Four words, to meet again in a future reality where Thrivival is the human cultural setting.
I have spent a good part of my life on the healing path, firstly to heal my own wounds, so that I may breath freely, relax deeply and enjoy my being. I am still on that path.
Secondly and perhaps more importantly, to ensure that I do not inflict the same wounds upon my own children. Breaking the cycles. And I sense it as an intergenerational thing, from one entire generation to the next. We are all in this together.
The hope is that they might too breathe more freely, relax into who they are more deeply and enjoy their being.
That is, I think, the second best possible gift I could give them. Peace as an internal reality.
The best gift is a cleaner, safer environment within which they can live as nurtured and nurturing beings.
Much of that healing has been through attempting to take some kind of responsibility for my diet, my thought processes, my actions. Small actions within my own limited sphere of influence.
A bumpy path, with many ‘wrong’ turnings, yet 'something' in me keeps me to the path.
That 'something' I have come to sense as an element of our innate nature. The biological urge to heal, to recover balance, to thrive, to live in a default state of trust and well being.
In recent years I have also spent much time learning about the structures that caused my wounding, by looking at them, by understanding them from different angles and by taking the piss out of them.
A sense of humour is a great gift to receive, and a necessary tool - to laugh when things do not work is a useful way to defuse, de-escalate, self regulate one's emotions. I have also devoted time to looking practices that are truly healthy and in that now common phrase, sustainable. Often looking for love in all the wrong places.
The opportunities for self deprecating humour are everywhere in my life.
One of the things I know for sure, is that consumerism, market economies, power exercised over people as an addiction and much else of what is taken a granted by industrialised cults is not sustainable.
The industrial revolution started the process whereby most of us did not grow our own food, but worked for money, and generally a pittance at that, so that we could buy food, inserting a middleman in the chain between food and eater, whilst that middleman extracted wealth from us.
Ignorance is not not knowing, ignorance is ignoring what is
That middleman does not exist in nature, and there’s the core of the problem. The fact is that in nature all living entities, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, have a direct relationship to their food, their nourishment. And we are all dependents. Others efforts make our foods available.
As lungs to oxygen. Eyes to light.
Nature functions in ways that enable all living entities have access to what they require to reach their full potential, and that in the process of reaching towards that potential, they also guarantee all other living entities the resources required for reaching full potential, notwithstanding ‘shit happens’ as in natural ‘disasters’ or being eaten…….shit is not waste, it is a resource, if treated in the correct and natural way.
Given the complexity and perfection of nature, the exquisite beauty and balance of the vast system that covers the surface of our planet, it does not make sense that this is a mechanical mindless process, but an intelligent one.
The seed must ‘know’ that it is to be the plant, and must know how to become that plant, or at the very least be able to learn how to become that plant. As must all living creatures.
The culture into which I was born is by design quite different, insofar that access to resources is controlled so as to alter the innate behaviour of those that are controlled, be they plant, animal or humane being.
That control necessitates the abuse that I experienced as a child. It necessitates the abuse of billions of animals which we ‘farm’ for food. It necessitates the enslaving or exploitation of plants in much the same way, insofar that the natural life path of plants is controlled, carrots are planted in lines, forests are destroyed etc etc..
The controller is the middleman, the interventionist in the process of life.
In nature all is food, and thus food is generally speaking, abundant. Strangely enough though, obesity is not common place, nor is starvation, in natural systems. Neither is existential insecurity as we experience it.
In Danger of Falling Fruit.
Permaculture seeks to replicate those systems in such a manner as to obviate the ‘clear the land and grow food in lines’ for profit way of doing things.
Bill Mollison made a great video about permaculture forest gardening entitled “In Danger of Falling Fruit” …….. as opposed to the Danger of falling bombs, as espoused by our governments, as the way towards ‘freedom‘ and ‘democracy‘.
As ever, old Bill expressed a profound and beautiful truth in pithy terms, with no wasted words. A beautiful human being who with David Holgrem, and others, has bequeathed us with an opportunity to get ourselves out of the mess we are in. Perhaps that was the only danger in the garden of Eden.
Would that it were the only danger facing us today!
Alice Miller and Carl Rogers are two others whose observations ring true in a similar manner, with respect to how we treat children and how we treat each other.
If, in my life, I could add to, or share those great gifts, even in the slightest way, then I would judge my life worth living, beyond the sheer joy of being alive, which as ever I regard as a great mystery, a profound gift for which I am ever grateful.
We can do this!
To subvert the systems of control, we need to not give them our compliance. If nobody enlists, there can be no war. If we grow our own food, we do not need the money nor do we need Tescos.
If we don’t watch television, we don’t need the BBC. If we sing our own songs, we don’t need Bono, nor do we need the Rolling Stones.
If we are prepared to be visionaries, we would need no movies nor would we need scripture. If we think for ourselves, we will need no leaders. We are born, each and every one of us, with innate wisdom and a great learning ability. Our expressions would be the sharing of that which enriches us all. Open sourced.
Change values for survival" Helen Caldicott says, and I would add, let's change our values and behaviour so that we move well beyond survival and stroll and stride and run and skip and hop with joy into Thrivival.
kindest regards
Corneilius
Do what you love, it's your gift to universe
