Living Lightly ...

Howdy all, I've been a little delinquent in getting a new posting up since I'm in Denmark delivering a twelve-day intensive MythoSelf Facilitator's Training program. We've just finished day three of the twelve and so far it's been a blast. The group is incredibly diverse in some ways ... folks from over ten countries in the room, an almost even mix of men an women, the youngest is just past twenty and the oldest approaching eighty (I'm in-between `'~>) ... lots of variation in race, color, creed ... all that good stuff. Yet, I'm finding more commonality than diversity at the core of the group. Most simply everyone wants to be living from his or her core ... from the essence of their being. Given the work I do this would not be so unusual to find in a group that I attract. However, what makes the group so fascinating to me has to do with their desire to be living authentically, while also living well ... neither compromising themselves nor their lives. While this may sound familiar and the doing may be simple ... it ain't easy. As I like to say, "All it takes is giving up everything." As simply as I can put it ... the system wants to come to rest ... this could be referred to as the cessation of all desire, a total sense of completeness ... wholeness. In this way I say a person begins to operate from well-formedness. The basis of being well-formed begins with becoming aware of the extant reality and acknowledging things as they are and not as you'd like them to be ... or even wish they were.

This has absolutely nothing to do with attraction ... or manifestation ... or desire of any kind, shape or form ... this position resides beyond desire.

I know when I make these statements I am liable to turn off a large group of folks who want to or do believe in things like The Laws of Attraction and the entire manifestation manifesto ... yet for me I am simply presenting a position where the drivers are not organized around either having or doing ... but around simply being. This position doesn't conflict with having or doing, it just subordinates them to being as the primary consideration and form. In some ways this could be called the the anti-"What The Bleep" doctrine (that should be fully shooting myself in the foot for a large contingent who might otherwise have agreed with at least some of what I'm suggesting `'~>).

Yet, in the end it seems so simple ... the most likely way to have the life you are designed to be living ... a life of complete satisfaction ... would be to begin from where desire is not.

I could also put it this way ... only when desire has been fulfilled or reliquished completely can there be any sense of knowing what you want ... prior to that need drives the system. The sense that something must be missing resides at the core of self-interest ... and makes social interest at best secondary ... the individual become primary over the community. However, the very concept of living both lightly and fully demands that the individual organizes in relation to the community, to allow themselves to be contained by and consumed by the community ... while never compromising themselves to it. In this way the individual lives in oscillation between being created by and creating the community that contains and consumes them ... co-creating the reality they are living. This premise stands at the very center of almost all mythological systems of teaching, the great and perennial wisdom traditions ... the titan that consumes itself to create its own progeny ... the human phoenix. In the end the sacrifice of self-interst leads to creating futures worth living ... and leaving ... allowing for the intention of legacy and largess ... to replace greed and gluttony. So here I am in the land of the Vikings exploring the patterns of living lightly in this world ... Best regards, Joseph Riggio, Social Ontologist Langebaek, Denmark