thoughts on regenerative paradigms.

 

the truth calls for revelation, and I find that most truths come wordlessly, without a label. what we usually can point at and box into a right or wrong form is usually as ephemeral as the mind that recognized it.

lately, idealists (myself included) have been obsessed with paradigms that regenerate the world, nurture it and find ways to honour its complexities. the narrative these paradigms tell are enticing and elusively mind-provoking, they are also ones that sacredly make you want to leave everything behind to fix the world and be an agent or vessel of elegant transformation.

however, being in the midst of that, I have found that the more time we spend judging the world and pointing at the behaviours of our ancestors as wrong, selfish and diabolical, the more we divide, the more we fall into the trap of feeing superior just because we know better.

in my work, having read all about ways to make my classroom more regenerative, I found myself judging the people who have built constraints into my world: the textbook and curriculum I need to race to finish, the large classroom sizes that don’t allow space for quiet contemplation, and the school made of concrete and not a bit of grass to sit on to gaze at the clouds. I pointed it out, bit by bit, just to prove to myself that this paradigm is right. 

all I can say now is that it is an elusive, delusional trap. idealism and the paradigm of reformation may be the way to fall into an egoistic superiority that is no different than the selfishness and greed we proclaim to what to change.

I feel that I keep falling into the depth of being sure that this world, this moment, just as it is, is perfect the way it is. all its people, all its brokenness and all its circumstances. all the trees near my house being cut down, all the streets and bridges they’re building, all the materialist hubs of entertainment— they feel so wrong. but deep down, I feel that there is no way but to embrace it and love it as it is.

the more we separate right and wrong, the more we feel the pain of being here. the more we rid ourselves of the inner knowing that we are here just for this little time, and all our achievements, all our doing will somehow fade away. it won’t stay. whatever we do, even the most transformational of things, one day, they’ll be forgotten or perhaps be replaced by other doings. in the end, it is all unfinished.

I feel the only doorway that leads to the infinity that we are is love. the love in our consciousness, the eyes of our hearts— and that is such a subtle distinction. the doing could be the same, and sometimes even grander without it. yet, the heart’s gaze is subtly deeper and shifting something more than this world of form can take.

and so, in this regenerative field, I find that it is truly the intimacy of the moments we share being alive that really compounds being here. and I feel it now, the time it takes to shift the attention towards a sacred temple in my chest. it is so subtle, so soft-spoken, found wistfully. the doing within this timelessness is profound, right, centred and true— and it coexists even with the most toxic of ideas. it makes out of it all, a home.

I don’t know what I’m saying, it feels like I’m only pointing at some metaphor I cannot grasp. and that is all we do— pointing at pointers, always missing the point the moment we reside in our heads. 

in this moment, it is all here in worship. every breath in ease is service. and somehow, whatever it is we are doing as humans, it is the best we can do, and it is the right thing.