INDRA'S NET

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Created on Tuesday, 02 July 2013 15:03

Written by Marian Moore

Marian @ Krysan

THE WELLBEING CONSULTANCY

Planting Golden Seeds in Northumberland, Tyne & Wear, and Durham

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 Benjamin Disraeli  — Life is too short to be small.

 

 

BUILDING A BETTER WORLD

(One Person at a Time)

by

Marian Moore

 

Sleepwalkers

There are many who believe that we in the west have become sleepwalkers. Faced with a world full of problems, we wish they would just go away; just disappear. But, despite our heartfelt desires and good intentions, the problems stubbornly persist. We are lulled into a sense of complacency as people starve, violence thrives, families fade, and nature simply disappears.

We continue sleep-walking through our lives as as if there is nothing wrong. But, always there is a disquiet: a whisper at the back of our minds.  We live with the nagging feeling that things are going badly awry in this precious world of ours. We feel that we can only truly rely on ourselves. When negative beliefs become widespread, we disengage from the outer world, retreating into our own personal lives. As we withdraw, we see our society rushing aimlessly toward an unknown future, without any sense of morality or conscious purpose to direct it. Awash in a sea of knowledge, we lack the wisdom to guide our own destiny.  

In a world of constantly increasing complexity, cynicism becomes the safest, most strategic position to adopt. It involves no action and thus no risk. Cynics can portray their inaction as more rational, objective, and even more scientifically founded than people who are trying to change the world. Apathy and negativity become acceptable states of being; prophets of doom abound round every corner dragging us down.  But, what to do?  A big question.

Building a better world

Recently, I have been involved in a number of initiatives aimed at changing things for the better — turning things around through positive action.  A new and encouraging philosophy is emerging in North East England, one that sits well with the optimistic world-view which follows. I quote from Building a Better World — One Person at a Time:

"How do we break out of the cycle of cynicism? We must stop blaming others for not doing anything and begin to take personal responsibility for being good people in the world. We need to seek out information that provides us with a basic understanding of our world's problems and a variety of options for action. We have to generate a form of practical idealism based on well-informed actions that actually make a difference in the world.

"Each of us must decide what we want our life to stand for and how we can uniquely contribute to a better world. By thinking about what we can provide for the next generations rather than about what we can take for ourselves in this lifetime, we can choose to create our own destiny, instead of leaving our children's future up for grabs. Finally, throughout it all, we need to recognize that we can't do everything.

"We must reconnect with a set of core values that every one of us can embrace despite our many differences — values like compassion, freedom, equality, justice, sustainability, democracy, community, and tolerance. (No society, especially one as powerful and rapidly changing as ours, survives for very long without a moral compass to guide its evolution and progress.) We have to deliberately build our society to increasingly reflect and nurture the growth of these values in the world."  Ellis Jones, et al (2007)

A cycle of hope

1. Taking personal responsibility for being a good person
2. Creating a vision of a better world based on your values
3. Seeking out quality information about the world's problems
4. Discovering practical options for action
5. Acting in line with your values
6. Recognising you can't do everything
7. Repeat until a better world results. 

You are now asked to think about the world you would like to live in. Let yourself imagine the a world that you could be proud to leave for your children — a world where peace, justice, compassion, and tolerance prevail and where each person has more than enough food, shelter, meaningful work, and close friends. What would a more loving, accepting, patient, understanding, and egalitarian world look like?

Your vision of a better future will provide you with an inspiring goal to work toward and will keep your passion alive for the journey ahead.  But, as  we start out on this journey, we must be aware of the many traps that can stop us from making a difference in the world.  Please, do join me again next week when, in the last blog of the PROVIDENCE series, I will look into these traps and how we can overcome them. 

The Jewel Net of Indra

Finally, and as a matter of some urgency, I beckon you back in time to the story of the Jewel Net of Indra and thus, once again, to the notion of connectedness —

Far away in the Heavenly abode lived the God Indra.  Indra, the God of natural forces that protect and nurture life, had a problem and thought deeply for a solution.  Indra yearned to protect and nurture the life of the entire universe, as all life is all the same. 

He saw that the whole cosmos was contained in a single grain of dust.   Thus, Indra, by some cunning, hung a net around the Universe so that it stretched out in all directions.  The net was infinite; it had no beginning and no end.  At each place where the net came together Indra placed a knot. 

In a gesture of extravagance that only a God can manage, on each knot Indra hung a beautiful jewel which contains and reflects every other jewel in the net.  When Indra touched any jewel in the net, all other jewels in the web resonated. 

If we select a jewel for viewing and look deeply into the jewel, each contains every other jewel in the net.  Each jewel contains all the life in the universe. 

 IN ONE IS ALL, IN MANY IS ONE

There's a 'right time' for everything

Marian Moore

♥

3 July 2013 

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 REFERENCE

The Better World Handbook: Small Changes That Make a Big Difference
by Ellis Jones, Ross Haenfler, and Brett Johnson with Brian Klocke.

Specifically designed to reach people who normally would not consider themselves activists, The Better World Handbook is directed toward those who care about creating a more just, sustainable, and socially responsible world but don’t know where to begin. Substantially updated, this revised bestseller now contains more recent information on global problems, more effective actions, and many new resources.  (Pub. 2003, 2007)

 

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ENDS

592 hits @ 2014-09-14