This document is a preliminary distillation, a 15% complete outline, of what James has applied throughout his adulthood in every community building Venture he's been involved in, and in building himself as best he can, to help others do the same. For the joy of it.
It is crazy. It is insane. James understands it to be exactly equivalent to what the lives of the individuals here speak of themselves, Lsgiabeing.com, and what some have spoken explicitly, like the man Jesus, if you would hold on to your life, you will lose it, if you would lose it for the sake of the neediest among you, you will gain it... Heaven... Joy.
If and when James fleshes this out in more detail there may be half a
dozen or a dozen or more points of reference, but for now these three or four are sufficient to outline the territory.The kingdom of God does not come by observation... For the kingdom of God (heaven, joy, truth) is within you. The degree to which humans searching for Joy for themselves, or for those dearest to them, or joy in a community, they defeat themselves the degree to which they allow the slightest inclination that this aspect of the building, or this aspect of the grounds, or this Financial Security, etc etc etc makes a damn bit of difference. With a little stretch of the imagination the Whos down in Whoville provide us the model, or, It's a Wonderful Life, Dickens Christmas Carol, or what some of us can Glimpse if we imagine that everything that we value materially gets swept in a fire, or by Trump's Goons... but the immaterial does not, and that life would be okay, different, but really untouched. Foolishness. Ridiculous. Insane. But also, truth.
These three or four preliminary markers on the corners of the foundation, they really all say the same thing but in extremely useful ways.
Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for meaning: those even in the death camps found life desperately worth living, when they had some meaning of their own life as it impacted others, not only larger than themselves, but larger than the horror of the camps themselves.
Johann Hari, rat Park: seemingly in complete conflict with what James has said above, beings walk past addictions, and for we humans it's everything, everything, everything, everything, everything... Material that our culture says is necessary from Goods to sex to friends..... Even addicted beings walked past these things, when they find themselves in an environment that actually built for them, in the scientific experiments rat Park. For the human being, rat Park is the non material, non material, non material... environment that just makes blatantly obvious that it matters what they do to the well-being of others, opportunities to help others to maybe find joy.
Mihaly csikszentmihalyi, the evolving self, flow strung into a lifetime every breath experience: the Decades of research by csikszentmihalyi and his affiliates, unquestionably the optimal Human Experience is being in flow, and that the only times that is found, is when one is connected to others in such a way that their entire course of life is to tend to the well-being of others, like that Village up in the Italian Alps, Off the Grid, off the roads, where what everyone in the village did, mattered to everyone else. The highest quality of life that they found in the world.
40 assets, search Institute: although yes there is a correlation between the 40 assets, and material abundance, that is a horrible attribute of our culture. But having said that, even that lose correlation is very very very very loose. And the common denominator is that desired outcomes for any individual, culminating in joy, is likely or unlikely the degree to which they are immersed all waking moments in loving resourceful human presence, coming to one as a child, and going out from one as an adult.
Martin Luther King jr., the full, joyful, enviable... life has three dimensions, soul, solidarity, serving, and the antithesis, the hellish life, have three dimensions, by implication, stuff, systems and institutions, and superiority.
God dammit James, God damn you, being so damn esoteric and vague. Yes, this is absolutely true, if having only a speedometer and a windshield and two pair of eyes is criminally vague to someone speeding a car down the highway at 60 miles an hour. But it is not. And in fact who with a grain of Sanity would want their windshield covered with confusing and opaque details? Nobody. We don't like the answer. The soul is our windshield. It's a piece of our nervous system, the limbic system, the mammalian brain, and we will do absolutely anything and everything for ourselves, for a loved ones, for a community... Except for putting our soul in charge, learning to use it as our windshield. And everything above and all the enviable people throughout history have done just that.
So no apologies from James. His apology would be to cower and pretend the details can help.
It is a red pill and blue pill situation. What evidence did Neo have Beyond his own intuition his own mammalian brain to decide what to do. Was it the detailed words of Morpheus? It was not.
No, no apologies from James. whoever presented the first Compass to someone owed them an apology? Oh I'm sorry it's noy more detailed. B*******.
With the compass, is there a whole shitload of work to decide where to structure one's route, how to get from this point a to that point b? Of course there is!
With a clear windshield on the car and a working speedometer, does it require tremendous work in attention every hour that one's driving to use them properly? And to use one's eyes properly? Of course it does!
For James this is probably all he has to say for days or maybe weeks.
He has a friend that has been badly battered for a Lifetime, that needs support and he is so privileged to maybe have that opportunity, unless the individual comes to their senses and tells him to skedaddle. But until then, later.
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