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!