Community

There’s a lot on my mind lately, and these thoughts have been hindering my creative capacities.
As it has taken so long to get to the stories I’ve been working on, and to post them here, I have decided to just do a little bit of streaming consciousness writing here, to allow myself to become better understood, and to also bring light to the fact that creativity often does not allow itself to be hindered by a set schedule. Oftentimes, creation happens all at once, and sometimes it trickles out of the creator slowly. This kind of activity is universal, and you can see it each time you step outside into Nature. Geographical processes can take millions of years, or minutes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic of community. According to The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary, which is a much better resource than the Macintosh or a free internet dictionary, the word is defined as such:

community
I. A body of individuals. 1. The commons as opp. to peers etc.; the common people. 2. An organized political, municipal, or social body; a body of people living in the same locality; a body of people having religion, profession, etc., in common; a body of nations unified by common interests (freq. w. cap. initial, in the title of an international organization). b. The members of such a body collectively. 3. A monastic, socialistic, etc., body of people living together and holding goods in common. 4. A group of animals etc. living or acting together; Ecol. a group of interdependent plants or animals growing or living together in natural conditions or inhabiting a specified locality.
II. A quality or state. 5. The state of being shared or held in common; joint ownership or liability. 6. (A) common character; (an) agreement; (an) identity. 7. Social intercourse; communion; fellowship, sense of common identity. 8. Commonness, ordinary
“Community.” Def. la. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. 1993. Print.

I feel this particular word is evolving a new meaning, which is the topic of my blog post today. I will return to the more entertaining stories shortly, which have been delayed due to research.

Community implies locality, but with our global interconnectedness brought upon us because of technological advancement, this particular definition of a localized meaning of community must be re-understood.

Perhaps because we are all living on one planet, that is our new definition of community. I have moved to a location where I have chosen a minimal interconnectedness with my peers because I have chosen to work on myself and not my relationships with others outside of myself. This choice defines community. I am in communion and walk a common ground with my Self. I am working to seek love inside of me to further my love with those outside of me, first starting with my partner, Beth. If I can learn to love myself and get to know myself, then I will always have a localized community, and this community will never be tainted by the needs outside of Self. The community of One will follow me everywhere. This is why it is so crucial to look within and to work with the inner self and learn to love yourself and forgive yourself of your faults: if you don’t have yourself, you have no community. After all, the only member of your community who will be guaranteed to be there for you every step of life and even when you die is yourself.

I see so much consternation about the lack of community in our American culture, and how that its absence is the “root of all evil,” and “why we are in the mess we’re in.” Many people blame a lack of community for most of our societal problems. Although I think there is something to be said about this particular lament, I feel it is a skin-deep complaint to a much deeper concern.

The lack of community is ultimately a general lack of forgiveness and extension of love to all aspects of the individual self. The self is a perfect extension of the All: the self is dark, light, grey, evil, hateful, spiteful, compassionate, loving, giving, all at once. We experience this, and some choose to not acknowledge their “Shadow Self,” or as Tori Amos so aptly defines as our “Dark Prince.” Those individuals who deny their darker self do themselves and their communities a great disservice, because the “Dark Prince” is there, and won’t really ever go away. It is lurking in the subconscious, waiting for a chance to get out; to be noticed, even in a moment. Usually, if it goes unacknowledged, it is left unchecked and misunderstood, and manifests itself in the life of the individual in manners which are all too often harmful to that individual, as well as that individuals’ loved ones. The cycle of abuse could be defined as the acting out of the abandoned shadow self, demanding attention by harming those who are closest to the individual inflicting the abuse.

Community seems to lack the definition of the Community of Self. It also seems to lack the more broad definition of members having something in common with others globally. We are an interconnected species, thanks to the Internet. Most of my members of community live hours away, and in many cases, states away. This distance is shortened in an instant with the aid of social networking tools like Facebook. Sure, we all mock Facebook, and I would agree that it isn’t used to it’s full potential, but Facebook pulls many members of a community together, albeit in a manner which hasn’t evolved as fast as it could.

I’d love to see Facebook used for idea exchange, and conversation that allows many people to put in their ideas and hopes, and dark sides, too. It seems that positivity on Facebook is honored, and negativity is condemned, save for the ‘blackish-grey’ exception: complaint, which is prevalent on Facebook walls, and most American conversations.

Perhaps the reason why Facebook is so poor a social tool is because it isn’t allowed to let out the Dark Princes on the Wall? The inner darkness isn’t given a voice on Facebook, and so for the most part, the sense of community lacks there, as well as in real life. Which brings us back to our little dilemma of self.

Everyone would have community, all the time, and be able to be in the state of communion, all the time, if they would learn to get to know their whole selves. Most people don’t take the time, and so far, I’ve seen a whole lot of hiding and defining self as whatever the Self “does,” rather than what the Self chooses “to be.” It’s a difference of verbs. Etre is the French verb meaning, “To be.” The French have an entirely separate word for the act of doing something: Faire. We English speaking North Americans seem to use both being and doing interchangeably. One of the first things people ask you is, “What do you do?” As if the act of doing defines who you are Being. Well, it doesn’t. Just because someone works in a successful occupation as an engineer doesn’t mean that person is successful at Being who they really are.

I observe a lot of hiding in my culture. I even experience a lot of others redefining self as “what you do.” Shakespeare had something going for him when he said, “To be or not to be, that is the question.” It really is the question! The answer to our lack of community is there, hidden between the lines of that little phrase. If an individual chooses to take ten minutes a day and stare at their naked self in a mirror, and try to accept all the darkness, as well as the light and grey, they just might wind up being able to feel more balanced and whole, and actually truly give back to their loved ones, rather than hide from the shadow self and abuse those around them. They might even be able to get to Be whatever it is they came here to experience Being!

The Hermit

"Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking." - Jessamyn West

The Hermit felt awkward around her more sociable cousin, the Firechief. She felt like everyone around her was judging her for being unemployed.

She didn’t really get around to being open with anyone about it. She felt that most people didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand her overall situation or predicament. And so, she kept it unsaid and simply tried to be the person that she felt she was, which was kind, creative, healing and humorous, most of the time, and bitter, hateful, angry, and sullen most of the other time.

The woman felt that she was without question a person who had come a long way and found a long line of things inside of her that most people would never get a chance to experience. Most people, the woman witnessed, would spend their lives hiding behind the Doing and the Chasing-the-dollar schemes and machines rather than learning to become the people of Being that they were. The woman had used her money to discover what this state of Beingness was for her, and she had recently discovered what it was, and was joyous to learn what she wanted to Be, all of the moments of her life: Creator.

The woman felt that this learning experience set her apart from the other animal humans. She felt that most of them thought and believed her to be lazy. She was not lazy, but she was very determined intellectually to sniff out her inadequacies and learn from them. So, she tried to do so. And because of this, she outcast herself.

This is how she came to be known as the Hermit.

Her avoidance of others led them to speculation of who she had become. Her silence allowed their assumption to grow, and in the darkness of that not knowing, their judgments of her, based on past experience, resulted in them never getting an opportunity to truly know her.

This led to her feeling rather awkward around anyone. Her awkwardness lent itself to a feeling that if she spoke of what she had been doing, she would be punished for not having done what was expected of her instead. What was expected of her was for her to utilize her magnificent intellect and become the woman everyone identified with intellect: successful, driven, oriented to goals, single-minded, passionate.

The Hermit was all of these things, but she was these things on a more subtle path than her peers. Their understanding of these successes was flamboyant, of the ego, not the shadow subconscious everyone chooses to hide from daily. No, the people did not consider a mastering of this to be anything special, and if they did, they hid it in jealousy, because their jealousy of not knowing their whole selves drove them to abuse those who did, in a pecking-order that was customary of the ego, but not the subconscious self.

Those who seek to master the shadow self become hermits because no one understands them. No one can comprehend the wonders these questing-masters have discovered inside of their own souls and hearts and minds. They covet this sense of never being alone, and because of that, their jealousy drives the mockery of these Hermit sages.

Walking back to her hovel, knowing it is messy around her, knowing that she has had little reward for her achievements, the Hermit’s ego was hurt each time she stepped out of the house and into the world. She wondered how she might now master the ego. Her ego was one of self-victimization and poor-meisms. She was tired of this behavior as it no longer served her purpose as Creator. And so she set out to find the new learning experience and tackle the ego. Her understanding of the ego was different now, and because she was no longer afraid of it, but acknowledged it as part of her, she was ready to see how she and the ego could coexist and cocreate as a community.