Evolving Consciousness

Hola Everybody,
One can tease out political differences quite simply. How individuals view the role of government, define freedom, and what they consider a just society is directly related to their level of moral reasoning. In addition, knowing where people stand in terms of their capacity for moral reasoning allows for more collaboration.

I was at two interviews today. Wish me luck. Also please consider supporting my writing and advocacy work by donating whatever you can HERE. I’ll be frank here, at this point, your generosity helps me with carfare so I can ride the subway to job interviews and decide whether I will lose my cellphone service or my property in storage.

But! I kid you not… life is good (if difficult at times).

Moral Development

... Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
 -- Henry David Thoreau

Not too long ago, I participated as part of a panel with a woman. We were addressing college students, and what struck me about this particular woman was the extent of her self-centeredness. I found it interesting because she sought me out before we spoke and mentioned that she too was a “practicing Buddhist.” Her version of Buddhism, it seemed to me, was simply meditation. I had a teacher who once joked that practicing Buddhism without ethics was like trying to row a boat without first untying it from the pier.

From what I gathered, her whole existence centered on her and she was oblivious to how she was connected to her environment; how her actions reverberated and caused ripples. In her world, what mattered was the conscious cultivation of her ego. In fact she could actually see the “logic” in the needless death of an infant. You may have heard of the moral dilemma that if the death of one infant would save hundreds, it was morally justified? This woman would gleefully strangle such a child. This is what happens when you mix Ayn Rand with meditation! LOL Nothing could be further from my vision of Buddhist practice.

Two people, two different worlds.

This got me to thinking and I have come to realization that “practicing meditation” or any set of mechanics isn’t enough. I have come to realize that we create our world according to our level of consciousness/ awareness. It’s the same with love. For some people, love’s reason is the satisfaction of the individual. Love is something that you go “out there” to get in order to satisfy a hunger for connection. Similarly, religion and everything else is filtered -- distilled -- according to where you stand in terms of your level of moral reasoning.

I’ll explain. Let’s look at moral development as a starting off point. Let’s say, for the sake of this post, that moral development has three distinct stages. At birth an infant hasn’t been socialized into its culture’s ethics, standards, and conventions; let’s call this the preconventional stage. It’s also known as the egocentric, in that the infant’s awareness is largely consumed with self -- self-absorbed. But as the young child begins to learn its culture’s rules and norms, it grows into the conventional stage of morals. This stage is also known as ethnocentric, in that it’s focused on the child’s particular group, tribe, clan, or nation, and therefore tends to exclude those not of its group. But at the next major stage of moral development, the post-conventional stage, the individual’s identity expands to include care and concern for all peoples, regardless of race, color, sexual orientation, or creed, which is why this stage is also known as worldcentric.

If you’re still with me, you can see that moral development tends to move from “me” (egocentric) to “us” (ethnocentric) to “all of us” (worldcentric). This is an example of unfolding waves of consciousness. 

Using this consciousness map as a framework to understand reality one can see how religion (or love) will manifest itself differently in a person who’s at the egocentric stage than a person who’s at a worldcentric stage. Both people can be just as devout (or “in love”), but spiritual practice will evolve according to any one individual’s level of moral development.

To further illustrate, imagine love from a morally egocentric perspective. Love at this stage resembles a yearning -- something like an addict's need for a fix -- an ego boost. Same thing with almost anything you look at in life: perception and meaning changes according to what level you are engaging the world. Religion from an egocentric perspective resembles the global wave of fundamentalism currently threatening our existence. And I mention fundamentalism in all its manifestations -- including our own home-grown Christian fundamentalism.

I find all this quite interesting because a lot of my work involves advocating for systemic change that is essentially an attempt to move collectively from one stage to another. But it’s also interesting because it helps me tease out the idiosyncrasies when someone says, “I love you.” Perhaps we need to know a little more about others and ourselves as we travel on our journey. For what may sound like “I love you” may in actuality mean “I love me.”

What would our national or geopolitical dialog resemble as people moved up the ladder of the stages of moral reasoning?

My name is Eddie and I'm in recovery from civilization...

The Politics of Fear

Hola mi Gente,

Yesterday was a very challenging day…

Ever simply feel that someone or some thing, or some situation is just right? Have you ever followed that inner feeling? How was that? Then again, I know many people who had children on account of a “feeling.”

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Responding to Fear

Nothing in life is to be feared; it only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

 -- Marie Curie

Today, here in the United States and in many other regions throughout the global village, we live under the shadow of an oligarchy. To be clear, a shadow is created by blocking, deflecting, or otherwise obstructing light. Whenever fear appears, it lives, grows, and remains a part of us by embedding itself between the light of creative vision and our intuition. It is the shadow, not a lack of ability, that is the biggest obstacle we face today as a global community. The shadow, as I see it, is the space between what we want and what we get. It’s the distance between who we are and who we are meant to be, with the biggest, deepest, and widest gap occurring between the present crisis and our vision.

Look around at what has so many of us mesmerized: paranoia, worry, doubt, disease. They cast a spell on almost every aspect of our lives. Fear prevents us from seeing or feeling clearly. Fear compels us to vote for a “lesser of two evils” as if that were really a choice. Fear blocks the natural flow of our creative energy and hampers our ability to be radically innovative. As a society, we seem to be caught in a state of generalized anxiety that makes solutions impossible or paralyzes their implementation. When we do manage to get started, it is fear that often calls us back at the first sign of disappointment or problem. Fear, keeps us “stuck on stupid” as in the example of the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. It stunts our growth and suffocates our awakening, causing us to repeat painful and habitual patterns of behavior and making us lose sight of our vision (or uncommon sense). In order for us to envision and create a better society we must get past this fearful landscape.

Historically, creative people have often felt separated from their communities. It’s as if their ability to see clearly between what is and what could be serves to stigmatize them. Innovators are often ridiculed, their ideas and insights too far ahead of the curve of the “conventional wisdom” (whatever that means). This isolation strikes fear within us: we fear that if we express our ideas, or rock the boat a little, or act on them, others will ridicule us. The truth is that our visionary thinking is the only thing that will save us. But people are afraid to follow their own ideas. They’re sure they will be perceived as crazy, or radical, or -- gasp! -- outside of the political norm.

We are defeated not by our uniqueness, but by our fear of the unusual, the new, the strange. We live in a society obsessed by numbers and norms, with its averages, means, and medians spurring us to believe in a modern myth called “normal” which has little to do with being real. The idea of “average” or “typical behavior” is nothing more than a mathematical conceit.

Similarly, we fear information that challenges our ingrained worldview. Most of the resistance we see today is really about killing the messenger than a defense of reason. Those yelling about fictitious unicorns, or decrying single-payer healthcare, or those who have made it their business to discredit all forms of science are protecting hidden agendas composed of fear and loathing.

We fear losing an illusory safe existence as self-doubt zeroes in on the space between our potential and insecurity. We’re not thin enough, smart enough, or committed. As a nation too many of us focus on what we can’t do, rather than what we’re capable of. We’re too late with too little. Such doubts and fears make us hesitate at a moment in time in which we can ill afford to hesitate. Others fear an innovative idea actually succeeding and taking hold because it means their worldview was wrong -- fear of success. Many fear death, or loss of control. Whatever the case, it’s fear-based living at a time of crisis.

A sure recipe for catastrophe.

Those who insist that nothing needs to be done, or that we must maintain at any cost a status quo that is eating us alive, demonstrate a complacency that’s ignorant, dis-empowering. And dangerous. Awakening to our full potential is not a spectator sport. If we’re going to respond the challenges we face, we must act and act thoughtfully with foresight. Whenever a group tries something different, there’s an initial period of turbulence. Many people, fearful of new ways, mistake turbulence for change itself and decide they would rather go back to the “good old days.” And let me be clear, there’s little difference between Trump wanting to “make America great again,” and Hillary Clinton demanding we stay the course -- a course that has seen 95% of the wealth generated in recent years going to the richest 1%. Indeed, we dismiss the world of potential and vision for a past that never existed and a recent past that’s killing us. 

If we allow ourselves to be led by a creative vision, we will never lose. We can let go of right and wrong, winning and losing, approval and disapproval. Right now, we are on the cusp of a new world emerging and behind us an old world imploding upon itself. The only rational response to fear is to fully embrace this new world. Our potential can only be realized by collective innovation. This new world has been hovering over us for a long time and it has nothing to do with some bullshit calendar and everything to do with being awake, and we have heard it speaking all our lives:

Seize the day. Go for broke. Walk the walk. Try your wings. Do unto others... 

Stop the fear.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

U-Turn

Hola mi Gente,

This is the longest I have been without regular work in 20 years. Sometimes it’s hard to keep sight of the light of the end of this dark tunnel. Still, every day I wake up, I wake up a winner. I already won today. Besides, regardless of my employment status, there’s this beautiful thing called life happening all around me. Gotta grab it by the throat while I still can. LOL

On another note, I am hoping to attend the Sanders rally in the South Bronx later today at the South Bronx’s St. Mary’s Park. More info here. I am not a Sanders’ supporter, but there is no question in my mind that he offers a viable and pragmatic alternative to the corporate democrat, Hillary Clinton. Some have even accused me of exercising my “privilege” clearly ignorant of my Puerto Rican heritage. My response is, you need to recognize your privilege if you think can afford a possible eight years of Hillary Clinton and the status quo. Because I don’t know about you, but I clearly understand that eight years of more fracking, more mass incarceration and the private prison industry, eternal war, and the military takeover of democratically elected foreign governments, is untenable.

* * *

The Life You Were Meant to Live

Life is change, growth is optional, choose wisely.

 -- Karen Kaiser Clark

I once read a book that asked the question, “What if you woke up one morning and realized you were living the wrong life?” LOL! I love it!

While people won't say it explicitly, in my work I get the sense that most people feel as if they're playing a starring role in a drama they never intended to play. I get this sense from so many people that they are somehow living the wrong life.

The thing is I see people do complete about faces all the time. In fact, I'm one of those people. About 26 years ago, I was a hopelessly addicted addict in solitary confinement -- sick, suffering from years of malnutrition, totally defeated -- it doesn't get any more hopeless than that. But something clicked right before then and many times after. My turn-around -- my about face -- happened in small increments until I evolved into the life I feel I was meant to live.

Others change in a flash. Gandhi and the French painter, Gauguin, changed overnight and undertook causes at a great price. Gauguin was a stockbroker leading the perfectly normal middle-class life and he just left one day. Left his wife and children and decided to become a painter. What's more, he painted in a style that was totally misunderstood by the public at the time. He lived most of the rest of his life in abject poverty and in the process condemned his wife and children to a life of destitution. Gauguin is today considered one of the greatest of the post-impressionists. I doubt that in his lifetime, Gauguin ever sold a painting for a significant sum of money. Eventually he died of syphilis and penniless. But he painted until the end of his life.

That was his passion. What's yours?

Gandhi, a chameleon if ever there was one, coined the term, “Be the change you want in the world.” He too was living a comfortable life until one day he was confronted with racism and it changed him forever. Whatever you might say about his inconsistencies, he was probably the single most influential pacifist in the 20^th century. His work influenced such people as Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh and countless others.

People do about faces all the time. People change political parties and careers, people give up their jobs as doctors and become poets, mothers quit their families to pursue careers and athletes quit their careers to spend more time with their families. There are passive people who become revolutionaries for a cause they didn't care about the day before.

I guess the message is that you can change at any time, no matter what your external circumstances. The people mentioned above are no different than you in many cases. We like to say, Those people were different, they were special. We're just plain folk. Well, if you look at the history of these change agents, you notice that they were just plain folk too. In fact, some had tasted failure numerous times before they found their calling.

What will you do when you get your wake-up call? Will you just turn over and fall asleep? Or will you heed the call? Because I can assure of this: you will be called. Perhaps you have been called already. 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization...