 Council Room
Thriving in the Business of Life
 Council Framework in a Unified Field: To create and sustain for this Earth, and around All-That-Is in the greater realm of existence, a Circle of Safety and Caring, and in separating the wheat from the chaff, giving only Food.
“What do we do before Enlightenment? We chop wood and carry water. What do we do after Enlightenment? We chop wood and carry water. First the ecstasy, then the laundry”…and then…
 To my mind and in my heart, the message carried forth, and conveyed across time by the indigenous tribes of this planet, including those who still hold strong in their connection with Nature as the basis for culture, is that the right and responsibility  for access to clean Water, Food, Shelter, and the Freedom To Be in that system of choice, is the basic element of our Common Ground with All Life, and with Universal Law, and for our mutual participation in it. This message is carried forward for the sake of the Ancestors and those yet to be born. It is a Covenant in which this Garden must be able to abide in order to continue to flourish, and to protect All Life.
The Maya and the Essenes, the Nubians and the Celts, and all the myriad and multitude of tribes and traditions across time and space, that are expressions of Spirit moving through form, have had culture as format for the experience of the Whole. In losing touch with Common Ground as cultural design, we also lose a sense of the purpose and meaning in our daily rituals and activity and of the Intrepid Tenacity that keeps us together and sustains us throughout.
Here’s a definition of Tenacity, which I see as a vital part of the Science of Grace: “The cohesive force among constituent particles, and that property of material bodies by which their parts resist an effort to force or pull them asunder.” This might also be called the scientific definition of Love…and while we’re at it, here’s a definition for Intrepid: “Resolute Courage – literally meaning without agitation or alarm.”
 With the potent and precarious place we find ourselves in at this time, we seem to have arrived at a major turning point in our Journeys of the Heart for the opportunity to think again, and relearn. All change comes from a feeling of chaos and travail, along with an opportunity to learn that dignity, Love, and purity of intent can exist without all the trappings of the “advanced” societies of this world. In the barest of situations we can not only exist but blossom and flower beautifully, if we have what we truly need. Let’s consider this, and hold on till we get all the way around if we can, OK?
 So now within this framework, let’s look at the idea that for thousands of years there have been those who practice a belief system that leads to a way of Life expressing through culture, that holds the Good of the People and All Life as Common Ground, through the protection and preservation of those resources and ideals that are held as Commons - the Land, the Natural World, and the work of the people in how they choose to live out their lives, their tradition, their beliefs.
 This way of shaping space and organizing people has also been presented “from time to time” as being a threat to the projected belief systems in some parts of the world that are based on conquest and competition in the showing of prowess amongst individuals as a way to be more, and to take more, and to get ahead of the game through the control of a situation for personal gain. Over time, this became the inherent value system of those cultures, and its driving force. For the indigenous peoples who co-operated in a way of identifying with the Life-force that is the very richness of the Natural World that they protected and held Sacred and shared in with All-That-Is, this is also what put them on a “new world map” and on the list of places to be “developed” for profit. Whoever was seen, personally, as a threat to the ideal of this ever-expanding way of doing business or was a part of what had become the next venture for the acquisition of necessary resources to run this expensive machine, was given the designation of irrelevant, and ultimately if persisting, as enemy.
Where are these indigenous communities around the world whose way of Life has always been derived and sustained through the knowledge in living and working in a Harmony with Nature that preserves and protects those same natural resources and components of labor that are still being coveted for “development” by the few, and what is it we can learn from their way of Life for this “time we're in for” on this planet? Let’s look and See… We might even say we’re about to have the “time of our lives” with it.
 How is it that the rest of us are now arriving at the place where the Common Ground of our hearts, as well as the voice of our scientists, is telling us that this Way is what we need to survive as a people and a planet in order to Thrive in the Business of Life? In the Moment before Dawn that we find ourselves in, this Story as last night’s Dream, is turning us All into focusing Together, from all Walks of Life, as the people who share this Earth and the Sky as a Common Ground in our mission for a Choice to continue existence in form. This is not only our Home, it is our Schoolhouse, and we have so much to learn from the Ancient Wisdom that gives our Science of Life its integrity and purpose.
 The Teachers, and the peasants, as we have All been called to Being in one time or another, work long and hard to keep Culture and its place on the Earth intact, and some of us never do give up, no matter how many are lost, and how much is taken away, because that is like giving up on Life Itself - the end of the world as we Know it to be…
It’s telling, as I see it, that ultimately the connection with the land and resources by the generations of family farms that replaced those tribes who had held this connection before, have now also practically become extinct, and for the same reasons. The global corporate machine with never-ending profit incentive as the bottom-line, continues to consume and exploit for the benefit of an ever narrowing few. Now it even shows itself, openly, to be willing to abandon its “own” as we have all played our parts in just trying to find the means and security to live our lives.
 This is what Evo Morales, the new President of Bolivia, who is of the indigenous people of that area, said recently. “So there’s this strong feeling of excluded people, discriminated peoples to unite, but not for revenge against anybody nor to oppress or to subordinate anybody, but rather our struggle for the recognizing that we have obligations that our rights be fully respected. The thinking of indigenous peoples is not of exclusion. I can tell you about the experiences of the Aymara, the Quechua from the highlands and the valleys in Bolivia, of how they welcome people in, but not exclude people. This is the sector that’s been discriminated against. We’ve been called everything. We’ve been called animals. Manuel Rocha once called me the Andean Taliban. But we want fundamentally our rights to be respected. That’s our struggle.”
 In this time we are beginning to see, in the Big Picture, that All our Ancestors were, at some time and in some place, indigenous tribes living with the Land, and that this is our Common Ground in protecting the Earth. Our Ancestors have All been indigenous peoples and immigrants too. We are now called to re-unite in this Common Awareness that we can no longer continue to operate unconsciously when it comes to our rights and responsibility for clean and available Water, Food, Shelter, and Freedom to Be. We must co-operate as a Whole and learn from one another for the Good of the Whole of All-That-Is…
I know this Story might sound like its about politics and economics because we’ve been led to believe that all discussions about people’s lives take place in that domain, and maybe religion too, but that’s not it. It’s about Culture and the part it plays in the quality of Life for us All, and the purpose we share in Caring for it. On the economic front I try to stay out of debt and to choose whom I give my money to as much as possible. The bumper-sticker on my car is a quote from the Dalai Lama that says, “My religion is simple. My religion is kindness.”
In politics, I am not a democrat or a republican, a leftist or a rightist…etc. or etc. I am greatly saddened that we have put so many labels on ourselves and each other that keep us separated from standing together as a People by being focused on and threatened by the perceived differences in who we are, and what we are against. This keeps us from getting to know each other and having the benefit of identifying ourselves as people with common interests who need to work together to create the kind of world in which we Thrive.
I vote in order to hold the space that we may continue to have a vote. However, I find that I am liberal and conservative. I am liberal about some things, and I’m conservative with others, and I think we all are. I’m liberal at some times, and conservative in others. I’m choosing to find what we all have in common and expand from there. If we do have two teams in this game, it seems to me when the cloud of fear is lifted from our eyes we see that we are the ones who care about the Life of All-That-Is, and the ones who don’t, and in the Light of our Seeing and our Caring, our diversity becomes our strength. We are recognized in each other by the Light in our eyes, and the Song in our hearts, and in Loving who shows up for the Dance…
 It seems to me that the Light of Understanding is dawning in the minds of many individuals now, and changing our mass consciousness into seeing that there are a relative few who continue to choose to see the people and natural resources of the Earth as objects to be acquired, owned, manipulated, and exploited for personal gain, and with no concern for the suffering and destruction that it brings.
My heart says that’s not for them to decide that for the rest of us, and that it is a parasitic existence of accumulating power through living off the Lifeblood of the Earth and its people, even to the last drop it would seem, and now even focusing to spread that clenching grasp out into the Universe itself. I personally don’t think that will be allowed to happen, but we certainly have a lot to learn in the “mean time” and we All do need to choose which team we’re playing on…
This scenario now unfolding “before our very eyes” has been unimaginable and unthinkable for most of us in this young country who have been in the narrow focus of Caring for Life by just being who we are day to day, and perhaps that is how we were caught looking the other way…or maybe with so many “baby-boomers” born after WWII, it means we were caught with our pants down – grin. However, be that as it may, it might be time for us to stop being manipulated by being led into focusing on what we are “against” and how we are divided, and thereby perpetuating an arena of opposing dualism of “eithers” and “ors” and “insteads” that keep us in reaction rather than Response-ability.
“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm” – Willa Cather.
The way I see it our real “enemy” is simply those blind and unconscious fear thoughts in the mass consciousness that seek control for the sake of security, and that have built up over time and across space. Clear discernment, and Trust, is what has been missing from our world for a long time. These great distortions in our system of reality might be the age-old accumulative reactions to the pain that is caused by believing the lie that we are worthless and no good. The antipathy and the antagonism that come out of this are intensified and perpetuated in the attitudes and beliefs that separate us from each other and therefore from the very Source of our Awareness of being a part of All-That-Is, along with the power and purpose that operate in that Knowing.
 What we’re meeting in this time could be this concerted mass unconsciousness being sent out, and because we live in a circular Universe, coming back around again to be dissolved in the Light of our Love for one another and All-That-Is. Only our fear can delay this happening. What are we to one another? We are one another… and what do we think about that idea? I’m interested because my understanding is that we vote with our thoughts!
 Now, it seems, we are coming around to remembering what we can do when we Know we’re doing it together, hand-in-hand and heart-to-heart. This is what we have come to in our evolution of being, and we can create in that Light the kinds of culture we need in which to Thrive, locally and globally. It’s probably the ones that we have always really wanted, lost sheep that we sometimes have felt ourselves to be when we feel cut off and in danger, over time and in space.
Rather than living in the crouch of a defensive and reactionary posture that provokes and perpetuates the insecurity and conflict, we are coming to remember and renew the passion in our desire to be putting our combined focus and priorities to our Common Ground, and working out from there. In consciously choosing to turn away from this poisoning cloud of anti-energy spread through fear and confusion, we are moving together in our ideas and with our words as a creative force that Loves Life into form just by where we put our Intention, our Attention, and our Action. The world will be in Harmony when the desire for revenge is gone.
 The goal becomes the process and thereby formats the Essence we seek into our quality of Life, and then that quality monitors and regulates the quantity of factors involved in living in Harmony with the Flow of the Seasons, and for Thriving in this Business of Life. The Beauty of the House of the World, as the Maya call this planet of our birth, and its place in this Universe of time and space, is in and of itself enough for us All, just in being able to be a part of it by participating in caring for it together. “Caregivers of the World Unite.”
  We have our unique parts to play in the All-That-Is on this expanding Spiral of Life in regards to the matter of form, and that is what creates the dynamic. The Dance is in the Essence of Being continually revolving and evolving in the awareness of the Essence of Being, with all that is experienced and learned along the Way. The Way is in imagining how it can be, and what we need to Thrive, and to Know that we can Thrive, as a People of this Earth and All-That-Is. It is to choose our belief systems with the Creation in mind and to enact them “with all our hearts.” Friends becoming Families – Families becoming Cultures - Cultures becoming Networks – Networks becoming the Grid that surrounds the Earth, to Light and Protect the Way, anchored in place by the Sacred Sites of All Time.
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