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I suggest that you build coalitions of 3-5 people to explore who each of you is, and what you think/feel is at the heart/center/ground/source/foundation/bedrock of each of you. How do you decide what to do? What directs your boat on its path through the sea? How do you think of what is good? Where do your ideas of the good originate? Who are your guides? How do you maintain your balance and harmony? What is your work? (Not what you do for a living, but what you live to do.) What would you go to hell for? What do you know about what has always been called God, that you did not get from some other source, including the Bible? Where do you go-- what do you do-- to be with what has always been called God? What are your essential virtues? The ones that form your essence. The ones that came with you from the womb. What is your essential nature? How do you like to spend your time? What are the stories that form your bedrock? Not necessarily things that have happened to you, but stories that connect you to the truth of who you are and how it is. What grounds you so solidly that nothing can knock you off your foundation? How do you know what is being called for in a situation? You might also commit to viewing all of the Jon Kabat-Zinn YouTube Videos (The shortest ones first) and giving some money to benevolent causes throughout the year. If someone suggests that the group elect officers, tell them that is cause for life-time disbarment and don't invite them to future meetings.
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02
Your personal coalitions, and you should have as many as you can manage, of 3 - 5 people will see you through, and enable you to meet whatever comes up with the resolve, creativity, resiliency, spirit and enthusiasm that has gotten us through all that we have faced as a species from the beginning to now. Our coalitions enable "truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," and, more importantly-- more important because the truth cannot happen without it-- they enable us to bear the pain of the full realization of the "truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." The truth about truth is that we rarely ever get all the way to the bottom of truth. There is always more than meets the eye. So, we have to keep looking. No matter how things are, there is always how things also are. This is where sitting in the silence in the presence of the Source (However you imagine that to be) and waiting for whatever arises/emerges out of the silence, as realization, or as urge, or as urgent call to action, or as memory, or as whatever comes up in the silence to guide/direct you to action, comes into play. Always the need to return to the silence, to return to the Source, and wait for whatever revelation we need to meet whatever we face. The silence/Source is with us always, and those who know, know we all draw water from the same well, and are connected at the level of the heart as One throughout all time and space-- and it is our ideas of how things ought to be that separate us into factions and divisions and war parties, and once we put contriving and conniving out of the picture there is only all of us together seeking together what is in the best interest of all of us together. And the base unit of all of us together is a coalition of 3 - 5 people speaking straight from the heart about matters that are important to us all.
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03
Two foundational assumptions for membership in the Church of What's Happening Now are your good faith and your ability to bear the pain of your life. Everybody wants to feel better. Nobody wants to do what it takes to get better. What it takes to get better is bearing the pain of the way things are. The culture we have created is a giant excursion into the unending possibilities of pain avoidance and relief. Diversion, distraction, escape and denial come in myriad shapes and sizes. There is something, somewhere, for everyone. If you are in pain in this place, someone will hand you a pill, or a drink, or an injection, or an experience that will take you far away from your anguish and transport you to a "land of gentle breezes where the peaceful waters flow" (Anne Murry, Snowbird). Always, always, at the bottom of our pain lies a contradiction that cannot be borne, which we have to bear. We want what we do not have, or have what we do not want. "That" rules out the possibility of "this." What we want runs afoul of something else we want. And, what we don't want is everywhere. The song has endless verses saying the same thing: We have to grow up against our will! Therefore, we choose not growing up. And here we are. Sometimes we can walk two paths at the same time. Sometimes we have to make a choice between mutually exclusive options. Sometimes we have to adjust ourselves to having lost our truest love. Bug always, we have to come to terms with the pain of our life being as it is. "This is the way things are, and this is what we can do about it, and that's that. And That is how things are." Growing up means coming to terms with how things are. Means bearing the pain of how things are. Doing that (growing up) will not be good for the economy. But. It will be the best thing we can do for ourselves and those we love-- though it may take a while for all of us to realize that.
