Global Research Assembly

Chicago

July 16, 1979

"But suddenly a convulsive cry tears through me. 'Help me!' Who calls?

"Gather your strength and listen; the whole heart of man is a single outcry. Lean against your breast to hear it; someone is struggling and shouting within you.

"It is your duty every moment, day and night, in joy and in sorrow, amid all daily necessities, to discern this Cry with vehemence or restraint, according to your nature, with laughter or with weeping, in thought, striving to find out who is imperiled and cries out.

"And how we may all be mobilized together to free him.

"Amidst our greatest happiness someone within us cries out: 'I am in pain! I want to escape your happiness! I am stifling!'

"Amidst. our deepest despair someone within us cries out: 'I do not despair! I fight on! I grasp at your head, I unsheathe myself from your body, I detach myself from the earth, I cannot be contained in brains, in names, in deeds!'

"Out of our most ample virtue someone rises up in despair and cries out: 'Virtue is narrow, I cannot breathe! Paradise is small and cannot contain me! Your God resembles a man, I do not want him!'

"I hear the savage cry, and I shudder. The agony that ascends within me composes itself, for the first time, into an integral human voice; it turns full face toward me and calls me clearly, with my own name, with the name of my father and my race.

"This is the moment of greatest crisis. This is the signal for the March to begin. If you do not hear this Cry, tearing at your entrails, do not set out."

In this series of talks, we have heard spins on the Convergence of the Three Campaigns, and on Engagement. Tonight I would like to talk about Awakenment. The fourth talk will be on Fulfillment.

First, I want to articulate two definitions. Awakenment is not the end product of the GCF program. Awakenment is the self­consciousness of planet earth in the on­going journey of human civilization. The awakenment campaign is not what ICA staff do when they do not have a Human Development Project. The awakenment campaign is the giving of form from the bottom up to the 20th century global reformulation of human sociality. And yet awakenment is most helpfully discussed in this group with reference to our experience in the awakenment campaign.

Awakenment can be divided in four ways:

1. as the explosion in consciousness of civilization itself,

2. as the reconciliation of life with life,

1. 3. as the symbolizing of awe and wonder in life, and
   1. 4. as life's bursting of its seams.

I spent three weeks in India last August. On the flight to Bombay, I proceeded to read a description of Bombay from a brochure I had picked up at the Indian Consulate Office here in Chicago. It described Bombay in this manner: "Bombay is a combination of the charms of San Francisco, the commerce of Chicago and the cosmopolitan culture of New York." I was very excited! When I got to Bombay airport and proceeded to Indian Airlines to catch a connecting flight to Aurangabad I discovered that the airlines had promised eight seats to some government officials on their way to Delhi and had given my seat away. So, I had one day to spend in Bombay. I set out very early in the morning to see the sights and very soon saw a man who impressed me. He had obviously slept on the sidewalk the night before. He had with him two water containers. Right on the sidewalk he proceeded to wash his face, brush his teeth and gargle, which was an art in itself. All the schooling I had received about being human and everything I had expected of a city like San Francisco, New York and Chicago collapsed around me. I stood there and looked at that man bundling up his belongings and standing up to go into the day, and I realized that that man symbolized the affirmation that life in any given situation can be 1ived.

Awakenment is the explosion of consciousness in civilization. It is the experience that earthbound life is sheer possibility. I did not worry about India and its problems when I left because of that. I had seen the Gram Saba training in the School and all the students participating in the "life method of planning." It is very simple, just like going to the market. You sort out what you need, determine your priorities and decide what you are going to want to get. I saw that India was awakened, for even when you asked a question and the students initially said, "We can't do it," you realized that they had decided to struggle through it. When you ask a question like, "What are you going to do about this across the world?" and people respond with, "This is what needs to happen but we don't know how to do it," that is an awakened community! An unawakened community is one which says "We don't know!"

The reality of awakenment is a global phenomenon. It was not initiated by doing Global Community Forum or by any other program. It is a happening of the 20th century. In India the 2,500 Gram Sabahs are out to allow the limitlessness of both the depth of depravity and the height of glory to come together in the same consciousness. I think that what sustained us in Mactan last year was to know that people in India have the profound understanding that life can be lived in any given situation. That means such consciousness is possible any place in the world. The Gram Sabah program is giving form to the consciousness -­ that life can be lived.

Awakenment comes to us as the reconciliation of life with life. It builds a bridge where there is separation. This happens by the process of "passing over." It happens when somebody decides to look outside of himself and get into something that is totally other, and then return.

In the awakenment forums, the Global Women's Forum, the Community Youth Forum, the Town Meetings, communities look at the past, the present and the future, and this experience is reconciliation. When racial differences and institutional rigidities are brought together and community people decide to take a journey in a very brief period away from itself and then back, reconciliation happens. Sometimes we talk about separation between the local and the global. It is incorrect to define that in terms of geography, as if local means you are a country bumpkin and global means you are a city slicker. Being global has nothing to do with how far you have traveled in your lifetime. Rather, you are local in so far as you have committed yourself to a local geography. When one decides to stay in Sudtonggan for nine months, it does not matter whether he comes from Indonesia or the moon, he is a local man in Sudtonggan. Being global has to do with a perspective of re­formulating the global in the local. The reconciliation that happens in the awakenment program happens by blowing out the parochialism that restricts one's consciousness to one geographic spot. It allows everyone to see the inter-relatedness of that local situation to all other local situations around the world.

Awakenment reveals the awe and the wonder of life. I came to school here in the United States in the mid 60's, to a very small college in Kentucky. I learned about things in the South that this nation is probably not very proud of. These things have been symbolized by a state called Mississippi. Mississippi had a very negative image in its own self story, the story of the nation and the story of the press. To see, today, that brochure that boasts, "Mississippi is Leading the Way," is awesome! You stand in wonder at how life can so radically change itself in so short a period of time. Mississippi will never be the same again. Awakenment explodes the wonder and the awe of the way life changes. Great celebration is released in knowing that change happens in the midst of the pain, the joy and the hope of existence. In doing Mactan 222 we learned that there are villages where people have not said their name in their whole lifetime. For a great many people in the world it is an excruciating experience to be asked to say their name when they register for the village meeting. They know their name but they have never said it to themselves and never said it out loud. They may say "Tin­ting" or a nickname that has been given them. Writing the name of the village can also be a wrenching experience. There are some villages the name of which has never been written on paper. The naming dynamic is the bringing forth of something that is new. It is a creative activity. And causes people to stand in awe and wonder as they see themselves as with a name. Mactan is the birthplace of Filipino nationalism. For a village to preserve its past - ­ to tell its story ­- to talk about its present contradiction and its proposals for the future is an activity that produces a profound sense of awe and wonder.

In Mactan 222 we had a lot of "Blue Shirts" who had been working in their own village. We told them after their training program (they had never been to a forum before except the demonstration one in the Training School), "Don't worry! The only thing you are out to do during these forums is to sing the five village songs and invite the participants to visit your village. What this maneuver is about is that we have gotten permission to go across this island to tell every community that your village is working to rebuild itself... " The story created reality. San Miguel, for instance, was a very stagnant village. The mayor of the Cordova Municipality suggested that village to us for the project because there was nothing he could do with that village. Five months later, the Municipality has suggested that San Miguel needs to be a contestant in the model communities village, that is only five months later! That would not have happened without the "Blue Shirts" going around and inviting everyone to come to their villages. The mythology that comes out of awakenment creates a new reality.

I want to describe for you what one day in Mactan 222 was like. Imagine yourself on a team. If you are not a Filipino you are on a team with four Filipinos and you are a "strange one." You are one of the "card­drawers." We decided that the best way we would get people out was to have someone strange walking in their village knocking on doors and announcing that there was going to be a gathering at 8 o'clock under the tree. Se we assigned all these "strange ones" to do nothing but to walk into the community, go get the sarangay (village) chief, and just walk door to door extending the invitation. The people came. At seven o'clock the team of five arrives in the village and the strange ones go door to door. There is a scribe that carries a portable blackboard that folds in the middle. He opens it up and hangs it either in the village hall, or the chapel or under a tree or on the basketball court. Then you put up your paper that says "Welcome to the Ketilingbanong Tigum (Community Forum). You set up the chairs and the registration table. There is a workshop-I leader and there is a workshop-II leader and there is a pointer. A pointer is like an advance man during a political campaign. He goes in and arranges for the snacks and lunch for the team, and ensures that there is transportation out of the village. After he has made all the necessary arrangements, he goes to the next village and sets up the next forum so that a team can do two forums in one day. After he sets up the next forum he comes back and joins his group for lunch and then does the same thing again every day for one week. Workshop I leader prepares for the workshop. He gets all the butcher paper and sets up the space. Workshop-II leader who is usually Filipino, does the New World talk. The New World talk is very simple. "Our island has changed during the last fifteen years. We all know that if you do not plan for your community, some one else will plan it for you. So let us get down to business and let us do it!" Workshop-II leader then puts two strips of butcher paper on either side of the blackboard and the conversation on the community events of the past and the hopes and dreams of the community. He then takes the first butcher paper down and starts listing the issues. The scribe takes the butcher paper to the back of the room for the story, song, and symbol. The issues are listed on one side of the black board and then gestalted on the right hand side on the remaining butcher paper. Then the butcher paper is moved to the left side and the challenge statement is written. In the meantime, the scribe gets a few people at the back of the room and leads the workshop on symbols and story. The interlude includes a meal of cakes and foods prepared early in the morning by the ladies. The interlude includes the singing of the HDP songs. Workshop-I leader then gives the New Human talk which goes something like this: "I have got good news for you. There are 42,000 villages in this nation and there are only 4,000 government officials to take charge of the local government department. You have been waiting for that government official to come. He is not coming for the next twenty years! That is good news!" The proposal workshop repeats the morning process using the blackboard and ending with a reporting plenary. The document is pure symbol, because of the high illiteracy rate. It is done with two sets of carbon paper, and at the end of the day it is lifted up, and one copy is given to the community while you take the other copy with you. You announce that the assembly will pull this together with the other communities. At the beginning of the day an announcement has been made that this community forum is one of twenty across this island today. From the very beginning, the community understands the event is on behalf of the whole island.

Everyone participating in the awakenment campaign - orchestrators, leaders and people alike, experience a new sense of creativity. After the Forums, you see many new things as you go around the island. Suddenly rocks begin to line up along the road, communities that are not a part of a human development project get their fences painted, and you get a request for training people as preschool teachers. People ask if they can come and attach themselves to a burl factory to learn the process. There is suddenly a new burst of raw creativity. You learn that challenged life creates itself anew. When life is threatened it finds ways of recreating itself.

We are talking in this Assembly about mass awakenment. The image I have of that is "the passion of that cry as it marches across the planet earth." We have produced rational forms with which to do awakenment programs. While we use these extremely fine tools, we must remember that they are only tools. The reason we are doing the campaign is not because you and I want only to do good programs in communities or bring about community development. Our vision is the awakenment of the planet. Mass awakenment is the task ­ not the techniques of doing the program. Awakening the masses of people is the necessary response to this cry that you and I are experiencing.