Language of Compassion

Twelve Theses for a Non-violent
Culture

1.         Home for the
Children. In a non-violent world children grow up in confidence and
trust. The future of humanity depends on the fate of its children. A
childhood marked by distrust and violence will not produce humane
beings. Provide a home to children where they can again trust their
parents.

2.         Love and Trust. Love
is the source of humane thinking and non-violent action. Love comes
from trust and trust comes from truth. Create living environments
where human beings have no reason for lies and fear. Create the
social and ecological conditions for love. Confidence and love are
the most fundamental powers in all of creation.

3.         Sexuality. Sexuality
is an elementary force of life and of the joy of existence.
Sexuality is autonomous. It can neither be controlled by patriarchal
marriage pledges demanding obedience, nor by tight external moral
constrictions; instead it needs truth and trust. Create the moral
and social conditions for healthy sexuality.

4.         Partnership.
Partnership is the highest form of relationship. It has its roots in
a common way of thinking. In no way is partnership in opposition to
a consensus-based sexual morality, because it is itself free of
jealousy. True partnership is the most radical model for a
relationship between human beings that is free of violence and fear.
Create the mental basis for a partnership free of jealousy.

5.         Community. The
organic environment for human beings is the community. Natural
values like truth, trust, solidarity and responsible participation
without philosophical nit-picking can only be realized within
communities that have developed organically. The non-violent society
of human beings is a network of communities who value consensus and
a common unity, and whose ultimate goal is a world where everyone’s
needs are met nonviolently. Only in this way can the original
concept of socialism be brought to reality in a humane way. Create
functioning communities.

6.         Freedom and Autonomy
of the Individual. A free world comprises individuals who say what
they think and share what touches them. They are not subordinate to
anything but their own knowledge and consciousness. The mature
community is a grassroots democracy of free individuals. It is a
human collective that is not collectively led in the name of a
leader or an ideology. The individual and the community are equal
and complementary forces in a non-violent world.

7.         Thinking. The
reflecting intellect is a young and powerful fruit on the tree of
evolution. Free and creative thinking dissolves all rigid
ideologies. The secrets of existence are beyond all scientific or
religious terminology. Individual autonomy is a direct result of a
thinking that is free of fear. Overcome all creeds and dogmas of
scientific and political systems. Create universities for the powers
of growth inherent in free thinking.

8.         Religion. Just like
Eros and the intellect, spirituality is one of the elemental powers
of human existence. We live in an endless radiant universe.
Everything we are and everything surrounding us has roots in the
universe. Spiritual love is the connectedness with the whole.
Therefore we do not need a religious confession nor predetermined
answers. The answer will come through the spiritual opening of the
mind. Create a free religious spirit without laws and without
dogmas.

9.         Nature. Nature is our
link with creation. We are its offspring, like a child that is born
from its mother’s womb. The secret of human existence is part of the
secret of nature. Whatever we do to nature we do to ourselves. The
outer and inner environment are two aspects of the same world. Let
us take care of Mother Nature and become aware of the processes of
growth and their rhythms and interrelatedness. Cooperation with all
vital energies and respect for life are the prerequisites for a
non-violent and humane civilization.

10.       Animals. Stop all
cruelty toward animals. Like us they are part of the living organism
of the biosphere. Like us they are beings with souls, just at a
different level of evolution. In a non-violent culture, whales are
not killed, animals are not kept for slaughter, and fur farming does
not exist. Create spaces for a coexistence of human beings and
animals that is free of fear. Animals do not exist for us to
slaughter but to help us to learn to see.

11.       Biotopes for Healing.
All of the thoughts above join together to form a new biotope for
healing. Such a biotope contains the informational totality for a
non-violent existence on planet Earth. Create pilot models for this
informational totality. Create international centers where the
social, technical, ecological and spiritual structures are such that
the healing powers of lifeÑtrust, Eros, Logos and symbiosisÑare
promoted in the best possible way.

12.       Networks of Human
Beings. Today, within all countries and cultures on earth, there are
people who have irrevocably understood the necessity of a positive
inner and outer revolution. They all contribute certain thoughts,
certain convictions, and certain aspects to the overall view of the
tasks at hand. It is not machines but people who decide if a future
worth living is possible. In that spirit we want to invite you to
join the network for a non-violent earth.

A Utopian Reality

I have heard of courageous
people who risk their lives on Greenpeace boats, placing themselves
between whalers’ harpoons, and the whales they would protect. Some
of them hate the whalers, in an unconscious attempt to work out
their authority issues with these projections of their own
patriarchal fathers and culture. Others, in the same boat, may have
done more of their inner work. They are now answering the call of a
real authority, one that compels them to protect and love the
whales. I would ask us all to ask ourselves this question: Are we
hating the whalers or loving the whales? If we are hating the
whalers, we will become like whalers, contributing to the
consciousness that allows humankind’s domination of the earth and
seas. If we do our inner healing work, then we can stay focused in
our love for the whales, ourselves and Mother Earth. From this
energy we can truly start creating conscious nonviolent partnership
communities and relationships. Then we will not be afraid to realize
our potential for power, for our souls will finally and truly trust
our benevolent intentions.

Some people are tired of all the
work involved in trying to save fundamentalists from their
oppression of women, children and sexuality, as well as shape up the
schools, convert corporate culture, and topple autocratic
governments all before breakfast. Lately I too have had much more
passion for creating a new partnership culture and community for
myself, my family and my close friends, rather than trying to change
the old culture. I think there is a line in the Bible that says,
“Don’t put new wine into old wineskins.”

I also believe that as people
sense the clarity, warmth and respect being expressed through the
members of these new partnership communities, those living in
Dominator organizational systems will want to join. Maybe we don’t
have to tear down Dominator organizational systems. Maybe they will
wither away from lack of interest.

If we create community systems
that better meet peoples’ needs for respect, acceptance, sexuality,
closeness, giving, gender equality, emotional safety, empathy,
celebration, warmth, and support, perhaps people will simply quit
participating in Dominator organizations. Perhaps they will quit
putting time and money into their Dominator churches and clubs,
their dysfunctional school systems and governments controlled by old
boy networks. The Nobel Prize winner and discoverer of the polio
vaccine, Jonas Salk, wrote in his book Anatomy of Reality that a new
culture will evolve through a new science of empathy based on both
reason and intuition “to bring about a change in the collective mind
that will constructively influence the course of the human future.”
I believe many people are itching to involve themselves in viable
alternative partnership communities. Peoples’ souls are longing for
a place to contribute their gifts, to play with others who are
really fun, to create schools with people who share more humane
values and, live with those who are more alive.

Creating Your Own Compassionate
Community

A conscious community is the
best resource anyone can have, particularly for growth and joy. As
psychiatrist Jean Baker Miller writes, “[the longing for community]
allows for the emergence of the truth: that for everyone men as well
as women individual development proceeds only by means of
affiliation.” If you do not have one, you can cocreate one with your
friends. I just started inviting my friends and their friends to do
some of the following activities, and gradually the need to become
more organized so we could enjoy even more community spirit
experience arose. Here are some examples from “Communities” magazine
(www.ic.org) of the kinds of activities that form the “glue” needed
for community building:

1.         Personal sharing time.

2.         Conflict resolution time.

4.         Shared meals.

4.         Decision-making that includes everyone.

5.         Children in the community.

6.         Shared values, a common vision and purpose.

7.         Appreciating and acknowledging each other.

8.         Singing, dancing, making music.

9.         Celebrations and rituals.

10.       Snuggling, puppy piles.

11.       Creating theatrical performances.

12.       Cocreating projects like a newsletter or event.

13.       Working together on projects that serve not only the community but the environment, the
city, the country, the world.

What I am writing about is not a
nice utopian dream, because it is already happening in many places
around the world. Besides the Human Awareness Institute communities,
NVC communities, and New Thought churches, there are many, many
other evolving conscious organizations. Of course the communities
that are the strongest are the ones that emerge organically, without
a charismatic leader or school of philosophy or religion, as this
often leads to endless nit-picking about what is or is not correct.
On another level, there is a new community that does not exist. It
is awakened within the heart, through the quality of connection we
make with the real people in our lives. It rises up in our hearts
when our compassion for the suffering of the world is touched. This
new community (which already exists is now physically manifesting at
Shangri La) is invisible. But it shows itself through your eyes,
your touch, your words, and your actions.

Dieter Duhm said it this way:

What then follows is cultural work
with ourselves and the way we lead our daily lives. Our suffering is
a signal from a life that is not lived. Healing consists of
recognizing and living that “unlived” life. To surmount our deeply
engrained restraints, our fears and weariness, our much too cozy
humanness, and our alternative gardens of refuge, we need an
experimental milieu in which such a transformation is understood and
affirmed. We need an inner centering and free communication
outwards. That is the key for a new culture. It includes new forms
of living together, raising children, new forms of love and
sexuality. The creation of a life-oriented culture requires the
creation of a new social and emotional space where people can again
learn to live and breathe freely. Such places would create the most
dependable healing power against fear and hatred, love.

Many new leaders in the quest for
this life-oriented culture are emerging and pointing the way to a
more enlightened ethics, as Eisler describes here:

Some writers, such as the
anthropologist Gayle Rubin, have taken the position that a new
sexual ethic should revolve primarily around whether sex is
consensual. However, she qualifies this by adding that rather than
the traditional division between acceptable or good sex as
heterosexual, married, monogamous, and reproductive, and bad sex as
anything else sexual acts should be judged, “by the way partners
treat one another, the level of mutual consideration, the presence
or absence of coercion, and the quantity and quality of the pleasure
they provide.” This new culture would have as the measure of
morality the value of consensus instead of conformity or coercion.
It would stress compassion, instead of control, pleasure instead of
pain. This would apply to all areas of human interactions, whether
it be sexuality, business, government, family life or communication.
But because sexuality is the spiritual core of our love and physical
life, and the linchpin that Dominator forces use to accumulate power
over societies, these new ethics must apply most vigorously to our
sexuality.

Riane Eisler describes the process of
developing the new culture as a shift in paradigms. She writes,

if we succeed in completing the
cultural shift from a dominator to a partnership social and
ideological organization, we will see a real sexual revolution one
in which sex will no longer be associated with domination and
submission but with the full expression of our powerful human
yearning for connection and for erotic pleasure. It will be a
sexuality that will make it possible for us to more fully express
and experience sexual passion as an altered state of consciousness.
It will also bring the recognition that erotic pleasure can be
imbued with a spirituality that is both immanent and transcendent.
And it will combine greater sexual freedom with greater empathy,
respect, responsibility, and caring.

This new culture would not value
being one of the nice, dead, conforming “sheople” of the community,
but would value holistic selfishness based on an awareness of the
unity of life. It would value service to the collective society, but
not at the expense of the individual and honor the ecological
interrelationship between ourselves, nature and each other.

The ability to control how love and
sexuality are dispensed allows the dynamic of domination to emerge
in a couple or in a culture. Love and sexuality can be spiritual
forces for the nurturing of harmony within individuals and groups as
long as the sacredness and primacy of free will and autonomy is
maintained.

Directions to Shangri La

From Hwy 17

17 into Santa Cruz

Take 1 south (toward Watsonville)

Go about 5 exits

Pass Bay Porter

Get off on Park Ave.

At bottom of ramp go left.

Thru to second stop light at Soquel Dr.

Go Right on Soquel about 3 blocks and on the

left you will see Temple Beth El (and Cabrillo College just ahead)

get into the left lane and turn left on Porter Gulch Rd.

Go exactly .5 miles (30 yards past green street sign that says

Hudson St.) and see mailbox with red cat on it and the number is

3614 Porter Gulch and turn right over the Bamboo Bridge into

Shangri La. Car Pool if possible. Park and follow lites to workshop
space or go to log cabin to find kelly.

From the South

Take Hwy 1 North

Drive to Aptos

Pass State Park Ave

Get off at Park Ave.

At bottom of ramp turn right

Go few minutes until reach Soquel Dr.

Go Right on Soquel about 3 blocks and on the

left you will see Temple Beth El (and Cabrillo College just ahead)

get into the left lane and turn left on Porter Gulch Rd.

Go exactly .5 miles (30 yards past green street sign that says

Hudson St.) and see mailbox with red cat on it and the number is

3614 Porter Gulch and turn right over the Bamboo Bridge into

Shangri La. Park and follow lites to workshop space or go to log
cabin to find kelly.