The story is always embellished. The best stories always are. Of those living today few really remember how bad it had gotten on Gaia. Few even knew her name at the turn of the 21st century. Gaia – the name floated around environmentalist’s circles in a whisper. What’s in a name? Everything. Gaia, a sacred utterance, an expression of Earth’s deepest dream. Gaia is our life, we and it – one. And, it was when Adam used her name that everything changed – a distinct and defining moment of global awakening. It was truly astonishing – the speech that shifted global consciousness on an unprecedented scale. It was so much like Dr. King’s speech, people gave it the same name, “I Have A Dream.” It captured the zeitgeist of the age, expressed the latent truth we all knew, but had yet given voice, form, utterance. “We are all Gaia,” he said.

But, Adam was barely known just ten years before. He was a teacher, and little else was known. For years he taught and lectured at a small environmental charter school. His wasn’t a story of privilege…like Gaia in the cosmos, it was a story of grace. His was a story born in Appalachia; a story with few dreams, less money, green mountains, television, church, baseball, and little thought of the world. Such a small thing in the beginning, desperately small. 

But there was something within him…a wisdom and deep prayer that found it’s way towards study. And as he grew in wisdom, he grew in awareness of a hurting world; a hurt that would take root in his own heart and drive him towards a tragic end befallen by so, so many – addiction – an incomprehensible erosion, a cancer of the soul. And miracles of miracles, Adam’s greatest pain – the pain of self-destruction, became in the same moment the healing stroke which would grow and grow and catapult him towards this destiny… and Gaia’s healing.  

In the end we know that it was his suffering, his proximity to death that mirrored the very pain of Earth in the early 21st century. It was a type of synchronicity that is drummed up from the very seat of creation. Christ is often the figure most compared to the event that took place. Christ’s life symbolically and literally represented an evolutionary leap in human consciousness, an awakening, a new interpretative lens on existence itself – love, forgiveness, grace, humility, faith – a spiritual dimension that heralded forth a reevaluation of values, of how power operated in human life. Adam stood in that legacy; a legacy of bringing awareness to the next phase of human revelation concerning existence itself, an eco-conscious evolutionary leap into what he called an aperspectival worldview. Few knew the full revelation of what he meant; fewer had read Jean Geber, Nietzsche, and Whitehead. 

But it was true, Adam’s life had strangely become co-extensive with Gaia’s life. He was modeling a posture of unification, one we are all called to model, to practice in love. He would always say that it was a paradoxical move – just like his healing – where surrender becomes triumph, where many become one, in diversity union; where in giving, we receive; where in pain, healing; where in darkness, light. Because it was dark, dark… as it so often is before the dawn. 

Our world had tumbled into such an overwhelming crisis. A crisis that seemed to touch every part, every system, every community and individual. Gaia was in such deep pain and her voice had gone neglected, ignored, willfully ignored for far, far too long. Ecologically, Gaia was dying. Our species was overrunning her life essence, her soul. We were driven by selfishness and self-centeredness, driven by a thousand forms of fear and we tore the limbs from our great mother. We were an addicted people – addicted to Gaia’s forest and waters, addicted to our own obsession with greed and consumerism, addicted to our cultural pain and mindless, frenzied production. “Build it! Who gives a shit!” “Will it make us money?!!” Our forests were literally suffocating; our coral reefs literally cooking; our waterways literally poisonous. Outstanding shame. And the dominant human condition – besides the multitudes of systemic racisms, sexisms, ableisms, bigotry, and outright hate on the outside – found itself lacking, bereft of spirit, internally absent and in pain like our Great Mother. 

I know all this sounds traumatic, but painting the picture of a global human “bottom” is exactly that… a hard picture. But there is light… of course there was light. Our human perseverance and courage have also grown and given us great gifts of technological capacity, alliance building, and human solutions. What a paradox again, that our ingenuity might have been at its peak at the same time we destructively extracted more and more resources from our world. And it’s true that people had a way of healing and seeing the light. The great religions continued to carve out space for worship and love. And, as dysfunctional as our political systems were during the first quarter of the 21st century, they endured long enough to give us the strong foundations of democratic cultural ambassadors we have today. 

And when we look back we can see that the foundations were set for an entire human, ecological revolution before Adam’s mark on the world unfolded. This is the gift we live in today. But that speech… Adam’s speech was superhuman. It was one of those speeches your therapist gives after listening to your same bullshit for six months and fed up he bypasses years of therapy to give you the answers because he can’t stand how willfully negligent you are. Adam told us the global and ecological meaning of Covid! How long did we seek restitution for Covid in blame and medical remedies without understanding the simple planetary message; Gaia’s profound instruction. What was it Christ said? “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Covid unified our entire planet within a matter of days. It was an unprecedented unification for the sake of public health. Covid was the Earth’s voice shouting as loudly as possible for our attention. And we listened! In just a matter of days the shelter in place transformed the ecological health of entire cities. Within days the Los Angeles and Shanghi’s skylines cleared of pollution, becoming visible, rather than choking under the smog of insatiable desire driven by consumer capitalism.  

So, even before Adam’s speech the stage was set for complete global transformation. Everyone now understands how significant the film and entertainment industry’s cultural revolution was to the reshaping of our collective consciousness. Only few had the foresight to see that the industry of entertainment had been producing and reproducing mythological tropes that failed to satisfy the longing for empowerment and transformation of society’s individuals. The gods of Hollywood were all but gone by 2030. What had replaced them was a growing mass of people producing self-affirmation movements for class consciousness; it almost became a rite of passage movement fueled by open sourced, decentralized medias; a empowerment movement that no one saw coming, but nevertheless reshaped human consciousness around the idea that global change on a radical scale was possible. 

Collectives of millions and millions were able to gather online and produce viral content that made visible the power of love and affirmation in the world. It was a movement that simply out-paced and out-performed news medias that were shackled and driven by drama. People started to radically share monetary resources through decentralized crypto currencies that incentivized resource sharing. Communities that organized against violence, addiction, war and poverty begin to mobilize millions for causes desperate for allies and attention. Ecocommunities began to get more and more visibility proving that ecocities were scalable, possible and alternative paths to consumerist city planning. 

But the biggest and most pressing synchronistic alignment came when Adam’s social media presence as a cultural ambassador had reached a point of critical mass. Right at that point the entire U.S. found itself in a vacuum of power and Adam, almost magically manifest, symbolized a type of possibility for being-in-the-world that captured global attention. Then came his speech! Do you remember? 

. . .

“I’m an educator. I’ve always loved learning and the idea of transformation. The one thing that I’ve learned over and over is that true education, true transformation is always preceded by significant disorientation, contraction, urgency and pain. Individually it often looks like the loss of a job, marriage, or dream; it’s a major injury, illness or addiction that requires a fundamental reorientation to life. And it is terrifying, and it feels like a death because it is; it is the death of a former version of life and all that went with it – the identity, thoughts, habits, the commitments, friends, the place, the labor and behavior. Mine was a bottom so complete that I faced two alternatives: either go on to the bitter end medicating and repressing my issues or accept spiritual help. Under the weight of my addiction and broken heart, facing the loss of my Ph.D., and all the dreams I held connected with that path I left my studies and entered the only fellowship that seemed appropriate for my condition – Alcoholics Anonymous. And I grieved for years… and I healed and grew. 

Addiction and recovery have become some of the most helpful lenses I have to diagnose many of my grosser handicaps in life. The spiritual path laid before me in the 12-steps was built upon the same spiritual foundations that each major world religion and secular therapy makes available to their practitioners. What I found on this path was a restoration of my character and my power – my response-ability to care for myself and to be of service to others. I began developing an intimate relationship with the spiritual principles necessary to fundamentally resurrect, reorient, and restore my life. 

I have applied recovery based principles and behaviors over the last decade, and the results have been near miraculous. And each time I thoroughly consider our world’s grosser dysfunctions it becomes very clear that we are an addicted society, an addicted people. We are sick – spiritually ill. And just like any addict, we must hit bottom in order to experience enough of a wake-up call to enact fundamental change – to heal. If the COVID-19 taught us anything it’s taught us that despite all of our powers we still face insurmountable, systemic, unmanageability and powerlessness. Revealed in each of my terrible bottoms was a deep call to reorder my life upon more skillful principles and practice – the religiously inclined would rightly call it a spiritual experience. If the coronavirus is seen as a societal bottom, then in my humble opinion, the opportunity that lies before the entire human condition is a call to recover, to deeply reflect and reorder our societies upon a new ecological and empathetic foundation. 

Individual transformation looks different for each of us, but it begins with having a clear vision of the problem. If we – the Earth community – are unwilling to collectively grasp the difference between a symptom (coronavirus) and the causal conditions (systemic ecological destruction) we will never be able to sufficiently meet the mandate of our time put forth by the United Nations and the Earth Charter. We are facing nothing short of a call to transform the very character and power that drives human progress.

To that end we need something like the twelve steps of AA for social and political institutions. We have to admit that we were powerless to overcome the obsessive drive to place short-term political and economic desire above ecological long-term health. The results of that powerlessness are continued environmental devastation and increasing systemic unmanageability, broken hearts, and deeply inequitable societies.

To that end we need something like the principles in the 12-traditions of AA as guides for how to realign our democratic processes upon a foundation of integrity and wisdom. Remember, at some point, after many outrageous displays of dysfunction and abuse our leaders got honest with themselves and had to separate church and state; now we need to get honest with ourselves and to the extent that we are able, we must separate money and politics. We’ve got to be finished. Without that measure, it will be impossible to make the difficult changes necessary to shift global consciousness and protect and restore our failing ecosystems.

To that end we need stringent taxation on companies that produce waste or any harmful effects to communities and the natural world. A symptom of our powerlessness has been our unwillingness to take responsibility for our pollution, our externalities. For instance, we’re afraid to get honest about our collective inability to eliminate all single use plastics. Why haven’t we done this? Why are we dragging our feet? 

To that end we must take seriously the formation of new global institutions like the Earth Charter and nations must begin to swiftly align their local and global practices upon those foundations. We agree that it is our responsibility to turn our lives and will over to higher order expressions of ecological empathy and global actions built upon the consciousness expressed in the Earth Charter…” 

. . . 

 What happened afterwards was nothing short of a series of social and geopolitical miracles. “We are Gaia.” We’re Adam’s famous last lines and his speech reverberated across nations and lands ripe for change. The harvest was the manifestation of a democratic order of countries that shifted from a model of power to a model of ecological logics built upon what was then a new edition of Adam’s Earth Charter. 

How I saved the World with a Book

By Mark Campbell

There has not been a war or even a rumor of a war for over ten years now and I have not seen a homeless person in at least as long. Did I actually have a hand in this transformation? Can I truly say that without sounding too conceited, even to myself? I ponder the question for a while before I smile and say out loud “Yes I did!”. I did it by writing a book about how people could get the most joy out of their lives.

The Guts of the Heart quickly became a New York Times best-seller and sold over eight million copies. In the book, I laid out how you could use embodied knowing as a scientific process to discover the truth of existence. This rational embodied knowing then enabled us to see ourselves, in our true essence, as the source of joy that grew when engaging with others. The book referred to this as Big Joy since it is the most expansive and burdenless joy that is available. This is in contrast to the joy that we mainly pursue in the material society which is both fleeting and burdened by the harm that it causes to the rest of the world. Because that harm results in scarcity, wars, and the need to defend what you have gained, it is referred to as bunker joy in the book.

The success of the book was largely due to its ability to combine the works of some of our greatest minds to build a solid case for why Big Joy works. Cognitive scientist John Vervaeke provided a rational language for embodied experiences while Carl Jung and Erich Neumann mapped out how and why human consciousness may have developed to block our access to embodied experiences. Frederick Nietzche meanwhile, provides the will and the why for alchemizing all of this knowledge towards becoming your best self despite what society or even morality are telling you to do.

John Vervaeke gave us scientific language for our embodied experiences in his video series called Awakening From the Meaning Crisis. The four forms of knowing allow us to describe these experiences rationally while expanding the concept of what we normally perceive as knowledge. This is mainly thinking and language which is referred to as propositional knowing. The other three forms are embodied knowing which allows you to know something directly through the body without the intrusion of thought. One example of embodied knowing is Procedural knowing which is knowing to throw a ball or ride a bicycle.

Once you understand that you can know something directly with your body then you can use that method to look beyond the limits of thinking. To do this, you could ask yourself a question that stumps your thinking and then investigate further using the three forms of embodied knowing. If you find an answer, it can then remain as embodied knowing while making it easier for your thinking and language to describe what it can.

If you ask yourself what was there before the universe even existed while dropping all stories about what you think or believe was there you will be left with the answer I don’t know. But if you ask the same question while breathing deeply into your abdomen to put your attention there you will get another answer. You will experience an embodied answer to the question that you can label as I don’t know in your mind. You may feel a spaciousness or a sense of relief that will prompt other sensations such as wonder or a faint sense of joy.

This provides you with an answer to your question that is known directly in the body and associated with I don’t know. If you direct this sense of I don’t know towards examining your body, you may find that the sense of wonder and joy is magnified as you move through the energy that feels like your body. This is your essence and you can label it I Am but the embodied sense of wonder and Joy confirms your existence much more powerfully than words alone ever could.

Once you can regularly view your essence as a source of wonder and joy, the ability extends to anyone with whom you engage. Just by turning your embodied attention to them, you will know them to be things of wonder and joy as well. Your embodied knowing confirms another’s essence directly in the same way as it confirms your own essence. This is extremely stimulating and pleasing to your own essence and results in the emergence of Big Joy which many people experience as love.

There are many scientific studies that point out the healing benefits of having loved ones around you. The book gathers many of these studies and uses them to demonstrate how the experience of Big Joy and the behaviours that result from it can facilitate dramatic healing episodes in the body and mind. After many years of intense scrutiny and hundreds of scientific studies, the healing effects of Big Joy became widely accepted. At that point, a movement began that gained even more momentum when examined by different scientific disciplines.

Depth psychology in particular, provided a more profound understanding of how and why the practice of experiencing the truth of I don’t know is so transformative. The pioneering work of Carl Jung and Erich Neumann tracks the development of consciousness through mythology, literature, and ancient artwork. The book The Origins and History of Consciousness uses this research to point to how human consciousness became disembodied to deal with the mystery of our existence and how we might regain that embodied knowledge.

The research tells a story of how ancient humans were confronted with this mystery of everything that was represented by the Uroboros, a snake that eats its own tail. Humanity turned away from the terrifying knowledge of our own death by developing an ego consciousness that was viewed as masculine and saw the Uroboros as the Great Mother, the unconscious total awareness, which both provided love and eros with one hand while dealing out death and deception in the other.

The development of this masculine ego continued as humanity learned how to separate more opposites and study one thing at a time in isolation from its complex background. Jung and Neumann saw this as the birth of the patriarchy which culminated in the scientific method in Western society and allowed humanity to survive and thrive. At the same time, however, we lost the ability to truly experience each other and exist in stimulating and embodied ways with the world. This also cut us off from most of the insight, and intuition that is provided by the total awareness of the unconscious mind.

Nevertheless, both Jung and Neumann assert that the development of a strong ego grounded in rationality was very necessary for the next stage of the development of consciousness which involves re-engaging the feminine unconscious. One example of this might be using rationality and reason to recognize embodied knowing for its utility in confronting the truth of the mystery of our existence. Neumann explained how doing this could open up humanity to the full insights of the unconscious mind.

Jung thought that we currently live in a world in which both women and men celebrate the masculine over the feminine. Thinking and science is seen as the ultimate truth while acquiring material goods, extolling your own merits, and benefitting in the short term at the long-term expense of others is the way of the world. We cheer the aggressive hero because this is the archetype that slays the Great Mother and conquers death itself.  It is part of who we are as humans but according to Jung it is only one stage of conscious development.

The next stage of development involves a new coexistence of the masculine and feminine in what Neumann calls the hermaphroditic ring of existence that will replace the Uroboros as our mystery of everything. This coexistence of opposites can be facilitated by validating the feminine perspectival, participatory, and procedural forms of knowing in a propositional way. That may be a big reason why the four forms of knowing started to become part of our common speech. This provided the perfect climate for my book The Guts of the Heart to be introduced.

The title is taken from a line that was attributed to Frederick NIetzche. He asserted that humans should live to be their ultimate selves by paying attention to their nature and desires while avoiding the trap of simple hedonism. He suggested that the body could provide knowledge from which values might emerge that were much more robust and meaningful than those that could be derived purely from abstract thought. The mind should serve the heart by digesting and interpreting what the body knows to be true. He encouraged us to live in such a way that the mind becomes the guts of the heart.

Naturally, people compared the book to the ideas of Frederick Nietzche but they were only partially right in doing that. Although I do sense that Nietzche wanted people to experience as much joy as they could, I think he missed out on the biggest sources of joy and I showed that in the book. Even so, I don’t fault him since he inspired me and many others like me to value joy. The problem was that our culture and almost all organized religions seemed to suggest that it was somehow wrong to derive joy and tangible benefits from caring for those around us.

That was the key – learning how to access a deep and lasting joy by first using daily practices to appreciate your true essence. Once that is accomplished, caring for yourself comes quite naturally since you see yourself as a source of wonder and joy through the four forms of knowing which also allows you to see others in this same way. Engaging with others in their true essence is what provides the Big Joy that outshines the other materialistic and hedonistic forms that became known as bunker joy since they would lead to us living in bunkers.

Immediately some copycats claimed they had shortcuts to this same joy. Some had a measured success but in time they all failed to achieve even a fraction of the joy that true practitioners were experiencing. As con artists attempted to game the system, they were either ignored or converted as their practices came too close to the real thing.

But my book was only the beginning of the transformation. Soon many other books, movies, songs, and works of art exploded onto the scene with an impact that dwarfed the launch of my work. The book How to Have the Best Intimate Sex of Your Life sold over twenty million copies and was loosely based on the practices outlined in my book. Divorce rates dropped off quickly while the porn industry suffered a total collapse two years after that. I was grateful to the author for both the positive changes she brought about in the world and the relative anonymity her fame offered me as a past celebrity.

How to Crush the Competition was the very unlikely name of a book that taught employers how transparency and care could facilitate a productive workplace with committed employees and fiercely loyal customers using some of the practices I had outlined. Companies who adopted the practices quickly outcompeted all others who refused to change. Again, there were those who tried to fake their way but they met with only marginal success after heavily investing with consultants who promised that they could guide them through a process of joy-washing as it came to be known.

In the end, it became impossible to fake the personal rewards of the joy practices since they became so prominent and recognizable as people got better at it. Healing and longevity quickly became the most sought-after side effects but the personal embodied experience of joy was the biggest payoff that allowed the cultural movement to sweep the globe in less than fifteen years with a religious fervor.

It turns out that the ancient religions were a paradox that took us close to the point of experiencing this same phenomenon while at the same time providing the impassable barrier that prevented us from getting there. How was it that a religion that held Love thy neighbor as thyself as the highest commandment could at the same time direct that you should not gain any personal reward in doing so? Because of this, we have been prevented from reaping the highest rewards of being human – experiencing a real and intense healing and empowering love with everyone else on earth.

The experience of Big Joy also had a positive effect on values and morals. It became very difficult to treat people in a harmful way when each person was seen as a potential source of Big Joy and healing. Eventually, these feminine, embodied ways of knowing began to replace the more masculine thinking and propositional knowing as the dominant modes of being. Over time, fewer words were spoken and even those tended to be playful and from the heart as the hunger for Big Joy grew.

In 2024, I wrote a book about Joy that changed everything for me and a lot of other people. Now it is the first day of the year 2050 and, because of that book, I feel like a child heading to a giant toy store. The lines on my face tell a little different story, however, and so do the heavy bags under my eyes unless I am wearing my glasses. I have left the spectacles behind today so that I might take the rays of the sun directly into me along with the wonderful crispness of the morning air in this newly revitalized city. I will just have to remember to smile so that I do not scare small children.

“Can I hold your face!” Did I hear that right? I look over and there is a small boy with a red toque on his head eagerly taking off his matching red mittens. He is beaming up at me as his mother struggles to regain her balance after being forced to stop so suddenly. She laughs and bends partly over the boy as she places her hand lightly on his shoulder. Her lithe body curls forward and then straightens up in a smile.

“He must really like you!” She says after gathering her breath again. “I’m okay with it if you’re okay.”

It is an unexpected offering but I will not refuse it since it is the young who have blossomed the most in this more connected world that we have become. As soon as I start to bend, my body reminds me that I will be ninety-two next month. I continue downwards anyway, through the expected pain in my hip and the unexpected pain in my shoulder until my knee touches the cold cement a foot away from the boy who immediately clamps both of his hands onto my temples.

He stares first into one eye and I can feel his essence immediately. He is ancient and full of a mystery that pours into me through the left pupil upon which his gaze is fixed. He switches unexpectedly to the other eye and I am swept away by a giddiness that rushes up through my toes and my chest to the top of my head and sends me floating above the three of us. My right side tingles as healing hormones rush through my blood. This never gets old.

He flips back and forth several times more, from one eye to the other in what feels like an eternity that ends much too quickly. He releases me and bows slightly with his head. “Thank you for sharing your essence with me. You are wonderful.”

I return the nod. “The honor is all mine little one.” As soon as I say it, I want to correct myself but there is nothing to correct even though my body-mind senses that he is an ancient presence. I stand instead, only a little surprised that there is no pain and the movement is both smooth and strong. I have been renewed by his gift and my body-mind revels in the feeling of it as I look into the tear-filled eyes of his mother. It is always very moving to witness an interaction like this one. We exchange warm looks and nods as her essence briefly flows through mine and firmly connects my feet to the ground beneath me. Another gift.

As I near the next corner, two young men embrace and then head their separate ways. “Don’t sell out!” the one says. The other replies “Yean man! Don’t sell out!” He then heads down the sidewalk towards me. I smile as I recognize the words as a reference to a practice that I helped to popularize. Some say that these practices feel like a new religion but to me, it is much more like truth and science.

I close my eyes and silently go through the steps. They flow through me now as one embodied experience:

1. Ask what came before the birth of the universe and what comes after death while dropping all of the stories that made you feel safe with this question and breathe deeply into the truth of the answer

I don’t know

1. while allowing the peace of that truth to flow up through you.

 

1. Turn your attention to the

you

1. that is receiving this

mystery of everything

1. and breathe into the truth of the mystery that is your own being while feeling the energy and joy there that is your essence.

 

Now experience everything and everyone around you in this way while allowing the joy and healing of their unique essence to permeate your own essence.

The saying “Don’t sell out” came later as people used the term to refer to what was routinely marketed as joy all around us. Money, casual sex, and material possessions still have a magnetic pull even today although their marketing has dwindled to almost nothing. And yet the term is a reminder of the true, powerful, and lasting joy that is always available as a healing gift of the present moment.

As I open my eyes, I notice that the young man has stopped two feet in front of me. He extends his right arm and I grasp his forearm as he grasps mine. He closes his eyes for a second and takes a deep breath before reopening them and staring warmly at me for a few moments. He smiles, releases me, nods his head, and moves on. I am renewed by his essence and feel a wrinkle or two straighten out on my face. Maybe I am not so scary looking after all.

 

 

The Garden

By Goody Lindley

What could I do – one person? And not just an ordinary person. I was far past my prime – pushing seventy. Yes, I knew we were in the middle of a climate crisis – and if the past summer with its forest fires and smoke obscuring the sun wasn’t enough to sound the alarm bells, there was the winter that locals said, was the first of its kind in their memories.

We lived in the West Kootenays on a mountainside acreage. By the end of January we should have been buried in a couple of metres of snow, and shovelling the driveway daily, only to get down to the road to find the snowplows hadn’t been able to keep up. Frozen water pipes and power outages should have been the norm. But we had no snow. Daytime temperatures refused to deep into the minuses. My skis were still stored in the shed and even my snowshoes were lonely.

What could I do? I was no Greta Thunberg! Heck, I wasn’t even one of the local high school kids collecting bottles and cans for the recycling depot.

And just as I was falling into despair, realizing that I wasn’t old enough to escape the full human-engineered catastrophe, I heard that some of the biggest Creston orchards had failed. The soft fruit tree buds had browned and withered during the winter’s one brief deep-freeze when the polar vortex had rolled down past a jet stream that had been faltering for years.

I took stock of our situation. My husband and I both drove electric vehicles – recent purchases. We recycled. We did everything we were supposed to do. We had a garden and an earth-battery greenhouse. Expand the garden? Sure – it wasn’t much, but we had some acres and it wouldn’t be too hard to  throw in a few more rows of potatoes and onions that would keep through the winter.

That spring, I got out and started digging. My back wasn’t happy about it, but then it didn’t exactly jump for joy whenever I lifted a laundry basket or a bag of dog food either, so it would just have to get used to the extra strain.

I bought massive sacks of seed potatoes at the local hardware store.

“That’s a lot of potatoes,” Marge said as she rang them through.

I plunked half a dozen bags of onion sets on the counter.

“That’s a lot of onions.”

I rifled thought the seed packets: beans, lettuce, tomatoes for the greenhouse, cucumbers, peppers, peas – an army of peas – squash, kale, chard, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, spinach – everything we liked to eat.

“You’re growing a lot this year,” Marge said. “Gonna preserve it all?”

“No – I don’t like preserving. I like growing and harvesting. And I can dry some of these – we have a drier.”

“If you’ve got extra, I’d preserve it for both of us.”

Oh! Okay – I’d never taken the thought that far. Sure. Why not?

I was planting my fifth row of potatoes when Chad stopped by to do some repairs to the soffits on the upper balcony. When he was done he came down to the garden to hand over his bill. I was leaning on my spade by then, trying to ease my rotten back.

“That’s a lot of hard work,” he said.

“Yes it is.”

“Do you have any help?”

“Simon helps when he can but he’s working.”

“My girlfriend could come by. She likes gardening but we don’t have any land.”

“Sure – that would be great. I’d be happy to share the harvest with her.”

“Done.”

Chad’s girlfriend, Lacey, brought her friend, June. The garden got planted faster than I could have imagined. Lacey suggested we dig up another half-acre of rich, sunny soil near the creek. Well, why not? If I was going to share the garden, we might as well make it big. June brought her mother out and Lacey brought her uncle with his rototiller.

After that, it just took on a life of its own. Simon and I had the land and all these other folks from the village had the strength and the will. But what was this? A co-operative? I had no idea how these things worked, and we all wanted it to be fair to everyone – there was enough land to feed us all. All we had to do was keep enriching the soil and practice good organic permaculture. Did we need rules? Laws? A constitution?

Chad said all we needed was good will, because there was enough for everyone and everyone was willing and happy to work together to give our little village food security.

Well, not everyone. The trouble began when I offered our tiny house rent-free to a young homeless couple who’d been living in a tent near the RV park. They’d been passing through, travelling from Vancouver to Calgary, getting a bit of work here and there. They’d just showed up one morning, hitching a ride with Lacey who said they were hungry and wanted to work for food.

But they had nowhere to sleep – only a ratty tent. We had a tiny home. Frank, one of the old Kootenay-born-and-bred natives, objected. “They’re just drifters – probably drug addicts. You let them stay in your tiny house and they’ll break into your house and steal everything they can get their hands on.”

I shrugged. “We never lock the door – no need to break in.”

“People like that – they’re nothing but trouble. They need to be in a city where they can access some sort of services.”

I dug in, royally pissed. Frank had hit one of my sore spots. “They’re homeless. They need a home. That’s it. If someone’s hungry, you give them food. If someone doesn’t have a home, you house them. It’s that simple.”

And just like that, our harmonious, peaceable kingdom where we shared and got along, divided sharply into two camps: the “you have to earn the right to food and a roof over your head,” side and the “food, shelter and clothing are a human right” contingent.

So – this was it – the story of humankind – the basics of the deep divisions in our society: Republicans versus Democrats, Conservatives versus Liberals, Dictatorships versus Democracy, traditional versus progressive, rich versus poor. Is this why we were doomed? Were we doomed?

A flash of memory: I was in my early twenties, walking home from work in downtown Toronto. There, under a storefront awning, a bearded man in nondescript clothes – something beige or brown, smeared with soot and dirt, crouched down on a ratty mattress, beside him a shopping cart stuffed with garbage bags, a roughly lettered cardboard sign in front of the tin on the sidewalk: “Homeless. Please Help!”

I stopped, a hundred thoughts flying through my mind and away – only one left behind –shock. I was standing on a sidewalk in one of the richest cities in one of the wealthiest countries in the world – and someone was homeless? How could that be? This wasn’t India or Cuba or Mongolia. This was Canada! How was this possible?

The shock never left me, and if I had a tiny house no one was living in, then I could offer it to people who needed a home.

I tried to convince Frank and the others – gave them positive statistics from other countries with policies of “homes first.”

I should have known better than to use logic. Right – if I couldn’t convince them, I’d show them. Maybe.

Cara and Jim moved in. Frank and his cronies came around less frequently. I agonized over our little problem until I felt like a hamster spinning on a wheel. Here were two of our biggest problems – food and shelter – the most basic of human needs. If we couldn’t solve that here on this tiny scale, how could the world deal with it? Was it really all about ideologies?

Capitalism says you have to earn the right to live; it also is based on the idea of infinite growth on a finite planet – clearly a bit of madness. So, in order to change the system, you first have to change the way we think. And how do we do that?

I had no answers. I wanted a cataclysmic event where one of the “old guard” was in trouble and Cara and Jim were the only ones with the skills to save the day. Then everyone would acknowledge their integrity and worth and we’d all live happily ever after. That happens in movies – not real life. Life tends to move more slowly than movies, less dramatically and more subtly, and change often happens long before you notice it.

Jim and Cara worked hard, even picking up a few odd jobs in the village. In late September, they moved on. By then, even Frank had got used to them, grudgingly acknowledging they’d worked hard.

The next year we added beehives and a wildflower meadow to the garden. Frank said that the small cottage he rented out as an Air B&B might be available for any young kids who wanted to help out on the farm. Sophie told her daughter in Victoria about it, and she had her husband moved in for the summer. It was a small thing. It seemed awfully big to me.

When our neighbouring village heard what we were doing, they came to visit, taking our ideas back with them. Then the local paper sent a reporter and photographer to have a look. Somehow, our story got syndicated and some filmmakers from California shot a documentary. I was interviewed a lot – a surreal experience, but I took the opportunity to talk about housing. It was easy enough to see what was happening on the land: the furrowed rows, the beans climbing up the corn stalks, but not as visible was the difference we were beginning to make with making housing affordable. People had basement suites, apartments above garages, and extra cottages that had been used as holiday rentals. What we were doing here wasn’t just about food  – it was also about shelter.

It was the documentary that really did it –  the beginning of a worldwide movement. What could you call it? Not a co-operative. It was more than that. Not once did we care or notice what religion anyone practiced or what their skin colour was, who they voted for, or what country they hailed from. All that mattered was a willingness to contribute and care.

Like a peach tree growing in a loamy well-drained soil, our success grew from the ground up. Our roots ran deep into what really mattered – caring for each other enough that the whys and hows didn’t matter. I think if we had started off with the concept of changing the world into what it is now: a place of peace and joy instead of a world of war and hate, we would never have started. The task would have been far too daunting.

We started by digging into the soil, planting seeds, and sharing with those around us – our little village. It continued by letting people be, by not convincing them that their worldview was wrong, and by letting change happen slowly and organically. And one day, we looked around and saw that our village was the earth we live on.

Who would have thought that I would live long enough to see a world like this – a world that is a garden that feeds and nurtures all of us? I’m still surprised that it all started with a few sacks of seed potatoes.

[Read more…] about Love Organized

It is January the 1st 2050 and my dream came true about the great possibilities that led us to becoming the cooperative society that we are now. Who would have believed it in 2024? This is how it happened: FIRST I deactivated my retirement by becoming the host of ‘Decolonising our Minds’ on the DTN mighty network and by following my passion and beliefs that a deep transformation of our dysfunctional and fractured society is possible. The foundation was laid when women and men related kindly in mutual respect and deep k~NOW~ing (kinaesthetically~BEING~aware in their bodies). How did we achieve that? By slowing our lives down and practicing breath~, body~ and energetic~awareness, listening with all our senses, responding by sharing our feelings, our personal stories, our ‘inner pilot’ – heartfelt values – and our personal truths. SECOND we all became aware how much our minds were colonised and started the process of decolonising the whole of our body~heart~minds. How? By taking our quintessential soul~selves seriously and talking to each other as if all of us truly mattered and were able together to heal & transform our world. In this way our confidence grew organically – first slowly, then in spurts because we inspired each other – and we started to talk to people in our wider local communities and were astonished how many people were on the same wave~length with us. We had underestimated the silent energetic transformation that had take place all over the planet already. THIRD Having recovered the intimate connection to our hearts, we encouraged each other to be the unique beings we were meant to be and were delighted in our authenticity and diversity and newly discovered infinite potential. Our inherent creativity and other birth rights like curiosity, joyfulness, affectionate relating surfaced and convinced others that a deep transformation was on the way. Our fears slowly dissolved and our growing courage explored new ways of BEING and DOING and BELIEVING. Dismantling our internalised limiting belief systems, we learnt to trust our imagination and intuition; visualising better ways, we grew out of our conventional behaviours. FOURTH more and more people started to identify as earth citizens and became members of earth households nested in communities, bio~regions, continents, the earth. Mother~child bonding was revered as primary source of wellbeing for the next generation while the whole community took response~ability to support kids and adults with care & kind~ness, beauty & harmony, clarity & truth~fullness for the benefit of all. In earth households we learnt that conflicts are opportunities to learn and grow out of immaturity and to comprehend the consequences of our behaviours. We used all the tricks in the books of ‘good parenting’, including ‘tough love’*. 

FIFTH a household needs good management – ECONOMY – to fulfil the foundational needs of it’s members (e.g. deep belonging, universal basic income, affordable housing, fulfilling work). As a person is nested in a household – as a glass of spring water is part of the spring – so can personal assets be nested in the communal ownership of common resources. Weaning ourselves off the trappings of so-called ‘civilisation’ – wastefulness was despised and ENOUGH replaced greed & perfectionism – we turned away from drama, man-made crises & trauma. As our values shifted from quantity to quality, economy became an integrated part of Soul Purpose Ecology**. SIXTH our perception of TIME changed too – from linear planning of stressful events through time into dynamic pulsating moments experienced in time – which reshaped our perception of REALITY. We realised that we were co~creating each new moment. When our living conditions deteriorated, we needed to listen and learn from nature and indigenous people to support earth in her healing. Mothers and indigenous peoples have nurtured life against all odds for thousands of years and so we started to learn from them. Women and nature were again revert and respected as life givers & life transformers; birthing & living & dying became part of the dance of Creation. SEVENTH our new found strength in authentic selfhood and cooperative relating made us a growing collective force to be reconned with. As our agency grew, we were able to practice together civil disobedience (e.g. paying taxes into funds controlled by us, peacefully not obeying rules & laws), to deal with the deteriorating cultural and natural environment. We set-up citizen’s assemblies to solve crises on local and bioregional levels and we learnt from ideas already successfully practiced somewhere else on our planet. We employed creativity & humour, the arts in all it’s forms, joyful celebrations and healing ceremonies that included all generations. EIGHTHS nevertheless the government did not recoil from using police & military to reestablish ‘law & order’ and many of us became sacrificed. It became increasingly obvious that our man-made systems of religion, family, education, medicine, finance, business, governance, police, justice, military, science & technology were dysfunctional constructions because they did not put the needs of life on earth at the centre of their purpose. Systems too needed to be deeply transformed by people for people. Consciousness raising & soul searching was needed. That’s were global disasters played their role as transformers. The loss & grief was a big tidal wave. 

NINTH Cooperations emerged as a necessity to survival. Collective wisdom matters, we matter! Cooperation is build on shared values, attitudes & believes like belonging to one earth, fair distribution of resources, willingness to be and do one’s best by continuous learning and evolving. We are all now very aware that there are bigger local and global challenges ahead of us and not everyone is willing or able to grow & change. There are many diverse parallel realities and always will be. All we can do is to embody the attitudes, behaviours and believes we wish to experience, encourage growing, give a helping hand and have faith in the self~healing power of nature. TENTH Resources are still not fairly distributed and decision making power is still not totally inclusive. In the coming decades, our hopes are that police & military will become ‘Worriers of Peace’ in support of life. AI and other potential highly destructive technologies are still not humanely transformed and patriarchal religions haven’t totally lost their rigid hold on our minds. But our collective healing has accelerated over the past decades. Resistance is melting, subversion is seeping through, conscious awareness is expanding because it feels so much more humane to live one’s full potential in a cooperative society based on ancient wisdom of indigenous cultures.

⁉ Doesn’t it⁉

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* Tough love = if you decide not to behave humanely but to behave like a crocodile, you will be speared. 

** Soul Purpose Ecology describes the sacred bond between nature, humanity and spirituality. 

I have long been intrigued by a lesser known AI – Appreciative Inquiry – which essentially states that  “we live in realities our questions create.”  The questions I have been contemplating are: “How can I be more loving today?” and “How may I best serve?”

One morning I awoke to a voice that sounded like George Burns from the “Oh, God!” movie, which boomed… “Have you thought about the media, schmuck? Everyone is tuned in!”  So with that guidance (and challenge), I embarked on a journey through hosting radio, TV and streamed video content designed to uplift its audience.  Fast forward to now…

In 2024, I produced a captivating video series called Near Future News that was picked up by Netflix.  The series showcases a future world in which humanity thrives, technology empowers and harmony prevails.  Each episode explores what that nourishing world looks and feels like… and how we got there.

One particular fictional pathway from the series, seen by millions, became self-fulfilling.

Polarization, climate change and world conflict were on the rise in 2024.  In response, a group of 7 billionaires (technologists, financiers, philanthropists) and 5 world leaders (one from Asia, North & South America, Europe and Africa) ran a series of AI-simulations, the vast preponderance of which pointed to the high likelihood of impending global economic disaster, potential nuclear world war and massive human casualties.

They knew they would need a new perspective, even a new worldview, to help avert such probable devastation. Together, they agreed that extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.

So, they journeyed deep into the Amazon, into an ayahuasca circle for any insight or epiphany that could be helpful, calling upon their innermost truths, their ancestors and Earth wisdom itself for guidance.  With equal measures of intention and surrender, they each dissolved into a non-ordinary state beyond time and space.  They each went into a deep physical – and emotional – purge… a form of energetic cleansing.

Their prayers were answered as they felt the presence of the Ancestors.  Much to their surprise, they realized that they were the Ancestors!  And that they were graced with financial and political power to accelerate a shift for all of humanity.

With newfound awareness and life purpose, they redeployed their collective trillions of dollars at their disposal to serve humanity more effectively, starting with clean, abundant water, ubiquitous organic food and alternative free energy.  They inspired their peers to do the same.

Countless viewers were inspired by that episode and the potential for a love- and life-affirming world… including the role that financial and elected leaders could play in making it a reality.  Social media was ablaze, beseeching real-world billionaires and leaders to follow the heretofore fictional lead.

Remarkably, many prominent über-wealthy and politically powerful souls responded with a resounding, “YES!”  Ultimately, only those people truly knew what money and influence cannot buy, because they had it all externally, yet yearned for something even more profound.  Their subsequent transformation rippled throughout the world as butterfly cells illuminating the caterpillar of humanity.

And the rest of the future… is history.  And it is a blessing!