Beyond Zombies and Vampires

Zombies & Vampires, Oh My! This post, an essay for Vinay Gupta’s The Future We Deserve, delineated the lay of the land today. We are hemmed in by these two types, both of behaviors and of ways of looking at those around us. But, in the end, is there anything to be gained by remaining

Zombies & Vampires, Oh My!

Zombies want nothing more than to be made into concrete and vampires are desperate to maintain their un-Dead powers. We want to be well, we want to heal, ourselves and our world. We want to experience life in all its particularity.

Being Stuck

Déjà Vu is a common experience for those stuck in abusive situations. We find that the current crisis looks much like the last. No amount of feigned surprise, or pronounced insistence from the abusers that, “This time is different!” can shake the feeling we’ve been here before. And, most likely, we’ll be here again. If we

Sufficiency without number

Sufficiency is an attitude not a quantity. Chasing after desires we have lost any sense that happiness can be anything other than a list checked off. Pursuit. Nothing could be more destabilizing. Either for an individual or a culture. And, before we get caught up in some form of zealotry…. Yes, the desire to control

Itching for a Fight!

I keep returning to the centrality of the simple fact that all that we actually have is our attention. The ramifications and repercussions of this realization are profound. This continues to strike at our preoccupation with futures. Seen in this light these are just another set of behaviors that siphon our attention away from the

Driven by Fear

Coercion, hostility, anger, rejection; are all signs of fear. They cease to exist when there is no fear. These are paraphrases of points Krishnamurti made repeatedly. The dynamics surrounding fear cannot be ignored. They inflect not only how we react and respond ourselves, but hold some key to how we can find ways to speak

What is innocence?

It seems we consider innocence to be a state of ignorance, held at no fault of our own, in which we are not acting out a power-play, or negotiating within the bounds of a power struggle; but acting out of a clean regard. We consider innocence to be an immature quality, but one we look

Further Notes on the Meaning of Wealth

We all act as though what we mean by wealth is obvious and lacking in ambiguity. Wealth is enough money to wield power so as to conserve one’s ability to keep a lot of money. Hmmm… That’s probably not what you had in mind. Has wealth always been the same thing? Is it going through

The Search for Hope without Control

“The Search for Hope without Control” The title of this post is a quote from the most recent entry on the Dark Mountain Project’s Blog. Dougald Hine’s conversation with David Abram is a treat to watch and a treasure trove of insight. You’ll have to see the video to find out which one of them

A Shared Foundation of Experience

It seems crazy to be thinking about boats at a time like this. Not just with winter closing in, but within this climate of growing uncertainty as the imminence of collapse emerges into our everyday lives. The old patterns don’t work, and whether we are upset by this, or inwardly glad to see cracks in

Futility, the chasm between efficiency and effectiveness

In the tension between our immersion in the fabric of being and the atomized self’s struggle to achieve a stasis, a utopia, not of richness, but an illusory concretion of wealth, in which we wish to stop without falling; we define the human condition. The workings of consciousness are so easily misunderstood as signs of separateness from the rest as epitomized in Cogito Ergo Sum. Yet consciousness, our phenomenological embededness in experience is the only window we have through which to glimpse an awareness of our integration into greater systems and structures.

Kindness & Respect

I’ve read that the key to long standing relationship is kindness. I’ve also felt myself a near-craving for respect: a compass, both attracting and repelling. Respect: re-spect, a second look? Could it be that simple?