On a recent train ride, a woman, sitting next to me, after a few minutes of introductions, asked me, “So what kind of work do you do?” I did not want to begin the response with “I am a creator, and I create life.” I haven’t yet arrived at the exact wording that would convey what it is I do. So I said, “I’m a writer and blogger. I write about the transformation of the American workplace.” With barely two or three sentences out of my mouth to clarify what I meant by transforming and shifting, the woman looked at me and said, “Well that’s not gonna happen. Who in the world believes that it would?”
The idea that we are not here to work and earn does sound far-fetched. For most of my years on this planet, all I have ever known that life was about was earning a living. Secure a good education and that will secure a decent paying job. A decent job is one that pays the mortgage for the house that comes with having a good job, sending the kids to a good school, if you have children, saving for retirement, and occasional vacations. You know the belief, so I don’t have to repeat all the details.
It is true that as wage earners we value our homes, cars, clothing, and our relative financial freedom. But we do not value our energy or our time; we are impervious to our power as creators. Jobs and the money earned from them cannot, in thousands of years, compensate for what we have the time and power to do now, but don’t, to make this planet and all the life on it thrive.
I do not pretend to have any solutions for the problems that we face as planetary beings. I have discovered that the process of solving problems is symptomatic of the belief in separation.
What I’d like to share with you are some fertile ideas that we can explore as a way around this vicious cycle of problem solving. This exploration can form the basis of a new narrative because it disconnects the “drive” to make, identify and solve problems. Here we only explore ideas.
We all desire, whether we express it or not, an end to conflict and discord on this planet. We all have a desire to be known and to share our talents and our gifts. Sharing, or extending the highest good in ourselves, is in our nature, if you will. When we do not share, gift and extend, discord prevails, on the planet, in our communities, in our relationships and in our bodies.
So let’s begin by contemplating the thought that we have misidentified ourselves. Maybe Teilhard de Chardin and many others are correct about us being spirits having a human experience. It’s more than reasonable to see how the manner in which we have organized life on the planet is contrary to the well-being of “spirit.”
Second, let us allow ourselves to examine how the belief in working and earning a living is inconsistent with what we are coming to know about the power of our minds. Meditate on the relationship between thought and experience.
Third. Let us contemplate the possibility that we are on this planet for a purpose; and that all we have been taught and learned has not directed us towards this purpose.
Fourth. Look around you and imagine that there is a talent or gift that you possess that could contribute to an expansion of joy and well-being for yourself, your family, your community, your city. You need not identify what this talent or gift is.
Fifth. Contemplate the idea that any type of learning that we engage in, at any level, at any age, would be solely designed for guidance towards the discovery and expansion of this talent or gift.
This sixth one I will phrase as a question: What if giving and sharing were to replace earning and owing? How would our lives be different void of the practice of buying and selling.
Seventh. Maybe the only purpose of “time” is to allow the discovery and expression of our true identity: spirits who have taken on a physical form (a body), with the power to create the physical.
Finally, number eight. Contemplate the idea of urban communities without places where people go to work and earn a living. How does the idea feel of having communities where the quality of life is dependent on the expression of talents, sharing and gifting?
The way to end the conflict, misery and discord that we are mired in, is to imagine life without them. It is a fast track to the expansion of consciousness, because it will guide us outside of the box, outside the belief in separation which is the sole generator of unsolvable problems.
Asking outside the box questions, imagining life beyond problem solving are a way to begin to create a new narrative that will move us beyond survival to lives filled with unlimited well-being and joy. This planet can and will thrive!
Summer Reading
Aside from finishing The Way of Mastery, I’ve been focusing on Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Sale Permaculture. I will simply say that there is far more to creating a permaculture garden than I imagined. This book is the classic text on the subject, so if you are a gardener, interested in what I call tiny-scale,
urban/city farming, this is the text that will get you started. In my case, it’s the text that I will use to re-start the garden next season. What Comes After Money? Essays From Reality Sandwich on Transforming Currency & Community. These essays are critiques on our current economic system and proposals for creating a new one. From reading these authors, it appears as if a gifting and sharing economy is the way the shift is going. Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure is a proposal to create an economic system based on tribe affiliation. The author, Daniel Quinn, the author of Ishmael, uses the circus and the members of the circus as an example of a tribal relationship that insures the economic well-being of its members. I wasn’t convinced that “tribalism” is the way forward and out of the separation.
I am currently reading two texts that I’ll hopefully share with you next time; How Quantum Activism Can Save Civilization, by Amit Goswami, Ph.D. So far I am not impressed; the civilization that we’ve made is what most believe is what needs to be dismantled. Finally, a book that I ordered last summer, but just taking it off the shelf to read, One-Straw Revolutionary, The Philosophy and Work of Masanobu Fukuoka, who was a natural farming practitioner. This book is an intimate look at his philosophy and practice.
