EVOLVE: Changing our Minds for the World we Want
As a Permaculturist I am here to support this cause, believing that it is we who are the crafters of our Reality and the designers of our Society. Now, many would contest this statement saying that there are very rich powerful people who are in control of our world and we are trapped in a world of their design. This may seem to be the case, but when you step back and look from far you will see that their “power” comes from our support or indifference, for me this is where the education and application of permaculture come in.
The limits to change our world are based on the limits that we have placed upon our own self. Our self identification is a construct of our mind, it exists is the abstract form of thought and hasn’t any concrete form, meaning it is subject to change. Because we identify with our bodies and thoughts, yet haven’t learned about their inner workings, it seems we are innocent victims of circumstance, being “products of our environment”. This self-defeating mode of the human thought is but a hiccup in our path of evolution, it is a fear of response-ability i.e. our ability to respond in new and unexpected ways to previously set patterns. The mind is a bit like a record it has grooves that we have created through repetition, the more we follow a particular groove the deeper embed this identity or habit-response-belief becomes.
I am speaking about CHANGE. How do we change our society and the world? It is not an easy feat, right? Well, the world and society are changing all the time as you know, so it isn’t about how we can change it, but how to direct its change.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”. This is MUCH easier said than done, without a doubt the grooves of our personal patterns are deep and most of us haven’t been given the tools to know how to skip the needle of our mind onto a new surface to create a totally new groove of our choosing.
Most of us have experienced some kind of dramatic turning point in our lives where we see things new and we feel different, again many times this seems to come about from some outside occurrence or circumstance. From my experience and perception this is not the case, somewhere deep within you there was a yearning for this change, normally this occurs within our subconscious, which we are out of touch with.
Our subconscious is a mysterious piece in this grand puzzle of change, we experience it mostly in our dreams, which are abstract and hard to make any sense of. Many people want a change in their life so badly, yet because they don’t have the tools to change the patterns of their mind, they try to bring it about by forcing change on their outer expression of patterns, i.e. behavior. This is a slippery slope, it can bring about real change if attention is given to changing the patterns of thought as well, but more often than not this approach does more harm than good.
There is no simple solution to this perceived barrier on the path of our evolution, all I know is, it takes a devoted effort to observing your own mind without judgement and an effort to respect others journey on this path of Life. It is an arduous journey that we are all treading every moment, facing the fears of our own responsibility to ourself. I am far from perfect and there are many things I would like to change about my inner and outer patterns, I am only passing on what I have glimpsed in my own experience looking through the lens of the ancient Seers, Rishis teachings.
Where Permaculture comes into all this “meditative talk” is – observation. Before you can decide any component of your design you need to understand “the lay of the land”, how all the systems both unseen and seen are integrated into and interacting with one another. So, lets observe our thoughts to prepare the ground of these new grooves to be seeded with the Love for this world that we all have! When the going seems slow, slow yourself down even more.
I am a Blogger at Vermont For Evolution and for Vermont Commons, as well as an aspiring permaculturist and yogi. I hope to be able to contribute to this think-tank helping to bringing about the shift we are all aiming to achieve.
Blessings on your journey, Simha
