An Abundance of Freedom

Self-sufficiency is a dangerous road. Especially for someone who has been given enough to be given more in a materially developed world. It is possible for me, someone who has the means and the opportunities, to live alone and doing what I want when I want, and it is dangerously possible.

It is possible for me to completely forget what kind of world that I live in, what kind of people that we are. We depend on each other - that is an inescapable fact. What we do, in no small part, is based on the accomplishments of our forerunners and contemporaries. The things that we eat, the way we do things, the places we go, the things that we use, everything is shaped by the greater collective. Which makes it easy, in an increasingly individualistic, customizable, self-centered society to forget that our own 'personal' accomplishments either a) were based on the accomplishments of someone else or b) were only possible because of the efforts of someone else.

I'm writing this post mostly as a reaction to a few things that have been happening in my own life around the whole debacle that is the individual and the collective. I've been wrestling with whether it is that we need people in order to function, or is it that we can each act as independent beings, and we want each other in our own lives. And, on writing that out, whether those two are part of a spectrum, or exist in some kind of yin-yang relationship.

Change is the only constant. Whether it be over seconds, over days, or over millenia, things will change.

We are human beings. We have choices in what we do, think, say, believe. When we grow we see more, hear more, understand more. We become more than what we are, and we continue to live. When we lack growth we decay, we see less, we become more unconscious and more and more like the animals from which we are descended. We become lower, and the human parts of us die.

Joy gives us wings! In times of joy our strength is more vital, our intellect keener, and our understanding less clouded. We seem better able to cope with the world and to find our sphere of usefulness. But when sadness visits us we become weak, our strength leaves us, our comprehension is dim and our intelligence veiled. The actualities of life seem to elude our grasp, the eyes of our spirits fail to discover the sacred mysteries, and we become even as dead beings.

'Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, Joy and Pain

There is this concept, joy. In what I have come to know of the world, it is something that is ever so slightly different than happiness - while they do go hand in hand, and appear together very often. Joy seems to be something that the soul has, and that can act and grow independent of personal satisfaction. It's a happiness beyond the level of satisfaction.

I feel more joyful, for instance, when I've cooked a meal for some friends, and they enjoy it. I feel joy when I share something with someone else, and they begin to discover  the same wonder that I had, and I get to watch it happen over again.

“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” Khalil Gibran

All of us feel pain at some point, in our journeys to become better and better people. To continue living. We get hurt by our environments, our friends, our associates, ourselves. But it also brings this compassion, this reflexive kindness when we see someone else in the same situation that we were.

So in these two steps, joy and pain, we walk forward. When we see the world with joy, and see its possibilities, we can soar and become wildly different people in short amounts of time. When we are visited by pain, we can be reminded that there are other people around us too. That there are, in this world, billions of sisters and brothers that we are responsible to, and that they need to be helped as well, when we are able.

There is this interesting thing that happens with people, mostly with people in the materially developed societies, (but I live in the US, so what does that even mean.) We have this astounding ability to defer things into the future. We seem to be in the habit of letting ourselves slip from enjoying the present moment in an anxiety to live a better future, or to avoid the present that has been given to us, or that we have built ourselves.

It seems that we go into this mode of deference when we are planning and strategizing and dreaming our lives to the point where we can't live them. When a vacation keeps getting pushed back, when a family trip hangs at the horizon of 'next month,' then ends up not happening until three years later. We keep our eyes on that horizon, but we can forget sometimes to walk towards it.

From my limited experience, we must keep balance. The us of the past, the us of the future, and the us that lives in the middle, between them. Extremes for this could be: we curse our pasts and forget to learn from them, we praise our futures and set goals that no mortal human could reach, let alone ourselves, and we live so attached to the middle that we wander where our desires and inclinations take us. We praise our pasts and forget that yes indeed, the world does change, we curse our futures, because those darn kids keep getting more and more hooked on technology and the world is going to crap, and we can curse our present selves with the constant comparisons to others and the dreams we have of them - and of ourselves. We can all bounce between any of these extremes.

What would it look like, then, for our three selves, working across the irreversible line of time, to work together? What would it look like if each of those three selves were working towards some same goal? The past would give lessons, the present would observe the change happening in the world and react to it, and prep the way for the future to have an even more advantageous position.

What would that look like for you?

"Let each morn be better than its eve, and each morrow richer than its yesterday."

So. Just watched the pilot. Definitely see the... uh... ambiguity of feelings that people may have for this show.

On some levels, it is definitely a guilty pleasure. And on others, it is certainly a corrupting influence. But I think there are other ways that we could get both of these kinds of needs satisfied. I think that there is something more.

Personally, I resonated with Walter, and his struggles simply living. Life gives him a whole bunch of crap and he has to just deal with it. And most of the crap comes from the people he loves, or who should love him. That, in itself, is incredibly damaging, not to mention the whole host of other things that come along with not being able to provide for his family, not being able to look at himself fully due to being older, and being expected to deal with all of the abuse that gets doled out by him secondhand by the people around him. I think his reaction is a reaction to a larger part of society, to the whole idea of the system.

WARNING WARNING personal ideas below WARNING WARNING

Walter had done everything that was expected of him - he has a wife, a kid, a house, a job. He's made enough to get himself a house, and met enough people to have semi-decent birthday party attendance (whether or not half of the guests were direct family is another matter that I have no idea about). Despite this, his life is unfulfilling to its core. He is being drained of life day after day, and I think that his 50th made him realize how much he had lost in his scramble to get more. He's mad, partly at society for making him go down the wrong paths and punishing him for it, partly at himself for not realizing it earlier.

So, that is what is coming out of my head after watching just the pilot.

Buisiness books are strange. Especially sales books. They try to boil down a million life lessons and strange intra-personal interactions into 120 pages, using their own terminology and their own goals for things.

A theme, or idea, that has been passed around a bunch over the past summer and year for many of those in the Youth Service Program is self-sacrifice. The idea that we, as individuals, are small, and our contributions need to be made in order for larger things to happen. Also, that we can 'give that which is lower for something that is higher.' I'll speak from my own experience, or at least from what I've seen.

The first thing that comes to mind for sacrifice is talking to people. Or more generally, doing things when I generally don't want to. What's been tried, and done, over the past few months is to push through it, and continue to do things, even if it sucks and it hurts - which is a good way to get things done. Push through anything, difficulties, weakness, anything and everything so that at the end of the day, we can feel some sense of accomplishment, or feeling like we've contributed to something greater.

So, for someone like me, who doesn't always describe himself as the 'extremely willing and able to talk to new people' type, this has been somewhat of a challenge. I've needed to reflect on ways to make this at least a little less unpleasant, at least a little bit less de-energizing - trying to create the discipline to find new things to learn from people and in people. It's been getting better, but it goes back and forth. Some days, I want to do things, other days I don't. But I guess that's where having people around you who are also doing the same thing and encouraging each other along comes into play - there's a better chance of changing those suckier days into learning days.

There's also some degree of freneticism coming into play as well - if our schedules are not full, we are not taking advantage of the day. If we don't feel tired at the end of the day, we aren't doing something right. And to a further extreme, we judge our self-worth on how busy we are and how crappy we may feel. Which is not healthy. The alluring thing about this is that it has some of the same qualities and aspects of self-sacrifice - we give it our all, we try to spread ourselves out as far as possible, and in the best case, we learn from our mistakes and grow. But a problem comes when you stretch yourself too thin, stretch yourself to the point where you can't do anything effectively or efficiently, where things start falling kaput. This has some rather unhelpful effects on grassroots level stuff - community building. It is based on relationships, and building those relationships take time and effort. So if you stretch yourself out, and can't do anything quite right because you're tired, and you start evaluating everything a little worse because you're tired and cranky, something will suffer, and the relationship has a risk of falling apart.

You can't expect to water a field with a water pail. You need to be conscious of what you have, and what you can do, and when it makes sense to do more. Keep watering, and be happy with what is being watered, and what is growing from it.

But what happens if you decide to pull the brakes on self sacrifice, and pay attention to and nurture your needs for the rest of your life?

Possibly, if there isn't an outward focus, or some goal of using your own health to make other people healthy and/ or happy, there's the danger of becoming self-absorbed and selfish, which is the exact opposite of what we need to become. In order for us to be happy as human beings, and especially together as the human race, we need to give, and we need to give more and more freely.

(The counter-clockwise arrows are for slide changes, which you can see here.)

Hello.

I’ve been asked to answer the question:  ↺

What have you learned over the past three institute and teaching campaigns?

↺

While this has not been an easy question to answer, due mostly to the many lessons I and the many others over this past summer have learned, as well as the many other lessons we have forgotten, or have yet to still learn. I would like to share with you now a brief, bulleted, hyper simplified, overly obtuse and abjectly abstruse summary of this summer, and what I have learned.

↺

The campaign season started in July, with the Turning Point campaign. Some context; most of the focus neighborhoods were in the Portland/ South Washington area, it was centered in the Portland Baha’i Center, and through the course of the campaign, we completed a study of Books 6 and 7. It began in the height of summer and ended in the height of summer, and the numbers of those who participated, at least in the morning and early afternoon sessions, were small.

↺

The focus of our efforts was on starting conversations with youth in various neighborhoods about their community, and building bonds of lasting and true friendship through action, service, and the study of Ruhi Book 1. In other words, we talked with a lot of people, and met many friends.

As someone who identifies himself as introverted, this need and type of outreach absolutely frightened me.

↺

↺

I would return from outreach with a profound sense of fatigue, and a slight dread for the next day, and what it meant as to social activity. One day, I particularly recall, I felt a sense of acidic burning in my midsection thinking about talking with people. All of these symptoms were products of my own social anxieties, my own veils that I put , and kept putting, between myself and the people I was talking with. I think the acidic burning sensation I felt that day that I still remember so distinctly was the physical sensation of veils being burned away.

↺

But we needed to find receptive souls. That was the goal, to find receptive souls, accompany them in the field of action, and connect them to the Revelation of Baha’u’llah.

↺

This confrontation with my weaknesses led me, at its last moments, to finally turn foremost to God for assistance in finding these souls, because heaven knows that I was utterly and completely incapable. We had memorized a quote that I constantly repeated to myself, which went,

↺

Speak, therefore; speak out with great courage at every meeting. When you are about to begin your address, turn first to Bahá'u'lláh and ask for the confirmations of the Holy Spirit, then open your lips and say whatever is suggested to your heart; this, however, with the utmost courage, dignity and conviction....

This became my manual and mantra as my partner for that day and I walked from door to door, from person to person, from soul to soul. “Baha’u’llah, help. I wish to be confirmed. Here goes...” and I spoke. I listened, and learned that I needed to strive every day to listen even harder. I needed to get out of the way, so that I didn’t diminish the message.

↺

Miraculously, not everyone shut their door in our faces. We met many radiant souls, and many pure soldiers of Baha, waiting for their orders.

↺

Another thing that I saw over the course of that campaign, and over the following summer, is that friendships born in service, that are tested by the many diverse experiences in the forge of fieldwork, are some of the most pure, dynamic, and motivating relationships that this earth can offer. The bonds between the cohort that participated in that campaign are some of the strongest that I’ve seen.

↺

The campaign ended, but the work in the neighborhoods continued. We attended and enthusiastically participated in the Youth Conferences, then went straight back with renewed vigor to similar work, this time in the Puget Sound area with the Shoulder to Shoulder campaign.

Context.

↺

This was another institute campaign, similarly structured and with an altered focus; to have conversations with junior youth and begin junior youth groups in Tacoma and Ainsworth. It began in the decline of summer, and ended somewhere between summer and fall, I’m not quite sure. Still getting used to the weather.

↺

With the Hilltop/ Ainsworth team, we learned quite quickly on the first day and transitioning into the second and third the importance of perseverance, even in the face of what seems to be certain failure. Making an effort can produce quite exquisite friendships and experiences.

↺

I don’t think it will ever be truly described with words the potency that prayer has, especially in the field of action. Especially living in a state of prayer, a constant pleading with every step to be guided by the hosts of divine inspiration, a confidence and trust in the completely, and what seems to be, completely counter-intuitive methods by which confirmations descend while we are working diligently and at our limits. One very brief story I’d like to share is about this theme.

↺

Three of us were needing something productive, and meaningful to do in the field, since the junior youth group that was going on was already being supervised, and our time was more effectively spent meeting new souls. We wanted to learn how to have conversations with youth, like in the previous campaign, and I was the only one who could be remotely be identified with having experience in that conversation. We consulted, we shared, we studied Book 1 in hopes of finding things to talk about, and finally, we prayed. I cannot speak to what the others prayed for, but in those moments of silence, I was reminded of another story of the mass teaching campaign that brought Germany to its quota for one of the Seven Year plans. Prayers for loving hearts was apparently a legitimate strategy that worked for those Alaskan believers that didn’t know German very well, yet still managed to connect scores of souls to Baha’u’llah’s message.

I thought I’d give it a shot.

Long story short, I prayed for a loving heart, we walked some fifty yards to another complex, then began speaking with two youth that were so open and with such love that an outsider might think we had known each other for months, years even.

Such love, and from such a distinctly heavenly source.

↺

For the third campaign, I will keep my treatment and what we learned and saw to a minimum, to make sure my friend Yasi can speak with some depth and breadth on our experience.

↺

Quick context, the third campaign, this time following more closely a concerted teaching effort as seen in the end of Book 6, was focused on getting us more familiar with and integrated into our respective neighborhoods. For the Kent team, we focused in Kent. The weather was non-descript Northwest. Except for the freak week of sunshine.

↺

Over the course of this most recent campaign, a common learning we all had was that this process of community building is incredibly complex and organic, diverse and nuanced, and that we inherently need to be locked in a mode of learning, a way of functioning that prioritizes focused experience and heightened perception to distill what are the essences of every learning and every obstacle.

↺

Also, that we needed to be moving as single organisms within our neighborhoods, as teams as well as groups of friends, neighbors, and co-workers, in order to be able to effectively learn much of anything collectively.

↺

In conclusion, what I learned over these past three campaigns and summer is the truth of these words of Abdu’l-Baha:

↺

O my God!  O my God!  Thou seest me in my lowliness and weakness, occupied with the greatest undertaking, determined to raise Thy word among the masses and to spread Thy teachings among Thy peoples.  How can I succeed unless Thou assist me with the breath of the Holy Spirit, help me to triumph by the hosts of Thy glorious kingdom, and shower upon me Thy confirmations, which alone can change a gnat into an eagle, a drop of water into rivers and seas, and an atom into lights and suns?  O my Lord!  Assist me with Thy triumphant and effective might, so that my tongue may utter Thy praises and attributes among all people and my soul overflow with the wine of Thy love and knowledge.

Thou art the Omnipotent and the Doer of whatsoever Thou willest.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá

↺

Nothing much happened today, but it feels different.

Woke up naturally, sauntered to the apartment, played a bit, listened to some songs for a bit, watched a bit. Studied a little bit, also, which ended up being my downfall. I had scheduled driver’s permit knowledge test from last week, and today was the big day. I kind of studied, but I didn’t really see the need to, since I was passing all of the practice tests I found. I failed by one question. I walked two miles to fail, and another two to feel bad for myself. And that was most of my day. That, and boredom.

Something is different, especially while I’m tired, after a beat-myself-up session, and watching some of the things go by on tumblr and what Grace shares with me. Everything is more wonderful, and more terrible. Feelings are more present, more powerful. It’s nice, at least to feel a little bit. I think I’ve been penting it up inside for a while. But I don’t think I can live in this extreme either. I can’t see much, and I know that a lot of the decisions I will make in this state will be less than satisfactory. But it is good to feel something, at least.

I think I’ve made me from the statements ‘you are disappointing,’ ‘much is expected of you,’ and ‘you must be excellent.’ And another me from ‘show love to anyone who needs it,’ ‘help those you see’ and ‘live a truthful life.’ A lot of tension, but I guess I asked for a problem, and here it is.

I should probably reflect before I completely forget about today.

Today was the aftershock day, or a sort of rest day, for the camp. Post-camp. We had a meeting along with the Olympia and Seattle teams about our schedules and how our efforts were going, and that was nice and heartening. It was good for everyone to talk about their experiences, and reflect on what we’ve learned so far, and what we are interested in learning in the coming years. Or year, in my case. Not entirely, but I’ll get to that.

After that, we returned to the apartment, and the others went their separate ways. I managed to move all of the furniture back before anyone got back, and have time to eat, vaccum, and call my mom, which was good. It was restful, doing all of that manual labor while reflecting a bit on the camp and everything in particular. Lauren came back this afternoon, so the team is together again. The two week cycle continues.

After that, I went to the Area Teaching Committee meeting to plan for the upcoming Reflection gathering or meeting before the expansion phase for our area. That was pretty good, even though I was a bit loopy and tired. We managed to get an agenda down, and talk a bit about what each of the segments would accomplish, and how that could be accomplished. We also read one of the letters from the National Spiritual Assembly that was super relevant to what we were doing. We included it into the agenda.

I guess now is the time to talk about the thing that I promised to talk later about. But first, something sort of related. It occurred to me, over the course of the meeting and the conversations I had with the other youth in the program, that I had been helped tremendously by building the discipline to reflect regularly on what I did, and that in turn made me extremely grateful for Grace, because she reads my reflections, keeps me accountable, and writes some of her words that are profoundly moving and leave images that explode with meaning and poignancy. I love her, and it will be fantastic to get home. But I think I’ve found the role that I need to play for the next 145 days.

There was a dream that I had, where the jazz band from senior year and I were taking a vacation to some remote resort island, and some other things happened, and I needed to survive on my own. The thing that is staying the most from that dream is the feeling that everything that I need is provided for, and while the stakes have increased, so has my ability.