James Stark: Intention

Saturday evenings for the next 13 weeks, there's a lecture series that coincides with this Permaculture class. I heard James Stark of the Regenerative Design Institute speak about leadership in the 21st century.

My grandest take-away from the discussion:

I am living my intention.

There are vast swathes of my life that aren't working. Anchors that hold me down. Real, physical constraints that prevent me from reaching the paradise I can sometimes see for myself and my family (and the world) when I sit quietly. Where did these chains come from? Why do they still have force over me?

Because I am committed to them. I supply them with all the energy they need to turn my dry path into sucking mud.

Here it is: I hold the intention that I am the link between the pain and suffering that births from our 1950s, nuclear family, cheap energy, consumptive lifestyle, and the 2020s, multigenerational, low energy, regenerative lifestyle. I insist on keeping a foot in both worlds, as a minister, or a prophet even. I noticed that people who start walking the path to how we will all live eventually reach their destination very quickly: so quickly that they become dead to their old way of life, their old friends, the old system. And so the next person feels like they are inventing the new system in a vacuum, until they bump up against this new culture and realize they are not alone.

I realize this could be the important step that must take place: for people to transform themselves through the risk of going to the new way without knowing it will work out. But I rail against it. I feel like we are ready to draw vast numbers of people into a sustainable, abundant future, if we make the process transparent. Is being a bridge the best way to do this?

No I see that my intention is perfectly fulfilled: my life is hard because I am putting the energy into having it be hard. My life is full of hope because I am putting energy into having there be hope. I straddle this boundary, addicted to the play of froth and foam that springs from the immovable object battling the irresistable force. No wonder I'm tired.

I've already begun setting myself a new intention. I don't fully know what it is yet, since I have some more assessment to do, but I already know that I intend to become intimate with the interplay of ease, grace and success.