COMMON EXPERIENCE OF MANKIND LOCUS OF THE WAY IDENTIFICATION OF THE WAY SOCIALITY OF THE WAY COMMUNITIES OF THE WAY SUMMER OF THE WAY THINKING OF THE WAY ACTION OF THE WAY PRESENCE OF THE WAY

This last year we studied The Way of All the Earth, and whatever else you may think of the book, its title ­- and its attempt to delineate the common experience of mankind is at the heart of what we're doing in the arena of transparency. For if you can get a fix on the common experience of mankind at the profound level, then you can figure out many different ways to communicate it ­ and perhaps even to elicit it through the religions and cultures since the dawn of history have divided the peoples of the earth. We are in a new era ­- have been for a decade now ­- the era of the earthrise. Although it was shocking at first, the notion of interdependence, of one people, is now commonplace. It is not a unity of thinking or ideology. Many years will elapse before anything approaching a common mode of thought exists. Nor is it a unity of acting ­ cultural patterns and presuppositions do not go easily away -­ and I don't even think they should, for that would devalue the richness of the mosaic that makes up this world. Although there are global thought patterns --especially in economics and science -­ and fairly common styles of action ­- rock music, for example -­ the world is and will remain a richly diverse place to live. But at a deeper level, Dunne senses there is a unity... subtle, elusive, and profound...that cuts across histories and cultures and divisions of economics and education. It is a unity of being. He posits that the peoples of the earth have a level of common experience, whatever their situation. And perhaps it is accentuated now that we can speak realistically of a planetary destiny and not have to posit that intuited commonality in the realm of the supernatural. One of our most common and startling experiences of the past year has been that of unity-­fellowhood-­ colleagueship­-with people whose background is vastly different from our own. How do you account for that? And how do you generate it? And how do you guard and protect it from the residual divisive forces still rampant? For there remain those who do love a wall. Not just we as an Order or a Movement, but the fate of the earth itself hinges on that unity emerging as a substantial force. "The Way" is the name for this X dimension, the human factor, that is the common experience of mankind. It is the name for that which accounts for the success of our methods-­and we've all had the experience of seeing terrible pedagogy and sloppy procedures still work wonders. That X factor-­the Way-­is irresistible. It is painful. It is awesome. It always wins. It is God making his way through history. It is the profoundest level of life. It is the pearl of great price that is yet available to (and some would say most abundant among) the wretched of the earth. It is what has kept us going this year and what lures us into a future full, so far as I can see, of even more intense criticism, frustration, and even boredom. That's what we're after in these talks, not some novel or cute gimmick to titillate our gizzards into doing more of the same. In fact the Way promises only to re­do our gizzards and to wipe us out. It is not a Way of prominence or reward. It is the Way of authenticity-­authenticity of one brief life on one small planet. Now there's at least one notable difference between us and Dunne ... actually two. First, he thinks, writes and talks about it. We do it. That means at least that we can learn from each other, and perhaps that neither has an exclusive hold on "truth." But far more important a difference is that Dunne concentrates on the individual in his solitariness: we encounter, elicit and sustain selfhood in society. That is, our work takes seriously the social dimensions of authenticity. Our experience of the last year has been of communities- human communities-profound communities: to use an image we've hung out to dry for a while, "primal communities." We have seen and been people of the Way, not just persons of the say. Our experience would suggest that the common experience of mankind is found not in the individual in his solitariness, but in the self in society. Perhaps there was a time when this was not true. Perhaps around the Enlightenment or the Renaissance, the discovery of the individual's independence was on the edge of history and creativity - certainly so if it enabled the emergence of authentic selves out of a faceless mass. Not so, today. Isolation is as out of place in selves as it is in nations. The relational character of the self has been discovered, and with it has emerged the cruciality of primal community. The Way of which we speak is a social category, not an individual one. We are learning to speak of communities of the Way. We are ourselves people of the Way. Guarding the Way is not one­on­one attention to the quirks of individuals. It is guarding the relations and dynamics and structures of the local community. We are not Awakening individuals so much as communities. We are not creating demonstration individuals but communities which create and sustain authentic human life. This summer we are intending in both our research task forces and in our "spirit life" to fix our attention on the life of the Way. For once these two aspects of the assembly are one. For when you push beneath the surface of the happenings in Town Meetings and Assemblies and Demonstration projects, what you reach is -­ and we're not good yet at identifying or measuring it-­ far better at doing it ­- the human factor, or the life of the Way. And conversely when you begin to spell out the implications of the finality, thinking, acting and presence of the Way, what you get is primal community -­ the Human Factor. For the thinking, we've coined the term "reasons of the heart." But reasons of the heart are quite different from romantic fantasizing or emotionally controlled nonsense. (I think that's why Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' so offended me -­ all the dialogue came out of the individuals' drive to satisfy their emotional itches. I found it boring. Someone said Woody was really panning that approach. Maybe so.) Reasons of the heart require the keenest sensitivity to the real situation and its meaning. It is rigorous. It takes the input from the senses, the mind, the emotion, the intuitions, the past, present, and future and the depths of life--and weaves them into unexpectedly obvious disclosures. Our swirling and cross­gestalting methods are attempts to get a procedural form on it. And villagers both recognize and participate in this reasoning -­ perhaps because they are so much up against life's harsh realities, and so little encumbered with the technical reasoning drummed into some of us that substituted ideas for life. But when Suriaban of Maliwada tells the story of the Fort and the village, it is reasoning of the heart -­ the thinking of the Way. And it emerged from a rigorous participation in the life of that community. The action of the Way is equally rigorous. We've used the term "Maneuvers of the Void" to suggest those unexpected, on target subtle and profound moves that, with apparent simplicity alter an entire situation. Our push for whistle points, pressure points and, more recently, keystones, is an attempt to provide methodological guidelines for this type of action. When it happens, it looks simple, easy and even nonchalant. Nothing could be further from the truth. Action of the Way requires the discipline, practice, and alertness of the Samurai, who, though he may appear to be relaxed or inattentive, is in fact participating with his whole being in the situation until the right flick of the wrist wrests the victory. Practice, discipline and keen sensitivity to detail constitute the active waiting that precedes sharp, effective action. Last year I drove twice from Central Iowa to Chicago during blizzards without snow tires or chains. To outward observers our trip seemed safe, easy, and only a bit slower than usual. Inside the driver's role was the most intense action. For you were not in control. You had to coast -­ to move with the forces. Uphill or down, you had to coast; deceleration or acceleration either one spun you into a ditch -­ so did turns. So you were absolutely turned on to the situation ­- to every gust of wind, every drift of snow, every rut in the path, every whir of the engine and every other vehicle on and off the rapidly vanishing road. It was a battle royal with panic, rage, hilarity, and passion -­all aimed at getting the car down the road. Curiously enough, the exits were blocked. The only stopping place was in the ditch, wrecked. That's like the action of the Way, only it's not yourself that's in danger of the ditch -­ it's your community. These local communities simply have two options -­ the junk pile of history or the action of the Way. The exits are blocked. Nor is it simply following passively the forces in a situation -­it means in full cognizance of every force and nuance of the circumstances to inject into them just precisely that action which wins. The action of the Way is complex. For what appears to be the intended act may well be a diversionary feint allowing the real deed to slip subtly by with little notice. In the action of the Way neither competition nor acclaim have any relevance whatsoever. Other communities on the Way and other people become colleagues from whom I and we can learn and with whom we can share. And what could possibly give (or be) recognition for effective accomplishment when the only issue is staying on the Way? When that is the issue, both 'successes' and 'defeats' are equally fraught with pitfalls and equally glorious adventures. For "Presence of the Way" we have coined the phrase "Witness of the Spirit." For there are and have always been those in history who exerted an influence that far exceeded what you would expect from their knowledge or action-­those whose very style or presence somehow presented the Way to everyone they encountered. It's the difference between the Pied Piper and all those other flutists whom the rats ignored. We've spoken of this phenomenon as 'charisma'-­but the expression is at once too individualistic and too passive. We're out to create communities of the Way whose renewed spirit shines through to impact and attract others into a new possibility of care. That's another way to say 'Social Demonstration.' We demonstrate possibility in the economic, in the social, and in the human. Underneath all the statistics and measurements and criteria is the reality of a community that has decided to care for itself and its neighbor. That's what site visitors 'see' and are impacted by: though figures and graphs may impress people, it is unlikely that very many have ever been awakened by a chart. That's the edge of our documentation: how to present objectively the Awakenment that has occurred in the community. So this presence of the Way is a community, a corporate, a social reality. And it is not passive, either given or withheld. The community's decision to care for itself is dramatically displayed in its appearance, its symbolic life, its services, and its support structures ... without them there is probably a malaise of spirit, and generating them requires immense effort. But-­and here we need to be careful-­the presence of these things does not guarantee presence of the Way ­- especially if they are provided by outside agencies with no participation or control by residents. Some of the most gorgeous habitats on earth are a clump of individual 'fortresses' whose Spirit witnesses only to exclusiveness, fear, and self­seeking. Likewise some of the most charismatic of people may also be grotesque by normal standards of appearance; yet their presence is somehow visible for it to be effective. Our push on Stakes and Guilds, space visibility, and especially symbols are attempts to put objective form on this presence in a manner that both dramatizes and sustains it in the community and displays it for all to see.