Forbidden Dhamma Poems

Recently I did a special ten-day course in Vipassana Meditation. During this course are a number of different rules and restrictions, such as no talking with the other students (which results in most of atmosphere there being very silent most of the time) and no reading, writing, music or leaving the course boundaries during the time of the course. There is also strict gender segregation, a strict daily time-table, fasting for about half of the day and many many hours of daily scheduled meditation. I had already previously sat three such Vipassana Meditation courses before, as well as did a bunch of volunteer work there previously as well, so I knew the drill.

Through fortuitous circumstances, a small pocket note-book of mine happened to not be confiscated at the beginning of the course, and I was left with a cheap bic pen in my possession as well. This lead to me eventually deciding to secretively, locked-away in my little room, write. That process was very powerful and meaningful for me, “therapeutic” even, despite it being totally against the rules. Here are some of the poems that I wrote in that little note-book.

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The crazy
whirlwind of the mind
spins alone
whereas usually
it spins with others
other whirlwinds
and other storms altogether
but now it is alone
who knows where the dust
will settle?
No expert can predict that
no use trying
a million different factors
come together
to create this perfect storm

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I must leave
this sacred prison
which is also my sanctuary
my hidden home
so many rules
so many restrictions
yet also the purest freedom
I have ever found
I hate it here
I love it here
Here here here
nowhere?
Whatever
it will all be over
soon enough

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Counting
and re-counting
the days
til I find out
how the rest of my days
End
Or begin
Or continue
but to what end?
We all know how it ends
in the end
but what do you do
til you get there?
How?
Is the path
how to walk the path
that’s why I’m here

________________________________

I love love love her
Really
I love community too
and I love loving.
Oh, how lovely

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Integrity!
That jack-boot
on the neck
I will die for you
I will live for you
but so what?
Billions and billions of souls
do not live for one man
or vice versa
it’s about gettin’ real
to the heart
and all that

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The silence
beautiful silence
oh, how I love thee
if only I can see you
more often
in fact, bring you with me
have you meet other people
have you live in the city
at least for a while
have you become other people
is that asking too much?
Or have you become me
we become one
I am silence
or at least I want to be
real true silence
through and through
Everywhere

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I don’t know a damn thing
about the guy next to me
here or anywhere
how cool is that?
We’re all connection
and oh-so similar
yet worlds apart
who is this guy?
Do I really want to know?
Curious minds
lead to curious places
it’s the story of my life
it’s why I’m here
Sitting
Wondering
Do I really want to know?

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Turning-point
Turning-point
oh, we meet again!
I remember you before
One-time
Three-times
Ten!
Where will you take me?
Where will I go?
I have to leave here
I have to go somewhere
“Oh?”
“So?”
“No!”

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I was bored, tired, hungry, horny, agitated and my legs hurt.
But instead of attending to any of that
I was sitting still
on the floor
with my eyes closed
listening to a recording
of some guy
going on
And on
And on
in some language that I don’t understand
watching my breath
Totally counter-intuitive
but it works

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Delusion, illusion, confusion, what’s really real in this world of just mind and matter? What does matter matter if we all die in the end? What does mind matter if nobody has you on their mind? Who are “they” anyway? Craving, clinging, craving, clinging, desperately, frantically, hurridly, imploringly – I NEED THIS!!!

I need what? What is there if there is only nothingness? Who am “I” if “I” does not exist? There is only only only – dhamma. The Law of Nature. Cause and effect, cause and effect, ad infinitum. Long long ago, far far away, some guy did something to somebody who then did something to somebody who then did something, and so on and on and on, which resulted in me then being here today. Why? What am I trying to get at? I have thoughts thoughts thoughts thoughts thoughts thoughts – but who cares? It all goes around and around the merry-go-round, and I am back where I started from. Starts stops starts stops arising passing away arising passing away – what do I DO with all of this god-damned impermanence?! It will all just come and go and come and go like I did so many times now and you did too – it’s just that you had a different name and a different face at the time. And I did too. Oh, so so many times, so many different lives, so many different miseries, so many different sufferings – so much suffering. The times, places and people change, but the suffering is still there. And it is still with us. I have to get out! Out of this prison (of suffering)! I must not come back here! I must go! I MUST LEAVE!!!

But go where? Where would I go? Here is all there is. All that there is. And so many people are still here. So many people. So much suffering. So much fighting. So much lying. So much killing. So much stealing. So much hurting. So many people. Like it or not for better or worse – I am here with you. We are here together. In this world of worlds,worlds upon worlds, so different so diverse, we are still here together. We are here doing doing doing back and forth back and forth – and I am wondering – what is being passed around between us all? Is it wholesome or unwholesome? Good or bad? The bad is bad, the good is good, it is still there, no matter what you think. So what can you do? Do nothing. Just sit. Be with it for a while. Feel it from the inside. Sooner or later, just watching watching watching feeling feeling feeling, it begins to change. That is ok. Change is inevitable. Purity comes with time. Time time time. And attention. And acceptance. All will be revealed. As it is.

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Artists’ colonies and artists’ camps. Writers’ colonies and writers’ camps. Buddhist colonies and Buddhist camps. Guerilla camps. Base camps. Terrorist camps. Summer camp.

Oh, that’s so camp.

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Sometimes I am just
vomiting out nonsense
frantically flailing
clutching and clawing
trying to somehow
somewhere sometime
find the Truth
that’s a capital “T”
there, boy.
That’s important
you know.
What goes around
comes around
and here you have it
wrapped-up in perfectly
preserved doctrine
ready for you to discard
and discover
what’s inside

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Dis-illusionment
ought to be a good thing
it means that we are not
under the spell of illusions
anymore
but then why does it hurt
so much?
I think that it is because of
Clinging
to ideas
of the way things are supposed
to be
the way things are supposed to
turn out
it all can be held
lightly
and dropped
at will
illusions only go so far

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How many people
are in their own private
fantasy-land play-ground
right now?
How many people
are wading through their own
private hell?
I can never tell
the impression is
everyone is their own special
bodhisattva monk
except me
I am all mess
and subjectivity
I can never tell
self-contained units
within self-contained units
and yet we are all connected
and we will find out
when the walls come down

Open your eyes, time to wake up, enough is enough is enough is enough

I read my friend Rachel’s recent blog entry about the ethics of care and healing trauma, and that reminded me of something, something that is very important to me. Caring is an essential component to my political world-view. I quite literally cannot envision a new anarchist world, that is, a world that is not structured by things like government, prisons, police, domination or hierarchy of any kind – I cannot see such a world existing or surviving without a deep sense of caring being the norm that people have for each-other.

And yet, I am struck by the profound absence of caring, again and again and again and again. This goes for radicals and “normal people”, anarchists and politicians alike. Caring, real caring, is seeming to be conspicuously absent in people’s lives, relationships, outlook on society and vision for the future. An example for this (aside from what Rachel has already mentioned in her blog entry) is the song by Chumbawamba that I link to at the top of this blog entry. It is a damn catchy song, I love it, and yet, the line that immediately follows the chorus that I am using as the title for this blog entry is: “give the fascist man a gun-shot”. To me, killing people, especially the act of labeling large swaths of people into certain categories, and then executing all of the people within that category – that all belies a profound lack of caring.

Within self-described anarchist circles there is a kind of fashionable chic going around now that has violence, or at least the rhetoric and images of violence, seem really awesome and desirable. I suppose that this kind of thing has existed within anarchist scenes for a long time now, which has partly fueled the image within popular society that “anarchists” are all violent maniacs. I recently read a quote by the radical socialist author William Morris who describes my sentiments exactly: “I cannot for the life of me see how the principles of anarchism, which propose the abolition of compulsion, can admit of promiscuous slaughter as a means of converting people”. For me, the glue that holds a society or a group of people together, without compulsion, coercion or a state structure present, is that the people involved really do care about each other to some degree.

In a more mainstream picture of the world, right now the U.S. government is regularly and increasingly killing scores of people in different countries across the world by using unmanned drone planes. A recent editorial I read describes these attacks as being “too clinical; they are like video games”. It is a totally impersonal way to kill people, and it is more and more becoming the norm, because it results in far less U.S. casualties. At least directly. A lot of the time when people try to hurt or kill other people out of revenge it is done so out of a motivation of “NOW you will understand the pain that I am feeling, because of the death of my loved ones. I will MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND this pain that I am feeling, by having you experience the death of YOUR loved ones.” I am guessing that when you don’t even see the people that are killing your loved ones, when you just see death machines flying around in the sky, the urge is then even stronger to have the people that are behind it understand the pain that is being caused.

Death by drone strikes seems to me to be a part of a much larger trend in society of a way of dealing with horrors and death – hide it away from direct viewing. Other forms of abuse and death do the same thing – the whole massive prison-industrial complex, old people dying in nursing homes, news stories of people being killed by suicide bombers all over the world getting little tiny blurbs being written about it in the newspapers. I recently went to a play performance by a touring radical theater group where the play that they gave enacted out some of the various different horrors of prison life in this country. The idea being that if you see real-life people right in front of your face suffering different pains and injustices then you would have it begin to sink in that this kind of thing actually is taking place in this world that you live in. It is no longer so damned abstract that you can’t really believe that it’s happening.

However, there is also another dynamic – that of people being exposed to all kinds of different scenes and images of pain, suffering and violence regularly, on an on-going basis, as a form of entertainment. This is very popular, very normal, very “cool” even. The idea is that seeing this kind of thing taking place, regularly, on a daily basis even, makes you numb to it. It takes the meaning and the real-ness out of the whole thing. It all then ceases to matter. There is no caring in this, even though you see that it is going on.

To counter all of this, I want caring – a regular on-going practice of real, conscious, intentional caring. There are different ways to go about this, to cultivate this, and my personal favorite is a Buddhist practice – “Mettā meditation”. The idea is that after meditating for a bit, you then shift your attention to your body sensations in the present moment (particularly around in your heart-area) and saying to yourself something along the lines of “May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free from suffering”. There are other ways to do Mettā meditation too, and other non-Mettā ways to cultivate real caring exist as well. The important thing is to really encourage within yourself conscious sincere wanting the well-being of other people – even if you do not know these people or even if you actively dislike them.

What I see as being important, from both a spiritual perspective as well as a radical social change perspective, is that people really do see and acknowledge all of the different pains, hurtings, sufferings and injustices that are taking place all over the world. And, together with seeing & acknowledging that, then sincerely responding within one’s self, within one’s heart, with a real feeling of caring and well-wishing for those people (or non-people, as the case may be). Whatever actions may be taken then, to help to remedy the situation, comes forth out of both seeing & knowing what is going on, as well as really actually feeling & wanting the best for those involved.

I don’t consider myself to be a pacifist, so please do not write off (or write up) what I am saying as being some kind of hard-line pacifist ranting. What is important to me is really, actually, caring about people. Really wanting people to be well, happy and healthy. Coming from this, I see nonviolence as usually being the best way to go about things, simply because violence often hurts people, and the idea is to minimize hurt, not to make more of it. (Paul R. Fleischman wrote up a good little essay about this perspective that I recommend, entitled “The Buddha Taught Nonviolence, Not Pacifism”)

Perhaps I am just a big sentimental softie here, but I just see wide-spread caring as being so important, so essential, a big part of what we all, or at least myself, am going for here. You can call me “unrealistic”, “naïve”, or a “dogmatic ideological” so-and-so. But I don’t care. Because as I see it, there is so much more, and so many more people out there, to care about.

Social Therapy

I recently visited the intentional community “Camphill Village Minnesota” and I spent about a week out there living & working with them. It was a wonderful experience for me and it reminded me a lot of what I love about Camphill communities and the valuable things that I have gotten from these experiences.

Foremost what I would like to talk about now is the method through which Camphill communities (focused on serving adults) are organized, which is a little-known philosophy/practice that is called “Social Therapy”. Based upon Rudolph Steiner’s “Anthroposophy”, Social Therapy is a way for adults with developmental disabilities to live, work and be supported in a village-like community environment. Although coming from this particular background, no specific religious, spiritual or philosophical affiliation is necessary in order to live and work there. The community is comprised of both residential homes and general community-use buildings, forests and fields, domestic and farm animals, crops and ornamental plants, and people.

An emphasis is placed on life resembling pre-industrial patterns as much as possible, with the work areas being agricultural and crafts-based instead of mechanical and computer-based. Food consumption is also moderated, and an emphasis is placed on having healthy organic foods, particularly foods that are grown on-site. Given that most of what one needs is located on the property itself, walking and bicycles are common modes of transportation.

The people who are supporting those with developmental disabilities, and who are ensuring that the community as a whole is functioning smoothly, are called “coworkers”. The coworkers are given the task of being very attentive to and aware of everything that is taking place with those who have developmental disabilities (who are called “villagers”). There is usually a one-to-one ratio between coworkers and villagers, and oftentimes there are more coworkers than villagers. The coworkers are encouraged to have as much unconditional love, care and warmth as possible towards the villagers, to see their positive potential and unrealized abilities and to provide the space for the villagers to grow and contribute at their own pace.

The primary social unit within these communities is that of the household. Each house resembles that of a family home, with each person having their own bed-room, and common space for the kitchen, dining room, living rooms, etc. Both coworkers and villagers live in the houses, and often-times actual biological families of the coworkers, pets and gardens surrounding the house live there as well. Each house has its own financial budget and has relative autonomy for determining its own systems for life inside the house. Over time and through continued shared experiences a distinct sense of “family” evolves among those who are living in each house.

Structure and rhythm is provided for the life in the community on a daily, weekly and yearly basis. This is done with an eye towards supporting the healthy psychic/physical lives of individuals, as well as to coordinate the activities of the various people within the community as a whole. Much attention is given to the different seasons of the year, both for the sake of coordinating the agricultural work that needs to be done, as well as for organizing public community festivals to celebrate the various seasonal holidays throughout the year.

A particular focus is given to the spiritual life of people, with space given for reflection and gratitude before each meal, quiet contemplation weekly on Saturday nights, as well as occasional Sunday services. There are also events to mark weddings, deaths and the spiritual significance of seasonal change. The act of cleaning is itself considered to be somewhat of a psycho-spiritual act, in the sense that it is viewed as being an outward expression of and correlating force for one’s internal sense of orderliness and openness to spiritual experience.

While visiting Camphill Village Minnesota I at one point got to see some of the big farmlands that are nearby the intentional community, surrounding it. These are massive mono-crop tracts of land. The coworker showing this to me then told me some about biodynamic and organic methods of agriculture, including a bit about how the land could be more productive in bearing crops when it is smaller pieces of land that are given more care and attention. This strikes me as being a general principle for effective healing in general, for both people and land: have smaller units with more direct care and attention given to everyone and everything there. The trend in mainstream society is to have massive institutions with the crops being protected and kept fertile by pesticides and chemical fertilizers and the people kept preoccupied by electronic devices and pacified by medications. Social Therapy seems to offer an alternative out of this path.

This is my over-all abbreviated summary of Social Therapy and life in Camphill communities. It is only upon leaving Camphill for a while and experiencing life some more in “normal” mainstream society that I have come to see how unique this form of social organization is. I have also come to appreciate the healthfulness of such systems, particularly in regards to supporting those who have developmental disabilities.

Now that I am living in a big city, and I walk around and see all these people on the streets who are homeless or who have some kind of mental illness. I also think about all of the people out there who suffer from some kind of addiction, all of the “at-risk youth” and “juvenile delinquents”, people stuck in cycles of abuse, and people whose lives get out of control and who wind up in prison. I think to myself: “what about these people? Are they to be left on their own, continuing down whatever hellish path they are on?” There has to be something better than the various cold heartless institutions that governments and corporations have relegated for these people.

My dream is to have the Camphill idea and practice of Social Therapy become something that is broader in scope and more widely implemented in society. Sometimes I have heard Camphill described as focusing on supporting “people in need of special care”, and not just people who have developmental disabilities. I like this phrasing, because to me this opens the door to applying the Camphill model to all of these different kinds of people that I mentioned previously.

Throughout my life experiences I have experienced other non-Camphill social environments that I would also call “social therapy” as well. In particular I am thinking about multi-day Nonviolent Communication residential intensives and ten-day Vipassana Meditation courses. With both of these cases, special care is put into preparing and maintaining a very therapeutic, healing and overall healthy environment for people to be in. A lot of good stuff comes out of these places. The problem is that it is all very temporary. People come, get the benefits, and then leave. While there is often talk among some folks there about establishing on-going intentional communities that are like that, usually this talk does not turn into action. And often the model that is thought about is that of creating a retreat center for workshops and seminars that the community members live at and maintain.

The retreat center model does not appeal to me, because in my eyes this assumes a certain kind of class back-ground for everyone involved. For the “people in need of special care” that I mentioned above, they would not be able to afford or get to a retreat center to reside there indefinitely. That kind of situation would only work for those who come from an upper or middle class background.

This all then brings to mind another kind of intentional community model – the Catholic Workers. These people do actively reach out to and serve the homeless, the addicted, the abused, and those with problems with the law. The Catholic Workers, however, do not have a particular therapeutic model in mind, and the level of attention to detail in creating a healing environment is generally not present there like it is in Camphill places.

So my ideal is to have a mix of both – to expand the means and methods of getting Social Therapy out into the world. And, similar to the Catholic Workers, to see this work as being integral to radical social change work itself. Reconstructing society, in other words, would be going hand-in-hand with personal and inter-personal healing. And this would be for all people regardless of ability or class back-ground.

Yesterday while walking around Minneapolis I came upon a big beautiful old mansion house that is for sale. I looked at it and visualized what it would be like to have that be a big family-style Camphill house, in conjunction with a vacant lot that could be used for urban agriculture. A space could be created here for intentionally supporting people in need of special care and creating a healing social environment for them and everyone involved. And I imagined that same place as also having space available for radical activist projects, an open anarchist social center. The same space, integrated. Social therapy supporting social change supporting social revolution. This is a vision of what Social Therapy could be.

My goal as an “NVC trainer”

In 2004 I first really discovered the work of Carl Rogers. That had a profound and lasting effect on me. There is a lot that I can say about that guy and his philosophy, but I’ll restrain myself here for the sake of brevity and getting to the point. I’ll simply say this - all of Carl Rogers’ approach can be summarized with three key words: authenticity, empathy and caring.

What struck me right away was the pure bare-bones simplicity of this approach. No agenda, plan, grand theory or complicated system was necessary. All protocols, procedures and formulas were beside the point. All that was needed was for one to be personally honest, empathically listening to the other person and really caring about that person without any strings attached. With that all set, good stuff follows. Despite whatever twists, turns and unexpectedness that one comes across along the way, with this approach you can trust that the combination of being authentic, empathic and caring will make things better in the end.

I came to Carl Rogers through my involvement with Nonviolent Communication (aka “NVC”), since Rogers was the teacher of Marshall Rosenberg (the founder of NVC). Everything that NVC was trying to do and get at was already talked about earlier by Carl Rogers. I was struck by how prone to “formulas” and “robot-speak” (as well as "New Age-speak") NVC was in comparison to the straight-forward plain-speaking nature of Rogers’ writings. I was also struck by how Rogers emphasized the “person-centered encounter group” model for learning, whereas NVC was emphasizing the celebrity “trainer” model for teaching. I came to believe that much rich potential existed here, at NVC’s conceptual “source”.

Years of using, learning, trying to study and practice NVC has resulted in myself and countless others getting caught up in loops, knots, and complications. Too many times, I have seen people’s NVC “practice” lead simply to a dead-end. Authenticity, empathy and caring, to me, serve as a good clear reminder of what we are trying to do with all of this “NVC” stuff to begin with. In other words, getting real and speaking it, listening keenly from the other person’s perspective and loving no matter what.

Coming across the work of Carl Rogers also changed the way that I wanted to formulate, present and teach NVC. Rogers engaged with what he called “person-centered learning”, that is, “teaching” without a plan and interacting with the student where they are at, regardless of any pre-existing notions of who they are or where they should be. Being a “teacher”, a “trainer”, or a “professional” so-and-so was not as important as the individual learner connecting with their own authentic interest. At best, the person who wants to support learning helps to facilitate the learner connecting with their own actual interest. If they are not doing that, then they are just wasting their time.

My hope as an “NVC trainer”, if you want to call me that, is to practice embodying those qualities of personal authenticity, empathic understanding and unconditional caring during those times that I am together with those who are wanting to learn. I can share what I can, but nothing is possible without actual ongoing honest mutual dialogue. Perhaps one of the most moving lessons that people get through what is called “NVC training” is that real heart-felt connection between people is possible when one makes the concerted effort to have it happen. The specific “tools” come and go, they can be taken along or left behind, but the core message remains the same. My aim is to facilitate that happening.

Emptiness

One of the aspects of Buddhist teachings that I have been learning about lately, particularly from various Mahayana perspectives, is that of “emptiness”. The idea behind this is that everything in existence is comprised of so many different factors and variables that are coming together to create it that when you peel apart each one of these, nothing is left. Essentially there is no essence, to anything. Everything is contingent upon so many other things also coming about that nothing is left on its own.

Recently I have come across a few different things that have illuminated this perspective further for me. I have realized that I have been operating with an on-going assumption that people who are associated with various labels are, will do, or believe certain things. For example, I have often assumed that to be an “anarchist” one wants to have there be a global anarchist social revolution (the “GASR”, I suppose you can call it). I have also assumed that to be an environmentalist one wants to stop global warming, stop global species extinction, etc. “before it’s too late”. Then I read a booklet entitled “Desert: can active disillusionment be liberatory?” which argues that an anarchist social revolution will not happen and that there will not be a global anarchist society. It also says that there has never been a monolithic authoritarian society either, that there have been, are now and will be in the future various shifting pockets and tendencies of both throughout the world. Whatever assumptions there are that to be an anarchist is to be a revolutionary, to essentially be working for a global revolution of sorts, is not necessarily the case.

Likewise, “Desert” argues that it is now “too late” to stop global warming, species extinction, etc., that the changes that are coming about because of this need to be taken into consideration for planning for the future, and that one can still do things to protect what is left of surviving wild nature. “Environmentalism” is not one thing, it is not something that we do or don’t do, the environment itself is not something that is either “saved” or is “destroyed”. It’s a dynamic inter-connected global system that is in flux, and we can work with that, wherever the changes may lead us.

With Buddhism I have until recently carried with me an assumption that to consider oneself to be a “Buddhist” one automatically is then a believer in and adherent to “nonviolence”. Then I met some self-identified Buddhists recently who vehemently rejected that notion. I’ve also come across some work that is being done within the U.S. military to integrate Buddhism and Buddhist meditation practice amongst the soldiers. So that idea of “Buddhism = nonviolence” has gone out the window.

Likewise, with those folks who do identify themselves as being into “nonviolence”, I have often assumed that them doing so automatically makes them people who are interested in Nonviolent Communication, and subsequently are interested in things like transforming “enemy images”, listening to people empathically, doing away with blame, moralistic judgments, etc. I have also assumed that those people who idolize and are very much into the work of Mohandas Gandhi would be into the various things that he was into and advocated himself, such as strict vegetarianism, living in an intentional community, simple living with minimal material possessions and a life of devotion to religion. Throughout my interactions with these folks I have discovered this to not be the case.

Then, with the adherents of “Nonviolent Communication” per se, especially folks who have made an explicit commitment to the principles and practices that NVC speaks of, I have assumed that there would be a real effort made to resolving conflicts peacefully, holding an empathic understanding of one-another and having a real sense of care for each-other. Until recently I have been a part of a group of committed NVC practitioners that I witnessed fall apart in the midst acrimonious conflict, judgments and counter-judgments. Talk and promises of peace, love and harmony does not necessarily have to mean anything in practice.

One part of my experience here in Minneapolis has been my meeting a bunch of different folks who identify as “gender-queer”, that is, considering themselves to be neither “male” nor “female”. I have found this interesting because doing this essentially “empties out” the whole concept and identity around “gender”, leaving no essential characteristics or assumptions that one can put upon a person because of that. The person then becomes, as far as gender is concerned, a blank slate. These people are not whatever you might assume because of them being a “man” or a “woman”. They are more obviously who they are because of whatever factors and forces are working on them and their lives, and whatever choices they are making to respond to that.

To me, all of this illustrates the Buddhist concept of “emptiness” – that is, people do not necessarily do something or become something simply because they align themselves with a particular label or belief system. Philosophy x does not mean that an “essence” of y will be included or come along as a result of x. There are simply too many factors at play, too many different variables running around, to reduce it to that. Subscribing to a particular philosophy is just one variable among many that create a particular outcome.

This perspective has been very captivating for me, I find it utterly fascinating. I find hope through looking at things in this way, which of course I can tease apart and realize that I am left with no hope at all, I am just content. One thing that has been helping me get this is my recently exploring and learning about Zen Buddhism and Zen meditation. This particular brand of Buddhism puts a particular focus on meditation, and this particular kind of meditation involves recognizing all of the different variables and factors that pop up in our attention, setting them aside, and ultimately focusing on no thing in particular - just holding your attention. I’ve been finding this very refreshing, and very basic.

I see the kind of “emptiness” that is being talked about here as not being the same thing as “it’s all meaningless” or “we are doomed”. I see it as more being about putting aside all of the noise and the chatter and the things that are being thrown at you, and realizing that when everything is set aside, nothing is left. Saying that this, that, or the other thing is all So Incredibly Important is then, actually, “much ado about nothing”. Without all of the different people, places, things and ideas that are coming together to create that Very Important Thing, it would not exist. The same goes for the things that create those things, and on and on and on.

I am thinking now that to call oneself something does not mean that one will think or will do anything in particular. The label is itself an empty signifier. The whole world of context and contingency will determine where one goes with a particular label. Probably more important than slapping labels on things and trying to predict the future, is being present and attentive. For when everything else falls away at least you can observe it happening.

Death and Community

Two days ago a fire broke out at a house five doors down from my apartment building resulting in the death of one person who was a guy well-known and much-beloved by the local radical/activist/anarchist scene. I knew the guy myself, but our relationship never went beyond the acquaintance level, and we never exchanged more than a few sentences with each-other. There is a collective community-wide (for the local radical community) mourning process going on right now, which I feel pretty much apart from (despite receiving the Facebook event invites) since I never really was connected with the guy.

All of this is bringing to my mind my experience of a couple of months ago, with my discovering the death of my friend Mario. That experience was pretty much the exact inverse of this one - I was personally affected and in a state of grieving, and everyone else around me was perfectly fine and unaffected by the whole thing. With that, there was no collective mourning process, no community coming together, no emotional support.

I then started thinking about prior deaths that I have experienced within a community context. The one prior to Mario was a woman named Dina, and we were both a part of the "Consciousness Transformation Community". This community was pretty much a "virtual community", existing mainly through the internet and telephone conference calls. I never actually met Dina in person. Her death was discovered similar to how Mario's was - somebody took it upon themselves to do some research on the internet to see what happened to her after some time had gone by without anyone hearing any word from her.

Prior to that, in June 2010, there was the death of a coworker of mine who lived and worked at the same house I did at Camphill Soltane. With her death, there was a wonderfully supportive and emotionally & spiritually connecting community response. The only problem that I had with that experience is that there was not that same strong sense of community and connection before-hand, that she felt isolated and hopeless enough to want to kill herself in the first place.

Rewind now to some years before even that, going back to the year 2004, and I recall the most positive experience that I have had with death and community. I am referring here to the death of Julie Greene, who was one of the founders of BayNVC in California. With her, there was a very strong sense of community, emotional support and interpersonal connection for everybody before, during and after her death. Even her funeral itself contained time and space within it for everybody to openly express themselves and to be listened to emphatically. This whole experience was definitely one of the most positive, inspiring and moving experiences I have ever had in my life.

Reflecting on all of these experiences, I realize a few things. For one, I see community as being important, as essential even - but it is very hard to define, and even harder to be a part of. With the current situation here in Minneapolis, I am having a strong sense that I personally am not a part of this community. I coexist with it and interact with it, but I do not have a personal sense of belonging to it and the collective mourning that is taking place seems to me to be something that does not really relate to me.

Likewise with Mario's case, he had distanced himself from others so thoroughly that even others whom I consider to have been a part of the same community as him they themselves do not consider him to have been a part of their community. With the case of Dina and the "Consciousness Transformation Community" before that, I never really considered that to have been a real "community" in the first place. In fact I have strong reservations and doubts as to whether a "virtual" online "community" is even possible. If it is possible, I definitely do not see such a thing as being desirable. I think that human beings have the built-in need for the presence of other people face-to-face and in the flesh.

With the case of Young-shin at Camphill Soltane, another point becomes clear to me - interpersonal connection and emotional support is necessary every step of the way: before, during and after the death. This same point was illustrated to me, in the positive sense, through my experience with the death of Julie Greene. In both cases, I saw first-hand the amazing benefits of having a strong community response and how helpful it is to have structures in place that are capable of "holding" everybody, their feelings, and their grieving.

What becomes clear to me throughout all of this is the desire I have for a clearly defined, actively engaged, in-the-flesh grouping of people who support each-other and care for one-another. I guess that I personally define "community" as being "a situation where my friends are friends with my friends". This is actually a very rare experience, or at least I haven't come across it that much, and I have the sense that this is something that is severely lacking in general, at least in the modern-day Western world.

I have had this experience of community (as I just defined it) before though, twice in my life - most notably at Twin Oaks Community in Virginia, and in the San Francisco Bay Area among the Nonviolent Communication and anarchist scenes there. The former was within the context and structural frame-work of a rural income-sharing intentional community and cottage industries, and the later existed within the context and structural frame-work of an urban network of inter-connected projects, groups, spaces, non-profit organizations and events. These are two very different situations, but in my experience they both shared that same solid sense of community.

I am unsure about where to go with all of this. I have my ideas, my past experiences, and my yearnings that I am feeling. And, as I (and we) keep on coming across - death is inevitable, and persistent. The most that I can hope for, and strive to actualize, is a continuing sense of love and care for others and the world. This is most supported, and best carried out, within the context of a community environment. A real community of care and support. This is what I wish for, both for myself, others, and everybody else.

"Don't mourn, organize"

In response to my last post my friend Paxus asked this:

"'Don't mourn, organize.' Okay so what is the fix? I think it is creating more intentional communities, both culturally and place based. Places which can deal with depression and other mental health problems, because they are culturally strong and because they are not economically destitute all the time.

(I)An-ok you have a massive intellect, what do you think is the key to creating more communities which are not just crash pads for drifters, but have some chance at filling the need for tribe and family that the mainstream has basically abandoned, except in its most sterile and insidious forms."

I wrote a reply to this, and I would like to share it with everybody here.

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I appreciate you asking me these questions, and nudging me towards thinking more proactively as to what can be done to prevent these kinds of things from happening repeatedly. I agree with you about “creating more intentional communities, both culturally and place based”. But I think that more needs to be done than just that. I have a lot of specific details in mind as to what I think can help here.

My personal vantage-point with all of this is through the three people who ended up committing suicide whom I befriended, each of whom lived or were somehow connected with intentional communities that I was also a part of. With each of these situations there was a combination three factors taking place simultaneously:

1) They all had physical body ailments that they did not fully understand and were not getting sufficient treatment for.

2) There was a lack of stable consistent ongoing emotional support and empathic listening for them.

And

3) On their part there was a personal shyness and social anxiety which would keep them from reaching out and really getting to know others, or letting others know them.

Addressing each point, the first part would involve having a good reliable health care system in place where people are getting quality treatment for whatever their physical ailments may be. This treatment would also include an educational or informative component where the patient learns all that they need and want to know about their conditions, body and health. Treatable conditions going untreated, or people being in the dark about what’s going on for them, does not need to happen and these kind of things can really just eat people alive. I totally see there as being a mind-body connection at play. In the cases of the folks I saw, I do think that there were psycho-somatic stimuli for their physical conditions, as well as their physical conditions reinforcing the shitty stories that they were telling themselves as a part of their depression & despair. So good medical care and education would be the first part.

The second part, regarding emotional support and empathic listening, would first involve have a stable reliable structure in place where you have people that are sufficiently trained in things like Nonviolent Communication and Focusing, so that they can empathically listen to folks. These two practices are teachable and learnable modalities where people can learn how to do sensitive-yet-active empathic listening. Empathy is something specific and something that can and should be learned. And underlying this, is a genuine interest on the part of the listener of what the actual lived experience is for the person whom they are listening to. Empathy cannot take place if genuine interest is not there. You cannot just go through the motions of empathy, you really have to be there for it.

With people trained in practical empathic listening, there would then be structures in place for everybody to go to, at least once a week, to candidly talk with someone about whatever is on their heart and mind. In other words, I would like for everybody to trust that there is at least one place or group of people whom they can go to to just totally spill their guts and drop off all the emotional baggage that they have unknowingly been picking up and carrying around with them. I would say actually that the more people whom are trained in stuff like Nonviolent Communication and Focusing, and Vipassana Meditation too, the better and more solid basis you would have for everything. But at the very least I would like for there to be one core structure in place for everybody to go to receive good solid reliable empathic support on a regular basis.

And finally there is the third part, which has to do with people’s personal shyness and social anxiety. This is perhaps the most important part, and in fact if this is not actively dealt with this can interfere with the other two parts even being addressed, let alone fulfilled. In other words, one can be so shy or socially anxious that one would refuse to seek medical attention for a physical problem, or would decline to speak up about some personal emotional thing that is troubling them, even if it is haunting their every living moment.

This is where I see Carl Rogers’ “Person Centered Approach” as coming in, as well as the “Radical Honesty” of Brad Blanton whom you are more familiar with. Carl Rogers speaks about the importance of establishing real person to person relationships, real human contact. This means that the “therapist”, or the “facilitator”, or whatever you want to call the person who takes the action of initiating the deeper more intentional relationship puts special attention on being really authentic and congruent with whatever they are thinking and feeling, along with being warm and caring and nonjudgmental, as well as having the qualities of being empathic that I spoke about earlier.

The “Radical Honesty” part is important too, in that one just says what is on one’s mind, rather than having it being implied or sort of hanging in the air of the room unsaid. This is vitally important, because often people who use things like NVC, for example, try using a method like that to skirt around being really honest about what they are actually thinking and feeling. I much prefer the approach that has been described as “just get it out there, and then clean up the mess afterwards”. That “cleaning up” can be done by having the dance of dialogue which includes the empathy and the caring, as well as the deeper and more focused work of Focusing, for example.

I have done this myself with shy and socially anxious people, I know first-hand that this approach can work, I know that this can happen. In fact, with the three people in question here, the three folks who prompted all of this for me, I did that with them. They were shy, reserved, socially anxious, and I was able to get through to them, to connect with them. The key is consciously approaching them with empathy, personal authenticity and genuine caring for them. This most often took place in one-on-one interactions, when nobody else was there to potentially derail the interactions. These experiences also are what lead to the additional frustration for me personally, later on, when I told people that I had some real, wonderful, heart-to-heart conversations with them. People often had a hard time believing me, because these folks were just so generally shy, quiet and reserved that they could not imagine them any other way.

And, of course, those wonderful encounters, those totally awesome connections, was not enough to save these people’s lives. I would say that this was because I was by no means systematic about the whole thing. I did not establish any reliable structure for support, as in having regularity of such interactions, follow-ups on continuing threads, goals-setting, feed-back, assessments, and such things. My interactions with all of these folks was more or less random, haphazard, sometimes the deeper more personal more intentional thing, and sometimes totally superficial and trivial banter. What I am saying is that, even with the shy and socially anxious folks, I believe that a more deliberate, intentional, systematic and structured approach can be taken to help “get through to them”, instead of resigning them to their own personal hell inside their head. Therefore, gradually, work together with them can be done towards uncovering whatever is most important and meaningful for them to work with internally.

Ultimately, I think that all of this can and should be done as roles and structures existing within intentional communities and other such communal enterprises. This is important, especially for shy and.or depressed people, because even if you have amazing authentic and deep human contact experiences, if that all ends and the person is totally alone for all of the rest of the week, this can pretty much undo whatever productive work was accomplished in those sessions. Within an intentional community, this work can be done as a part of a “mental health team” or a “conflict resolution team”. The essential thing is that the folks who are acting in such roles are trained in and committed to using the skills that I mentioned here (NVC and Focusing, for the sake of empathic listening), and that the three principles of authenticity, empathy and unconditional caring are the three guiding lights in all that they do. I believe that these three lights, when held to, can help people to avoid whatever rigidity or stiltedness that could creep in by virtue of someone acting within a role in a social institution.

I really want to emphasize here, if I haven’t already, the absolute importance of having regularity, continuity and reliability of support here. This is so important. All three of the people I mentioned had support in all three areas that I mentioned – health-wise, emotional & empathy-wise and in the area of breaking through their shyness. The thing is, a one-time thing or sporadic occurrences is not enough. This support was not continuous and ongoing. Without that, they fell through the cracks. All that I’ve said here is a part of what I see as being necessary for weaving a kind of social fabric that is capable of really “holding” people in a supportive way. The income-sharing intentional community structure would be another aspect of the social fabric that supportively holds people as well.

You said that it is important to create more “communities which are not just crash pads for drifters, but have some chance at filling the need for tribe and family” – I think that this needs to be addressed head-on. For all three people, and all three communities in question, the phenomenon of having “drifters” come and go was very much the norm. I think that in all three places the communities generally wanted a more stable solid group of community members who stayed put, but the reality was that people would just drift in and out. I think that this needs to be addressed explicitly and directly in dialogue – have all the parties take the time to sit down with each-other and to honestly address the questions: “What will it take for you to make a real commitment to stay put and really invest yourself in this community?” as well as “What will it take for me to make a real commitment to you to support you in whatever ways that you need support and to really invest myself in my relationship with you?”

So this is another part right there – the issue of the sustainability of the relationships of all of the people such that they will all stay put and stick it out with each-other to have there be a lasting ongoing community of people together. This involves having open direct conversations with each-other, distinct and separate from the other conversations that I was talking about which would exist more for emotional support purposes. What I am referring to here are more clearing-the-air, putting-all-the-cards-on-the-table kinds of conversations so that everybody knows where everybody’s at as far as their various relationships with each-other. One group that I am a part of, the “Consciousness Transformation Community”, has these kinds of conversations take place once a month. Perhaps that would suffice for an intentional community as well.

What I was just referring to would be for community-wide conversations. For individuals or small groups of people who have conflicts or other stuff come up between them, I like Ganas Community’s rule of “No Non-negotiable Negativity”. That is, if you have some kind of negativity come up between you and someone else, you are committed to openly addressing it and actively working on it. I consider this to be a very important common agreement to make, because I know first-hand how negativity, judgment, anger, etc. can just poison a community, as well as interpersonal relationships, and one’s own sense of personal well-being as well! Negativity can be a poison that seeps in and ruins everything. So to counteract that, I would like for everyone to make an agreement right upon entering the community that they will work on their shit when (not if, but WHEN) it comes up.

To rekindle that sense of tribe and family that people are missing, I think that it is important for people to ask themselves – “what makes me come alive?”, “what helps me to feel closer and more connected with others?”, “what helps me to feel like I belong?” – and then actively take steps, create action-plans even, based on the answers that come up for them through these inquiries. Through purposefully discovering your own authentic self, together with others, the ground-work is laid to then have the conversation about how to live authentically with others who are doing the same. Step-by-step it would be a kind of re-creating of tribe, or family, but in a way that actually works for the people involved.

Looking back at what I wrote here, it seems as if what I am advocating is conversation after conversation after conversation. Well, that’s true, but all of it must be done intentionally. Intentional conversations for and within intentional communities. I think that after a while, after people have been habituated to it and it settles in as a cultural norm, the specific formats and structures of these conversations will cease to be such a big thing, and the general attitude and “consciousness” behind the whole thing will permeate people’s lives in general. That kind of environment of casual free-flowing connection is so totally different from the world that we live in, so very different from the background context of those whom I mentioned lived in. I am awe-struck by the disparity between the two.

These are my ideas, for a start. There is certainly more that can be said about everything. Feel free to ask me more questions. I would love to develop these ideas further.