Here is the original design of the interactive community map tool that would later evolve into Resource Community, a collaborative map website co-founded by myself and my close friend Allison Bailey. Find the full Color & Icon Key below.
Category: Philosophy of Being
Wise Existing is Enough
The reason I never give up is because I want to make the path so it will be that much easier for people like me who come after me, to live the meaningful life within their own values. The culture got sick because surviving and getting beyond survival is brutal and traumatizing. The culture only stays sick because people who have actually discovered healing, transformative wisdom give up.
Without wisdom, life is purposeless and complicated and creates suffering.
With wisdom, life is hard but simple, and what suffering is here becomes the source of transformation.
I’ve realized that when you can’t actually DO anything to make a change, not doing the action that is evil is the most heroic action possible. To do nothing at all. And though you have no influence over others’ resistant beliefs, exposure to your divergent beliefs and values is enough. There will always be one or two people who hear who are struck just enough there’s a crack in the shell. And others who fully resonate with you who were hiding in plain sight. It’s sometimes very few people, but it is those few who must be completely unrelenting just in their willingness to keep existing and being the example that creates the opportunity for those in the future.
Everything starts with the first of many.
Choosing Character Over Success
Below is my comment response to the video – Interview on Meaning, Masculinity and Responsibility with Neil Smedley & Iman Amrani of The Guardian.
The greatest flaw in focus on “success” is that it distracts us from a proper focus on character. A person of great character who lives through tragedy and failure, especially outside of his own control, is an important story. Too many people get attached to the success story and don’t bother to consider the character of the person they follow. And if some of those people get far enough down that path to discover it has no rooted meaning, that can be a real existential crisis.
One of the best people I met aimed to get as much of his resources as possible from within his own being. And after all the ways my life has been dragged through the mud due to others being unstable and unreliable, I really have no interest in the success story, especially from people who don’t understand sorrow, anger, grief- the reactions to tragedy and evil. With yin and yang, if you blind yourself to the dark parts of the world and life, you’re missing an integral half of the recipe for meaning and purpose.
After losing everything, all I have left is the proof of my character, the fact that I survived, and the chance to start over again.
The Overwhelming Mystery of Existence, and the Choice to Be a Friend in the Flurry of Deep Dark
Explanation of This Article
This is a story that may be hard to comprehend. It’s written chaotically, representing the strange experience of reality. It represents constant change, the unpredictable nature of living and consciousness. The mystery of how huge and strange the universe is and not knowing if there is an “end”. And it ties into the chaos of living as a human being in this life, how little control you have over anything, and yet the opportunity to play life as a game and attain self-determination. A game where, if there is suffering, disaster, and things fall the fuck apart…
Continue reading “The Overwhelming Mystery of Existence, and the Choice to Be a Friend in the Flurry of Deep Dark”
This is a story that may be hard to comprehend. It’s written chaotically, representing the strange experience of reality. It represents constant change, the unpredictable nature of living and consciousness. The mystery of how huge and strange the universe is and not knowing if there is an “end”. And it ties into the chaos of living as a human being in this life, how little control you have over anything, and yet the opportunity to play life as a game and attain self-determination. A game where, if there is suffering, disaster, and things fall the fuck apart…
Continue reading “The Overwhelming Mystery of Existence, and the Choice to Be a Friend in the Flurry of Deep Dark”
Intrinsic Abundance: Defining Wealth & Poverty by Self-Determination
SUMMARY
Intrinsic Abundance is the belief that wealth and poverty are best defined by the needs of Self-Determination. Current definitions of wealth and poverty are extrinsic based on physical resources. The Materialist Fallacy is the belief that attaining more money or resources automatically or intrinsically equates to greater quality of life, wealth, abundance, or personal liberation. Intrinsic Abundance, by contrast, puts Self-Determination as the foundation of abundance, and shows that ego-death is a natural companion path to Self-Determination.
Continue reading “Intrinsic Abundance: Defining Wealth & Poverty by Self-Determination”
When Trauma Becomes Political
I see many people with trauma respond to that pent up energy by funneling it into an ideology that makes them feel safe and comfortable. There is politicization of trauma today, and in the words of Marshall Rosenberg (nonviolent communication), this is a “tragic expression of unmet needs, tragic because it is said in the way that makes it unlikely others will want to or be able to meet those needs.”
Continue reading “When Trauma Becomes Political”
embracing Deep Dark
When you discover how difficult some things can be, how crippling and how Deep Dark, that’s when you believe what you thought was powerful is all a sham. But sometimes it’s just showing you why something is really powerful. Get used to the dark. What’s powerful is not always light, the light could be a crutch. What’s powerful is allowing you to live in the dark, and transmute it on your own.
That is the path to self-determination.
Art: “Learning to live with the noises” by Hoopoe Aftonmåne
