Dark Colors

Darkness is to space what silence is to sound; i.e., the interval. – Marshall McLuhan

Bizarrely enough, the smart monkeys of Earth are obsessed with wrapping colorful and non colorful cloth around their bodies and striding around in display rituals. We just love designing and acquiring new pieces of said cloth, taking pictures of it, and us in it, and endlessly parading our clinging cloth pieces.

I write about colors and dyeing in the spring. I am in a soft but clear pastel and cheery mood then, full of hope for harmony and gentleness.

I have experienced a backlash.

I had boxed up my murky colored clothes; now I crack them open again. 

I can’t seem to get enough mucky drabs; I pull out black, dull green, navy and browns. Why, what?

Change of season? Do we really reflect nature by liking flower colors in spring, and preferring dry leaf colors in fall? Do we dance out the colors around us wrapped in flags of the seasons’ colors?

Or is something darker at play? 

Am I depressed about the times we live in, the trends, retrenchments, the dark feelings suddenly coming out from under the rocks?

Like the phenomenon of long skirts in hard times and short skirts in good times, I think we fly happy colorful flags when we feel safe to do so. Am I diving under cover of camo in these times of backlash?

Just wondering.

“Flowers grow out of dark moments.” – Corita Kent

“I used to be afraid until I learned that I am a light and the dark is afraid of me.” -Eph 5:8

Toward Unitics Consciousness

“We are in this lifeboat together and the fiercest thing we can do is to say, I’m living in a new republic of the heart. I’m a revolutionary. You are not going to separate yourself from me. I refuse to be in separation from you. That’s the fierceness. That’s the voice of love.” -Terry Patton 

(From the book, Unitics:)

Politics will always be with us, as long as we have egos. We will struggle, contend, and so, need to compromise as long as we are separate beings. But what if we realize that we are not all that separate? What if we regard our individual selves as also part of a larger whole? What if we regarded others the way parents think of their own children, putting them first, making sure they had everything they need? The saints speak of all people as their children.

Both our sense of individuality and our awareness of the whole are evolving together now, at the same time. The process is mutually reinforcing, with the strong ego longing to become part of something greater, while each member of the greater whole stretches to grow out and beyond the perceived constraints of conventional group mind, thus expanding it.

If your imprisonment to the group consciousness seems to inhibit your freedom, so also can your illusion of an isolated self, you against the world. The feeling of membership to the group may bring feelings of security and belonging, but if you don’t value your own self you may not feel deserving of that love. That is just a different flavor of lonesome.

The paradox of individual self and the All continues all the way up and down. As above, so below. Turtles, all the way down. So politics forever, right?

Not so much. Eventually politics, the struggle between separate entities for power, should mature into a cooperation model that seeks the well being and success of all. Unitics.

Unitics addresses the same needs at a higher level. Individuality is not lost, but it is employed in more interesting and meaningful ways. Nor is connectedness lost, but enhanced, by a feeling of self that expands to the whole group, the whole planet, indeed, to all life everywhere forever.

It is a shift of perspective. Seeing everyone else as your sibling, all creatures as your responsibility, the planet as your community garden, the universe as one with your own body, causes you to feel and act differently.

Just as the political arena is fear filled, so the realm of unitics is love filled. Indeed the thought of oneself as separate and alone in the world is fearful! But so is the way individuals have often been controlled and oppressed by the the group. This is a kind of scary security gained at the price of being subsumed by the majority.

Unitics, by contrast, arises from an inner identification, an new and greater awareness, sparking a spontaneous and natural impulse to contribute. The feeling of security caused by the consciousness of unitics is authentic and loving.

Children live in this paradox. They accept their complete dependence on their parents and tribe as obvious. At the same time they strive and drive themselves toward competence and self sufficiency constantly and unrelentingly. Can we grownups hold this paradox with that much freshness, and never stop developing both a sense of connection as well as individuality?

“Remember, the entrance to the sanctuary is within you” -Rumi

Regardening The Earth

“I pledge allegiance to the world; to care for earth and sea and air; to cherish every living thing; with peace and justice everywhere.”-L.G. (This was officially read out at the United Nations)

How to Regarden the Earth

(from The Flower Child’s Garden Planet)

First, each of us awakens to the holographic two way nature of our connection to the greater Whole.

Next, we reorient and align with loving cooperation and healing.

Regarding the garden, our body and our environment are connected. We are creating one planet Earth garden, even as we each are an individual raised bed. We are each a walking talking universe in a pot, or maybe a doughnut shape.

We consume. We whirl and spew, affecting everything and everyone else. All together we roar, we are a big force on Earth, for good or ill. 

We are starting to awaken and get a clue. We have choices. To make, now. Real, physical, down to earth choices, choices about how to think creatively, and choices about our attitude. Attitude is altitude.

Think of a neighborhood. Each house is a unique space reflecting its dwellers, and together the feeling of the neighborhood as a whole emerges. We are landscaping a whole planet now!

Think of a flock of birds standing together. When do they all take off together, leaping as one into the sky, who decides the moment, and how? The alpha leader birds? No, it happens when enough of them are aligned with one another, each choosing, one by one, to turn to face in the same direction, conveying their shared intent. Each of us birds really, intrinsically, matters. It is time to take a new direction.

Time to replace economy of money as guiding metaphor for societal organization, with planet garden. It’s time to see the living regenerating systems of planet Earth as a guide to the garden we must now to create to survive and thrive.

The big changes we need actually come from gazillions of tiny turnings. You need not make drastic and dramatic gestures. To just go along with your awareness activated, and to do what you can do, with what you have, as you go along, is enough. Reorient and align.

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” 

― Albert Einstein