My Way - Three Stories - Part 2

Part 1 started developing three simultaneous stories: a large one about creation and the creative impulse, a medium one about finding "my way" at Sage Garden Ecovillas, and a small one - told partly in diagrams - about what that way is.  The diagrams I've used so far show a mirrored relationship between "Business As Usual" and "My Way," and that's intentional.  It's an admission that 1) what I perceive as my way is not the thing in itself, but only how it differs from the prevailing "right" ways (business as usual), and 2) the prevailing ways are just as self-consistent as my way.  But does that mean the perpetuating business as usual is just as good?  Maybe it's time to continue the large story.

... we ask, "But which way is my way?"  Now that the world of ways to do is no longer void or formless, and we have spent some time practicing the "right" ways, we start accumulating consequences.  Only now can we start to see the limitations of model that we used to call some ways "right" and others "wrong."

It's like the development of any living being.  Before we're born (or hatched, or sprouted, or whatever our emergence looks like), we operate on a model of interaction with the universe that works for us, but only temporarily.  That model could be summed up as, "do nothing, and the universe will take care of you."  After we operate under that model for a time, our physical size and the evolutionary significance of that model demand that we emerge as an individual organism and move on to new model, which for human organisms could be summed up as, "kick and scream when something feels wrong, and then the universe will take care of you."  This model is a vital improvement over the prior one, and it keeps us alive for another stage of development, but it is also temporary - another stage in a long progression that starts like this:

Let's return to the question that started this: "Is it just as good to perpetuate business as usual, or is my way (or your way or the way of any of us) any better?"  In a sense, if we step outside of time and our historical context and look at the whole timeline of the development of human wisdom and the accompanying behaviors, today's business as usual is just as valid and important as any other model at any other stage of development.  But in another sense, from the perspective of our current time, failing to move on from business as usual would be as dangerous to our species and our planet as refusing to be born (when it's time) would be to a fetus and her mother.  I say "would be" instead of "is" because it's inevitable that we will move on, even if it's with as much kicking and screaming as any infant.

I really got caught up in the large story there, didn't I?  I didn't mean to.  Next time I write about this topic, I'll try to focus more on the medium and small stories.