Outline – From Inner Understanding to Activism

 

　

Outline – From Inner Understanding to Activism

Evolutionary Revolution 1A

　

Understanding cultural, societal issues is inexorably tied to defining our personal, individual issues. We can't work through issues out in the world until we have a clear idea of our own.

1. To understand the denial we've been inappropriately infected with requires first understanding the depth of grief process to which a human life cycle is exposed.

2. Every loss triggers a grief response. In balanced circumstances the response is commensurate with the loss.

3. Once we understand the reactionary, dysfunctional grief responses to the multitude of losses each of us experiences we can understand the sources of our dissatisfaction, frustration, and fear.

4. Unresolved grief never, ever goes away.

5. Recognizing, understanding, and working through our unresolved grief - becoming current with our grief - opens us to balanced experience of light/love.

6. Of equal importance, being current with our grief allows us to deal with the darkness, which is as inevitable an experience in our life as breathing out after breathing in, without resistance or guilt. The darkness is not one bit lighter or less painful, but we pass through it in the shared presence of our community.

7. In the balance of that environment we can for the first time open ourselves to the transcendence that is at the heart of love. It is then that we can open ourselves to our own, unique, individual spiritual path.

8. It's after we can direct our lives and follow our path that we can finally look about us and begin to see how the same process that has so damaged us, has mired our social, political, economic, and spiritual institutions in patterns counter to the needs of the people.

These few sentences can't share what needs to be shared. I have previously suggested it was possible to present an overview in an hour. I think I was wrong. It might well be more like two hours - and some extra time for questions. And that’s only a bare-bones explanation of the Overview.

Most often the objection I hear to even discussing these issues is –

“You want to change everything, do something about everything? It’s too much, it’s just too much.”

Here’s my response. I've repeated this at least a thousand times in the last thirty plus years. A Buddhist teacher once told me –

"... You want to make changes out there in the world? Look to your own heart. Then be totally in the moment. Be open to that moment. You will always know what needs to be done in that moment. Watch what happens. Watch the changes."

I've tried to live that advice every day since then. Everything that I’ve been involved in that has had positive results, at the St. Francis Center, the Fredericksburg Hospice, Sena Foundation, both books, Quicksilver Times, and in my personal life, has come as a result of that lesson. I've failed at it so often, still do every day, especially in all the love relationships I've been so lucky to have experienced. Failed so often and so many. But the failure was always mine, my self-absorption, my greed, my laziness. The lesson is true. And me? I'm working on it.

Can we do this? To quote a great man, “Yes we Can!”

The thing is… If you’re fulfilled, if your life is in balance and your world – the way you see it out there – is balanced and working well, go on about your business. But if you’re not fulfilled, if your world is as out of balance as your heart, take a look. Listen. Read. Think. Ask questions.

No one at Sena Foundation or Quicksilver Times wants your money. No one wants to control you, or manipulate you. It’s all about sharing.

There’s a new Translation in a state of becoming. Sena Foundation and Quicksilver Times, Remembered Gifts and New Directions and White Man Dancing – Grief, God, and A Unified Theory, are part of a Telling, as are the SF & QST Facebook pages and this blog.

You understand. You hear…



love,



bill