Reflections

It seems I have come full circle in the past year, with my present studies of nonviolence. Slightly over a year ago, I wrote this essay: Stormriding on Winds of Change

I remember, at the time, one of the things that was spurring me was reading about the concept of Restorative Justice, an offshoot of some of Gandhi's work in india. It inspired me at the time... but honestly, I never got very far with it. Time, perhaps, to take things further, and also beyond the setting of the Otherkin community, though I am sure I will find applications for it there still. My understanding of the underlying concepts is changing and evolving as I learn more from Gandhi's work and from other sources. It was a good start, there were even some areas where I got things more right than I knew by fortuitous accident. But only a beginning, and with some flaws as well.

Beyond Duality, another entry from the same time period, also ties in with it and with what I am studying presently.

One final thing, an archiving of some points that particularly resonate for me in an article I have been reading:

"I hope those who have followed these essays will realize that nonviolence does NOT have an answer to all problems. It is, in the words of Barbara Deming, an experiment that has just begun.

Nonviolence is not an academic exercise - it is a matter of testing theories in practice, asking what went wrong and trying again.

Nonviolence is a theory of managing social conflict in order to achieve social change. It is not a theory of generating social chaos, except in brief periods. It is an effort to bring the full community within the framework of compassion.

Nonviolence is a search for truth - not a search for ways to prove your opponent wrong. If you are not ready, as you examine the facts, to realize you may be wrong and your opponent right, you aren’t ready for nonviolence.

You must not be attached to your theories, but only to the method. The method is the theory. We create the path by walking. The ends will be determined by the means - they do not exist separate and apart from the means."
http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/philo-nv7.php

If the Russians Love Their Children Too

A little over five years ago (December 1999/January 2000), I was deep in the midst of what some would come to call my "mad bastard" phase... an apt description of the head-space I was in at the time.

Exactly five years ago, I was out of that headspace and working to change myself in positive ways.

What changed?

Well, the catalyst was that one of the people I was working with endangered my boyfriend in a way that made me really see the direction things were going in.

But the groundwork came before that. The new order of things was taking form beneath the shell of the old.

I'm not sure where it started really. I think perhaps me stubbornly refusing to make use of the idiotic code-names and insisting that if I was going to speak for the organization it was going to be my name and my reputation on the line.

There were other things too... seeing "friends" of one of the people I was working with be treated as little more than resources... contacted only when they could do something for the person, with but the most superficial of pleasantries exchanged before "getting down to business".

But one of the things I think really influenced me at that time was something I never suspected back then.

The person I was working with, and living with, had a strong tendency to put a cd in the cd player and hit repeat... playing the same songs over and over again for days, then weeks, at a time. It was, frankly, maddening and to this day I cannot really enjoy some of the never-ending story II or III (forget which at this point) soundtrack because of that.

But I did find one CD this person owned that I could tolerate for those lengths. It was a mix cd, containing the best of quite a few different artists and styles. And it had a song on it that I really liked. Russians, by Sting.

I loved this song from the first time I heard it. There were times when I was living in that situation that I truly felt like this song was keeping me sane. And I liked its message of peace. But it's only now that I'm seeing the really nonviolent connotations of the song. I can't help but wonder if that message of nonviolence, even absorbed subconsciously, helped ease me out of my obsessive, even violently adversarial mad bastard phase and onto the path I am walking now.

Seeds are opening, changing, growing, even before they sprout from the ground as plants and begin to reach for the sky.