ENERGY: JUDGE IT LESS, USE IT MORE.

In my usual session this week with Dr. Diane Evans, she told me of a story she'd heard about inmates in Florida who saved a baby. She thought it wonderful that these outcasts had used their unique criminal skills - in this case, breaking and entering - to do well.

"Well, duh!" I responded.

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"Every skill, every energy, has a useful, creative, supportive and cooperative application. The same skill or energy can be used to destroy or harm, as well. But the energy is the same, and there's a useful place for everything, I never doubt it.

"It's like with murderers. We detest them as a general rule, and imprison them; but at the same time, we train soldiers to behave exactly that way: to be murderers, to go out and kill efficiently, and without compunction. And then, when they do well in battle - when they go and kill lots of people we've decided that we don't like - we laud them, pin medals on them, call them heroes and say 'what a good boy you are!' It's not about the energy itself, it's about how it gets used."

"Did you put that in your blog?"

"No."

"You should."

So here it is. There is a place for the useful application of all energy towards creating balance and harmony in the universe.

I should clarify at once that I surely believe we can do better than to murder one another. Pointless murder - any sort that doesn't feed bodies and support homeostasis - is an inefficient use of energy. Even so, clearly many cultures and nations believe otherwise, as their armies and other lethally weaponized forces indicate. The powers that be within these or those borders pronounce that one sort of murder is bad but another sort is good. Sometimes even with those definitions, powers simply ignore, forget, or dismiss certain murders; or else publicize, condemn and protest the atrocity of other murders. It depends only on which stance better suits the agenda du jour. But as powers vary, so too does enforcement of laws against murders along with the general judgment of which murders are acceptable for their society and which are unacceptable. This is to say that there is nothing solid in the judgments of murders. Calling it "right" or "wrong" simply allows us to extol some and vilify others, and then feel better about the actions we may take towards those murderers, whether it is to reward or punish them - and sometimes we'll even murder murderers to punish them.

The only sure thing is the murder itself: the ending of some lives at the hands of others. The thing to see is that there's an energy behind that action, and when we can clarify and channel that energy into a productive outlet, we can make it a creative rather than a destructive force. On the levels of community and nation, it is often said that police and military forces may use the energy of murder for the collective "good." But that murder is pointless, too. In the case of murder, it would be far better to transform the energy at its source and in doing so alter its expression altogether. We can reap the benefits of any energy, but we must both shape and direct it wisely. Finding the most useful place in which to apply specific energy or else figuring out how to transform it may take a great deal of creative thinking, but in that humans excel.

I also want to note here that obviously, hurt comes from hurt. By this, I mean that the energy to hurt comes from an energy which has been hurt. Many who do harm need not punishment, but healing. Only healing can erase and prevent one's perceived need or desire to hurt others. Pronouncing the hurtful or their desire to hurt "wicked, irremediable, and unredeemable" only makes them exactly so. It does nothing to resolve the personal misery that prompts the "wicked" person to inflict his misery upon others. It's as simple as garbage in, garbage out.

At some point in the life of one who does harm, some need wasn't met. Remember that discussion of stress and harmony? Yeah, well, the villain and the hater are some highly stressed people. Their natural and chosen functions were dismissed, denied, thwarted, oppressed, and even mocked over and over. Their needs - for anything from sustenance and security to love, appreciation, and guidance - were insufficiently met, and it broke them. Their health and balance faltered, including their capacity to choose wisely and behave harmoniously. In their efforts to either get their needs met or simply feel a little bit better (having abandoned hope of achieving needs altogether) they do everything from belittling and subjugating to murdering others. They disregard the needs and rights of others just as their own needs and rights have been disregarded. They lie, thieve and deceive in an effort to fill some void or other. They simply do not know a better way. Also, it is nearly impossible to learn a better way - or to learn anything new at all - when our fundamental needs are not being met! Research has shown this repeatedly, and it's exactly why we have school breakfast programs.

To meet our needs is instinctually our first priority. Without help and guidance from others with more experience, we're likely to err a lot on the way to discovering which ways best fulfill our needs, which ways yield the highest returns for the lowest cost (of energy and consequences alike). That is the balance and energy efficiency we aim to achieve, and it takes some real work to determine what best suits our individual natures. Though we may not know the best way to acquire what we need, that doesn't stop us from trying to get it in the best way we know how. Recognize that any action - any energy application - unguided by wisdom results in complete fucking chaos: imbalance, pollution, waste, disease, harm, and suffering sooner or later arrive.

All the demeaning, critical, defaming and judgmental labels we give to those who err are undeserved. In an interconnected world, we are no less culpable for the actions of others than the actors themselves are. It is in our own best interest to care for each other's needs, but we have failed to nourish and guide some brothers and sisters of ours. And just as we would not want our friends to give up on us, we can't give up on them, either. Locking up and abandoning people, continuing to leave their needs unaddressed, makes them more broken and sickly still.

It's never too late, and rarely difficult, to find the good in people and in their natural and even chosen proclivities. With that perspective of the potential energy in anyone, we can find appropriate, harmonious, beneficent applications for their energies. That energy can even be redirected towards the discovery of new and better ways of using one's energy. We have to stop judging, though, and start thinking. We have to stop declaring "How bad that is!" and start asking "What good can we make of this? How can we get something better out of this energy?"

In permaculture, there is this concept that the solution is inherent in the problem. It may even be that the problem is a solution of its own. Like shit, which we have to get away from ourselves and immediate environs lest it becomes problematic, harmful. But for plants (and the tiny organisms that feed them), shit is the solution to the problem of what to eat. To be able to make solutions out of problems, we have to expand our perception to include more than our limited human scope typically permits. We have to mind the interconnected web of the world and also the needs of other people, animals, plants, ecosystems, political and social systems, microorganisms, insects, and everything we can fathom. There is always something out there that needs or can make good use of any talent or material, any energy born of this world. We need only to discover it. Will finds a way. Even vast, destructive energies like oil spills may be finding remediation with the transformative help of mushrooms, (Paul Stamets is the fucking man, btw), and carbon dioxide is being absorbed for use in carbon-neutral fuel.

If we can figure out how to do amazing shit like that, it's absurd, dismissive, short-sighted and frankly foolish to believe for a second that we can't also figure out how to transform other energies, especially to the mere extent of changing human behaviors. We already have the skills to do so. marketers and advertisers use those skills in order to get us to buy all kinds of unnecessary products on the daily. They easily modify our behaviors - getting us to buy this thing instead of that, to take a chance, to try something new - with simply a word here, some color there, by showing images of folks in sad solitude without products followed by images of happy people among friends and family and the product, and other such images, effective even when we understand how we're being lured. (Read advertising and marketing expert Martin Lindstrom's "Brandwashed" and "Buyology" for more discussion on these and other such tactics). It's fucking brilliance, but a talent applied here for ends that serve corporate rather than collective interests. Of course, this same energy applied to motivate behaviors like kindness and support would go a long way to improving the well-being of any society. More well-motivated public health campaigns and service announcements could serve the planet all the more with the talents of those masterful mind-manipulators.

I have been speaking here in broad terms, but how is the understanding that all energies can be put to good use of any value to us as individuals?

Let's consider any action or habit that we have which doesn't serve or even actively destroys our health and well being, or which hurts others. See that we expend energy to perform the action because it allows us to get some need met. We're exchanging the energy of the action for the energy we prefer in return. We may do things to relax, to feel connected with others, to feel powerful, to feel loved, and so on. Whatever the case, we've got to figure out the need that motivates the performance of the action. That being known, we can then consider, experiment with, and implement other ways which allow us to get that need met. We can seek help from others or observe how others get that need met. Plenty of people, their books and blogs and podcasts will give us a plethora of ideas we can use alongside those we can come up with on our own. There may be some trial and error along the way to discovery, but it is always worth it to keep trying for joy, health and well being for all parties involved. In this way, we redirect our own energies, change our habits and transform ourselves.

Among those of us with the luxury of abundantly available energy, it may be that our habit is to withhold certain energies out of fear of losing them or not having enough, or maybe we just don't know where to apply energy so we let it lay around and pile up. That hoarding and stagnation is essentially pollution - too much of the same kind of energy, not moving and proliferating in one area, like a disease - and this damages the bodies of self, community, society and the world. Potential energy decays in greed and laziness, and unmoved each amounts to nothing. The only way to expel a surfeit of energy is to use it. We must apply our energies in various circumstances until the returns for our expenditures are more rewarding than either hoarding or abandoning them to disuse. We know rewarding returns by their effects which not only increase our own health, joy and well being, but also the health, joy, and well-being of everything that touches us. That is the effect of true wealth, truly abundant energy, wealth unspoiled by the ruinous rot of avarice and sloth.

Only after we have had some success in reapplying our own wayward and inefficiently used energies towards more harmonious and beneficent ends - after we have essentially turned shit into fertilizer, food waste into compost, and basically found places where a little trash here is a grand treasure there - only then can we have any hope of figuring out how to help others even want to transform their own energies. Only then can we start to resolve some of the global damaged we've caused - effects of ill-considered and unwise uses of energy. See that judgment accomplishes nothing. It will take nonjudgment to appreciate the real potential of any energy we come across and to find a healthy use for it. It will take no less than our time and ingeniously, wisely directed energy to repair and prevent injury and end pointless destruction and harm. This is the investment we must offer to our brothers, sisters and the planet in the effort to lift up the collective: everyone, everything and ourselves.

Use yourselves harmoniously, friends!

GETTING FIRED

I'm a fan of inertia to a fault. It may have to do with the fact that when I act, I desire so deeply to do well that I put the entire force of my being into my action. This desire can make even the smallest tasks seem overwhelming to the point that inaction sometimes feels preferable. 

I don't care for work. I care for creation, for lifting up others, and for love. When I act to accomplish those things, it can look a lot like work, and surely some people might call it that. I put a great deal of time and energy into the things I care about, absolutely. But I prefer to think of it as living lovingly, thoughtfully and consciously directed. Living is both more essential to life and more fun, so I try to start from the point of living, and whatever is the "work" of life must naturally flow from that. I will do well as my nature, learning, ability, growth, and circumstances permit and develop. In this way, I am always fired up about my "work." There are so many great things we can do in the world while we're alive. There's no time for mediocre and soul-sapping drudgery. There's no time to do less than our best. 

I never did understand half-assing things until this one job where I slowly sank into the sad state of not caring about my work. I had started the job with my lowest pay ever under the impression that I was to improve the products of a business I appreciated, and that I would have some freedom in my hours to do so. After a time I realized that suddenly and instead, I was expected to perform little more than customer service and that I would need to maintain a regular schedule for that work. This was to happen while the changes I had originally been asked to make simply never happened and I maintained and endured the status quo, which was a state of decay. I felt under-appreciated, that my talent went unacknowledged and under-utilized, and that my vision for even small improvements was denied at every turn at a place which was already in a downward spiral. Before I saw that all this was happening I had been demotivated, demoralized, and disappointed. I ceased to care about the work because it wasn't even the work I had agreed to perform at all but rather found thrust upon me. 

I went to work later and later because it took me longer and longer every day just to bring myself to go there. And then, I could work more peacefully, quietly with fewer people around, including the boss who had hired and then - I felt - ignored and betrayed me. Finally, the boss had enough of my odd hours. Boss told me it was now plain that I wasn't into the work and that if that were the case, then I wasn't needed anymore, after all. In that moment I was utterly relieved. I went home feeling free and alive again in the cool indigo of that sweet, crisp, evening.

After that, I knew I could never again do work which felt meaningless, work I didn't enjoy, work that didn't use or come from the best of me and my nature. They call it being fired, but they should call it being ashes, 'cause all that fire has gone out or else goes out, one way or another. Or maybe the fire was never there at all.

It took me a while to determine what would fire me up again. I think part of the reason I slogged through as lamely as I did for the time that I did was that I wasn't sure what could ignite me next, and so I hadn't been well-motivated to jump a ship where I had already committed to help out, albeit differently.

Sometimes I recall Dr. Penn - in describing the shiftiness of my moods, actions, and inactions along the lines of physics - telling me "An object in motion tends to stay in motion. An object at rest tends to stay at rest."

I have this tendency to be either completely ablaze or else ashes - there's no in between. I love love. I love making things, studying, science, nature, and contributing to personal, communal, and planetary health and well-being. That's my fire, and I only burn being in those ways. In between actions along those lines, it can be difficult to pry me from the mode of max-chill. That's just the conservation of energy required for those times I do burn, I suppose. 

From ashes, I've had to learn to skip the process of finding motivation entirely because I never have found motivation. I think it's bullshit. For every reason to do, there's a reason not to do. If I do manage to convince myself that the reasons to do are better or even more rewarding than not to do and then act accordingly, I feel like I've just conned myself and end up acting grudgingly, even when I'm doing a decent thing. So I have decided to abandon that entire line of thinking. It doesn't serve me. 

Fortunately, I don't need motivation at all anymore. I know at least some of what I really love, and what I value: I know my fire. It's there whenever I want or need it. So it's much easier to spontaneously combust than to build a fucking fire. I just get up and do the thing, and only then do the light and heat arrive. I don't need reasons, visions of what will be, or notions of how great I will feel when I do the thing, because all that's just imagination, bullshit. I just need my fucking fire. 

That's the thing about ashes: as long as we live, there's still a little ember underneath, just waiting for the right fuel to ignite it. The breath of our desires (as for money and comfort) and the tinder of our abilities may be enough to stoke up some occupation that'll keep us warm enough to survive. But predilection, passion, or even mere curiosity explored may ignite that fire with which we warm and provide light to those around us, as well as ourselves.

Get fired and keep burning, friends. You are loved.

STRESS AND HARMONY

Andrew Millison's permaculture landscape design course at OSU described the principle of stress and harmony in these terms:

"Stress may be defined as the prevention of natural function or forced function, function with essential needs unmet; and conversely, harmony is the permission of chosen and natural functions, and the supply of essential needs."

Stress to natural forms or systems results in disorder, dysfunction, disease, lost energy, poor production or low yields, and even breakdown of systems to the point of untimely death. Harmony creates just the opposite: order, easy function, health, energy efficiency, high production and yields, and long lives well lived. This principle applies from the level of the individual cell on through more complex beings like plants and animals and on up to whole ecosystems and even the entire unified living being of the planet.

I found that this principle applies also to ourselves. When our essential needs aren't met, when we're forced to function beyond our unique limits, or when we're prevented by others from functioning in alignment with our natures we suffer stress, disorder, and disease. Stress, disorder, and disease are nature's way of revealing to us that our systems for living are in some way or ways inefficient, destructive, and basically fucked up. Our bodies would typically move towards balance, towards homeostasis, towards harmony, but we have to allow and support that work. This may include removing ourselves from any outside forces – toxic places, people, activities, lifestyles, relationships and anything else – which prevent or inhibit the development of our healthiest natural forms. Most of us would prefer to be healthy and happy, but we have to mind our real needs and values in order to achieve them. We have to prioritize and allow their fulfillment.

We can see that many "civilized" people – myself included, for a long time - try instead to force themselves out of alignment with their natures. The thing is, civilization and human “development” have failed to create healthy functioning systems for life on this planet. Each new generation is born amid these increasingly broken systems and has to find a way to adapt. Education and a now massive amount of media specify how we ought to adapt to the status quo. In a thousand ways every day we are told that we have to deny or suppress our natures if we hope to thrive in the world, to make something of ourselves – as if we weren't something already. And so deluded and poisoned, self-abusing in order to survive in a broken system and a destructive culture, we trudge onward. Homeostasis and harmony give way as we pursue money instead, all because we're deluded into actually believing that we need money to live more than we need life to live. That's some early-learned and hard-wired programming for many folks, but if we'll think about it for a moment, it's clearly fucking absurd. But that belief has prompted many of us to abandon the physical and emotional needs our natures actually require for healthy harmonious lives. Simply put, our priorities are fucked.

Fortunately, we can change our patterns. We can extricate ourselves from the man-machine clusterfuck and develop more harmonious ways of living. The hardest part may be recognizing or accepting who our “natural self” even is. All that shaping we've experienced up to now may have made us like bonsai trees, distorted and stunted all this time. We can't expect to be anything near to natural overnight. Neither could we abandon that tree to the elements and expect it to survive easily, if at all. Masanobu Fukuoka learned this the hard way when he left a cultivated citrus orchard to fend for itself – and killed most of it – in his early efforts at natural farming.

While our capacity to adapt can allow us to make some dramatic changes rapidly, a slower transition may reduce the immediate stress to the system and improve our chances of success and survival, like a smoker going cold-turkey versus phasing out tobacco over time. There may be failures, but no matter. If we're already out of balance, unhealthy, and miserable, then our best bet will always be towards improvement. 

It may take some experimentation, allowing ourselves to function in ways we may have prohibited before in order to figure out how best to harmonize. We can learn and improve as we go along. We were designed to do that. Remember that the point where personal choice leads to failure is also the point at which observation, reflection, and learning lead to personal growth. The more we may have separated our actions and lifestyles from our natures, the harder it will be to discover who our harmonious, natural self really is. But the only thing to do is keep trying. Remember that we will always be more than we could ever possibly imagine and that we will always be changing over time, anyway. Being naturally harmonious is not an end, but a process of constant discovery and adaptation which sustains health and joy.

So we have to ask ourselves often, “What nourishes and maintains my body and mind? What lifts up my heart and soul?” We must prioritize in our lives the answers to these questions if we are to minimize stress and develop and maintain harmony.

We might also avoid some unnecessary failure if we study the larger picture and observe its patterns before implementing big changes. Observing the grand scheme, we clearly see that we are connected and interdependent. Consequently, we must regard not only our own needs but also the needs of others.

We must consider our observations of the bigger picture, and within that context ask ourselves, “How might I arrange my natural functions in the world so that they don't simply coexist alongside those of others, but in what ways might my natural functions even complement the lives and function of others so that we both benefit? Where in the world is my natural self most useful, that I can find symbiosis there?”

The answers to these questions might allow us to better adapt to our world rather than waiting for it to adapt to us. And we can see that with this approach we could eventually develop harmonious systems of living between people, within communities, ecosystems and even the entire planet. Of course, there can be no global harmony without collective individual harmony. In an interconnected world, this means it can start with you.

Nature may have been presented to us as cruel, as survival of the fittest, as this against that. But nature doesn't see all that struggle, though, doesn't give a shit how we describe it. Life just seeks balance over time, and it uses so many natural patterns and systems to accomplish that balance. The patterns of nature don't care whether or not we fight them, but they will end us one way or another in any case. We can either go with the natural flow, harmonize and enjoy the ride and die, or we can fight against the flow, struggle, stress and die. The choice is yours. 

Choose well and be well, friends.