Footnotes to Crossroads Dispatches

quixotic accelerator -- proposal for 2012 Zero1 Festival ARTHere

Revised ARTHere Proposal for MACLA's Peapod Adobe Youth Voices Academy in San Jose, CA. The program is for local youth 13-18 years of age.

Title:  Quixotic Accelerator

Description:

Imagine a crossroads of time and space where merchants and sellers from all multiplicities come together to trade. Their voices hark back to when and where people made their living by living their making. For instance, 1938: Dave Packard and Bill Hewitt bake their hand-painted oscillators on the kitchen oven (while working out of a garage). 2012: San Jose youth tinker, experiment, and unify entrepreneurship and arts through an "accelerator"[1] which blossoms over the course of the installation. 

On opening night of Zero1 Festival, the youth-driven microeconomy emerges at the site of former mercado, improvised together by found and gifted items (for a visual aesthetic, download PDF in the style of Roberto Fernandez' studio whom was inspired by the favelas of Buenos Aires). A simple urban game with transmedia storytelling and role-playing elements invites merchants and buyers[2] into a quixotic pop-up mercado that allows youth to engage their imagination in offering historical, futuristic, make-believe, tangible (basically anything they can conjure up with their heads or their hands) goods and services. Even when the youth aren't actively participating  in person during the full length of the installation, their recorded voices describing their regalos animate the market in their stead. 

Based on the regalos that each teen wishes to express and share, we will work individually and as a team to bring the full mercado to life virtually and physically within a hands-on, experiential "accelerator/incubator"-styled workshop. We will learn how to make the best of the individual, team and community gifts, enthusiasm, resources, mentors and allies we have immediately available and can tap into. In the words of Bob Dylan when asked what was the secret to his success: "I was doing what I could with what I had where I was."

We will take the stipend offered, and use it as seed capital. For instance, perhaps one teen wishes to use their illustrations on a silkscreen-printed T-shirt. They track down and source the materials, and borrow or rent the equipment (there is a screen printing press within a block of MACLA). He may request $100 from the mercado pool of money and show the team that it's plausible to earn $300 in sales. Another teen might sell original MP3 songs and spoken word poetry in our corresponding virtual [2] mercado. She affixes a QR code to the back of a card stock postcard with the lyrics scribed on the back and offered for sale on opening night. Each of the regalos arise from the participant's own innate gifts and self-directed choices; cooperation, and collaborations may form between the youth (one may illustrate a CD cover, another mix the music) and/or allies in the community (by providing advice, raw materials and/or loaning equipment). 

The details of this project open-ended in this description purposefully as the goal is to embrace the objectives and dreams of the youth collectively in a collaborative fashion.

[1] Accelerators and incubators are homegrown Silicon Valley phenomena that aren't always representative of the wealth of indigenous talent that lurks beyond the den of software engineering. Beyond the traditional milieu of venture capital and the support ecosystem it fosters, lie waiting new adventures in culture-making ventures that are self-sustaining for the makers, inventors and artists and a generative, synergistic ecosystem in its own right.

[2] Youth may design their own art currency to use during the mercado, encourage bartering, or other forms of exchange. As both exploration of what exchanges are and/or work around legal requirements of online marketplaces such as Gumroad and Etsy. (The accelerator workshop will address fundraising as well as alternative/complimentary currencies.)

[3] The virtual market will make available the mercado to a global online audience who may not be in San Jose for the 3D festivities. It will use a group Tumblr blog (with each separate post representing an item for sale with links to Gumroad  (digital goods, such as songs, poems, illustrated stories, graphic design of a T-shirt, sketches, etc.) and possibly Etsy (for tangible goods like handmade herbal soap or T-shirt). Each tangible regalo (even performances of dance at the mercado) can be tagged with a QR code that links to virtual mercado.

Artist / Group Bio: Evelyn Rodriguez is a writer that is not going to let her computer engineering degree rot. She once was a startup CTO. She currently envisions narrative Internet games that dissolve the theatrical fourth wall. Her website is evelynrodriguez.typepad.com

Type Of Media: Social Practice

Budget:  The spirit of this installation is resourcefulness and improvisation. We will learn to leverage our current resources, establish partnerships with allies that might be able to help with raw materials or in-kind donations, etc. 

I propose that  we use the $750 as seed capital, and each team member proposes how they might use a portion of that (as described in main proposal). For instance one teen might request $25 for card stock and photocopies. She estimates she can sell 50 postcards for $2 each tangibly for profit of $75 (this doesn't include scanning of the cards for virtual sales). The others will make suggestions and approve the use of the $25  from the pool of $750 for the mercado. I am willing to make the purchases on behalf of the students; but it is up to them to direct the use of the funds so that we don't just spend the allotment but earn it back to demonstrate how self-sustaining ventures operate. We can discuss how MACLA will distribute the profits, but I suggest allowing the kids to keep their profits minus 20% (to thank MACLA for the use of the Academy space and to sustain future workshops/installations).

In general, the $750 will be used efficiently to buy raw materials primarily that are used to make goods for sale.

There may be small amounts that might need to be bought (if cannot be found or gifted) such as paint supplies (to decorate booths), speakers soldered to inexpensive MP3 players (I've priced these at average $6 each) to mimic the voices of the merchants (when the kids aren't there, their recordings play), etc. Items such as these that might need to be purchased (rather than scraped together) should total less than $200. 

In addition, I want to mention that the virtual, online mercado can be an trial mercado  they can use to 'beta test'  their final offerings or offer additional merchandise than a 3D booth might allow for prior to the grand opening of the 3D installation. Sales of a few digital goods they've already made  or can quickly make (for instance, a PDF of a short comic book they created could be priced at $1). These profits can also be used for seed capital of the 3D mercado.

Questions for staff:

I am very open and flexible in terms of collaboration.

I am gathering a list of mentors and allies that might be able to assist us -- from providing advice (for instance, one youth might want to email a real person who sells foods and coffees such as coffee shop owner Nancy Coupal of Coupa Cafe) to others providing raw materials. I'm not sure how your organization works with the youth in terms of outside contact. What I can do is perhaps a Skype or phone call or emails from the Academy where we make our requests to these external mentors/allies (part of this is to teach them that they can learn how to rely and partner within an ecosystem of support from other entrepreneurs and artists). I guess what I am asking is if in their spare time they would be available and interested in making phone calls and email messages to people they might want to reach out to for extra assistance.

I have several acquaintances and friends that are available to volunteer in person. For instance, one friend [redacted for privacy] has a background in interior design, and has worked with many corporations including [redacted] to design and construct office spaces. Her father [redacted] is a well-known restaurant owner and entrepreneur. She has volunteered to help facilitate when we are in the "construction" phase of the 3D mercado for 1-2 days. It is not necessary to have additional volunteers, but in the spirit of also teaching that entrepreneurship is also about an ecosystem of mutual support, it might be a good experience.

I'm still formulating how the accelerator is structured, but I think about 1.5-2 hours per day for about 12 days is necessary; ideally, we have a break of 3-4 days between as I find it is useful to have a break when doing new, creative projects. I envision about 15 youth participating in the workshop and creating the mercado.

I would also suggest a field trip to TechShop one day, and/or another to the Friday Farmer's Market in San Pedro Square to see a few people who make and sell their wares in person. I'm not sure how or if field trips are possible with the youth.

PHOTO CREDIT: Popup storefront hand-decorated by designer Poketo.

ADDITIONAL: Pinterest inspiration board (primarily for visuals of the 3D mercado installation in the 398” x depth 226” x height (to ridge) 123” room. 

Introduction to "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho

Re-read Paulo Coelho’s introduction to “The Alchemist” and I am reminded again how much I love it.

I'm preparing to facilitate a workshop for Latino urban youth ages 13-18 years old on transmedia storytelling where I am going to encourage them to share their gifts and dreams with the world. I thought about how even when adults ask "What do you want to be when you grow up?" it's asked politely already hemmed by familial and culturally-condoned expectations. This book popped into my head as a possibility for an all-ages inspirational tome to pursue what calls you, and express that voice.

p.s. I'm taking a version of that workshop and making an online "summer camp" for all-ages too. Stay tuned.

Anyhow, here's the full Introduction to the book.

I remember receiving a letter from the American publisher Harper Collins that said that: "reading The Alchemist was like getting up at dawn and seeing the sun rise while the rest of the world still slept." I went outside, looked up at the sky, and thought to myself: "So, the book is going to be published in English!" At the time, I was struggling to establish myself as a writer and to follow my path despite all the voices telling me it was impossible.

And little by little, my dream was becoming a reality. Ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million copies sold in America. One day, a Brazilian journalist phoned to say that President Clinton had been photographed reading the book. Some time later, when I was in Turkey, I opened the magazine Vanity Fair and there was Julia Roberts declaring that she adored the book. Walking alone down a street in Miami, I heard a girl telling her mother: "You must read The Alchemist!" 

The book has been translated into fifty-six languages, has sold more than twenty million copies, and people are beginning to ask: What's the secret behind such a huge success?

The only honest response is: I don't know. All I know is that, like Santiago the shepherd boy, we all need to be aware of our personal calling. What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dream.

Why?

There are four obstacles.

First: we are told from childhood that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear, and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it’s still there.

If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: “Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.” We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.

I ask myself: are defeats necessary?

Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and get up eight times.

So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people?

Because, once we have overcome the defeats—and we always do—we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight. We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives.

Oscar Wilde said: “Each man kills the thing he loves.”

And it’s true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal—when it was only a step away.

This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.” 

Paulo Coelho

Rio de Janeiro

November 2002

Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

 

Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman on economy and community from "Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (and a way to get there from here)"

Excerpts on economy and community from the book, "Spontaneous Evolution," by Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman:

page 294 "Principle One: Wealth is Well-Being"

"In his treatise on human economics, Aristotle wrote that a city originates for the sake of basic survival, but it exists for the sake of living well."

page 291

"Aristotle first defined economics as the science of household management, the study of the dynamics necessary to sustain individual or family survival. As households joined together in community to enhance their collective survival and prosperity, family economic principles were extended and applied to the well-being of the entire village. Villages with successful economies subsequently grew into cities and, later, evolved into more encompassing nation-states that employed essentially the same economic principles. As nation-states further evolve into the new organism called global humanity, in which all must share the finite resources of one planet, it is again necessary for us to revise and expand our understanding of economics. 

Historically the field of economics has been associated with the dynamics of property exchange among members of human communities. But in a fractal Universe, the same economic principles apply to all living systems, be they households, nations, businesses, or the communities of cells that comprise a human body."

page 292

"Considering our culture's preoccupation with the material realm, it is not surprising that we measure wealth in terms of physical possessions, particularly money. Aristotle recognized an inevitable problem of equating money with wealth over 2,500 years ago when he wrote, "He who is rich in coin may often be in want of necessary food.""

page 308

"Valueless, debt-based representative money is a major contributor to the current global economic crisis. 

. . . In his book Access to Human Wealth: Money beyond Greed and Scarcity, Bernard Lietaer, a Belgian economist who helped design the euro, offers a short-term solution for our economic problems in the form of yin currency. Yin currency is designed as a complement to the dominant money, yang currency, represented by the dollar, the yen, the franc, the euro and so on.

Lietaer emphasizes the nature of what constitutes workable, beneficial money is defined by agreement within a community. Therefore, people are free to create their own currencies to complement the yang monetary system. Without even realizing it, we make use of complementary currencies all the time. Lietaer cites frequent-flyer miles as an example of an agreed upon complementary currency--and you don't even need to fly to earn them.

Yin currency represents a form of money that allows time-rich but money-poor communities to contract needed services from those willing to provide them. Currently, nearly 4,000 communities around the world use yin currencies, most often as a means of funding nurturant care in communities where there isn't enough yang money to pay for social services.

A specific example of yin currency is Japanese fureai kippu, which means "caring relationship ticket." Instead of relying on expensive nursing homes, Japan has created the fureai kippu currency to pay for elderly care not covered by national health insurance.

Here's how it works. Let's say an elderly man who lives on your street cannot go shopping by himself. You do his shopping, help him prepare food, and assist him with his ritual bath, which is an important part of Japanese culture. In exchange, you earn credits that can be put in what might be termed a fureai kippu savings account. You can draw on your credits when you are old, or you can transfer them to your elderly mother who lives in another city so she can pay someone else to look after her.

Surveys indicate that Japanese seniors overwhelmingly prefer services provided through fureai kippu to those paid for in yen because they more closely express the heartfelt essence of community.

Interestingly, the word community is derived from the Latin cum munere. Munere is "to give," and cum means "among each other." Community and fureai kippu share the same meaning--"to give among each other.""

 

They had no problems understanding light speed and teleportation except that they could have done it more discreetly. - Malidoma Some

One day after the dot-com bubble burst and I was no longer a CTO at an Internet start-up, I was at a wonderful bookstore and cafe in Salt Lake City, The Golden Braid. Instinctually, a particular book had a magnetic pull and I lifted out of the shelf. At that time, I very much defined myself as a left-brained, analytic, rational pseduo-intellectual that thought I knew how the whole world worked... until the rug had been pulled out from underneath me that previous year. Every part of my life went from idyllic (if you didn't look too far below the surface) to catastrophic, and I finally found myself in an unknown place where I had no pat answers.

This is a long-winded way of saying that this book I'm about to excerpt below made a huge impression on me. It changed my life. It was a voyage home, a true homecoming even if I didn't quite understand everything in it, it still rang true. It's the true tale of an African boy whisked from his village to a missionary school and his odyssey back to his own culture and shamanism. I don't really want to give too much away, but I recently checked the book out of the library to re-read my favorite passages.

In the world I reside today everything is based on left-brained intelligence (or, seeing as I'm in Vegas now, primal emotions run-amok) which culturally and systemically dismisses and buries any conversation by methods of mockery and/or fear all things not measurable and taught in schools or books. Thus, I tend to not speak of these agreed upon taboo subjects.

The passage below also explains why I'm moving more toward fiction writing to convey another view of reality.

This passage is in the Introduction by the author, he also mentions that Asian countries tend to also hold a non-Western view of reality that is foreign to Western education. Another reason that two of the main characters in a story I'm working are Asian-American.

"In the culture of my people, the Dagara, we have no word for the supernatural. The closest we come to this concept is Yielbongura, "the thing that knowledge can't eat." This word suggests that the life and power of certain things depend upon their resistance to the kind of categorizing knowledge that human being apply to everything. In Western reality, there is a clear split between the spiritual and the material, between religious life and secular life. This concept is alien to the Dagara. For us, as for many indigenous cultures, the supernatural is part of our everyday lives. To a Dagara man or woman, the material is just as the spiritual taking on form.

. . . .

The world of the Dagara also does not distinguish between reality and imagination. To us, there is a close connection between thought and reality. To imagine something, to closely focus one's thoughts upon it, has the potential to bring something into being. Thus, people who take a tragic view of life and are always expecting the worst usually manifest that reality. Those who expect that things will work together for the good usually experience just that. In the realm of the sacred, this concept is taken even further, for what is magic but the ability to focus thought and energy to get results on the human plane? The Dagara view of reality is large. If one can imagine something, then it has at least the potential to exist.

I decided to do a little experiment of my own with "reality" versus "imagination" when I was home visiting my village in 1986. I brought with me a little electronic generator, a television monitor, a VCR, and a "Star Trek" tape titled The Voyage Home. I wanted to know if the Dagara elders could tell the difference between fiction and reality. The events unfolding in a science fiction film, considered futuristic or fantastic in the West, were perceived by my elders as the current affairs in the day-to-day lives of some other group of people living in the world. The elders did not understand what a starship is. They did not understand what the fussy uniforms of its crew members had to do with making magic. They recognized in Spock a Kontomble of the seventh planet, the very one that I describe later in this story, and their only objection to him was that he was too tall. They had never seen a Kontomble that big. They had no problems understanding light speed and teleportation except that they could have done it more discreetly. I could not make them understand that all this was not real. Even though stories abound in my culture, we have no word for fiction. The only way I could get across to them the Western concept of fiction was to associate fiction with telling lies.

My elders were comfortable with "Star Trek," the West's vision of its own future. Because they believe in things like magical beings (Spock), traveling at the speed of light, and teleportation, the wonders that Westerners imagine being part of their future are very much a part of my elders' present. The irony is that the West sees the indigenous world as primitive or archaic. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the West could learn to be as "archaic" as my elders are?

As in the case of "Star Trek," Westerners look to the future as a place of hope, a better world where every person has dignity and value, where wealth is not unequally distributed, where the wonders of technology make miracles possible. If people in the West could embrace some of the more positive values of the indigenous world, perhaps that might even provide them with a "shortcut" to their own future." -- Malidoma Patrice Some, Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman

Money is congealed energy and releasing it releases life possibilities. - Joseph Campbell

"Money is congealed energy and releasing it releases life possibilities.

. . . I got back from my student years in Europe three weeks before the Wall Street crash. . . I'd earned several thousand dollars--which was a lot in those days--and that was what I had until it disappeared. I didn't make another cent for five years. I found that, if you had no responsibilities, you could live wonderfully without any money. In fact, I thought anybody who worked for money was a fool. I took a vow never to do anything for money. Now, that does not mean that when I do something for somebody I don't ask for money. I want as much as I can get, but that's the secondary part of the game. My life course is absolutely indifferent to money. As a result, a lot of money has come in by my doing what I feel I want to do from the inside. If you do that, you are doing things that attract money, because you are giving life and life responds in the way of its counterpart in hard coin.

Being as I was, and given the field I was interested in, I had a certain disdain for people who gave their lives to making money. Now that I have made money, in dealing with it I've had to be in touch with people whose business is money, whose whole life has been in that field, and I've had an interesting and surprising experience: I've met some magnificent people.

Money experienced as life experience is indeed a meditation, and letting it flow out instead of hoarding it is a mode of participation in the lives of others. There's a beautiful thing that can grow out of a life devoted to money tha surprised me.

In the living of life today, money is a facilitating energy source. With money in the tank like gasoline, you can get places you other wise couldn't go.

. . . From what I have seen in the history of the arts in New York, when money is poured on something it flowers. With money there has to be a flow. I had a beautiful experience of a man with money when I was a trustee of the Bollinger Foundation, which was founded by Paul Mellon, an enormously wealthy man. He and his wife had been in analysis with Carl Jung when the war came and they had to leave Switzerland. They asked Jung what they could give him in the way of a gift to express their gratitude for what he had done. He suggested they establish a foundation for the interpretation and study of symbols. That's whay they did, and it is an example of a lot of money being put to the right use. The influence of that Bollinger Series on on the literature and science of America has been enormous.

. . . When you put the money in the wrong place, it can be devastating. Where is the money [and its associated intent to prioritize, value, attend to] going and where is it coming from in the economy of a nation, the economy of a city? You can turn a flowering culture into a desiccating culture just by wrong channeling. What factor in your own consciousness are you going to favor in the spending of the money? For instance, I have a seventy-five-dollar book coming out. Some people will say that is expensive, but those same people will spend one-hundred-and-fifty dollars to have dinner in a restaurant with another couple. So, is the money going up here in your mind or is it going down there in your stomach?"

- from Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion, edited by Diane K. Olson

This is a companion blog for longer excerpts to cite transcriptions from books. The main blog on inspiration, imagination, innovation, improvisation, creativity, and the Call is over at Crossroads Dispatches by Evelyn Rodriguez. Since, I mentioned Campbell in this one, you may also be interested in the art, myth and alchemy blog called Fertile Verge.

This is Burning Man, by Brian Doherty

Some notes taken from a book about that experiment in a self-organizing culture and ephemeral city-springing, This is Burning Man, by Brian Doherty. And the subtitle is:

page 272
What I'm picking up from Larry's new dispensation [more anti-consumerist and political activism... BM used to be apolitical event] struck me as antithetical to what I originally found interesting about Burning Man--that it offered a seeking and celebration of creative expression and liberated experience as a key to brain change and a means to search for what one might call the sacred. There are times, though, when Larry and I are feeling the same things. "We are beings, created things," Larry tells me. "We're the products of genetic mutation, and we're infinitely variable. The world presents itself to us as an artifact with slots to fill. But everyone's gifts are unique and not necessarily apparent to the [people themselves] unless some circumstance calls them forth. The whole story of my progress," he surmises, "might seem blind and hapless. But there was from the beginning a sense of something real in me and the idea that it had to have a home out there somewhere. Intuitively, blindly, as chance allowed, I moved in that direction even if it didn't make any sense by the world's standards. The human world is like a flowery meadow, and the individual is like a weed--each one different. A wed is simply an unwanted plant. It's a human category. There's no such plant as a weed. But the human world is more and more a monoculture. Farmer Jones wants corn and everything else is a weed, and if you can't get with the corn program, Buster, then get your thistle ass out of here! That's the problem everyone faces."

As he looks around at Burning Man, Larry sees lots of weeds essaying things with no apparent practical purpose. "It's weeds, but it's their weeds. Who knows what that leads to? Maybe nothing. But unless people are given that opportunity they will never find out. If their judgments are always governed by the world's standards, they might never find that one thing they are brilliant at, that they were born to do, and that's the greatest tragedy of all--the quiet desperation Thoreau wrote of. That just means that they never discovered what they were meant to do with the transcendent faith that they were meant to do that something. And that's been the moral of my life."

There's a lot I could argue with Larry about, but not that.

page 273
[What is it?] This book, I hope, provides some answers to that question. It's a place for human beings to live vividly free lives and have--as Larry used to recognize--experiences that are fundamental, unconditional, marvelous, and worth a thousand lectures on why one ought not to shop at Wal-Mart. [Kind of giving Larry a jab on that last bit.]

page 274
Interactive is the buzzword for Burning Man-style art, defined by BRAF's Jessica Bobier as "art that blurs the line between artists and audience, with collaboration in the creation or the experience of the piece. Art that requires the action of a participant to complete the piece. It represents the opportunity for people to come together and incites them to interact with one another, whether directly because they are needed to make something happen, or just something so exciting it makes people gather, brings them together." It fits in smoothly with the old Burning Man dispensation: art that creates community, art that gives you an opportunity to have an experience other than spectating.

page 282
It didn't start out as an art festival. It didn't really start as anything but an act and an excuse to gather. "What is art, you know?" muses Michael Michael on the meaning of this train he's riding. "Why art at Burning Man? What is this art thing? There's something much larger here. Art is a vehicle, a symptom of something bigger occurring. It's spreading beyond the desert, beyond the playa. It's a way of being, of thinking, to change a person: That's the real story, the real thing that's happening."

The change--that knowledge within that you no longer have to be and think and act as you previously been and thought and acted if you don't wish to--is a mystery, and Burning Man has no monopoly on the technology of generating it. It can come in an instant like a thief in the night, like Christ, or after years of difficult discipline, like those spent with a yogi master, but what's important is that it can happen and that the technologies of change exist and Burning Man is very, very good at reminding people of that.

page 280
Chris Radcliffe: "You don't need to go to Puerto Vallarta and lay on the beach and eat fish and drink frozen daiquiris and read Jacqueline Susann novels. You can have a primary experience of existence instead of something processed and fed back to you. Someone once said to me, if you're being entertained, you're not having any fun. And that's perfectly right. What we were doing was a very primary thing."

The main blog is at Crossroads Dispatches; this is accompaniment blog for longer excerpts cited there.

I've come to the realization that we have to discover the shaman within. - Alberto Villoldo

Another excerpt from Alberto Villoldo's book imparting the knowledge he gained through Inka shamans and his own direct experiences in Shaman, Healer, Sage. This one about the transpersonal awakening (typically comes from a collapse of the conceptual separate identity, and can be facilitated through mental queries like, Who am I?, What am I?, Am I?, et all) and its potential "personal' consequences.

He explains a pretty common ego trick which has us worshippinng the exoticism of the Other as the self-realized--the whole "not me, I'm not worthy" routine--and plan elaborate excursions to South America or to drool over an African shaman dressed in his native garb in your local cellphone shop--and I cite two examples from folks I know, and totally be oblivious to the ordinariness of It, and its innate in-dwelling in yourself. Seeing it only out there (and in specific steoreotypical disguises) keeps you from knowing and being It yourself and seeing It everywhere anytime. Anyhow, without further ado, Alberto's words:

"I've come to the realization that we have to discover the shaman within. I teach my students that no amount of traveling with the Indians will bring you to your own wisdom and power. I've found that it frequently achieves exactly the opposite, distracting us from a true encounter with Spirit. The shaman is a self-realized person. She discovers the ways of Spirit through her inner awakening. Antonio would remind me that the Buddha was not a Buddhist, and that Christ was not a Christian. One sat under the banyan tree until he gained illumination. The other went to the desert for forty days. In the sixth chakra [pineal gland, third eye] we experience our own awakening. We shed the ponchos, the robes, the rattles and feathers, and all other exterior markings.

An awakened third eye allows the shaman to know who he is. It gives him knowledge of the past and the future and allows him to envision alternative destinies. Some legends report that those who awaken this chakra can even attain physical immortality. They no longer age or succumb to disease, but rather are able to maintain their youthful vitality and strength. All the desires of one with an awakened third eye come true, and if a number of healers hold the same vision, it comes true for the planet. Native religions have long practiced this tradition. Elders of the Hopi and a similar council of Inka medicine men and women sit in meditation envisioning the kind of world that hey want their great-grandchildren to inherit." - pages 98-99, Shaman, Healer, Sage by Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D.

Alchemy of Relationships: From Dependence to Co-Dependence to Independence to Interdependence

In Almine's book, Journey to the Heart of God, there is a chapter on The Alchemy of Relationship where she shares the four stages of relationship development.

The entire chapter is about how crucial relationships are to our awareness and consciousness. The last stage, Interdependence, is about allowing and celebrating the diversity in unity, or the unity in diversity, much like in Scott Pecks' development from pseudocommunity into full-fledged community where everyone is allowed to be who they are.

The four stages:

"Dependence: In this stage similarities are stressed. Couples experience this as their initial stage of being 'in love'. They feel euphoric because they see themselves in the mirror of the other person. Culturally this manifests as tribal life where the individual is expected to behave in a certain way in exchange for the tribe's support.

Co-dependence: Some individuality is expressed, but there is still a strong desire to identify with each other and no one steps too far out of 'the box.' Many tribal members in North America are in this stage, where they live in the city, but retain strong ties of dependence with the tribe.

Independence: In personal interaction each individual becomes almost desperate to find his or her own identity. Differences now are emphasized. In the modern, mechanized societies all types of insurance are needed since there is no tribal support. In apartments people live without knowing their neighbor's name.

Interdependence: If stage 3 can be survived, this stage brings stability. The individuals are secure in their relationships and supportive of each others' differences. This is the template for communal living for the future: a group lives together because of a common goal, voluntarily commits certain contributions and is free to express and grow in diversity."

Other quotes I resonated with:

"These stages lead from uniformity to unity within diversity."

"Tribal societies that remain in sameness are painfully pushed into change. Diversity produces more chances of exploring the unknown."

"In the stage of unity within diversity [interdependence] the chances are maximized for individual growth to contribute to the growth of the group within a stable environment."

You can download a copy of this chapter Alchemy of Relationship, by Almine, here.

 

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark

A Ritual To Read To Each Other (from "A Scripture of Leaves", 1989)

by William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider-
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Keith Ferrazzi's keystones of mutally supportive lifeline relationships--generosity, vulnerability, candor, accountability

Excerpted from Who's Got Your Back, by Keith Ferrazzi:

"Far too often, I've found, we are cut off from each other, both at home and in the workplace. (I sure was once!) Too many people try to go it alone. I can understand why. In today's culture, we've overemphasized the individual at the expense of teamwork and collaboration. The media give us story after story of business and sports and political superstars--hyperachievers who seemingly reached their goals single-handedly by following a brilliant but solitary vision. Too often, we're left the nagging sensation that those who need or seek out help are somehow weak, lacking in confidence, or otherwise insufficient. The result is that too many of us lose our way or falter and stumble on the path to the top.

We're wary of opening ourselves up even to our closest friends, never mind our colleagues in the office. We view vulnerability, and occasionally even outright kindness, as a badge of weakness. We keep our opinions, our secrets, and our fears to ourselves. Honesty is viewed as risky, mine-filled, something others can't handle (whereas a lot of the time we're the ones who are afraid). So instead of telling people what we think to their faces, we talk in circles.

The result? Instead of giving heartfelt advice, we gossip, speak indirectly, play politics, or use other colleagues and friends as our in-through-the-back-door messengers. It's as if we're still in high school! We view generosity of spirit as if it were some old-fashioned throwback to an era that no longer exists. Some of us go so far as to assume that if someone holds out an offer of help, she must have an ulterior motive: What does that person want from me? And so we continue to go it alone.

At the same time, as a culture, we complain of a lack of balance in our lives--that we spend all our time working, thinking about work, winding down from work, or getting ready for work. Yet according to economists Ellen McGrattan and Richard Rogerson, our work hours have actually remained more or less constant since World War II. In fact, some studies suggest that our leisure time has actually increased. (Whose fault is it if you keep your Blackberry glued to your knuckles while you're on vacation or at the gym?)

So if we're all working the same number of hours as before, or even less, why does it feel as though we're toiling away at our career responsibilities more while getting a whole lot less out of our efforts?

The real villain, as I found for myself, is the lack of richer, deeper relationships in both the workplace and our personal lives. We have too many nodding acquaintances and not enough close encounters of the lifeline variety.

Sad to say, a lot of our relationships have become more focused on accomplishing specific tasks or projects, rather than on developing and nurturing intimate connections. Unfortunately, that's a choice we've made. Our day-to-day dealings with colleagues and clients remain, for the most part, on a surface level. Most of us are happy just skimming across the water. The result, in the workplace, has been a major loyalty drain among customers, employers, and employees; we're not achieving our full potential in our careers because we're so afraid of soliciting the advice, feedback, and support of others. The result in our personal lives has been a nagging feeling that there's got to be more to life than this.