Giver Culture

Rare & Precious Treasures from Earth

Life on Earth is like living in an elaborate & fantastic treasure room. If life is as rare as our solar system suggests then a flower petal, a puppy, a strawberry, or a bird represents some of the most rare & unique treasures that have ever existed.

In addition, in today’s world many of us have a standard of life that kings & emperors, only centuries ago, would have envied. A king of old may have easily given up half his kingdom for a ride on a 50cc motorcycle, let alone a car or airplane. Something as ubiquitous as a flat screen TV brought back in time would have been a wonder of the ancient world that people would make pilgrimages to experience.

We are truly living not only in a unique place in the universe, but also in a special time… but having lived our whole lives in the treasure room it is easy to take it for granted.

Appreciation & wonder is only a widened perspective point away. All we need to realize is how rare and special life truly is when all things are considered.

Thanks to the article, In Search of Equilibrium, for inspiring this blog post.

Once, in an online discussion, I was told that the idea of a Giver Culture sounds wonderful, but how would we survive if we gave everything away for free?  For some people give and give until they are in debt, which isn’t a very sustainable way to be, and definitely could not support a whole culture.

But the core idea of the Giver Culture  is not to simply give more than you have the means to give (which would surely put you into debt), but to change our behaviors from a material consuming culture to an open information-skill consuming culture, and to share what we have learned with others.

If you even spent an hour a week teaching a subject at a community college to a class of 15, you would be a Giver. This is more valuable than a material gift in many ways. Passing on knowledge/skills is the type of gift that keeps on giving. Maybe teaching 15 people is no big deal, but what if we had a culture where this was considered normal? Where the majority of people did this from time to time? Surely teaching a single class a week would not put you into debt, but you would be a Giver. In such a culture having knowledge and skills to pass on might be more of a mark of prestige than having money. And, besides deliberating illness, how could anyone take away such wealth? There is also the famous maxim ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you teach him for a lifetime.’

Gifts that keep on giving are like seeds. A seed might grow a fruit tree, which is valuable in of itself, but it also grows viable seeds within the fruits that can grow other fruit trees. Once we start thinking along these terms, we start truly giving.

Also, I tend to think that this type of behavior might slowly ease us off money. Why? Because first, such behavior once adopted by more and more of the human race will lower the population. Many countries that are developed now have a negative population rate. It has also been shown that in places, such as Bangladesh, where micro-loans have been given out with the condition that the borrowers attend weekly educational seminars, population rates have dropped drastically. Advanced education seems to have the effect of reducing the population. Especially when and if education is freely available to women.

With a lowering population, but an existing infrastructure and knowledge base, there will be more for everyone.

Also, with a culture that highly values creation and discovery, we would be creating solutions that would reduce our material needs. Cheaper energy, cheaper goods, cheaper communication etc. This would slowly ease us off money. In some ways this is already happening. Facebook provides a lot of value for its users, but I barely pay anything but my internet connection for it (which is becoming faster and/or cheaper every year). There are plenty of free things available, digitally.

Of course material costs are expensive, but with many advances into nanotechnology and quantum computing, there will be a time (and there are plenty of recent advances in this field) that atomic structures will be as easy to manipulate as computer data. Then we will be able to replicate and copy at will, using any source of matter as our base. In a Giver Culture, this knowledge/technology would be made available freely (or at least cheaply). It would be like Linux, or Firefox. It would be Open Source.

The problem is, in a consumer culture, is that we have come to value having many material possessions. We don’t currently value creating, discovering, sharing or cooperation. So our current lifestyle costs us a lot. It costs us a lot in that it demands much of the world around us and it doesn’t share. It doesn’t give back.

Of course there are individuals who give and share, create and cooperate, discover and create value that wasn’t there before. But those are usually individuals or small groups stuck in a consumer based culture. If those individuals and small groups connected with other like minded givers around the world, they would soon form a culture. This culture would help each other out, grow and become stronger in their giver-oriented values. Then this would have an effect of swaying the entire world.

Such a culture would advance rapidly. It would be obvious that they would have wealth and riches beyond the average of the ordinary population. Being in a culture is vital, since it is an ecosystem in which benefits all. Silicon Valley is such an example for the technology world. There is a whole ecosystem in place for start-ups and existing tech companies to not only survive but thrive.

Money (aka survival) is important. But we should never take our eye off the prize. What we wish to contribute to the world, our own personal vision statement is far more important. Many people want to contribute and make a difference, but are afraid of doing so because of fear of not surviving the current, difficult demands of a consumer based, highly conditional culture.

I feel the solution is very simple, actually. Find something that you feel you wish to contribute. Find a way to do so and partner with others who wish to make a difference. Keep learning and honing your skills and share what you know with others. The beauty of a Giver Culture is the promise of a  large community aligned in the hope to do just that. To make a difference, simply and practically.

A few months ago (May ’10) I picked up a gem of a book titled ‘The Power of Giving’.   Obviously, it was an immediate draw.   Its a beautiful, simple book full of insights and words of wisdom related to the practical side of giving, and what purpose it has in our lives.

It seems that the Giver Culture truly starting to take root, as evidenced by this inspiring book.  In fact, it helped me, after a long period of being busy, stressed out and struggling to stay afloat, to take a look at what is important to me: resuming this blog, which is one of the gifts I wish to give.

This brings me to a good point, that is repeated in Mr. Jamal & Mr. McKinnon’s book, that giving doesn’t need to require tremendous resources.  In Chapter 2, titled ‘What Can You Give’, the authors list a number of things that can be given, many of which do not require tremendous amounts of resources that might drain us in difficult times.  These are:

• love
• laughter
• knowledge
• leadership
• hope
• life
• time
• money
• skills
• health
• touch
• attention
• advice

To this wonderful book, the only addition I would put forward is a section or chapter on ‘Gifts That Keep On Giving’.  There are certain types of gifts that have a long-standing value and can keep providing, effortlessly (or nearly so) for most of a human lifetime.   A house, for instance can provide a shelter that can be given for a long period of time.  Couchsurfing.org is a prime example of this.   The house doesn’t even have to be yours.

An investment fund can also provide a great source of giving.   Instead of giving to charity, why not save for charity?  Save an amount of money and invest it in a way that generates interest and give the profits to charity.   All that is lost is the potential to use the money directly, but even so such investments can help provide collateral for loans (perhaps a mortgage for a larger home with an extra room to share?).

Fruit and vegetables planted in a garden or a balcony, can also be a source of giving.  Each year, you can give the proceeds away.   My father-in-law does this and my grandparents did it for most of their lives.  Sometimes it doesn’t take a lot of effort to share a bounty of life & love that people will truly enjoy and appreciate.

It is true that there is, indeed, a Power in Giving.   Thank you Mr. Jamal & Mr. McKinnon for bringing this to light.

“Like Shel Silverstein’s concept of “The Giving Tree” there are aspects of culture that are dedicated to giving rather than exploiting or acquiring power. Imagine an entire culture emerging from within thebelly of our narcissistic capitalism. This culture is a culture of giving, of selfless compassion and helping, not because we are of any religion or law, but just because it is who we are. “

The quote above is a gift to this article, which is apt since this idea, itself, begins with a gift. Since this gift is a new culture for humanity—a Culture of Givers, this gift also contains the concept of a gift within itself. Just as the seeds of life contain the ability to eventually create their own seeds of life. This culture is also a gift to Life, and since you are a being infused with the essence life, it is a gift to you.

Like all gifts you may accept or reject it; it is your decision. Your have the right to decline it, or to receive it, to disbelieve it, to believe it. It is your choice—your freedom. Do with it what you will.

As this work is published, this Giver Culture already exists amongst us. Yet for now, we are small and fragile. It may be too early for our idea, just as democracy seemed premature in the fifth and sixth centuries when appeared in ancient Greece and India. Even so, those early democracies paved the way forward for more mature democracies, with checks and balances, universal suffrage, racial and gender equality and other enabling features allowing human beings to enjoy the greatest amount of freedom since the dawn of civilization.

Like any new idea, our early culture of Givers holds the potential to be a seed that grows into a new way for humanity and life to interact. It offers the promise of undoing the damage that has been done to the Earth, of finding a new respectful relationship with the life on this planet, and as a way of creating, for ourselves, a world that is exciting, rewarding, new, beautiful and full of richness and freedom. This new culture exists, in part, to displace, but not replace, the Culture of Consumers that is currently dominating the planet; our goal is to cooperate with them, yet to limit the destruction that they are causing to the Earth. It proposes the eventual transformation of society—from a majority of takers to a majority of givers.

What is the Giver Culture?

One of the simplest explanations of a culture could be stated as a shared way of living. The Giver Culture is simply a framework for a way of living that heavily supports creativity and discovery. Composed of creators and seekers who share and give their creations and discoveries freely amongst others, our new culture celebrates our creativity, freely shares our discoveries, and wishes for our gifts to spread onwards. This sharing, of knowledge, art, inspiration and discovery, is an enabling force for all members of our culture, pushing the limits of what we can do and what we can know. Since it is an open culture, we allow and encourage all beings to join regardless of what is currently seen as gender, race, class or beliefs.

As regards to beliefs, each member is encouraged to seek and create a customized belief and personal subculture, to try it and test it and alter it if necessary. This is ultimately a culture, not an ideology or a religion, and even more than most cultures, we are able to support a variety of ideas and beliefs—and even encourage and celebrate this diversity.As members of the Giver Culture, we are more interested in expanding our knowledge and experience than acquiring material goods. Material goods are not shunned, but used simply for what they are and are shared whenever the opportunity arises. We come together, in centralized locations to learn and share knowledge. We seek knowledge anywhere we can, whether from their own members, or from members and institutions of the Consumer Culture, from direct experience, or from the dwindling populations of Hunter-Gatherer societies that still exist.

Our culture is also rooted in the laws of cooperation. It considers, as recent mathematics suggest, that generally cooperation is often a superior, more stable strategy to competition, especially in the long-term. Cooperation is encouraged, amongst ourselves, amongst other cultures and amongst life itself.Givers wish to create more than they consume. Whether we create stories, paintings, ideas, music, poems, sculptures, connections, meditations, dances, teachings, structures, jokes, families, communities or many other forms, we create and share with whom we can. With members of the Consumer Culture, we do as members of the Consumer Culture already do, trading our creations for currency. In turn, we use currency to help better the world. Our finances are used to create films, books, games, software, scientific research, inventions, crafts, art, music and creative corporate entities to help produce goods, that contain low material costs, to be sold for a profit to consumers. Our profits are used to help buy and protect wildlife reserves that are given freely to the collective life on Earth.

The Giver Culture, through our sharing of resources, respect for other living things and cooperative spirit, tends to leave a small footprint on the Earth. We organize ourselves together to pool and share resources that do not need to be purchased by each individual. By doing so, we can use our time and money more wisely furthering our communities and ourselves. Since we use less of the Earth’s resources, the Giver lifestyle helps to lessen environmental destruction. It also allows for the possibility of more free time for each individual.

Members of the Giver Culture can opt to work less to live well and spend the rest of our time creating, discovering, learning new skills and experiencing the beauty and richness of life.

In a more primordial, unorganized form, a Giver Culture is starting to emerge amongst some scientists, artists and engineers of this world. The scientific world is full of cases, in which great, valuable discoveries or inventions are given back to the world community. There have been many scientific breakthroughs, shared freely by those that made the discoveries that have resulted in many advances and technologies used daily. If counted, the sum of the riches that these advances have given us would be immeasurable.

The inventions and discoveries of scientists are often ones that shape us the most, and although corporations privately hold many discoveries, there are many others that are freely given to the academic world.

In the world of computer software, members of the Open Source Software Movement echo many of the key tenants of the Giver Culture. In this movement, programmers, testers, web designers, and artists, work together, cooperating to create software that is given to the world for free. From doing so, they gain experience, knowledge, friendships, connections, esteem and many other benefits. Even with such, non-monetary rewards, it is often found that their true calling is to create, to collaborate, to discover, to step up to new challenges and have fun in the process.

Likewise, this is a calling that we adamantly share in.

Although there is no clear, compelling evidence that life, or the human experience, is endowed with any special purpose beyond simple survival, we, as creators and seekers, cannot idly accept this to be the final verdict. We, as creators, can give life a purpose: to seek and create ad infinity. It is not that we assert that this is life’s true purpose, we assume that, unless revealed, life may not have a purpose, yet we do not suppose that we are prevented from endowing life with our own created purpose. Since we continuously seek and discover, we are not prevented from discovering any possible purpose, if it truly exists. Even if a grand purpose to life does hold to be true, we would try to test and seek the entire depths of what that might mean to us.

For more on this subject, please read part 2, “Why a Giver Culture?”

This is a continuation of ideas presented in part 1, “The Giver Culture“.

In this time in history, a number of dividing opinions exist regarding whether humanity is progressing towards an improved world or whether we are dooming ourselves (and countless other species).

Answering the question, “Are we doomed?” is a little more complex than offering a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

One group of people might suppose that we, as humanity, are fine. Why add more complexity and divisions by creating yet another cultural branch of humanity? This group may argue that science and technology will help solve our problems, that we are living in a Golden Age of humanity, and as we progress, current problems will be rendered meaningless, as some of our old problems were rendered meaningless by current advances.

Another ultra-positive viewpoint heard in some circles—is the belief that humanity is on the brink of a spiritual revolution and that we will become collectively enlightened. (I’m personally hoping for this one, however I feel that we have much more progress to make before this happens.)

Yet these are others who tend to think that we on the verge of extinction due to an imminent and devastating environmental catastrophe. They point out that our way of life is based on growth and consumerism—that this lifestyle the majority of us live is destroying the Earth.

Often technology is blamed. Sometimes human nature is blamed. Either way, I seldom hear truly practical solutions presented.

A few solutions, such as the New Tribal movements, wish to turn the clock back to our pre-civilized past arguing that was the only time that human beings fit naturally into the circle of life. It would take all of humanity, simultaneously in alignment to return to a Hunter-Gathering society—and it is obvious that is not going to happen any time soon, if ever.

So are we doomed to extinction or will we somehow transcend these problems?

When I was in my early twenties, I read an excellent book by Daniel Quinn that echoed some thoughts I had been having about the problems that civilized culture was facing. Before I read this book, had been doing some science fiction story writing at the time and wrote a short story that hinted at two cultures of humanity that ended up living amongst the stars. One culture was based from Earth, one was based from the colonists of Mars.

Each had opposing viewpoints on how to colonize the Galaxy. The Terrans, having discovered faster-than-light travel before the Martians, were the first to discover planets with life outside our solar system. They colonized these life-rich worlds. The Martians, having created a life-rich world on the previously dead planet of Mars, skipped the life-filled worlds and gave life to dead worlds with potential. In hindsight, the Terrans of my story were part of a Consumer Culture, based on the one that is dominant on Earth today.

The Martians were a Giver Culture, one that is just appearing on Earth now.(This was just a subtle background for a story, in which the Terrans finally face a sentient species. These aliens viewed the Terran world snatching as sacrilegious—thus wordlessly declared war on them.)

Daniel Quinn’s book, Ishmael, allowed me to put this little science fiction back-story into a truer perspective. It seemed to me that the Consumer Culture that Daniel Quinn talked about in this book (he calls it the Taker Culture), was truly a cultural anomaly, believing in unlimited growth and consumption, that would and could truly bring humanity and countless other species to the brink of extinction. This book also widened my perspective by showing that, since we seem to view history as only existing when civilization appeared, we often forget that we existed for far longer without civilization. Countless other cultures preceded the rise of our Consumer Culture . The Consumer Culture was not the only way humanity could live. Ishmael never truly gave any solution besides stepping outside the Consumer/Taker culture to try to find a way to live.

With my imagined Martian society, I realized that there could be another way for humanity to live. I expanded the idea of the Giver culture, somewhat, for a science fiction novel that I had planned to write. Eventually, however, I started to think that this culture should not be regulated to simply one of countless ideas in the world of speculative fiction, but should, instead, become a real way for humanity to live.

One thing I noted, after reading Ishmael, and thinking about these questions further, is that the Consumer/Taker Culture simply had to appear. Take a time machine, for example, armed with a powerful ray gun. Go back in time, and blast the initial Consumer/Taker cultural anomaly out of existence—before it had a chance to spread.

Would this solve the problem? Is this cultural mess-up simply a one-chance wonder, or would it have appeared in a different form, at some other time, regardless?

I place a strong bet in the latter.

This brings me to branch of mathematics called Game Theory. Many people have seen the movie or read the book, A Beautiful Mind, about a Nobel Prize winning game theorist, John Nash. Many students of sociology and psychology are given a peek at Game Theory, by playing one of its most well known examples, Prisoner’s Dilemma. Without going into many details (although some of the details in Game Theory are fascinating) Game Theory often deals with what is called Evolutionary Stable Strategies.

An Evolutionary Stable Strategy is a strategy, if adopted by a population, which prevents invasion from an alternate, competing strategy. In Ishmael, Danniel Quinn’s two major branches of human cultures are, the Takers (what I term as Consumers) and the Leavers, which are tribal, hunter-gathering oriented societies. He shows that the early Leaver societies dominated human culture on Earth until some indeterminate point of time roughly around ten thousand years ago when the first Taker cultures appeared. The Taker culture then systematically drove the neighboring Leaver societies into extinction, either by absorbing them, or by destroying them by waging wars for local resources. The reason the Taker lifestyle was more successful, at first, is that they waged war with any competing species to increase their food supply. With an increased food supply, their population increased, forcing them to step up resource gathering—including more vigilant attempts to cut off any competition for their growing demands of food.

Eventually, in the present day, you can only find a handful of Leaver cultures. Most humans live in Taker cultures, and we are nearing our limitations of this type of lifestyle. The Taker Culture, in comparison to the Leaver Culture seems to be an Evolutionary Stable Strategy, at least until our resources run out.

The fact that the Taker Culture can only be a superior strategy when there are newly available resources, strongly hints that it is not a true Evolutionary Stable Strategy. It is just simply one that has not run its full course. And if it is not, what alternate type of strategy could truly be a more stable solution? Would this new idea of a Giver culture be closer to a true Evolutionary Stable Strategy?

Evidence exists that it might be so.

Richard Dawkins, the famed evolutionary biologist and science popular writer, wrote a chapter, in his critically acclaimed book, The Selfish Gene, titled ‘Nice Guys Finish First’. He pointed out that game theorists have often shown that cooperative strategies beat out competitive or purely selfish strategies in the long term. Although the Consumer/Taker Culture may seem, at first glance, to have strong elements of cooperation, it also has a very marked history of competition, especially when resources dwindle. Much evidence suggests that we are nearing a major problem, as the population explosion on Earth is accelerating, and resources are becoming increasingly harder to find.

This is where a Giver Culture may be a more stable strategy in the long term. A Giver Culture, would have the technical know-how to create solutions to our problems. Food could be grown with the most limited of resources using cutting-edge scientific knowledge. Having high levels of education, especially amongst women, would slow down population growth. To ensure that the Giver Culture grows in numbers, families would become larger partially through adoption. As members of the Consumer/Taker culture grow beyond their ability to feed themselves, many of their children may be abandoned, just as what happens in famine stricken areas today. The Giver Culture, a compassionate culture rooted in spirit of cooperation, would be a natural place for these abandoned children to turn.

A Giver Culture could also lessen the Consumer Culture’s resource thirst, by weaning them off the purchase of material goods somewhat, by the consumption of virtual entertainment and goods in their stead. As energy costs spike, in response to global oil shortages, people will be unable to travel as often. Improved virtual worlds, evolved from today’s video games, combined with generations of new consumers, who are increasingly more computer-savvy, will help generate a large market for such goods. Their social standings in these virtual worlds may slowly surpass their social standings in the real world (this is already happening). A Giver Culture may take advantage of this by being the creators of the most premier content—since it is a culture where creativity is practically worshiped. The profits of such creative endeavors can help to secure land that is protected against the machinations of the consumer lifestyle.

So do we need a Giver Culture to survive? Unfortunately the answer to that question is uncertain. It has a good chance, however, of increasing our likelihood, as there is evidence that such a culture may be closer to a true Evolutionary Stable Strategy.

In the beginning of this article, I divided the question of whether humanity survives or thrives into two possible answers—‘yes’ or ‘no’.

But is that the most important question, whether we, as a species, survive? Is life only about survival?

For many members of the Consumer/Taker society, it seems so. The pinnacle of the consumer society is a comfortable existence. In this modern age, we surely have almost mastered this goal, yet for most it is a very unsatisfying way to live. In modern countries, where most people live a fairly comfortable existence, people are often left wondering whether there is anything more to life. Many members of modern society are increasingly finding themselves to be depressed, lonely, anxious and with deep feelings of despair. To choose a Giver Culture simply on survival, so that we may lessen our chances for extinction, is a choice based on fear. Fear of extinction feels like an extension of the individual’s fear of death. Living a life centered upon the fear of death is often a very poor choice. Human beings grow and thrive on risk and experience, none of which can be had if the fear of death is too strong. Likewise, the Giver Culture does not simply exist so that we may stave of our own extinction.

The Giver Culture is necessary for humanity to raise the bar, for us to start living more authentically. It exists for us to find out exactly what are the limits to what we can know, experience, create, love, find, make. What are humanity’s limits? How can we find out what they are? A creative culture, such as the Giver Culture, would seek out the limits of these questions. By exploring the inner and outer universe, we can find out what it truly means to exist. This reason alone is why we need a Giver Culture.For more on this subject, please read part 2, “Foundations of a Giver Culture“

Love.  It is a word that stands alone.  It has been the subject of much pleasure and strife in human history. We give great credence to this word.  It fulfils us, inspires us, and takes us to new heights and depths.  It renders us helpless, yet frees us to soar upon the heavens.

What is this stuff called love?  Is it simply an illusion or an actual force of nature?  Is it both, neither, nor?

With human beings, love is a messy affair.  You can say whatever you wish about the human realm of love, but it is often a complex mess of emotions and feelings that make it hard to decipher.  One of my good friends, a fairly rational thinker, feels that love is simply biology.  What humans call love, he states, is simply a wash of hormones and neurotransmitters released by the brain, evolved for the purpose of passing along our genes.  Although I can follow his reasoning, for it is hard to find fault with it, yet it doesn’t ring true to me. It never seemed like the complete answer.

Once I looked deeply into some of the fundamental roots of the joys and difficulties of relationships I realized that my friend was only partially correct. Although he thought he had ‘love’ all figured out, he hadn’t truly reached the heart of the matter.

Human beings are undoubtedly one of the most complex species that have ever evolved on this planet.  We evolved our emotions the same way as our mammalian cousins.  We evolved such feelings simply so we would, simply, connect.

If one examines the world of love and relationships purely rationally, one can see that they do not quite make sense.  Human beings, with our ability to rationalize, must see the illogic even more clearly than our animal brethren.  It seems that love is such a complex and powerful mess of emotions for human beings simply for the fact that we need to overpower our strong rationalities in order to connect at all.

It dawned on me that love is simply ‘connection’.  Love is the ability to connect.  Absolute love is a completely open connection.  When you love something such as a person, or the joys of painting, or sailing, or eating chocolate, you are connecting with it.  The stronger the connection, the stronger the love is.  ‘Loving people’ are people who are simply open to connections.

Under this line of reasoning, the opposite of love, of connection, is repulsion.  Repulsion is what we experience as fear.  Fear drives us away from things, where love attracts. In the centre, between love and fear is simply ‘disconnection’.  Disconnection means nothing; there is neither love nor fear.

This insight certainly seems interesting.  What made me even more curious about this line of reasoning was that it took me to something else that I have been thinking about for quite some time—that trinary logic might provide some insights to some of the mysteries of our universe.

With computers we have a binary system of fundamental building blocks—the ‘O’ and the ‘1’.  With these two components we can build an infinite variety of hardware and software, all of which rests on this binary foundation.

With atomic forces we tend to see three behaviours—Attraction, Repulsion, Neutrality.  The interplay of these forces create the molecular world that we experience on a daily basis.  Whether the entire universal building blocks, whether quarks or strings or something else not yet discovered, are also governed by three types of behaviour is not yet certain, but perhaps it is something that might end up being true—universe being a trinary system.

This trinary idea made me think of Taoism.  With Taoism the universe separated into two fundamental forces, the dark Yin force and the light Yang force.  According to Taoism the interplay between these forces created all that was in the universe.  Although, according to Taoism, there was another ‘something’ or ‘nothing’ that these yin and yang forces originally derived from.  The balancing that Taoists attempt to achieve is hoped to bring a closer to this ultimate universal essence.  This original nothing-essence seemed to me as the third state that I had been thinking about with my thoughts on love and fear.  Disconnection, which is neither love or fear, lies somewhere as the potential to be either.

-1—0—1

Fear—Disconnect—Love

Repulsion—Neutrality—Connection

Now one of the more interesting things about connection is that it unites and creates diversity and complexity.  Single-celled life forms connected billions of years ago to allow multi-cellular creatures to exist.  One day, the connections that we are laying, in this information age, may allow the human species, and maybe even all Earth-based life, to connect in ways that would be as revolutionary as the rise of multi-cellular organisms.  The more we connect the greater we become.  Perhaps this is a fundamental mathematical truism stemming from the very trinary nature of our universe itself.  Perhaps our biological mess of emotions is simply an echo of this primary law of the universe.

Now this same friend once lived in a Taoist temple for a couple of years as a teenager.  He used to believe, and perhaps still does, that when Buddhists masters seek enlightenment they are pointlessly shooting their energies into a black hole, turning their life force into nothingness.

On a motorcycle ride home, after sitting in a beautiful banyan tree in my neighbourhood today, I was reminded of my friend’s statement, made over a decade ago.  It just popped in my mind.  Curious to know why this particular statement had so suddenly appeared in my mind, I examined it and suddenly I received an insight.  I felt that even if this is what Buddhist masters were actually doing when achieving nirvana they might be doing exactly what they should.

A master, being aware of subtleties that we cannot ordinarily comprehend, is quite aware of anything that causes fear.  Fear cannot exist at this state if the master wishes to progress.  Now what could be the absolute, most frightening concept that is known to exist in the universe?  Entering a place where no escape exists, where time and space are meaningless, a prison cut entirely off from the rest of the universe—a black hole.

A black hole is known to cosmologists as a singularity.  All laws of physics break down inside this singularity.  The only other singularity that has ever existed in the known universe, besides a black hole, is the universe just before the Big Bang itself.

The Big Bang.  It was essentially a black hole just before the universe began.  Now this singularity is the source of everything, of all life, of all death.  If these Buddhist masters were actually shooting themselves into such singularities, the eventual outcome would be the same.  Certainly, they would be cut off from this universe, yet they would eventually be part of a singularity that would eventually become its own source of everything in its own universe.

So by facing this ultimate fear, it results in the ultimate love: the creation of all.  And this practice, of hunting down and conquering fears, ends up balancing things out to allow the greatest expression of love of all—pure creation.

Giving the great peace that is ‘nothing’ to your fear as you face it, causes it to die, which then gives birth to love.

Give your negativities the gift of peace. Then love that peace.  It is the source of creation & the greatest love of all.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

-Albert Einstein-

There is Truth and there is Beauty.  Some may chose one over the other.  Few are those who find the delectable discovery that when Truth and Beauty are combined it forms a symphony that approaches divinity not only in its depth of creative power, but also its scope of infinite possibilities.  Today I saw but a glimpse of that rare beauty that such a combination can bring.

Since I was in my early twenties I have had a number of experiences that have shaken me to my core.  At first, these experiences came slowly.  Recently the frequency of these experiences has seemed to accelerate—almost exponentially.   Each experience has had its own indistinguishable nature.  No two experiences were alike.  Some were like being shot out of a cannon; some took days or weeks to conclude.  Some were composed of one big experience.  Others took a string of fairly large incidences.  Today I had a number of small insights, coincidences and experiences that all centred around one central theme.  This theme was about the nature of Faith.

The very idea of faith has been one in which I have had trouble with for quite a long time.  Previously I never saw it as necessary.  I felt that looking at the underlying truth of any matter was much more important than having faith in something unsubstantiated. It seemed foolish, I thought, to put blind trust in something that had no facts or reason behind it.  Yet I always felt that “a leap of faith” is what drives evolution, and the discovery of the unknown.  The two ideas seemed irreconcilable.

Today, for the first time in my life, the two ideas were not irreconcilable any longer.  I now seem to have a perspective that not only allows for a “leap of faith” but also gives it the wings to soar.

All one needs do, I found, was to allow for the possibility—to entertain any possibility.  One does not need to take this possibility too seriously, yet one needs to open the gates of their imagination just a smidgen to allow that possibility to exist.  For when that is done, the human mind will eventually start to figure out how that might be possible, and when there are a few human minds at work on such a possibility, then success is even more likely.

Jesus spoke of having only the faith the size of a mustard seed as being enough to move a mountain.  What I believe he meant by this, was that if you allowed just the seed of a possibility—a tiny amount of faith to acknowledge that a mountain might be moved—then one would naturally find a way for that mountain to be moved.  If we open our eyes we can see this in the modern era.  We have many marvellous technologies now that were not even conceivable for the vast majority of the time we have, as a species, been here on Earth.  These advances all required a smidgen of faith to start, as well as being backed by the foundations of truth.  And the greater beauty was that these discoveries inspired others to build and discover more and more.  Now, in today’s world, moving a mountain not an impossible task for human beings to accomplish—for we have the knowledge and vision to accomplish such a task.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine who has been on a spiritual journey of discovery, came down from the mountains of Taiwan. He and his wife gave up everything, including money, to put trust in existence.  The timing of his visit was absolutely perfect.  He contacted me just as I was looking to contact him.

When he came, he had some outrageous spiritual theories.  Some of which I had heard before he went into the mountains.  They seemed irrational and absolutely crazed in some aspects.  They completely made no sense especially in view of modern scientific knowledge.  When he came he asked me to have faith in him, simply as a friend.  I opened myself to the possibilities that my friend’s theories were true.  I did not believe completely that they were, but I instead imagined, as if, they were true.

I never completely came to agreement with my friend in the end, although we spend days talking as if the foundation of his theories were factual.  We built upon these theories, expanding it with our ideas and imaginative speculations.  In the end they allowed me to make some spiritual discoveries that I have been testing, with great success, since his visit ended.  My theories are different than his.  Yet I would possibly never have come to such conclusions if I had not opened my mind to what he believed.  I took a leap of faith, and since I never abandoned what I felt to be true, I not only survived any potential crash, but have also soared.

If our perspective is founded on a layer of truth, at least as close to the truth as we currently know, this can provide us with a secure foundation.  Yet, if we layer our perspective, with beauty provided by our imaginations, we can add an extra layer of colour and texture to nature without losing site of what is real.  This frees our imaginations to find solutions to problems that are currently impossible, and with time, awareness, patience and cooperation we might eventually discover ways to make the impossible truly possible.

By mixing truth with beauty we can create and discover more, for it gives us greater motivation to create and discover.  Books, films, art are often more powerful when they mix truth with beauty.  Discoveries are more compelling when they not only give us the facts of how and why certain processes in nature happen, but also give us the possibilities of where these discoveries might lead us.

The culmination of my day ended up with me, by sheer coincidence, watching a movie that was about the power of faith.  An army of extremely talented and creative people created this beautiful film.  Its central theme was faith, which had strangely also been the central theme of my day.  This movie was woven in a most delightful way that mixed realism and fantasy in the visuals, the message, the characters and the plot.

This day and this movie gave power to this idea that all we need is simply a tiny amount of faith—just enough faith to imagine possibilities. By doing so we can, through our imaginations, add beauty to our perspective without abandoning our foundations of truth.

In the last week a string of remarkable circumstances provided me with a number of amazing perspectives that led to the realization through direct experience that a great Peace lies within us.

This is a type of Peace that is deep within all of us, it is the true source of true creativity, love and bliss.

No one is responsible for this Peace.  Only we are.  It is our responsibility.  It is our birthright.  All we need to do is to access it.  And this Peace lies within each one of us.

To reach this Peace, all we need to do is be one with the Now.  Be here.  Feel yourself.  Feel your emotions, your aches and pains, watch the illusion of time dissolve as only the Now is present.

The deeper you come to this realization that all is in the Now, a great Peace will fulfil you.  Start spinning the illusion of past and future and the Peace will dissipate.

It is our greatest freedom, to access this great Peace through the Now.

Human beings tend to compare.  They compare each other to those around them.  Years ago, a friend of mine and I went on a walk to the park at twilight.  On the way back our conversation shifted to how people compare themselves to others.  About how people comparatively judge themselves and those around them, positively or negatively.  She cited a study in which people, who watch media featuring able and attractive actors, will rate their partners lower, after recently viewing the media.

This made me think.  Of course we all do this.  I do this, and so do most people.  In fact, much of my unhappiness is usually linked to judging myself too harshly. Often, the root of that judgement is based on how I compare myself with others.  I thought, what is a more holistic, and truer type of perspective that could transcend such a viewpoint.

I realized that we could all look at ourselves as unique, and offering a unique perspective on the universe.  That we could focus on this aspect of ourselves, instead of looking at how we compare to others.

If, by looking at ourselves and others as unique, creative individuals, we can see each person’s value and beauty.  Life is never truly the same twice.  Life tends to favour uniqueness, especially the more complex it becomes.  Human beings are some of the most complex forms of life that we know of.  We are one of the only species that can truly be creative.

Each person looks at the universe in a creative way, in their own personalized perspective.  Even if this perspective is not shared, it is an act of creation.  It is infused with its own meanings, symbolism and value.

Each day, each one of us is taking in input from our five senses, interpreting the input in our own way, and creating our own perspective of that matter.  The only problem is that few of us ever notice that we are constructing complex and fantastic perspectives, since we are so focused on how we are comparing to others.  If we could see how unique each one of us were, and celebrate our uniqueness, and others, we would find a much healthier way to view our place in the world, without needing to constantly compare ourselves to others.

For, at the very least, we are creators of unique perspectives, artists interpreting and creating the world every moment.

Knots have always held a fascination for me.  I have always marvelled at the way that knots almost magically form in a tangled string over time. I have often contemplated that perhaps this is how life formed. Amino acid strands combined with chemical bonds and quantum uncertainties may have “tangled” molecules together forming even more complex proteins that eventually led to life.  Perhaps by studying knots, their types, and how they can naturally form on their own, we may discover many secrets about the origins of life.

In my struggle to gain an understanding of superstring theory, I have also mused about knots.  Superstring theory claims that particles may be the vibrations of tiny multidimensional strings.  Topology studies, which often ponder the shapes of multidimensional objects, state that knots aren’t always possible in every dimension.  Knots can exist in the third dimension, for example, but aren’t possible in a second, or fourth spacial dimension.  Perhaps at the 9th or 10th dimensions, that superstring theory is currently claiming exists, there are many other kinds of knots that are impossible for us to visualize. Superstring knots?  Perhaps unravelling such mysteries could lead to a deeper understanding of our universe.

Recently, I have discovered another type of knot.  A psychological knot that is the root cause for some of the behaviours that we are not usually aware of.  It takes an extremely contemplative and honest self-assessment to see these knots, and the best way to unravel them.  When the threads are followed, their hidden trails can lead deep into the psyche, with surprising results revealed.

For instance, years-ago, I caught myself telling a white lie to a colleague.  I wasn’t even sure, at first, why I made this lie.  I even watched myself make the lie and marvelled at the fact that I did so.  I immediately went outside for a walk, to try and understand the reason why I had made this seemingly innocent falsehood.  Sitting outside, under the trees and the sun, I followed the thread and discovered that I was actually trying to manipulate another person through the grapevine of gossip.  I wanted a certain coworker to feel a certain way about me and I was trying to spread information in an indirect way. I wanted to manipulate feelings for how my ego had been bruised before.  It was a very subtle type of revenge.  All of this, and all of these feelings were formerly below the surface.  I didn’t even formally know they existed before.

It made me realize how certain actions and dreams that I had in the past were also related, even if I previously thought my actions were benign. All of these thoughts, dreams and feelings were laying there, tangled below the surface of my consciousness, like a giant knot.  Seeing the knot for what it was, allowed me to work on it, to start unravelling it.  Keeping the heart, soul, and mind free of such knots takes great honesty and insight.

Ultimately the knot untangles, unties and untethers the self: leading to a truer and greater freedom.