Download Slide 1 - Freeing the River of Being

DRAFT OPENING???
World Citizens for Universal Understanding of Law
A Vision of the People of the World
Learning to Be in Harmony with Creation
Focusing on:
• Peace, Equality, Innovation, and Dynamic Development for All
People
• Principled Action that Nurtures the Flourishing Well-Being and
Rightful Path of Evolution and Contentment for All Living Creatures
• Reverence for the True Beauty of the Earth able to Shine Forth in
Majesty, Glory, Simplicity and Serenity for All
Part I
Becoming Social Healers
Freeing Ourselves from that Which Harms—
Anger, Division, Unconscious Participation in
Systems of Oppression
“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be
achieved by understanding.” Albert Einstein
This presentation is about how radical, healing
social change CAN happen.
It is not a dream to be postponed or forgotten.
When people have the right knowledge and
guidance, it WILL happen.
Our work is to gather and share the deeper
human understandings that allow new levels
of healing change to happen.
This process involves becoming aware of what
heals and what harms, and naming those
realities.
“The gravest obstacles to achievement of
liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs
those within it and thereby acts to submerge
humans’ consciousness.” --Paolo Freire,
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
When we are exposed to harmful realities, the
ways of harming are within us, most often
without our knowing it.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Freire quote on oppressed people rising above
limited consciousness of the oppressor to
achieve new level of insight and
understanding-- …
In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paolo
Freire provides detailed explanation of the
profound challenges of separating ourselves
from dominant modes of oppression and
creating new healing levels of awareness
through language and new forms of dialogue,
reflection and action.
To begin to create a new understanding and
self-awareness as social healers,
we need to distinguish
that which serves to nurture our holistic human
development– making us more compassionately
aware, socially creative, healthful and inclusive
from that which stunts or regresses our holistic
human development– allowing us to become
apathetic, or possibly hostile, isolating, harmful
and exclusionary
Quotes – change within the Heart– quote from
peace picture book– within individuals
We then need a language that allows us to
express our new levels of awareness so that
we can separate ourselves from that which is
harmful.
We need to define the consciousness that emerges when we
affirm or when we deny life.
Here is an example of this use of language to name these types
of consciousness-• Qualities of liberation consciousness can be named healing,
humanizing, and creative.
• These qualities emerge in states of bio-philia– a name for pure
feelings of resonating love and radiant respect for all life forms.
• Qualities of oppression consciousness can be named limited,
dehumanizing , and self-replicating.
• These qualities emerge in states of necro-philia- a name for feelings
of contempt or systematic indifference towards life and an
inclination to destroy health and vibrancy.
• When we agree to naming, we have a new
tool of awareness that allows us to recognize
the ways our feelings, thoughts and actions
have been shaped by harmful reality and
limited by it.
• “Pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument
of critical discovery to realize that all are
manifestations of dehumanization.”
• In other words, creating new names and
conscious ways of talking allows us to realize
that ALL people have been harmed and made
less humane by humanity’s harmful ways.
• Although systems of oppression create false
perceptions of division in our consciousness,
when we enter deepened reflection and discern
the causes and effects of relationship, liberation
consciousness comes through to us.
• With the ‘critical discovery’ of limitation, that ‘all
are manifestations of dehumanization’, can be
the release of a yet deeper, blessing discovery of
possibility within creation, that, more essentially,
we are all manifestations of the same essential
underlying unity.
• “I believe in advaita (unity of life), I believe in the essential unity of man
and, for that matter, of all that lives. Therefore I believe that if one man
gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him and, if one man fails, the
whole world fails to that extent.”
--Gandhi (Young India, 4 December 1924)
In this understanding of the individual and our inter-related unity,
our sense of individual power and role in society is profoundly awakened…
while at the same time, the healing insight of the essential equality of all
living creatures offers us access to our inward capacity for equilibrium.
All individuals are EQUALLY an expression of their Creator. All are equally
vulnerable to the effects of other beings’ actions on the interwoven fabric
of our being.
Work on concepts this slide- crystallize
• Reflective equilbrium– mental equilibrium–
equality and worth of ideas TO BE RECOGNIZED
and integrated
• the integrative mental foundation for just
decision-making that affirms power through
peace, not through any forms of prejudicial
reasoning.
• dynamic structural appreciations of peace, not
through static form assumptions of prejudice-exclusionary
• Quotes from different traditions on unity
• self and Self Atman… etc.
With this deepened perception of
unity…
We are no longer alone as social healers with distinct,
separate causes— we are all developing consciousness and
releasing ourselves from the same underlying oppressive
mindset.
We are liberating the self-- as individuals, as groups of people
who have been oppressed– from all forms of judgmental,
divisive thinking, from participating in non-reflective
systems of exclusion and harm.
Through profoundly pro-social, relational emotions, we feel
the unity of being. It allows us to connect to each other
and to other social healers throughout time.
A whole new awareness of friendship in
humanity awakens–
people from all different time periods in
humanity’s development and from all different
parts of the world are revealed to share the same
essential message of our universal human need
to nurture our noble qualities through
education, reflection and action and to eliminate
contamination of human character produced by
acceptance of any dehumanizing norms.
Summary
To become social healers we need to :
• create an awareness and language that gives us the tools to
recognize what harms, what heals
• apply our language tools to increase awareness that all are affected
by oppressive harmful ways, that we all unconsciously participate
in these dehumanizing social norms
• through heightened awareness and compassion for our
vulnerability, and through integration of scientific fact and
recognition of the coherence of a multitude of theological writings,
recognize an underlying essence of being- an essential unity within
all life–
• develop develop a feeling appreciation of mysterious interrelationship in all of creation and support a new unity of friendship
with social healers throughout time and place
FOCUS: FINDING UNITY and COLLABORATIVE MENTAL POWER AS SOCIAL HEALERS
As social healers we feel pain and oppression directly in the areas of
the social body that we have had contact with through direct
experience and that we have become aware of through our own
outreach efforts to educate ourselves and to imagine empathically
the perspectives and feelings of our fellow living creatures.
When we experience the blessing discovery of our spiritual unity,
we are able to join with all social healers, of our day– those who
serve different areas of the social body in different parts of the
world, as well as social healers through all different time periods
of history and throughout the progression revelation of our World
Faiths.
• “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be
achieved by understanding.”– Albert Einstein
• Peace cannot be attained by the ways of force
either.
• This is the same social truth expressed by
Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson
Mandela– and all of our social healer FRIENDS.
• The feelings, thoughts and norms of the dominant
system must be recognized, and named.
• What we have accepted as social facts about human
nature and progress must be replaced by new
knowledge of what our capacities are and what the
path of genuine reason and happiness for humanity is.
• This understanding must be integrated and whole new
ways of relating, new paradigm shifts in human
judgment must be set in place.
• Then we are SOCIAL HEALING in a new paradigm of
health, wholeness, unity and we are developing
thoughts and actions from the sanctified feeling
ground of relational, pro-social emotions– reverence,
respect, gratitude, humility, attentive appreciation
• By developing a conscious disposition towards these
emotions, a new social-emotional ecology develops-FEELINGS OF TENDERNESS, TRUST and GENUINE LOVE
begin to underlie all social interactions– these are the
developmental building blocks for genuine human
progress, they create the foundation for peace and
justice–
• Relational emotions are possible when we
understand … quote– human relationship to
grandeur of Nature– Gandhi and Einstein quotes
• Pictures proportionality of design in NatureFibonacci– proportionality of emotion
• Haidt– cognitive structure make accomodation to
grandeur– relational emotions are HEALTHFUL for
learning– attune us to greater intelligence–
encourage receptivity and deepened perception
based on reality, not fear and constructions
Part II
Becoming Aware of Social Reality
Learning to see the difference between human
construction and essential reality…
Overcoming habits and assumptions that shape
Identifying codes, agreements and norms
Recognizing underlying errors of perception that
“Human beings live in social reality as naturally as animals
live in the physical world. It is, essentially, invisible.”
Paul Lample, p. ~7 Revelation and Social Reality
When people are given tools and knowledge to feel
the promise of a better world, they will feel safer to
think more deeply about life, our real purpose and
potential.
We are inviting our imagination and our capacity for
discernment and high reason to awaken and join
together in a new way.
Our strengthened mind allows us to know courage in
the face of life-denying , divisive human realities,
negative feelings, and deep pain.
Fundamental understanding:
Social reality is the distinct reality that humans create for themselves.
Social reality is made up of codes and agreements . These codes and agreements exist on
different levels of awareness. These codes and agreements have allowed us to survive in the
physical reality and to be open to an agreed upon level of responsibility for the conscious
well-being of other creatures in the larger totality of life.
Social reality is the one reality that humans can change.
When the codes, agreements and norms shaping the society change, the social reality changes.
The message is this:
When the codes and agreements of social reality reflect a conscious, attuned
alignment with deeper principles and truths governing the flourishing, well-being
of life, then our social reality will evolve on the path towards genuine human
progress, peace, and happiness.
We do not create physical reality.
We cannot change laws of physical reality.
For instance, the laws of physics themselves.
We must discover these laws and work with them.
these are truths that directly affect our physical survival. They
include laws such as the laws of attraction, laws of entropy,
laws governing light and matter, processes of
photosynthesis and digestion.
Laws governing the needs of physical survival, birth and
death. Learning the laws of physical reality gives us the
ability to live in ordered societies together.
We do not create spiritual reality either.
There are much more mysterious truths concerning the underlying
unity of life, the principles of design within creation.
As Einstein put it: “Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit
of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of
the Universe-- a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the
face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”
These laws govern the inner realities of the universe, ‘For every part of
the universe is connected with every other part by ties that are very
powerful and admit of no imbalance, nor any slackening whatever.”
Abdu’l-Baha
• WORK ON THIS—
• Moral awakening and consciousness, entering a
moral, spiritual relationship with physical reality–
act responsibly with awareness of sanctity of
inter-relationship and integrity of the whole, not
primitively, individualistically, materially to attain
competitive gains.
• NEW RELATIONSHIP to material, physical reality
based on spiritual understanding, feelign,
thoughts, perceptions
By actively seeking truth, investigating all available
fields of knowledge and engaging in reflection, we can
begin the journey of discerning the nature of these
deeper laws of physical and spiritual reality.
Once we understand these laws, we can apply them to
social reality.
“Justice is a relation of congruity which really subsists
between two things. This relation is always the same,
whatever begin consider it, whether it be God, or an
angel, or lastly a man. --Montesquieu
In order to achieve this, we must develop our
mind in a new way.
Find quote about—don’t worship nature– it’s
about man’s relationship to the larger scheme
of Creation (humility, respect)
Human beings must develop new capacities of
their mind so that they are able to integrate
reverential, respectful understanding of the
spiritual nature of reality, our inter-connection,
and allow that to shape how we interact with the
physical world.
Mystery-science george quote- einstein mystery
quote
• The problem is, in the modern world, some people think
that social reality reflects the total nature of reality.
• “Human beings live in social reality as naturally as animals
live in the physical world. It is, essentially, invisible.” Paul
Lample, p. ~7 Revelation and Social Reality
• To counterbalance that invisibility, we need to make an
active effort to become aware of current laws and mores
that shape our behavior.
• After we do this, we have to investigate whether these
agreements are in alignment with what science and
spiritual teachings tell us about what is necessary for the
flourishing of humanity and all life.
We have to agree to develop our minds and to
attain a new level of conscious self-awareness.
Notes on challenges of perceiving our social reality– agreements affect brain processing on deep
levels of being– shape our reactive thinking, close in our assumptions as reality
•
This is challenging because the codes and agreements of social reality deeply affect all aspects of our inner being
including our feelings of fear and safety.
•
We are able to participate in social reality without any higher awareness of what the codes and agreements are
that we participate in.
•
We can live without awareness of how our feelings, thoughts and actions are being shaped being shaped
unexamined assumptions of the current agreements of social reality.
•
For instance, a person may feel that it is more important to continue a lifelong daily routine of going to work in a
job that does not utilize their capacities, does not develop them as human beings, does not bring greater good
and service into the world, just so that they will be able to maintain what they perceive as necessary for their
physical social survival.
•
Without deepened critical thought, it is easy to believe that what we SEE on the outside and FEEL on the inside is
what is ultimately REAL and TRUE about reality and life.
•
If the social agreements creating the social reality do not integrate deeper biological truths about the conditions
for optimal life flourishing and deeper intellectual and moral principles about inter-relationship and the necessity
for continual learning and development, than the individual participates in a social reality that is in need of an
awakening and a transformation.
• The codes and agreeements of are themselves longevolved, collective survival responses to the environment
and , if left unconscious, they can continue to call upon
deep fear and survival mechanisms in the brain to shape
our attention on certain priorities, affecting the way we
engage our brain’s sensory reward system, how we
organize our feelings and perceptions.
• the same neural pathways involved in our bodily, physical
survival, pathways that affect our heart, blood, digestion
and all internal regulation are deeply involved in social
emotions that develop in response to our social
environment. (Yang, Affective and Cultural Neuroscience)
There are 2 types of social change.
•
•
•
Reactive–
Shallow, incremental change at the level of legal code – can generate powerful emotions and create significant movement
and change, but deeper levels of self-awareness and re-organization within the society are still not affected.
These are ‘positive’ gains and steps towards Justice that are made in one field that represent increased access to freedom
and rights and that have the potential to assist in human development within the common framework that is still
maintained by the dominant model in existence.
•
Ex.: Laws freeing slaves. “At the uppermost levels of this social reality existed the economic system in which one human
being could legitimately own another as property. The slave was defined as less than human. The social structure was not
reinforced by the casual beliefs of individuals alone; all of the systems of human knowing were brought to bear to justify the
social order. Teachings of the Bible were invoked to affirm that the slave must obey the master and that beings of dark skin
were inferior; to deny this was to deny the Word of God. Sciences were utilized to justifiy the superiority of the white race;
if any were to object, they could be dismissed as unifirom ed and individuals contending with empirical facts of the physical
world. And how deep was the change in collective understanding after the bloody struggle in which the existing social order
was overturned and slavery ended? Superficial at best. The constructed reality of slavery was legally abolished, only to be
succeeded by Jim Crow laws and other forms of social oppression. The economic system of slavery was exchanged for d
facto control through sharecropping. It would take another century for the civil rights movement to overthrow certain
political and social inequalities. And even those substantial changes did not alter the underlying powerful substructures of
social reality that supported white privilege.” p. 9
•
Although through the new law, the slaves were theoretically allowed to have access to new range of mobility, greater
awareness of biological truth– we truly are one people with equality of capacity– and spiritual truth– we are meant to love
each other with pure hearts and to feel each other as one family, not judging each other, forgiving each other, serving and
helping each other, participating in beauty –making creativity together and knowledge-seeking. Because deeper truth and
law was not revealed, institutions still participated in underlying perceptions of error and ignorance. We contiue to have
vast inequalities in education, health care and living conditions for whole classes, sexes and races of human beings.
•
Ex.: The movement from reduced mountain top removal to fracking. even if the loophole protecting those in the fracking
industry from having to abide by the Clean Water Act and Safe Water Act was removed, the deeper materialistic mindset of
using domination and force to acesss resources and dehumanizing labor would still be in place. Brute mechanization
Reflective
• Deep, radical change at the level of self-aware realization of
understanding– directs a new course in relationship to
change and progress, integrating knowledge, and core
beliefs about human development, rights and
responsibilities in a new way. These changes require whole
new terms of governance and new alignments of purpose
in the field of education. They involve radical shifts in how
knowledge is shared and in how information is interpreted
and regulated by the media. They deeply affect social
creative expression through the arts.
• Shift in ‘fundamental agreement which frame belief and
behavior’– ‘case of dramatic collapse of communism in
countries across Europe and Asia in a matter of months
around 1990s’ p. 9 Revelation and Social Reality
Today, all social problems stem from the same
one problem: our current social reality is
locking in behavior norms, institutional norms
of governance, education and the arts based
on unexamined codes and agreements. Our
range of social action is limited and same
fundamental misperceptions about
We need new knowledge and a deep, reflective
change in social agreement to affect a large
scale re-organization of genuine collective
power.
There is a current underlying acceptance of the slow progress model.
This is faith expressed within current governance and mainstream education that the
current model of global, free market capitalism is the way of true progress, since it
seems to be the way in which we have progressed in the past, and it seems to
reflect the reality of nature. The naïve belief, perpetuated by an unexamined
internalization of codes and agreements and an absence of critical thought, is that
in the long-run, this ‘natural’ system of competition will eventually lead humanity
to a state of improved happiness.
Through a rigorous system of competition, material and social rewards and
punishments, and through efforts of individual exertion to figure out ways to work
adaptively ‘with the existing system’, individuals will achieve their peace of
material ‘happiness’ which is basically defined as ‘social success’ and
individualistically-based ideals of contentment.
Larger spiritual questions about our true purpose, moral and social concern for our
fellow living beings while we are pursuing and affirming this path of work and selfadvancement, are not addressed.
The struggle for existence, just in proportion as it
becomes intense, impels men to new efforts and
inventions. That this improvement and capacity for
improvement is fixed by hereditary transmission, and
extended by the tendency of the best adapted
individual, to survive and propogate among individuals,
and of the best adapted, or most improvedtribe,
nation, or race to survive in the stuggle between social
aggregates. On this theory the differences between
man and the animals, and differences in the relative
progress of men, are now explained as confidently, and
all but as generally, as a little while ago they were
exploained upon the theory of special creation and
divine interposition.
The practical outcome of this theory is in a sort of hopeful fatalism, of
which current literaure is full. In this view, progress is the result of
forces which work slowly, steadily and remorselessly, for the
elevation of man. War, slavery, tyranny, superstition, famine, and
pestilence, the want and misery which fest I modern civilization, are
the impelling causes which drive man on, by elimanting poorer
types and extdning the higher; and hereditary transmission is the
power by which advances are fixed, and past advances made the
footing for new advances. The individual is the result of changes
thus impressed upon and perpetuated throgh a long series of past
individuals, and the social organization takes its form from the
individuals of which it is composed. Thus, while this theory is, as
Herbert Spencer says- ‘radical to a degree beyond anything which
current radicalism conceives,’ inasmuch as it looks for changes in
the very nature of man; it is at the same time ‘conservative to a
degree beyond anything coneived by current conservatism,’
inasmasuch as it holds that no change can avail save these slow
changes in men’s natures. P. 480
“We have reached such a point that progress
seems to be natural with us, and we look
forward confidenlty to the greater
achievements of the coming race…”p. 481
It is an unexamined trust in the natural course of
‘progress’ and a belief that no deeper
questioning of the perceptions and
assumptions underlying our social reality is
required.
“The vulgar explanation of progress is, I think,
very much like the view naturally taken by the
money-maker of the causes of the unequal
distribution of wealth. His theory those who
have will and ability, and that it is ignorance,
or idleness, or extravagance, that makes the
difference between the rich and the
poor.”..p.478