In the next years Active nonviolence may converge from a movement towards a global consciousness

(source wikipedia: the Dragon and the Phoenix)

“The faith in the future of the human is rooted in an understanding of the direction of history that began with our hominid ancestors. This species, which has worked and struggled over the course of millions of years to surmount pain and suffering, is not now going to yield to the absurd. This is why we need to understand processes that are more ample than simple immediate circumstance, and to support, even if we do not see immediate results, everything that goes in the direction of evolution. When courageous human beings who are moved by a spirit of solidarity become disheartened, this slows the march of history. But it is difficult to grasp this broader meaning if one does not also organize and orient one’s personal life in a positive direction. What is at work here is not the interplay of mechanical factors or historical determinism—it is human intention, which tends to make its way through all difficulties.”                                                         (Silo, Letter to my friends p.45, 1995)

 

Caring for others is rooted in human structure

Many don’t realize that Nonviolence comes from ancient time. It was formalized in Ahimsa 2,500 years ago. In this blog we will explore the attitude of “caring for others and look after others”. This “caring for others” attitude was fundamental for the first human community survival.  The “caring for others” is link to nonviolent gesture and action that has accompanied the step of our ancestors at the beginning of our time.

Nonviolence attitude comes from much further back maybe 100,000 years ago. It’s part of the “mental and psychosocial fabric” of the human species but hasn’t yet been able to take shape. Silo, “Universal Roots Myths” author and founder of the humanist movement, explain that perhaps nonviolence attitude was already lodged in the hominid consciousness very long ago. This nonviolence attitude emerges at the beginning of the human being, than vanished more than 10,000 years ago.

Karen Rohn, explored the “attitude” for taking care of others in “The rupture Reflections on a text in a personal letter from Silo”. In that work she explained her interpretation of a letter that Silo wrote to her in 2004. In a short text, Silo, moves within a temporal arc of the last 300,000 years of human process.

Rohn explained how Silo treats these themes and concepts in a distant descriptive perspective with a deeper and intimate connection helping comprehension of these processes. “The unique style of Silo, “simultaneously observing from afar while being within”, helps one “fall down the rabbit-hole”. He establishes historical moments and the determining situational factors which formed the original spiritual, mental and psychosocial human tendency that continues moving within the depths of our personal and collective landscape.  

Rohn investigate the letter by searching the meaning of the word “tendency”. The definition of “tendency”, in the classic English dictionaries explained that it’s “to move or be inclined to move in a certain direction”. By using this word Silo is saying that in a particular moment in time within the human was born its original movement or inclination in a defined direction and character. Rohn expose others definition of the word tendency, which is to “care for or look after, give one´s attention to” and it can be interpreted as a particular attitude. Rohn study ancient divinity, sacred Mothers and Goddesses in various cultures.  In the work “Energetical Roots of Fundamental Experience South India”, she developed the central qualities of Goddness which are: their unique act of reproducing, birthing, nurturing and protecting life, both human and animal life.

“..the different historical actors from the Neolithic era appeared which also allowed for writing, the domestication of animals and plants and the first urban settlements in the Indus Valley, China, Mesopotamia and Eastern Mediterranean (including the civilizations of Crete, Anatolia, Egypt and North Africa). All of this came to life thanks to the most basic technology of the oven (and of course the conservation and production of fire) and the matriarchal social structure.”

But then, a rupture happen, little by little myths went changing and the Mothers and Goddess were replaced by Fathers, male gods and the patriarchal society and new life belonged to the lineage of the father.

According to Rohn this has enormous consequences in our evolution as a species, in our aspirations as a species, in our mental and spiritual happiness or suffering. Because it seem like at that moment, human being have created a “species discrimination” which generated in suffering. “We have created suffering”2  at a species level and from there the discrimination hasn’t stopped inventing form. Discrimination against minorities, against religion, against skin color, against poor, against various human and cultural characteristics.  

“If evolution depends on the free energy in a species and the health of its environment we are more or less detained in our evolution and things are complicated. All of us are detained, not just the unfavored half, because we all relate and live together. The deep changes that discrimination creates changes all the relations because as a species we are one structure. Can we imagine another species where half of the population is considered as “less,” how would we consider the possibilities of this situation? We have forgotten that the rules of the game are that we are One species, with one tendency, one mold and one direction. Our basic human tendency is that of community, of an innate inclination to make things better, to be caring.”

(wikipedia: prehistorical art, women did many drawing in the cave)

These mental and social virtues were part of the sensibility and direction of a collective lifestyle for all members of a tribe or community with its shared experiences, ideals, attitudes and procedures and here our essential tendency was determined, it was not divided has male and female, it was part of a whole, a species called human being. Our collective situation changed and today we live within a more or less global landscape where the feminine has lost value and is considered as less than the masculine.  In the last era, the sacred feminine which was previously undoubted, slowly became denied and eliminated as a presence in our landscape. The rupture in our shared collective tendency weakens and halts the evolution of our species. 

Imagine one day if we visit an other planet and meet a species that would have denied haft of their potential, we would probably think "that crazy" and would say  "this condition is totally unacceptable". We would probably explain to them that this condition has enormous consequences in their evolution and reduce their future and full potential as a species.

Today if seem, the only way we can evolve would be together as a species. Together acknowledge our tendency about the “we,” about caring for the others and paying attention to others, caring for the environment, caring for our planet. Because if we go on dividing ourselves, dividing nature, dividing countries, dividing families and dividing our life, signs are within us and all around us demonstrating that we moving down the wrong track.

According to Rohn, to be in contact with the whole potential of our tendency our species needs to live and move on common ground. Silo, refer to this interesting metaphor in “Universal Roots Myths” the human beings, as a whole, as a species, have the equipment to fly very far.

But in these moments of great acceleration and changes what should we do? I believe we can only be guided by what’s right for ourselves and for the others, “to take care of others” which is the basic attitude of Active nonviolence. But obviously, to do the right thing it’s not enough to change the direction of the events.

What about the direction of the events today? Everyone realize that time of pragmatism is now gone, and look what it have left us with, the reborn of “fascism and intolerance”.  As the situation change it’s getting much more dangerous and out of control, more incertitude are add to this scenario such as climate change and migration crisis, wars and massive weapons of destruction on every continent (nuclear weapons) which in few months could easily be in the hands of any “fascist government” or “terrorists groups”. In history we have seem many ideologies have disappeared because they did not adapt to the environment, and to new circumstances.

Never before we have large “metropolis” cities with millions of people and yet people speak more and more of their “loneliness.” Never before we have these widespread mental disorders, mental illness and psychiatric illness and yet people needed human warmth so much as now, but any approach to another in a spirit of kindness and help is received with suspicion. More and more our children are suffering from anxiety disorders, autism and others disorders. Millions and millions of people have been abandoned, and led to believe in the greatest unhappiness that he or she has something important to lose—an ethereal “something” that is coveted by all the rest of humanity!

It seem like we are entering in a zone of strong turbulence, and it may be messy. So how do you prepare for an emergency situation ? You need to jump ! I believe the time to prepare ourselves and our society is now, because when the big crisis will hit, there will be no time to think or to choose our common destiny, in emergency the "dangerous" situation will choose for us. When that moment appeared people will act rapidly and will choose safety. If we aren't prepared it will be the perfect opportunity for the raising of a authoritarian and violent worldwide organization.

(source : internet)

Social change through Active Nonviolence

I believe we need to prepare ourselves by setting the proper conditions at the level of our species for a change in the human mental and psychosocial structure. This kind of change would be link to an experience of reconciliation with our species. We still have this tendency from within it's a "seed dormancy process". The potential of this tendency can grow rapidly in the world if proper conditions are set in motion.

  

Today Active nonviolence movement and civil disobedience are now set in motion in many countries and could end up being something worldwide at any moment, because we live in a moment of planetarization, It would be a new narrative, and a new myth. 

Active nonviolence is strategic methodology based on well-timed action and can produce change in the direction of our life and in society.


My experience with Active nonviolence

Many would say but why Active nonviolence ? Over the years that I trained Active nonviolence I encounter many people that were saying "but Active Nonviolence is to timid to generated condition for social change, you are losing your time teaching Active nonviolence." Then I realize they didn’t made any difference between the timid, who retreat or become paralyzed when faced with any difficulty, and those who take action to surmount the difficulties, knowing that it is precisely by advancing that they will be able to get through the problems.

For several decades I practice Active non-violence. I launched several projects with friends. A neighborhood newspaper called "Visions Voisins". The newpaper was published every month by humanist and nonviolent volunteer for more than 10 years. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, we organized several demonstrations to denounce war as a solution to stop terrorist attack. Subsequently, I started an international nonviolence education program with humanist friends in England. I organizes several training in Haiti, Morocco, Kenya. In 2011, I launched another Active nonviolence program to educated the new generations. Run This Way school program for active nonviolence. More than 20,000 students across Quebec, France, Ireland participated in the program over 4 years. Currently, I am working on new medias projects related to nonviolence  and civil disobedience movement across the world.

Many times through my experiences I advances with new project, sometimes I had to let go a project because, if I would go forward it could generated problem beyond my strength. The problem I was facing was so large that I had to retreat, however, I knew that the dynamic, and the relationship of forces would change, either because the influence of nonviolence grows or because the problem’s influence weakens.

   

Personal change and Active nonviolence

Today I am sharing with my readers the "Path". Each time I did this small meditation with a group of people it has strengthen myself and strengthen the direction that I choose in my life. Each time it help me to define my project on Active nonviolence with new the generation.

I had learned that if I intend for my world of relationships to be nonviolent, I must ask  reciprocity of actions. This position is not “naturally given” in our behavior and in our society which is base on individualism and performance. But reciprocity of action is something that we must learned. This behavior is known as “the Golden Rule.” It is learned and perfected over time and experience in the world of relationships with others. (1)

Also rather than resigning to one’s supposed human “nature,” I learned that it's possible to change my behavior and that learning extends to others as a result of lessons I learned in overcoming my own suffering.

 
The Path


If you believe that your life will end with death, nothing that you think, feel, or do has any meaning. 
Everything will end with incoherence and disintegration.

If you believe that your life does not end with death, you must bring into agreement what you think with what you feel and what you do. 

All must advance toward coherence, toward unity. If you are indifferent to the pain and suffering of others, none of the help that you ask for will find justification.

If you are not indifferent to the pain and suffering of others, in order to help them you must bring your thoughts, feelings, and actions into agreement.

Learn to treat others in the way that you want to be treated.

Learn to surpass pain and suffering in yourself, in those close to you, and in human society. 

Learn to resist the violence that is within you and outside of you.  

Learn to recognize the signs of the sacred within you and around you. 

Do not let your life pass by without asking yourself, “Who am I?”

Do not let your life pass by without asking yourself, “Where am I going?”

Do not let a day pass by without giving an answer to yourself about who you are. 

Do not let a day pass by without giving an answer to yourself about where you are going.

Do not let a great joy pass without giving thanks internally. 

Do not let a great sadness pass without calling into your interior for the joy that you have saved there. 

Do not imagine that you are alone in your village, in your city, on the Earth, or among the infinite worlds.  

Do not imagine that you are enchained to this time and this space.  

Do not imagine that in your death loneliness will become eternal. 

In fact, the Path is a ceremonies that I experienced with others, mostly active nonviolence militants and activists. These kind of personal experiences propel myself with others in the construction of a new reality, a reality that humanize, a reality that take care for others.
 
Myth and social change 

On a social level I used various ancient myth to help me comprehend a deeper reality in human psychism. A reality where I could be in contact with this hidden tendency of our species, where I could find the path to reconcile with myself and the others and our species.

According to Victor Frankl, Carl Jung (psychotherapists) and Joseph Campbell (mythologist) myths connect us and propel our constructive participation in society. In fact "myths" work in society like a vacuum with common shared values.

To conclude our exploration on the ancient tendency and active nonviolence I would like to share this Chinese myths, “the Dragon and the Phoenix”, from Silo "Universal Roots Myths" which I believe is appropriated for this moment. It talks about equilibrium between forces, between the Yin and the Yang, between the women and the men, between the nature and society, between night and day, between winter and summer, between the abyss and the stars in the sky.  

 (Wikipedia: Yin and Yang )

Chinese Myths

The Dragon and the Phoenix1

When the waters were not yet under control and the overflowing rivers inundated the fields, the mother goddess gave birth to beneficent offspring, who began to give order to the chaos of the times. The brilliant dragons sailed through the waters and the sky as they brought under control the rivers and lakes, the sea and the clouds. On high they roared, as with tiger paw and eagle talon they rent the curtains snapping in the great gusts of wind, unleashing the rains. They gave the rivers their courses, contained the lakes, and gave depth to the seas. They made the caverns from which water gushes forth, and they made the subterranean channels through which the water flows great distances, to later spring suddenly to the surface, untouched by the scorching sun. They traced the lines that run through the mountains and allow the energy of the Earth to flow, balancing the health of that gigantic body. And more often than not they had to struggle with problems provoked by gods and men, busy with their irresponsible strivings. Smoke would pour out from between their jaws, a life-giving and humid mist, a creator of unreal worlds. With their scaly, serpentine bodies they would cut through the storms and cleave the typhoons. Against their powerful horns and sharp teeth no obstacle could endure, no entanglement could stand. And they were much given to appearing to the mortals. Sometimes they would appear in dreams, sometimes in grottoes, sometimes along the shores of lakes—particularly those places where it was their custom to hide their crystalline dwellings, whose beautiful gardens were adorned with sparkling fruits and the most precious stones.

Immortal Long, the celestial dragon, always placed his activity (his Yang) at the service of the Tao, and the Tao recognized this, allowing him to be in all things, from the largest to the smallest, from the great Universe to the least particle. Everything that has lived has lived thanks to Long. Nothing has remained immutable save the unnamable Tao; even the silently nameable Tao is transformed, thanks to the activity of Long. And not even those who believe in Heaven and Hell can ensure their permanence.2

But Long loves Feng, the Phoenix bird who concentrates the seed of things, who contracts that which Long extends. And when Long and Feng are balanced, the Tao shines like a pearl bathed in the purest light. Long does not struggle against Feng—because they love each other, they search for each other, making the pearl shine. Because of this, the wise arrange their lives according to the balance between the Dragon and the Phoenix—the images of the sacred principles of the Yang and the Yin. The sages position themselves in the empty place, searching for equilibrium. The wise understand that non-action generates action and that action generates non-action. May the beating hearts of all living things and the waters of the sea, the day and the night, the winter and the summer, follow the rhythm marked for them by the Tao.

At the end of this age, when the Universe will have reached its greatest extension, it will contract once again like a falling stone. Everything, even time, will invert, returning to the beginning. The Dragon and the Phoenix will meet again. The Yang and the Yin will interpenetrate; so great will be their attraction that they will absorb everything into the empty seed of the Tao. The sky above, the Earth below—with this the creative and the receptive are determined, with this the changes and transformations are revealed.3

But no one can really know how things have been or how they will be, and if someone did know they would not be able to explain it.

So it is that: To know that you do not know is best; he who pretends to know when he does not, has an infirm mind. He who recognizes an infirm mind as infirm does not have an infirm mind. The mind of the wise is not an infirm mind, because the wise recognize the infirm mind as infirm.4

________________________________________________________________

Reference: the Path - from the Message, Silo.net

1 “Alice in Wonderland”. Lewis Carroll. Chapter 1. Down the Rabbit-Hole. “For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.”

2 The general context for this letter is that in 2004, among his many interests, Silo was investigating the influence of fire in the human process. The investigation, carried out with a group of friends, was aimed at having direct experience of conserving, transporting and creating fire and later original techniques with materials and temperatures by working with ovens, kilns, ceramics, metals, glazes, molds and preliminary experiments with glass. One of the first forms that we reproduced were the earliest representations of the human being which are feminine – the mothers, Venuses and goddesses. Besides working with the fire workshop I was also dedicated to different investigations of the feminine related to spiritual and cultural expressions

and Silo’s Message. – Universal Roots Myths, Silo

3 Yin has been interpreted as a passive force, complementary to Yang. Yin, however, appears as a force that is previous to Yang. Associating Yin with the feminine and Yang with the masculine has given rise to a number of anthropological discussions in which it has been argued that this anteriority is historical rather than conceptual. This argument leads to the conclusion that the primacy of the feminine corresponds to a matriarchal epoch that was later displaced by the patriarchy in which Yang asserts its activity, as for example with the Dragon Emperor (Yang) and the Feng Empress (Yin)

4 This is an allusion to the myths of the afterlife. In the fragment included below, we find reflected various popular beliefs about the afterlife, although they are drawn from different epochs. For example, consider the case of the Eight Immortals that only appears in the thirteenth century c.e. (Yuan Dynasty), alongside figures that were feared or venerated anywhere from the eleventh to the second centuries b.c.e. (the classical period of the Chou Dynasty). In any case, this is a work of great merit that also gives certain ritual rules: “Do you know what they will do with you?” asked Tcheng-Kuang, looking at him attentively. “They will skin you alive, they will tear out your nails, your teeth, and your eyes, they will strip off your flesh and throw it to the vultures. Then dogs will gnaw your bones. And during the one hundred and five days of the Yin solstice, your relatives will not be able to visit your tomb and offer you the sacrifices of the festival of death. The young men of your village will throw their kites—illustrated with the legends of the Eight Immortal Sages—into the air. From these kites they will hang their bells and lanterns. Millions of lanterns will be lit that day in China, but none will be lit for you.… Nor will they burn sulfur or the leaves of the artemisa in the middle of the patio to expel the demons. Ching, the great demon who carries the register of Life and Death, will already have written your name on the door of Hell, on the Great Ocean, on the path that leads to the Yellow Fountains, where the dead live.… Sung-Ti, the Infernal Majesty who lives in the palace of the Black Ropes; and the Lord of the Five Senses, Yen-Lo; the terrible and the implacable Ping-Tang, Lord of the Hells; all will one by one make you pass through their torture chambers in an infinite cycle of torments. You will not go to the Kwang Sung Paradise, where the Queen Mother of the West strolls amid her peach trees, nor will you ever again see the sun, Father Yang, beautiful Raven of Gold, cross the sky in his chariot of flames.” See, e.g., La Flor del Tao, A. Quiroga (Madrid: Cárcamo, 1982, pp. 13ff., from the bilingual edition).

5 Ta Chuan: The Great Treatise. See, e.g., I Ching: Disertación de Ta Chuan, transl. A. Martínez (Quindio, Colombia: Ed. Tao, 1974).

6 Tao Te Ching, op. cit., 71.

Reference :

Universal Roots Myths,Silo

The rupture Reflections on a text in a personal letter from Silo, Karen Rohn