some thoughts on the LMO while digesting and meditating yesterday in
the studio. mash has been busy or bored of me recently so ive had lots
of time to practice and to meditate by myself, which is great.
so im thining about the LMO and the notion of virutal ashram. im
thinking that goddamit we're still so far apart and its been so many
years and sometimes it seems like the big crunch is imminent and
sometimes its very very clear that i know nothing outside of this
moment and not much in it besides.
heres to the electricity lasting the length of this email and one day
me getting a laptop with a battery. and one day me never using a
laptop again. cheers. hari om tat sat jai guru datt.
of course its some sort of internet web email thing.
there's this concept of an ashram that ive done a poor job of
explaining to people. luckily the premise of the LMO-qua-ashram had to
do with the fact (and how many times did i joyfully say this to
friends and lovers) that "Ive got land!" and it turns out that wasnt
true despite the fact for 10 years my mom has been telling me begging
me please come back to sequim you have land here, do your weird hippie
famring projects here. really shes been saying that ever since bolson
round 1 and then i went back and tried a little and it was a bit of a
disaster.
so heres the belated acknowledgement of that and the unfortunate
reality (as i tell baby, its not a problem, its the reality) is that
im not going to be going back to Lost Meadow Lane except as a guest
for mao's long while. so there's that. and it's a bummer because i had
all these ATTACHMENTMENTS And INDENTIFICATIONS and EXPECTATIONS
[ all recipes for disaster / not included in the cookbook ]
about the LMO and specifically Max and getting our permaculture groove
on there in a major way. theres a lot of fallout some of it being that
was my attempt at the infamous "Settling Down" and what a comical
failure and now im back on the road and loving it again and finding
myself in the footsteps of Gandhiji (looking over my writings) and
learning about Vinobaji and this whole traditional of indian wandering
mystic sages that my hair almost qualifies me for (until i get lice,
at which point i will shave it, immediately, no attachment in the face
of lice, that's for damn sure).
but anyhow. what is an ashram? well there's a lot to answer that
question with but for now i want to go back to el salvador and bring
up the nightly reflections. john would have these visitng groups come
from high school and college and every night after an intense day of
poverty beauty liberation and theology we/they would get together and
reflect a little bit, just share.
and neilu and matt and i have done similar things each night we lived
together -- prayer sessions inloud and outloud, giving thanks and
expressing hopes and, yes, desires, and making commitments to self and
to god and reflecting on what we learned that day. and in other
communities as well.
this to me lies at the root of community, and is central to the
ashram. a social space of shared reflection and understanding that not
only are we on the same path but we are in point of fact, the same
being. Being, even.
this, besides the fruit trees and frisbee, is the whole reason i want
to live with my lovers, to have this sense of shared selfhood and
purpose be more immediate. obviously it can never cease to be true,
and i can never cease to realize it, in some sense, but the realizing
is a lot more WOW and TECHNOCOLOR when im with you people.
but the basis is this shared sense of understanding and oneness that i
think any real community has. and in india theyve been doing this for
a long time so they have evolved the concept of an ashram, a sanctuary
where the seeker can take refuge, have time for their sadhana
(practices -- meditation, reading, etc), and give themselves to seva
(service, work for the world, cleaning toilets and GIS programming).
being india and venerable they've evolved a lot of customs to help out
and some that hinder even
- vows (gandhi had 11 as part of his ashram, i wrote a little thing
about, ill attach it if i can)
- guru (the master)
- admission (you go to an ashram and you have to say who you know and
your qualificatons and all this shit)
so depending on where you are those are great or get in the way but
its all about the ONE LOVE and if those help its down the road a bit.
i also want to make it clear that this concept of an ashram is not new
to anyone who is in love or feels a sense of partnership or oneness.
it is exactly That, just a name and a set of helpful functions. a nice
way of putting it that has some deeper, explicit, wearetheworld
connotations. this is not a new idea to you.
so i guess it came to me, how do we maintain that while we are
physically separated? so maybe we cant have the fruit trees because i
dont have any land just yet, but we can at least build some sort of
organizational net to help us with this shared reflection bit.
and we all do this anyhow. its called email and its fucking wonderful
and also a chain. but what if you had some sort of group that was this
family, this section of the Family, this collection of inmates, this
virutal ashram, and you could send these reflections. and theres no
argument and there's no reply or response there's just sharing and
praying outloud and what was good about today and ruminations or
whatever. at the beginning its a mailing list and we have these too
(and often they degenerate into dialogue where the point here is not
so much communication or completion but nakedness, vulnerability,
sharing, regular commmunion). does that make sense? communion more
than communication?
later you could add different things if people want to be on the same
diet or share their meditation practices or i dont know, there could
be more. but in the beginning its just this mailing list with
Intention and maybe (this is something ive wanted ever since cholmes
explained what a map was to me) this map with everybody's location on
it so you can see where the family is.
the interesting technical side that has to do with the personal side
is that since the sharing is not about communication and not tailored
to any audience but god, since it will be in many ways innocent of ego
and style, it can be shared across a wider [sic] range of our lovers.
as in i dont write an email and send it to amanda then send it to uz
(usually) because my relatonships are different with those people.
whereas with this it wouldnt be about either amanda or uz but rather
this bit of light reflecting from the one to the self to the one.
of course the prerequisite for sharing somehing like this would be a
sense of total shared pathness, uncondtional love, and open
vulnerability, for which set the term 'wider' seldom applies.
the technical side is that we're all part of many ashrams making up
the bigger ashram fractally climbing up the scale up to and including
dick cheney, somewhere out there. and not all the family members know
they are in the same family with everybody else. and thats fine
because theres an infinite amount to be learned in relating to self,
even, and we dont want to blow everybody's minds just yet.
but you could have this service where im a member of the bigfun ashram
and a member of the harleydavidson ashram and i send my
daily/weekkly/inter-mittens reflection and it just goes automatically
to both of those. so you send this one email and it automatically goes
to all your ashrams (by default all boxes are checked).
thats the only non-energetic innovation to this besides the whole
cholmsian "where are my rupees map".
the other aspect i thought about had to do with the FOAF disaster (now
that myspace has won, cant the other companies use the protocols and
team up?...) and websites and passwords in general. it could be that
theres no website and all of this is done by email somehow, you get
some randomly generated private email
mangolandia.fkdjfkd@spaceshipashram.com and just send to that every
time and it sends it to all your people for you. when you register you
can tell your location and any profile changes are given using
generated email links that are verified craigsliststyle... so no
logins or anything. obvisouly there's some security concerns here but
perhaps they can be dealt with...
as always, id love to hear what you think.
ankur
--
black panthers head back to the motherland:
http://mangolandia.blogspot.com
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