Chris Johnstone – Gaia Speaking

by Chris Johnstone and Joanna Macy, an extract from the book Active Hope

Images from the buddhist platform Tricycle, with thanks

While having our heart in what we do is an essential part of what makes life satisfying, it isn’t enough. Repeated failure, frustration, and lack of progress can leave us wondering whether we’re wasting our time. It is difficult to stick to a path if we don’t see it going anywhere. So the way we understand and experience success affects our willingness to keep going.
The models of success we’re likely to have been given generally take us in the wrong direction. In the story of Business as Usual, success is measured in terms of wealth, fame, or position. A company making massive profits is regarded as successful, even when its ways of doing this harm its employees and our world. People are judged as successful simply because they have managed to acquire a vastly larger share of the world’s resources than they could ever need — at a time when hundreds of millions starve. It is the very hunger for this type of success that leads us, collectively, to plunder our planet.
With the consciousness shift of the Great Turning, we recognize ourselves as intimately connected with all life, like a cell within a “larger body. To call an individual cell “successful” while the larger body sickens or dies is complete nonsense. If we are to survive as a civilization, we need the intelligence to define success as that which contributes to the well-being of our larger body, the web of life. Commercial success is easy to count, but how do we count the success of contributing to planetary well-being? Do we experience this success often? And if not, what is getting in the way?

TRY THIS: REFLECTING ON SUCCESS

Taking your definition of success as that which contributes to the well-being of our world, how often do you feel you are succeeding?

We experience success when we reach a goal that is significant to us. But what if our goal is the elimination of poverty or the transition to a low-carbon economy? If the change we want doesn’t happen in our lifetime, does that mean we will never experience success? For the encouraging boost we get when we know we’re moving forward, we need to find markers of progress we can spot more easily and often. What helps here is making the distinction between eventual goals and intermediate ones.

The progressive brainstorming process (described in chapter 9 of the Active Hope book) began with longer-range, eventual goals. These are the things we would really like to see happen, even if we can’t immediately see how they will come about. We take one of these eventual goals and list some of the conditions needed to bring it about. So if our goal is the elimination of poverty, we would need to have in place widespread political will, new taxation policies, redistribution of resources, and the like. Then, taking one of these, we ask, “What would be needed for this?” Each stage moves us closer to our present situation. Before long, we’re identifying steps that are within our reach, such as eating lower in the food chain or setting up a study-action group on world hunger.
For any goal we choose to pursue, we track back in time to identify intermediate steps. Each time we take a step like this, we are succeeding. Instead of rushing on immediately to the next task, we can take a moment to savor these mini-victories. The following open sentence is a useful prompt for this process.

TRY THIS: SAVORING SUCCESS EVERY DAY with the following open sentence.

A recent step I’ve taken that I feel good about is…

There are steps we take that often don’t get counted, like the choice of where to place our attention. Just noticing that things are seriously amiss is a step on the journey. If we care enough to want to do something, that is also a significant mini-victory. Just to show up with bodhichitta is a success.

In a society that views success in competitive terms, it is usually only those recognized as “winners” who are applauded. We need to learn the skill of encouraging and applauding ourselves. We can reinforce our appreciation of the steps we take by imagining the support of the ancestors, the future beings, and the more-than-human world. When we develop our receptivity, we will sense them cheering us on. If we form a study-action group or build support in other ways, we can take time to do this for each other, noticing and appreciating what we’re doing well.
When we reflect on past successes, we can ask, “What strengths in me helped me do that?” Naming our strengths makes them more available to us. However, the challenges we face demand of us more commitment, endurance, and courage than we could ever dredge up out of our individual supply. That is why we need to make the essential shift of seeing with new eyes — it takes the process of strength recognition to a new level, that of the larger web of life. Just as we can identify with the suffering of other beings in in this web, so too can we identify with their successes and draw on their strengths. There is an ancient Buddhist meditation that helps us do this. It is called “the Great Ball of Merit” and it is excellent training for the moral imagination:

TRY THIS: THE GREAT BALL OF MERIT

Relax and close your eyes, relax into your breathing…Open your awareness to the fellow beings who share with you this planet-time…in this room…this neighborhood…this town. Open to all those in this country and in other lands…Let your awareness encompass all beings living now in our world.
Opening now to all time, let your awareness encompass all beings who have ever lived…of all races and creeds and walks of life, rich and poor, kings and beggars, saints and sinners…Like successive mountain ranges, the vast vistas of these fellow beings present themselves to your mind’s eye.
Now open to the knowledge that in each of these innumerable lives some act of merit was performed. No matter how stunted or deprived the life, there was at the very least one gesture of kindness, one gift of love, or one act of valor or self-sacrifice…on the battlefield or in the workplace, hospital or home…From each of these beings in their endless multitudes arose actions of courage, kindness, of teaching and healing…Let yourself see these manifold, immeasurable acts of merit. “Now imagine that you can sweep together these acts of merit. Sweep them into a pile in front of you. Use your hands…pile them up…pile them into a heap, viewing it with gladness and gratitude. Now pat them into a ball. It is the Great Ball of Merit. Hold it now and weigh it in your hands…Rejoice in it, knowing that no act of goodness is ever lost. It remains ever and always a present resource…a means for the transformation of life…So now, with jubilation and thanksgiving, you turn that great ball, turn it over…over…into the healing of our world.

The more we practice this meditation, the more familiar we become with the process of drawing strengths from outside our narrow self. Knowing about the Great Ball of Merit can also change the way we think about our own actions. Each time we do something, no matter how small, that is guided by bodhichitta and contributes to our world, we know we are adding to this abundance.

Extracts from the book Active Hope by Chris Johnstone and Joanna Macy

Hereunder are some of my favourite extracts from the book Active Hope, some which we used for our online Gaia Speaking course “Active Hope in the Great Turning” this month during the Seeing with New Eyes session. I am drawing inspiration again from this section of the book as I prepare the section Going Forth, as it indeeds fills me with Active Hope.

It illustrates so well how we can Go Forth with the joy of being an synergetic part of humanity, one through who inevitably emergence with happen. And if we align with the concept and practice of “power-with”, this emergence will most certainly be produced in the direction that we personally wish humanity to follow. I hope these words provide as much relief as they do to me in these challenging times where we feel called to make a difference. – Joanna Tomkins

While the conversations between Mandela and de Klerk played a pivotal role in bringing apartheid to an end, this historic change wouldn’t have happened without a much larger context of support. Within South Africa, people risked their lives daily to engage in the struggle for change. Around the world, millions of people played supporting roles by joining boycotts and campaigns. If we focus only on each separate activity, it is easy to dismiss it by thinking, “That won’t do much.” To see the power of a step, we need to ask, “What is it part of?” An action that might seem inconsequential by itself adds to and interacts with other actions in ways that contribute to a much bigger picture of change.
Remember our example of the newspaper photograph? When seen under a magnifying glass it appears as just a collection of tiny dots, but when, from a little distance, we see the photo as a whole, the larger pattern comes into view. In a similar fashion, a bigger picture of change emerges out of the many tiny dots of separate actions and choices. This link between small steps and big changes opens up our power in an entirely new way. Each individual step doesn’t have to make a big impact on its own — because we can understand that the benefit of an action may not be visible at the level at which that action is taken.
Shared visions, values, and purposes flow through and between people. Nelson Mandela was deeply committed to a vision for his country that many were holding; the power of that vision moved through him and was transmitted to others. This type of power can’t be hoarded or held back by prison walls; it is like a kind of electricity that lights us up inside and inspires those around us. When a vision moves through us, it becomes expressed in what we do, how we are, and what we say. The alignment of these three creates a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. The words below, from Mandela’s defense at his trial in the 1960s, mean so much more because of the actions that followed them:

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

THE POWER OF EMERGENCE

The concept of power-with contains hidden depths; so far we’ve described four aspects. First, there is the power of inner strengths drawn from us when we engage with challenges and rise to the occasion. Second, there is the power arising out of cooperation with others. Third, there is the subtle power of small steps whose impact only becomes evident when we step back and see the larger picture they contribute to. And last, there is the energizing power of an inspiring vision that moves through and strengthens us when we act for a purpose bigger than ourselves. All these are products of synergy and emergence; they come about when different elements interact to become a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.
At every level, from atoms and molecules to cells, organs, and organisms, complex wholes arise bringing new capacities into existence.

At each level, the whole acts through its parts to achieve more than we could ever imagine from examining the parts alone. So what new capacities emerge when groups of people act together to form larger complex social systems?
Our technologically advanced society has achieved wonders our ancestors could never have envisioned. We’ve put people on the moon, decoded DNA, and cured diseases. The problem is this collective level of power is also destroying our world. Countless seemingly innocent activities and choices are acting together to bring about the sixth mass extinction in our planet’s history.
Seeing with new eyes, we recognize that we’re not separate individuals in our own little bubbles but connected parts in a much larger story. A question that helps us develop this wider view is “What is happening through me?” Is the sixth mass extinction happening through us as a result of our habits, choices, and actions? By recognizing the ways we contribute to the unraveling of our world, we identify choice points at which we can turn toward its healing. The question “How could the Great Turning happen through me?” invites a different story to flow through us. This type of power happens through what we say and do and are.

NOT NEEDING TO KNOW THE OUTCOME

The concept of emergence is liberating because it frees us from the need to see the results of our actions. Many of our planet’s problems, such as climate change, mass starvation, and habitat loss, are so much bigger than we are that it is easy to believe we are wasting our time trying to solve them. If we depend on seeing the positive results of our individual steps, we’ll avoid challenges that seem beyond what we can visibly influence. Yet our actions take effect through such multiplicities of synergy that we can’t trace their causal chain. Everything we do has ripples of influence extending far beyond what we can see.
When we face a problem, a single brain cell doesn’t come up with a solution, though it can participate in one. The process of thinking happens at a level higher than just individual brain cells — it happens through them. Similarly, there’s no way that we personally can fix the mess our world is in, but the process of healing and recovery at a planetary level can happen through us and through what we do. ”

For this to happen, we need to play our part. That’s where power-with comes in.

THE HELPING HAND OF GRACE

All the individuals on a team may each be brilliant by themselves, but if they don’t shift their story from personal success to team success, their net effectiveness will be greatly reduced. When people experience themselves as part of a group with a shared purpose, team spirit flows through them, and their central organizing principle changes. The guiding question moves from “What can I gain?” to “What can I give?”
We can develop a similar team spirit with life. When we are guided by our willingness to find and play our part, we can feel as if we are acting not just alone but as part of a larger team of life that acts with us and through us. Since this team involves many other players, unsuspected allies can emerge at crucial moments; unseen helpers can remove obstacles we didn’t even know were there. When we’re guided by questions such as “What can I offer?” and “What can I give?” we might sometimes play the role of stepping out in front and at other times that of being the ally giving support. Either way, we think of the additional support behind our actions as a form of grace. Based on an interview with Joanna, this poem, edited into verse by Tom Atlee, founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute, expresses well the grace that comes from belonging to life:

When you act on behalf
of something greater than yourself,
you begin
to feel it acting through you
with a power that is greater than your own.

This is grace.

Today, as we take risks
for the sake of something greater
than our separate, individual lives,
we are feeling graced
by other beings and by Earth itself.

Those with whom and on whose behalf we act
give us strength
and eloquence
and staying power
we didn’t know we had.
We just need to practice knowing that
and remembering that we are sustained
by each other in the web of life.

Our true power comes as a gift, like grace,
because in truth it is sustained by others.
If we practice drawing on the wisdom
and beauty
and strengths
of our fellow human beings
and our fellow species
we can go into any situation
and trust
that the courage and intelligence required
will be supplied.

POWER-WITH IN ACTION

Here are three ways we can open to the kind of power we’ve been describing. We can:
• hear our call to action and choose to answer it.
• understand that power-with arises from what we do, not what we have.
• draw on the strengths of others.

There will be times when we become alerted to an issue and experience an inner call to respond. Choosing to respond to that call empowers us. Once we take that first step, we start on a journey presenting us with situations that increase our capacity to respond. Strengths such as courage, determination, and creativity are drawn forth from us most when we rise to the challenges that evoke them. When we share our cause with others, allies appear; synergy occurs. And when we act for causes larger than ourselves, the larger community for whom we do this will be acting through us.
We can experience our call to action in many different ways. Sometimes the uncomfortable discrepancy of realizing that our behavior is out of step with our values motivates us. Our conscience calls, and when we step into integrity, more of who we are heads in the same direction. At other times our call is more of a powerful summoning. We just know, even if we’re not sure how, that we need to be somewhere, do something, or contact a particular person.
If we think of ourselves only as separate individuals, then we understand these intuitive calls purely in personal terms. Recognizing ourselves as part of the larger web of life leads to a different view. Just as we experience the Earth crying within us as pain for the world, we can experience the Earth thinking within us as a guiding impulse pulling us in a particular direction. We can view this as “cointelligence,” an ability to think and feel with our world.

Developing a sense of partnership with Earth involves listening for guiding signals and taking them seriously when we hear them.

Tag: Chris Johnstone

Seeing Success with New Eyes

Emergence and Power-With