Nature's Web: Chapter 2, Part 3
Finding My Life’s Calling
Welcome to the Birthing the Symbiotic Age Book!
NEW here? — please visit the TABLE OF CONTENTS FIRST and catch up!
You are in Chapter 2, Part 3, Finding My Life’s Calling
Here are all Chapter 2 posts:
Chapter 2, Part 1 — Nature’s Great Chain of Being and a Unifying Principle for Human Society.
Chapter 2, Part 2 — Nature’s Web and True Freedom, and The Tyranny AND Liberation of the Mind
Are you trying to figure out Where This is All Going? Read an overview of the Symbiotic Culture Strategy — embodying the Transcendent through the nodes of intersection within local, grassroots-empowered community networks.
Find this chapter post as a podcast episode on Spotify and Apple!
Previously, at the end of Chapter 2, Part 2:
And, coming from my personal immersion in Nature’s Web, I saw a definite organizational pattern that points humanity toward a truly symbiotic culture and way of being. In time, I would call it the Symbiotic Network.
In weaving together our own web that reinforces intentional mutual benefit, humanity would find a pathway to reconnect with and be informed by the Luminous Web — following the Logos ordering principle.
I could see my own path unfolding, although it would be years before I would discover my greatest inspiration for building a real-world community, Sarvodaya — an experiment that created such a symbiotic culture and web and has sustained it for over sixty-five years.
I instinctively knew that finding it was somehow part of my life’s work.
Chapter 2: Nature’s Web - Part 3
Finding My Life’s Calling
As I sought to integrate my inner life and the outer world, I found myself in a unique position. No matter how non-ordinary my experiences were, I never stopped being a scientist. Applying what could be called an “empirical sensibility,” I am reporting my experience as “data.”
When we really do follow science, we learn that fruitful inquiry involves a dance between the rational and intuitive. Neither the rational nor the intuitive mind by itself has the answers, but working in accord, they point us in the right direction.
Just so you fully understand, I’m not seeking to codify any beliefs, start a new religion or philosophy, or even tell you what to believe.
It requires no theology or cosmology to recognize this ordering principle and the virtues of Goodness that emanate from it.
That’s why, as we will discover later, some versions of the universal virtues and principles, like the Golden Rule, can be found in every civilization and tradition. In fact, these universal Virtues seem but a reflection of the underlying Ancient Blueprint — as Socrates famously said, virtues “come from the Divine.”
In reading these first two chapters, you may be feeling a separation from the Transcendent experiences I related to you. These non-ordinary experiences have given me a unique perspective and a way to transform the competing voices of the surface ego into a coherent, purposeful one.
What about those who don’t have that firsthand experience — who haven’t had a significant emotional event, a near-death experience, a religious conversion, a transformational psychedelic journey, or experiences as I’ve described?
I would say this: While my experiences might be out of the ordinary, transcendent experiences of all kinds are normal and natural for human beings across time and culture.
The desire to transcend the self is as innate in people as it is to eat, drink, and have sex.
This drive is the key to unifying the community.
Even though I had the initial experience, I still needed to have a burning desire in my heart to continue to experience the Transcendent and to make that journey the number one priority in my life. We all possess the inherent potential and capability to embark on this personal journey and experience it for ourselves.
To do that, we must learn to listen to our authentic selves in the midst of the chaos and confusion of human society and within our own inner world.
And, each of us is having transcendent experiences in everyday moments — maybe without recognizing them as such.
Experiencing the awe and beauty of a sunrise … the unconditional love you express for your children … being enveloped in a majestic starfield on a dark night … the love that comes from being of service at a homeless shelter … a group of soldiers in the midst of a life or death firefight … the experience of caring for your elderly mother or father … listening to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons … making love with your spouse … snowboarding down an epic tree line on a fresh powder day … the connection with the Divine during a church liturgy … being enraptured by reading a novel or poetry, or creating or observing art, all of these bring the Transcendent to the ordinary.
The depth that we can experience through all of these is part of the ongoing “turning of our mind” towards a true conversion: a shift from self to others, a shift from external rewards to intrinsic values and inherent worth, an increase in moral and ethical concern and capable character, and doing the right thing.
It involves moving beyond a limited, self-focused “love” towards a naturally and willingly broadened sense of Cosmic Love being embodied within us.
This love is then manifested through increasingly larger circles of self-giving love, starting with our families and extending to our communities, cities, countries, and, ultimately, the entire world.
Over my lifetime, I have come to recognize the turning — metanoia — as a process and a practice. Simply being aware that such experiences are possible indicates that any human is capable of seeing through the veil of the world, finding the connection to a Transcendent order, and living from that Ground of Being.
I hope reading about my journey may clarify and deepen your own. Just knowing this potential for transformation already exists within you will help you recognize the cues and clues that might lead you to deepen your own transcendent, luminous experiences.
You’ll then have taken a step toward your authentic self and begin to hear your authentic voice more frequently until it becomes the voice you hear above the din of life — and find yourself living more and more from that universal Ground of Being.
As you will read in subsequent chapters, having these realizations didn’t liberate me completely from my egoic stuff — in the process of working with others in symbiotic practice, I have had to face, acknowledge, and transform my own limited ways of seeing and being — my shadow.
This process is by no means complete; I have to be cognizant of and face this shadow every day.
In fact, what I’ve discovered takes the common view of being a “conscious person” – thinking of yourself as “better” than others – and turns it upside down. For me, being a “conscious person” means knowing when I am not being conscious — and making self-corrections to re-align with my Conscience and Authentic Self.
Meanwhile, I’ve gotten to experience Sarvodaya’s wise theme and motto time and time again: We build the road, and the road builds us. As villagers in Sri Lanka worked to develop self-reliant villages through community participation, in the process, people learned to transcend societal divisions based on race, religion, politics, caste, and age as they came together as ONE FAMILY.
As I emerged from the cultural restrictions and the tyranny of the mind to see life and nature from “the window of the Spirit,” I had a vision of how the web of a symbiotic human society can emerge from Nature’s Web.
In 1983, I wrote a poem, “I Cannot Take the Well-Worn Path,” that summarizes the purposeful vow that set me on the “path less traveled” that has led to my life calling, this book, and the audacious mission and vision of a Spiritual Revolution of the Heart and a Symbiotic Revolution.
I cannot take the well-worn path.
The tried and true.
Take a chance, I must.
Let down my artificial barriers and opaque covers.
For I can be as others misperceive me, playing the roles and games, or I can learn to connect to my authentic self.
How do I find God (transcendent reality) while living as a human being?
What thread links me to the smallest atom, a crashing wave in the ocean, another person, or the largest galaxies?
Dear God, all I want to be is truly alive, to become a Human Being.
I want to be my better self and not an obedient, “travel the well-worn path” organization man.
How can I participate in society’s “Big Lie,” saying we are all separate when the lie is magnified by my complicity? I will not find the answers outside of myself, in any social movement or political group, cult, religion, or nation.
They do not have the answers.
How do I find “God” (transcendent reality) while living as a human being?
How do I identify with and live by the natural order of Creation that emanates from the Luminous Web?
How do I make a bridge from my own experience to the world at large so others can make the journey more easily? For me, it begins with a decision, a declaration, and then an invitation and challenge.
We must begin the world anew.
Circles and webs of light develop from dark — small at first, they join together, and larger and larger they become, shining as only Spirit can shine.
Can you see the light, the beauty, the perfect harmony?
Desire to experience this all-pervasive unity, where everything is connected to everything else.
The light of Spirit now spreads throughout the world in an explosive chain reaction of moral force, countering the nuclear chain reaction of physical force.
At this moment, the Spirit was unleashed from its fetters.
Like healing waters rushing forth, this salve of reconciliation could begin to mend societal pain, hurt, trauma, and mistrust. Then, feeling this inner strength, trust, and peace, people started to tear down their prison walls and share with one another.
They began to rebuild communities by sharing and working together, making REAL a more loving and united world.
Begin with a decision.
Act on what you perceive to be true.
Say no to blind obedience, to unquestioning, to cynicism.
Say yes to healing the wounds of separation and division among and within us, affirming new possibilities, and building a world based on compassion and love.
Take the first step on the not-so-well-worn path.
Let it begin with each of us!
I emerged from this reflective period in my life with a mission based not only on the Transcendent, Luminous Web but on its reflection within Nature’s Web and a concept that comes from biology — Symbiogenesis.
It’s a mouthful, but it may offer humanity a way through our current evolutionary crisis.
As with the biological symbiogenesis of 3.5 billion years ago, where multi-cellular life emerged from single-cell life in “collaboration,” today, human culture now has an opportunity to evolve from “single-cell” organizational silos into multi-siloed community networks – from a battlefield of winners and losers to a playing field where we all can win.
I call this new cultural evolution Cultural Symbiogenesis.
Even though I didn’t have the words to describe it at the time, I knew it intuitively:
Unless we solve the “silo problem,” we won’t be able to solve any of the
other problems and issues we care about.
I was beginning to glean a model for a new Symbiotic Network context that reflected the interconnectedness of the mycelium we spoke of earlier – because, after all, society’s most vexing problems are interconnected at every scale.
And so, the first phase of my formation was complete: experience with the Luminous Web, connecting that with Nature’s Web, connecting to and integrating the Transcendent Ground of Being within myself, and the emerging formulation of the Symbiotic Network.
It was almost time for me to test my inner insights in outer reality. And … there were more experiences needed that would reveal a traditional pathway to reconcile the mental, physical, and spiritual — and an indigenous but Christian “medicine woman,” Dona Catalina, in Mexico, would be the catalyst.
Great to read about your concept of cultural symbiogenesis, Richard! Funny how ideas seem to crop up in multiple places at the same time - we just finished a book on "MycoFi" about mycelial economics, with this reference to symbiogenesis as well:
"Endosymbiotic Finance:
Imagine a future where the economic power of an organization comes from its own internalized energy, rather than having to rely on outside sources of extractive finance. In the same way that cells absorbed the power-generating capabilities of mitochondria, MycoFi proposes endosymbiotic finance as the process by which organizations internalize the capacity to produce and store their own economic power, rather than having to submit to the high costs of external finance provided by banks. This capability for endogenous credit issuance enables organizations to have tighter feedback loops between their evolving needs for capital and their ability to issue vouchers backed by their own productive capacity. This process of organizational symbiogenesis will see DAOs and other myco-organizations continue to “absorb” the useful functions of finance, steadily reducing the power asymmetries that have allowed external finance to become the proverbial “tail that wags the dog” of the real economy."
Your story is so inspiring. Keep up the great work!
Richard,
I listened to this chapter as I walked along the edge of a huge construction project that is transforming an urban canyon into high density housing.
So many of your experiences resonate with my own. You help me find some magic moments during my walk in the San Diego sun. I found yellow flowers blooming out of the trash kicked down the hillside.
I felt the root structures of an old fig tree as I stood on the stump. I glanced up to see a 1000 Teslas waiting to be delivered.
Thank you for helping me find this vein of experience in the sea of mundane concrete.
Keep singing!