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.

"In a world full of no ones, I am a someone"

A couple of days ago I found out that a good friend of mine died, probably by suicide, but I’m waiting for the police report to arrive before that is confirmed. This is news to me, and for a number of other people who knew him and were friends/friendly with him. But the actual death happened about three years ago. To me this is the kind of silence that says a lot.

His name was Mario, and I lived with him in two different intentional communities, and we both volunteered in post-Katrina New Orleans at the same time as well. He originally knew about me from my anarchist writings on the internet and in radical publications before we even met. It was only when we were first living together and he saw how my name was spelled that he realized that I was the same guy whose writings he read. We had many different interests, values and ideals in common, and he was one of the folks whom I wanted to create a wonderful new utopian community with together, but it never quite happened.

Mario was a very shy person, admittedly socially awkward, and as a result of that he was pretty chronically quite lonely and longing for social connection, friendship and romantic relationship. His great fear was social isolation, and that much-feared result very often was a part of his day-to-day reality. However, he was quite personable, quite friendly, quite knowledgeable and he opened up quite readily to me. He held an ideal for a kind of drop-out crusty-squatter way of life, along with a desire for authentic spiritual experience and authentic interpersonal connection, anarchist social revolution, communal living and the kind of tribal social structures that I wanted as well.

The reality was that we drifted in and out of each-other’s lives, and the kind of engaged constructive work of building what we wanted to see in the world kept on getting deferred to some vague distant future. Eventually we parted ways, he ended up traveling cross-country to various places, and I started traveling cross-country to various places too. We never met up again, although we did stay in touch somewhat via e-mail. He started talking about increasing health problems, as well as depression. His health deteriorated to the point that he could not do much, so he took refuge at the home of his one parent that he was in contact with, and stayed there. He was quite socially isolated there, a crippled radical anarchist in the middle of a small town in Kansas. He began to despair that he would ever get better emotionally or physically. I don’t know what happened after that, but eventually he died, in May 2009.

None of the deaths that I have experienced before has ever felt as disconnected as this one. He died in a place where hardly anyone knew him or could grieve his loss together, I am in a place where nobody around me knew him and can grieve with me, and everybody I know who knew him is living in a different geographical place. That, and it has been years since any of us had any contact with him, and years since he died as well. This whole situation is like a picture-perfect example of social fragmentation.

I look back at this story and I feel quite angry. I feel angry because I feel quite certain that if he had a strong, supportive and loving community surrounding him, that this would not have happened. I am convinced that things do not have to be this way. If he did kill himself then that would mean that I have now had three close friends/coworkers in my life who have killed themselves. Each time, I speak the rhetoric of community, emotional health and personal growth, and each time these people feel increasingly estranged, despairing and completely powerless about their personal circumstances.

I do recognize that suicide and the choices that one takes to get to that point are all a matter of individual responsibility ultimately in the hands of the person who takes that action. However, I do not see the matter as being entirely about that. I see our human reality as being inextricably a kind of social fabric in which we are inter-related and connected with each-other, for better or worse, like it or not. We all make choices in relation to one-another to help or to ignore, to listen to or to write off, to engage with or to mind your own business. All too often I believe that we all, including myself, make the later of these choices.

And here’s the clincher – this is happening everywhere. It’s not just Mario, it’s not just the other people in my life who have committed suicide, it’s people all over the place. Just because I do not know personally all of the different people who have, or are, or are considering right now committing suicide does not make it any less important. Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said that “one person dying is a tragedy, many people dying is a statistic.” I believe that suicide, and the isolation, the despair, the lack of meaningful social contact that is underlying it endemic to the world that we live in, to the kind of society and social organization that we participate in, and that ultimately we each need to take personal responsibility for this happening just as much as each individual takes responsibility for deciding to kill themselves.

To me, the kind of profound social isolation and disconnection that Mario lived in, which is also reflected in the way that so many people in our society live their lives, is completely and totally unsustainable. People need connection, community, belonging and care. Without that, suicide, homicide, and any number of other horrible things, is just a matter of time before it happens.

I don’t want your sympathy. I don’t want to hear any condolences, any “I’m so sorry for your loss”, because ultimately this loss is not my loss – it is our loss. Even if you did not know the guy, this has affected you, the underlying social condition affects the context that you live in, and you helped to make it happen. We’re all in this thing together. Let’s start acting like it.

The Middle Way

So often in my life I have felt like an extremist. I have continually been drawn to the most radical views, the most fringe life-styles, and I have cherished the most extreme experiences. As a child I felt inside like I was extremely weird and different from everybody else. As an adult I have somewhat consciously longed for the most extreme results for the future of humanity. In many ways all of this is still the case for me. At the same time I am having a dawning appreciation for something else – balance.

“Buddhism” can mean many different things to many different people, but one key idea in it is that of “The Middle Way”. This idea got started as being about the “middle way” between hedonism and asceticism, indulgence and denial. But this can also be interpreted as being about the “middle way” between nihilism and absolutism, atheism and theism. This interpretation is one that has particular resonance for me right now.

A lot of the time my view-points tend to fall into the extremes of nihilism or absolutism, despite my conscious wishes to the contrary. “Everything is shit”, especially everything that we see in this world – nihilism. Or, “here is The Answer”, and over the years I have posed so many things as being that – absolutism. Back and forth, back and forth I’ve gone, sometimes reflecting a kind of internal mood swing in the process. At times I’ve also seen anarchism as by necessity incorporating these two elements, as being a kind of marriage of nihilism and absolutism. I don’t think that that approach really works, at the very least it is sort of crazy-making, but more than that there are other approaches out there.

A “middle way”, or balance, can be an integration of the two in the sense that it recognizes and acknowledges the best aspects of both. When something is destructive, it is seen as such, no need to deny it. When something helps with health and well-being, then that is acknowledged as well. There is no need to find fault with everything, nor is there a need to find the bright side of everything. Although both faults and bright sides do exist, when they exist, and that is recognized. An approach of balance would then be based on a profound acceptance of what is. There is no need for rose-colored glasses, or dark-tinted glasses either.

This is definitely an area where it is far easier to talk about it than to actually practice it. As I write these words even, I see within myself a desire to put up “The Middle Way” as being “The Answer”, my old absolutest approach. Swirling around this are my critiques of all that’s surrounding, something that can very well lead to an “everything is shit” conclusion, my old nihilist friend. I am so used to either trying to recruit everybody to The Righteous Cause For a Better Tomorrow, or to rain on their parade and dynamite their hopes & dreams. The radical notion for me then is to do neither, or aspects of both. There is nothing to be recruited to but there are better ways to live. There are flaws and draw-backs to everything, but not to the point of everything being worthless.

Perhaps the most difficult thing to grasp, or at least one of them, is that there are no beliefs that can console you. Nothing can really comfort you, for it is all an illusion in the end. This is one of the great back-handed gifts of nihilism. This sentiment is best expressed by this poetic phrase by Vasily Rozanov:

"The show is over. The audience get up to leave their seats. Time to collect their coats and go home. They turn round...No more coats and no more home."

Conversely, the Buddha is claimed to have said:

“Make an island of yourself, make yourself your refuge; there is no other refuge. Make truth your island, make truth your refuge; there is no other refuge.”

In other words, stark reality is to be faced, point-blank, as it is. It is not to be denied, nor is it to be all puffed up with some grand theory of something-or-other. Perhaps it is not as bad as one makes it out to be, perhaps "making it out to be" anything is actually part of the problem. Straight down the middle, with no hiding from it or craving for something else, a balance can be found. That is the middle way.

2011: Looking on from afar

I have an annual tradition that I do around each New Year of publicly reflecting in writing on my personal experience of the year that just ended. Here is my experience of 2011.

The main general theme that I can think of that runs throughout 2011 is “looking on from afar”. The first half of the year I was looking on to my up-coming move to Minneapolis with great anxiety, uncertainty and anticipation. The second half of the year, after having moved to Minneapolis, I looked on to various places, people and situations of my past with nostalgia and sometimes yearning to see them again. My experience with life first-hand has generally been second-rate with thoughts of what might-be, what has-been, and what is going on over-there.

And this year, out over-there has been absolutely amazing! This has been the year of the Arab Spring with the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and the uprisings in Bahrain, Syria and Yemen. This has been the year of the big protests in Spain and Russia, the riots in Greece, Rome and England, and the end of the Iraq War, Osama Bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi. Most strikingly for me as an American radical, this has been the year of the Occupy movement, something that I totally did not see coming and have been totally transfixed with.

However, all of those things have all been stuff that I have observed from afar, as a kind of politically engaged spectator of sorts. The Occupy stuff I have only marginally gotten involved with. I have intentionally kept my distance from it all since I do have some strong reservations about it. I have not really gotten deeply involved with anything this year. If anything this year has been marked by me getting more un-involved with stuff instead of involved.

There have been some things that I have gotten involved with this year, or rather, got RE-involved with once more. One of them is anarchism – I realized that I am now and have always been an anarchist all along ever since I first discovered the philosophy. I have re-gained my comfort with ideologically and socially re-associating myself with things A-word-related. It also became very clear to me as the year progressed how much disgust and aversion I have within me to mainstream contemporary ways of life.

Then there is Vipassana Meditation (as taught by S.N. Goenka). This year I sat another ten-day course, volunteered at another, and then volunteered at the Illinois Vipassana Meditation Center during some periods in-between courses taking place. This is the most involved with Vipassana Meditation that I have been since 2008, which is the year that I first got into it. I have also publicly introduced people to Nonviolent Communication this year, which is something that I had not done for a long time.

There are some other things that I have more-or-less gotten involved with afresh, such as Buddhism. Now, Buddhism is something that I have already been interested in prior to this year, but this year I have studied the subject more than I ever have before in the past. I also took part in a short class on Buddhist history here in Minneapolis, taught by Rita M. Gross, the author of the book “Buddhism After Patriarchy”. That experience was very informative for me, and was quite mind-blowing at some points. Related to Buddhism I also got into reading the works of the Beat Generation, namely Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. The first two were self-proclaimed Buddhists, though they had some different perspectives on the matter.

Gary Snyder’s perspective on Buddhism has been very influential for me this year, for 50 years ago (in 1961) he wrote an essay entitled “Buddhist Anarchism” (also known as “Buddhism and the Coming Revolution”) that I first read this year. Reading this inspired me to write two articles on the subject of “Buddhist anarchism,” to produce a pamphlet about it and to give a public workshop presentation about it. I have been very excited about the possibilities around this semi-new philosophy of “Buddhist anarchism”, yet I have also felt very wary and reluctant around it as well. This latter is because I am afraid of creating a big new Identity around it all. Building up and clinging to some self-constructed identity is what I have done many times previously in the past related to my identity as an “anarchist”. I know first-hand the profound suffering that can come with clinging to a particular identity (or anything else), and it would be of the utmost irony if this occurred related to something with the philosophy of Buddhism! The challenge for me here is to appreciate and cherish something without clinging to it.

I also have to say that all of these things are essentially about ideas – the reading, the writing, the theorizing. These particular ideas have not really impacted my own personal life that much. My actual real-life experience day-to-day this year has actually been pretty dull and bland for me. The dullness of my life has not necessarily been “bad”, it has all been rather nice, and keeping in mind all of the different horrors and atrocities taking place in our world I am very much appreciative of what I have experienced. I also feel very grateful for the continuing relationship that I have with Liz. However, I’ve also had very few close personal friendships with people this year, and these mainly have been with people who live somewhere else and who occasionally I’ve visited with for at most a couple of days. Some of these friends, and family members too, have had some amazing experiences and adventures this year as they traveled to different places and countries abroad. I have only been able to enjoy these experiences vicariously, mainly through reading written accounts about them online and imagining.

Looking back on it my own personal favorite experiences of the year, the ones that most stand out for me are ones that also involved traveling. They were the trips to Twin Oaks and Acorn communities in central Virginia with some other coworkers from Camphill Soltane in March, going to the New York City Anarchist Bookfair and tabling and co-facilitating a workshop there in April, going to the Christian anarchist festival, called “PAPA Fest”, in rural Pennsylvania and giving a workshop there in June, and visiting Camphill Village Copake in up-state New York in July. These were the experiences where I personally felt the most alive, the most free and in integrity with myself this year.

As the year ends I am left with a continuing sense of uncertainty, of not-knowing. In a way I have learned quite a lot this year, and in another sense I feel like I have learned nothing at all. I do not know what the up-coming year of 2012 will bring me or where it will take me. The very best thing that I can think of in terms of finding comfort with the uncertainty and peace with the not-knowing is the philosophy of Buddhism and the practice of Vipassana Meditation. These are some of the reasons why I like them so much and why they have been such important parts of my life this year. I feel grateful that they are there and reassured knowing that I can relate with this proactively instead of just reactively.

One of the things that I learned this year is that you cannot repeat the past when it is something positive and you try to intentionally re-create it. However, you can repeat the past when it is something negative and you unintentionally stumble upon it (again). This to me implies an additional lesson of the importance of going into things with a clear mind, free from preconceptions of “the way things ought to be”, and allowing whatever arises to be there. This way the not-knowing can be an ally and not a menace.

May all beings be happy, be peaceful, be liberated, for the coming year. :-)