Biomatrixing

Findhorn. Reading the book " Small is Beautiful" by E.F. Schumacher (for whom Schumacher College is named). A read that I think many you would find pertinent to our world experience. He wrote the book in 1971, at the cusp of the first oil crisis, and speaks to many of the issues brought up in your email. He asks the question, "how do we create meaningful lives, meaningful work, meaningful connection for 2 billion poor villagers?" His question these days would ask the same thing, but the numbers would be at least doubled, I think.

He quotes the calculations of the Chinese governement in the late sixties, who determined that it requires roughly 150 years of peasant work to provide the basic human needs and systems required to send 1 person to university for 5 years (because that person is not contributing to meeting their own basic needs, they must be provided for). He proposes that university offers the educated the means and vehicles to give back to society, not, as many have interpreted it, as a "pathway to privilege".

Also talks alot about the economics of oil, and that oil, as a non-renewable substance, is capital. Meaning, it is part of the limited physical infrastructure of our 1 world and cannot be replaced. But in our silly wierd economy, oil is calculated as currency, as income, as something that simply sells for this and is bought for that. There is absolutely no representation in our economy that recognizes that we have only one planet, a fact that thankfully is changing.

Mended some old fishing nets salvaged from Berghead and continued to stretch them around the boom frame of my floating bioremediation "island" today. I work alone and enjoy it. The sun rises at 9:00am and sets at 3:30pm. The weather is wet or less-wet at around 40°. Stretching the nets is rugged work, cold yesterday in the freezing rain, and my hands are bloody and calloused and cut. The physical battle is perhaps my distant shadowy pull toward the cultural struggles that Sam and Emilia are facing, [and surely the rest of you too in your ways] and my time here in Findhorn feels culturally safe and familiar, constant learning, constant discovery, but not pushed to cultural edges. I look forward to India, especially after sharing an evening tea with Kaido, the tai chi teacher, woodsman, and rebel-leader of sorts among the Findhornians.

Last night he told his story of approaching Bodhgaya, india where he would spend his 5th day of sitting at the base of the Bo tree where gautama buddha found enlightenment. The dalai lama and many Tibetans were there at the time, and he felt lucky to participate at a time when they were present. The area beggars, hundreds of them, knew of the Tibetans generosity and lined the approach path to the gate, past which they were not allowed. Kaido learned to direct his gaze at the gate, not staring at the twisted gnarled bodies, limbless or eyeless or burned scarred chunks of bone and sunburned brown skin wrapped in the filthiest of rags, certainly not making eye contact, and he would give his rupee to the last or second to last beggar so the others would not have time to flock to him.

On that particular morning, however, as he was passing a bearded man with weak twisted arms and no legs, his peripheral glance caught the man's gaze, and the man flashed a smile of pure truth, a piercing punch of direct humanity, of groundedness, of complete presence. Kaido realized, in the flash of an instant, that all of the structure, the gate, the Bo tree, the Dalai Lama and his entourage, were but his constructs of meaning, his hollow symbols that represent something "meaningful", but had no inherent meaning for him. The unique and precious moment of truth, spontaneaous and unpredicted, was there in the dust, wrapped in filth, free from ceremony, free on the fringe. Kaido's individual truth, his guru, his mirror, his teacher in that moment was this legless smiling man. He sat down with him, and the man offered him a bidi cigarette, and they smoked, fully present, living, breathing.

I am very excited to reunite with you all and share stories. I was dedicated the lyrics of a Leonard Cohen song last night, which I would like to share.

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.


-Aaron