I do a tremendous amount of non-fiction reading in culture, economics, politics, finance, anthropology, and history.  It's been rare, lately, after the life exposure and reading that I've done, to run across books with more than a few novel ideas, if that.  I've been delighted to have come across Barry C. Carter's Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era,  a truly gratifying read full of profound perspectives that I highly recommend.  Here's a taste:

"I define mass privatization as a wealth-creation organization or community in which individual workers, or a small team of workers, own the specific work they perform.  These private owners work in partnership with other private owners.  Networks of small virtual teams (teamnets) form chains of customers linked through information technology to form powerful global enterprises (Lipnack and Stamps 1993).  Teamnets are flexible enough to customize at the individual level while producing en masse, hence mass customization.  Partners are bound together through a compelling vision and mission and through the alignment that comes from an organizational structure based upon win/win compensation.  Internal to the organization, suppliers as partners are compensated directly by their customers.  Likewise, internal customers pay their suppliers directly.  There are no managers, salaries, bosses, hierarchies, employees, or central controls.

       Is mass privatization socialism?  No!  In socialism the individual worker owns nothing.  Is is capitalism?  No!  In capitalism the individual worker does not own the individual work performed.  Though socialism purports to be a system in which workers own the means of production, and capitalism espouses the right of the individual to own and entire business, neither system supports the individual's owning the means of production for his or her own work.  Both systems are, however, based on the central control and ownership of work.

        Mass privatization is a more coherent wealth-creation paradigm than either socialism or capitalism; it comes from a higher vantage point.  It synthesizes the best values of both systems (individual liberty and worker ownership) and ignores the negative methods (authoritarian control and the centralization of ownership)Mass privatization is a wealth-creation organizing structure that both socialist and capitalist would likely embrace.  They would both feel as if their views had been proved correct and valid.  Ironically, there is also the possibility that either of these people would find mass privatization total heresy." Barry C. Carter Infinite Wealth

Just found a great link to a number of Barry C. Carter's writings here:  http://futurepositive.synearth.net/2002/07/16/

Here's an interesting example of an approach moving toward this sort of solution.

L’Infini n’a pas d’ailleurs

Ces derniers 5 ans la vie m’appelle à prendre conscience de la mort avec d’autant plus d’intimité que mes 20 ans de service comme infirmier en soins intensifs et ma présence lors de la mort de nombreux patients.  Pour des raisons diverses, par des chemins divers, la Vie me montre que ses dents sont déjà dans ma chaire.  Les parcours de la Vie dévastent les fictions.  Je suis conscient que le personnage qui écrit ces paroles n’est pas durable.   En même temps je jouis d’autant plus de cette fiction et apprends à savourer TOUS ses goûts le temps que cela dure, c'est-à-dire, maintenant.

Cette vie appelle à méditer sur la mort et sur la bénédiction et la fiction de cette « mortalité ».

Nous parlons de la mort comme d’un tiers, comme si la mort avait une existence propre et distincte de ce que nous appelons la vie.  Comme si la vie s’alimentait d’autre chose que la mort, comme si elle exprimait autre chose.  En ce faisant, nous protégeons notre propre fiction.  Comme s’il y avait autre chose qu’unité sans faille entre vie et mort.  L’humain est fascinant ; notre conscience est plus disponible aux fictions conçues à base de structures linguistiques qu’à notre « vivant ».  Facilement nous restons plus accrochés aux cendres de notre vécu qu’à notre vivant.  Et souvent nous nous éprenons plus d’idées mortes que de ce vivant palpitant qui dépasse et surcharge nos capacités cognitives. 

La Mort, telle que nous la concevons, c'est-à-dire « appart », est une fiction.  Si nous examinons soigneusement notre vivant, nous découvrons que notre vitalité est en proportion directe avec ce que nous laissons mourir et notre disponibilité à TOUT ce qui surgit et vit maintenant, et maintenant, et maintenant.  Si nous osons être disponibles à 100% à CE vivant, dans toutes les dimensions de ce vivant, c.à.d. corporelles, affectives, pensées, vibrationnelles, nous nous rendons compte que l’entièreté de notre vivant surgit seulement dans un « maintenant » sans issue, pas dans la vie qu’on s’imagine qu’on aura « un jour », pas dans la mort qu’on s’imagine qu’on « vivra » un jour, et pas dans notre accroche à un vécu déjà mort et qu’on essaie de ressusciter de par nos narratives. 

La Vie, telle que nous la concevons, c'est-à-dire « appart », est une fiction aussi.  Si je te parle de ma « vie » je ne pourrais que t’offrir des cendres linguistiques de mon vécu, c'est-à-dire des vestiges du passé narré en paroles qui ne sont pas de la même étoffe que ce vivant. (que je te parle à toi ou à moi-même).  Mais si je laisse reposer ce réflexe de narration continuelle et que je m’ouvre à ce qui vit en moi maintenant, tous mes stratagèmes,  même pour comprendre un simple moment de vie ordinaire, sont dépassés. 

L’Infini n’a pas d’ailleurs. 

Nous exprimons son dénouement même dans l’existence la plus banale.   Et toute la Vie est banale, c'est-à-dire extraordinaire, c’est à dire dépassant l’ordinaire de nos perceptions, de nos concepts et notre disponibilité ordinairement réduite à la Vie.  La Vie est infinie, c'est-à-dire réduite à un CECI qui se fiche de nos bornes, de notre compréhension ; ce CECI qui nous inclut dans notre dépassement absolu.

On peut laisser tomber tout le poids de l’avenir et du passé avec une disponibilité à goûter et à vivre pleinement tout ce qui vit en nous maintenant.  Et on peut reprendre tout le poids de l’avenir et du passé en évitant de vivre la disponibilité à ce qui surgit maintenant.  Ce-qui-est jouit des deux et de tout le reste, même de tout ce que nous refusons.

L’Infini n’a pas d’ailleurs. 

Je suis l’Infini et je le serais – cet Infini qui dépasse le « moi » d’une fiction narrée.  Ce qui vit VIT.  Comme disait Jésus, « Laissez aux morts d’enterrer les morts ».  C’est un appel à la Présence :  Laissez aux morts d’enterrer les morts !  Mais quand je regarde ma vie, je suis étonné de combien de temps j’ai dédié à être un mort enterrant les morts : un Olivier déjà mort, déjà périmé ;  un vécu déjà mort, périmé ; des personnages déjà morts, déjà rendus à la vie mais dont je portais des cadavres conceptuels périmés, et tout cela quand la fraîcheur de VIVRE s’offrait à moi, souvent délaissée.  Que l’image fictif de ce que nous pensons être trouve sa fin n’est que libération de la fiction-même d’être attrapé et d’être libéré, d’être né et de mourir.  Comprenons que cette fiction ne trouve pas sa fin dans un avenir ou une mort projetés « ailleurs ».  Nous n’avons pas besoin d’attendre « demain » pour mourir ou pour vivre.  La dévastation et la libération de tout ce que nous pensons être s’offre à nous pleinement dans chaque moment auquel nous nous rendons disponible à ce-qui-vit, à ce qui grouille en nous !   Ce dé-noue-ment n’a pas d’ « autre ».  La Vie-Mort-même est dé-noue-ment, nous la célébrons avec disponibilité !

Le « rapport » tel que nous le concevons, c'est-à-dire « appart », avec nature propre, est aussi une fiction.  Lors de ce parcours, en fait je n’ai connu personne, même pas moi-même.  Tout ce qui a lieu est l’expérience de ce-qui-vit avec son vivant.  Tout ce qui se vivait était la disponibilité de ce-qui-vit à son expérience.  Nous pouvons choisir de nous faufiler dans nos fictions narratives ou de retourner à ce qui VIT maintenant.  L’un n’est pas mieux que l’autre.

L’Infini n’a pas d’ailleurs. 

De quoi donc chercherait-il à se sauver ?  De quoi donc chercherait-il à se protéger ?  Que chercherait-il à remédier ?

Une simple question invite une réponse vivante...simplement...maintenant.

« Est-ce que j’ose poser mes fictions et vivre la disponibilité à TOUT ce qui surgit dans CETTE expérience du Vivant maintenant ? »

L’Infini n’a pas d’ailleurs.

©2009 Olivier Tryba

The medicine for me today is from the MicMac pointing out how their language is verb-centered, as opposed to noun-centered. I ask myself how my life would look if, instead of seeing people in roles, I attuned more to Life's Miraculous Expressing and Creating in its different Processes.

So I am honoring this day as one that calls my attention to Mothering, as a verb pointing to apprenticeship in kindness, wisdom and skill in relationship to the bright, young sprouts of all that is Vital and honoring all my sources of connection to this medicine of Mothering, of Birthing, Nourishing, Growing, Loving, Caring for, Maturing and being Kind To the Vitality Indwelling and Surrounding Us.

I honor all of the people (female and male), places, and EVERYTHING that sustains and feeds our connecting to LIVING Beautifully, starting with the Ones Who Birthed me into Physicality, Awareness, Movement, Relatedness, Caring and Breath, proceeding to the Many Who are Birthing me into Physicality, Awareness, Movement, Relatedness, Caring and Breath, and honoring my own capacity to Birth This Experience into the Fullness of Physicality, Awareness, Movement, Relatedness, Caring and Breath.

I wish us all powerful connecting to the medicine of Mothering, through those who gave us birth, AND directly to our own capacity for relating to and extending this medicine to others, and even to our mothers, elders and all of those manifestations of Living which invite us into Birthing Skillfully what arises in our experience.

And when we think of all the beautiful Mamitas of the World, think of all of the wonderful ways that they work their magic: Let us CATCH! some of that magic, that we may make it ours, and offer back a little of that loveliness back into our Mothers' Worlds that ALL of our bright, tender, green shoots grow into fullness in the medicine of Birthing into Physicality, Awareness, Movement, Relatedness, Caring and Breath..

May it be so!

©2009

We might talk sometime, say over musky delicacies of sumptuously prepared goat, shimmers of indigo evoking terrestrial heavens, variegated and manifest, throaty and silent communion under stars, dear friend. Then, perhaps, we can sing to roads, paths, and miniscule foot clouds of humans in Stone Peoples' world, walking on offerings of ancestors waiting for us to sing and invite them back into cloudburst, ripening melons, and the thrill of evanescent eyes beseeching us beyond earthen walls, to quench thirst from the murmur of wells whose water paths run sinuous, heartbeat to ancient heartbeat, straight to that longing which exploded from our Great Mother, She who, being Starlight, surrendered to the luminescently implosive creativity of Her-Longing-to-Become-Us!

©Little Big O 2009

This was originally written to a post by Kathy here on "Who or What would you have the hardest time loving?"  that I was asked to weigh in on.

I believe that what many of us ultimately have the hardest time loving is the nature of our experience.  We are in continuous pursuit of something ELSE.

To sumptuous denizens of Beingness,

First of all, as the Mayans say,"In Lak'ech!" "You are another I."

Can we venture together for a moment?

Let me ask you:  what do the meditator, the activist, the addict, and the rapist all have in common in terms of what motivates those specific activities: meditation, activism, addiction and rape?

Consider that for a moment.  What are they all trying to do that we are trying to do?  Please note the phrase: "trying to do" which gives a big clue.


So here's a quote from Kathy that points to it and it's the crux of how Western humans relate to their experience, after 12-18 plus years of programming in schools to pick the "right answer" to "do the right thing" and I quote you.

"I see myself, and lots of other people (may be a projection) saying we’re in the flow.  When really we’re still asleep and just responding from the firing random associations in our Pavlov-dog neurons. "

So there are times when we feel like we're in the flow, or say we're in the flow and then there are times that we're just Pavlovian-dog bio-bots, right?


Consider the rapist Kathy mentions.  Okay, so he's chosen an activity which, on the surface, appears quite different than, say the meditator's activity, right?  ...on the surface...   There are times when the rapist is in flow and there are times that he's not, right?  Kind of like sky-diving, meditating or something, perhaps, I don't know. 

But what's a rapist?  What is he doing?  A rapist is someone who interrupts another human being's will to follow their chosen course and hijacks their experience into fulfilling their expectations for a totally different experience.  They subject one human being to another's will.


Johnny sits at the window at school.  It's May.  Mrs. Stuart is teaching algebra.  Suddenly a small, bright orange bird alights upon the sill right next to Johnny, outside.  The birds head tilts and his eyes connect with Johnny.  It's THEIR moment.  He trills a short blast of thrilling notes that reach straight through to the pulsatile essence of Johnny's heart.  Johnny's in COMMUNE-ion and LIFE is singing to him.  There is only one movement and the entire world is a part of it. 

Mrs. Stuart has something that she believes is much more important than Johnny’s experience, and she will bodily, even violently assure that Johnny grasps this.  He is not in charge.  Mrs. Stuart is in charge of him!  Mrs. Stuart is not pleased to see Johnny looking outside and Johnny gets rudely called out of his experience into the experience that Mrs. Stuart intends for him.  This interruption is the essence of rape.  Please consider the dynamics that I am pointing to, not the judgment.  As long as we allow our children to be interrupted, and as long as we continue to interrupt our children, rape will proliferate, because we acculturate each other into the belief that we can feel better by interrupting another person. 
 
So rape is essentially believing that MY experience is more important than your experience and I’m going to gang-press you into my experience.  This is the essence not only of rape, but of our educational system, our parenting model and majority rule democracy.  Bottom line:  “We have decided that you WILL do what we say AND, not only that, you WILL submit to the belief that it’s for your own good.”

How many times have you heard someone you're "close to" tell you "I absolutely need to talk to you!" Whenever you hear that you are talking to someone who is insane! 
 
This is NOT the status quo amongst human beings, but it is in many cultures AND there are others that don't treat each other this way.  I had some Cheyenne, Lakota & Klamath friends that I spent years with that very specifically did not do this.  When I was with them, I began to notice that they didn’t ask direct pointed questions and very few questions at all.  Already something as subtle as, “Kathy, will you drive me to the grocery store?” is understood to put you in a situation where I am trapping you into a choice about what I want to use you for.  i.e. “Will you allow me to use you for my purposes?”  Instead someone might say “in the air,” without making eye contact (and thus putting someone on the spot) “I want to go to the grocery store today.” Simple statement.  Now someone can GIFT their aid or simply share the adventure.  “Yeah!  I’m going there shortly and there’s room in my car for whoever wants to go.”

Our cultures are very different.  Notice how we are perpetually negotiating other people’s wills.  “Hey, honey, will you do this?” “Honey, did you do what we agreed upon?” This is Western intimacy and it’s no wonder we’re all driving each other nuts.  What we often miss is that we’re driving OURSELVES nuts too.

The vocabulary of "Honey, how can I make you happy?" & "How can I make myself happy?" has shared presumptions. This is the vocabulary of life as an artifact that requires manipulation, not life as LIVING.  (And that's okay.  As a matter of fact, it's beautiful!  Our BEAUTY is inescapable.  We can only choose to Taste!  Taste!  Taste!... or not...)

But we do treat each other and ourselves this way.  After 12 plus years of getting perpetually interrupted in the mental institutions called schools, where our experience is reduced to a mental artifact, we are conditioned to believe that "performance" or "flow" or "feeling good" is a matter of doing something ELSE or getting someone else to do something, i.e. we are conditioned to separate ourselves from our experience and to decide whether or not we are PERFORMING as desired.  Our lives are no longer authentic, they are pre-conceived, or pre-mentated performances. 

Please take this in for a moment:  Performance...  "How do I perform?" "How is my performance right now?"  "How is YOUR performance right now?!" "Are you doing this right?" "Are you Being right?!" "Are you grasping what Little Big O is telling you right?!" 
 
HAHAHAHAHA!
 
We are crazy, beautiful beings. 

 
Anything for you there?
 
So feeling is a performance.  We are convinced that we will feel better when we DO something better.  Of course we want to feel good right?  We tell the world how good we feel.  We are in pursuit of a feeling.  It doesn't matter whether we are meditators, addicts or rapists, the fact is that we are conditioned to believe that by doing something, we can feel better.   If we simply DO something, we can taste that thrill that is perpetually elusive.  And we do things and we do feel better.  But "better" doesn't last, does it?  Soon we're faced with our Pavlovian self again...  "Oh shit!  You mean I turned into that Pavlovian fucking dog again?!  Oh FUUUUUCK!  I was so God-damn close to enlightenment and then I turned back into a lumbering, drooling 185 lb. Newfoundland slobbering all over the damn place!  What's up with THAT!!!!!!!!" 

Once we have internalized the culture of the Mrs. Stuarts, of the world and of our parents, our relationship to ourselves is one of perpetual interruption and evaluation.  We become the next generation of interruptors.  Interruption becomes intimacy.  How do I show my loved ones that I care?  I interrupt them.  How do I show myself that I really want to improve?  I interrupt myself.  "See!  Now I'm an adult.  I don't need Mom, Dad or Mrs. Stuart anymore.  I can interrupt myself all on my own and even find brand new ways of interrupting myself that Mom, Dad, & Mrs Stuart never even imagined:  Tibetan ways, shamanistic ways, crazy no-way ways, etc.  Now I have better vocabulary for what I SHOULD be doing than my peers. "Am I in flow or am I out of flow?" "Do I feel okay or not?" "AM I okay?" "Really?" "Reeeaaaaaalllly?"  and we are perpetually seeking to feel better by some mental criteria.  We want to improve ourselves.  We have an IDEA of what "flow" is and we are trying to feel it in our emotional and physical bodies.  We have an idea of how we could "be all that we can be," right?  And even though we may not join the army, we're still going to gang-press ourselves into the IDEA we have for ourselves.


Is this wrong?  No.  It's not right or wrong.  It's CURIOUS. 
 

"Curious" 
 

Let me offer you curiosity as a treasured, lived key, heart to heart, and beseech you cup your hands together and allow me to pour this bright tingling intimacy of this energetic relational key we label "curious" and pour it from my hands to yours, from my heart to yours, tingling up from our palms, up our arms to our chests, necks, heads, bellies, groins, legs, toes. 
 
Curious, eh?
 

Can you FEEL that there’s something profound about loving wrapped up in this curiosity?  Like if we were to discover passionate love together, its dimensions would be proportionate to how much curiosity we dared offer each other.  Can you FEEL it?
 
Maybe there’s something already-here…  Are you curious?
 

Yet we keep bumping up against this frustration of trying to achieve some state which very astute people keep selling to us as "better" than the state we're presently in.  The depth of our access to our present experience is shallow because we are conditioned to perpetually interrupting it and playing Mrs. Stuart with ourselves and evaluating whether we are experiencing what we want to experience.

What's the alternative?  Well, I think Michael Brown puts it quite succinctly when he says, "We can either keep trying to feel better OR we can get better at feeling." The latter process is one of venturing through the layers of what we are experiencing without trying to do something to it.  If we feel "awful," we develop the courage to actually feel what awful FEELS like without making drama that we externalize and without trying to make awful "not awful."  We begin to become curious.  We begin to allow that in "awful" there is room to simply BE, to taste, to experience.  We begin to experience that we don't get destroyed by "awful" nor does the world end in awful.  Awful, once we FEEL it, isn’t actually awful.  There are really no words for it, but the experience is vital, it is alive and we are living it.  When the Zen people say "Not-two," what are they pointing at?  You are already it!  And then they say, "And if you tell me 'One' I will beat the living daylights out of you!"

Not One!  Not Two! 

Something is LIVING here.  It is not separate from you.
 
Engaging in this process for many of us means reconnecting with a process of maturing our relationship to our experience that was interrupted at a very young age.   It’s simply accessing this experience we are having right now and allowing, even for a short time, that we can take, say, 15 minutes a day and not interrupt our experience.  Not chasing “enlightenment,” not “self-improvement,” just a simple willingness to come home to being THIS beingness.  “Hello!”  Settling in.  Tasting the flavor of this.  Maybe expansiveness.  Maybe Pavlov’s dog with the long wet tongue.
 
We begin to redevelop familiarity with our felt experience beyond the perpetual fascism of continually “fixing,” “readjusting,” etc.  And if we continually fix and readjust, we don’t fix that either.  We fix and readjust and get curious in the midst of it.  “Wow, look at me go trying to fix myself again!”  “Wow, look at me go trying to fix my child, my lover, my world, my gaia friends again!  How CURIOUS!”
 
Hahahahahaha!
 

“What’s here?”  It’s okay to be just-this and NOT do something about it.  Life can go on here.  Life can move within us and we don’t have to interrupt or correct it.  Then another intelligence that we are knit of appears.  Not an idea and not no-idea.  BEING is here.  We are it!  How curious!
 
We can smile, laugh then become very curious:

 
"O!  It's me again!  How curious!  Hmmmm....."