our hearts know is possible.
The alternative is patterns of aggression recurring again and again.
Why I’m sharing this
I share all of this to invite you to a particular kind of space. A space where people are offering the gift of curiosity, to both themselves and each other, and the possibilities of the future, arising out of a care and courage of heart – where curious people meet to realise what’s possible.
That space is called Beings Club and you are invited.
We will practice together at Salons, meditating in ways that take care of our relationship with ourselves. Then we will meet in pairs and triads, to share space and curiosity. Finally, we will close each Salon as a group reflecting on where we’ve discovered connection.
That’s the whole of Beings Club and it is the more beautiful world already here.
If this writing has resonated – this space needs you.
The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible isn’t a thing one person creates and others visit. It only arises if we live it together, which means it only happens if you bring yourself to be part of it.
So this isn’t an invitation in the usual sense. I’m not offering you something finished. I’m telling you it doesn’t exist without you, and asking you to be part of making it real.
If you want to be part of this there are two things to do:
Go to beingsclub.com and leave a note at the door near the end of the page.
Share this invitation with a friend, or two, or five.
We do this together, or it doesn’t happen.
The next Beings Club Salon is planned for last week of September.
Depending on how that goes, we’ll continue roughly once-a-month from there, curiously, care-fully, responsibly, and indefinitely…
Stay curious,
John
Where I’ve Been Recently
I paused Beings Club in April to collaborate with and support Daniel Thorson in the building and development of a new project.
That new project is The ARC Network.
The ARC Network is building infrastructure for the emergence of an intimate planetary culture: distributed, scalable capacity to deliver attuned loving presence to anyone in need.
In its current form, the ARC is a small network of individuals learning a practice together. We call it dyadic unfolding.
In that practice, two people meet and take it in turns speaking from the truth of their present experience while the other offers steady, loving presence.
Both people leave the session changed because they have been met — perhaps in a dimension of their being that they've never been met in before. And because they are asked to hold a quality of presence that connects them with the intrinsic value of being alive.
If you’re interested in learning the practice and getting closer to the ARC, we’re offering an 8-week training.
You can find out more here.