” There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading in the same direction, so it doesn’t matter which path you take. The only one wasting time is the one who runs around and around the mountain, telling everyone that his or her path is wrong” Hindu Proverb.
Sustainable Living is a different way of thinking and not simply a set of green technologies that allow us to maintain a destructive materialistic-consumerist lifestyle a little longer. There are basic principles that can apply to sustainable living, which is why I wrote my textbook about it in 2012 (no, I am not drumming up trade 😊 You can get cheap used copies and I don’t get royalties). Today, there are 8 billion people on this planet and about 25% of these are children who generally live within their family and community choices. This means that 75% of humanity has the free-will to make choices for themselves. A better world is within the grasp of anyone willing to open up and recognize that probability. We need to stop waiting for ‘powerful others’ to push us into directions we would rather not go.
Humans have a tendency to want to cling to the old and known ways. Our present world has its origins in the Medieval Renaissance and that way is crumbling already. I have talked about a new renaissance (see, Nova Renascentia, A New Beginning – Part 2 and Nova Renascentia,A New Beginning – Part 4: The Great Reset, but which one? (both January 2021) but at some point we have to choose before the choice is forced upon us, or worse, taken away by those who would decide for us. And a part of that choice involves a change in how we spiritually interact with the world. I have written a lot about this already and had a long string of posts (Spirituality, Service & Connection) starting in June 2021.
Most of our problems come from egoic and fixed emotional attachments to dogmatic ways of thinking that promote separation and otherness in your identity as a separated human being. Many fear authorities and change and so let the hierarchy subjugate their choices. If the many realized how much personal sovereign power they really had, the few could not control them. Humanity is a collective intelligence that thrives on the duality we see as life. We can choose fear, anger, hate, greed, etc., or we can choose Love, compassion, collaboration, etc. We choose. If you let your mindless and unconscious conditioning choose then don’t be surprised that the few doing the conditioning have us on the negative end of the spectrum.
Those obsessed with the conditioned path are running with fear as their guide. They are the ones acting as true-believers, running around the mountain trying to keep us in line for their masters. Our goal should be to individually self-actualize ourselves by climbing the mountain, help others do so, and not maintain the status quo simply to avoid perceived punishment (physically or mentally) of some form. The few that are financially able to live independently and feel ‘protected’ by their wealth, unconsciously live in fear of losing that wealth. It’s why the social economic stratifications have always occurred through history. The last three years should have revealed just how fickle is our global consumer society.
I hear a lot about how hard it is to start living sustainably. Too often I hear that most people will get on board once there is a good plan. The hierarchy will not produce such a plan. The current infrastructure does make it hard to step way from. So, what we need to do is just start where we are and then adjust as we go along. Our choices done locally at first. This expectation that we live just jump from here to a sustainable world is our barrier. “The time to start will never be just right. Start with whatever tools you have and better tools will be found as you go along” Napoleon Hill.
I think most people have this idea that life is like we imagine a good movie – a good final product with twists and turns that all moves relatively seamlessly. This flow within a film is due to the editorial aspect after the film is made. Before the editorial process, all the filmed footage is extremely chaotic and disconnected – we rarely see the endless retakes before the directors vision is realized. It is when it is sent to the editors for further for the endless cutting and splicing process that the final product is created by hours of hard work. What keeps the process going is a vision of what the final product ought to be from what is available in the footage. If we intend to create a new and better world then we too need a vision of what is possible from where we are now, knowing that it will change as we go along.
Most people love to go to natural parks for a variety of reasons, but one of the most common reasons is to experience the natural world outside of the human-built environment. The reasons? It’s in our genes. Being outdoors, especially in a relaxed environment, brings us back to our natural states. It literally can make us feel limitless. Besides, relaxation has all sort so of benefits. It gives us a genuine sense freedom and joy. Relaxing decreases cortisol (the stress hormone) and increases oxytocin (the Love hormone). Studies also show that being outside in nature is relaxing, and unless you are working our hard, decreases muscle tension and promotes healthier hearts and emotional wellness. We breathe easier, sleep better after being out, have less depression, more motivation to do things, better mental energy and improved health overall. There is lots of evidence that our bodies actually improve, such that all our senses become keener and overall health improves.
Now imagine getting all that within the human-built environment! That is what living sustainably will bring once we choose not to live in the materialistic rat-race we call modern civilization. We bring the natural world back into our lives on a daily level and we will get the same benefits that we accrue when we recreate in nature. That is all part of a spiritual experience that often has nothing to do with any religiosity. It probably has its roots back to a time when the Earth was simply the Goddess Gaia and we understood that living harmoniously with Gaia brought rewards and benefits that future materialistic cultures failed to recognize or enjoy.
In a previous post (Adapting to Transformational changes 7 – A technological Solution to Horse Poop, Part 2 {December 2018}) I used the bicycle as a metaphor for how change moves along. If we start by intending to live in societies that are peaceful, calm and open with a focus of joy and happiness, we begin the process and then ‘edit’ as we go along as we find what works and what needs modifying or changing completely. I have decided to take a different approach in the next few posts. In my Sustainable Living Text, I used a story of a woman (called Esperanza) who is looking back over the century of her life to explain how sustainability came about. I’m not going to just post the stories I have already written in the textbook, but to expand on them to show a process of Living Sustainably that can easily occur once we make the choices to thrive with resiliency, regeneration, and cooperation.
0 Comments