Fund Thrivable.org kick-off

by

After three years of exploration and network building, writing and discussion, planning and processing, Thrivable.org is just about ready for kick-off. We will have a soft launch to our friends and collaborators this month (August) and will run a pilot for three to six months.

While I have self-funded the development until this point, the work is for the commons. And if it is to be our shared organization and movement, then it must expand beyond my effort and my funds. We own this work together.

Are you willing to make a commitment to becoming thrivable? Buy me a virtual cup of coffee to keep me alert on this effort.

Have you already felt the effects of my work and the emergence of thrivable? Pay it forward for others.

My sincere gratitude for your faith in this emerging idea and project. Thank you for your commitment to a better world for all.

Experiencing as…

by

Last winter I started playing a little game. Call it “I am the universe experiencing itself as…___”

It began after having an awakening where I saw myself as one perspective that the universe has for seeing itself, and holding that as one among gazillions of others. Let us imagine the the universe, or god, or whatever greater consciousness may exist, is using everything created as a way to perceive everything else. Let us be in that perception from a state of non-judgment. No experience is more valuable than any other in this game with our imaginations.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trodel/3598596315/

by http://www.flickr.com/photos/trodel/3598596315/

Imagine a rock. A common pebble you find in your walk. What does it experience? How was it formed? How did, over time, it transform into the current shape? What is the experience of time to the rock? A grain of sand. A drop of water? A tree? A piece of petrified forest? A star?

We begin. Number of players: 1 to ? Rules:

  • Begin each turn with “I am the universe experiencing itself as…_____”
  • Fill in the blank at the end.
  • When playing with others, try being radically different in scale or experience, place, or time. Alternately, try surprising your playmates with a completely different angle on the same body. Say, one person fills the blank with _body of a 5 year old boy in Africa_ then the next might say _the bacteria in the boys intestines_ or _his great-great grandmother_.
  • Be creative. You win when you are moved by it. To laughter, to tears, to ahas, or to sleep. 😉

Spots of interest. Note from the perspective of the universe that the experience of death is not a pain felt in the body as pain – it is an experience. There is a slight detachement to what that experience feels like because it is all taken in as information about the experience. Also, all experiences add to the knowledge of the universe, so the experience of being vomit is no less valuable than the experience of being the body of a superstar. This exercise can be (or has been for me) a great leveler. And yet, I don’t think of the world as all being equal. It is different. Apples to oranges. Usually when I describe this, I use the metaphor of my hands. Why would one hand be better than the other? They are different (one being right and one being left). Or the cells in my foot are no less valuable than the cells in my ear.

Try it. See what happens for you. And tell me how it goes for you.

Messes–there is no right answer

by

I still find myself resisting my own crazy idealism. But life experience has brought me to understand something a wild teacher in high school said to us.

“There are no right answers, there is only more or less appropriate.”

Life is messy with little black and white and a whole lot of rainbowed spectrums. story of stuff

Work is complicated. There are always compromises. No worker or organization lives in some ideal world where they don’t compromise. What matters is the choices around when and where to compromise. And each of us are the only ones capable of making those choices and living with them.

What makes this all bearable? One, we have no choice. Bear it or do something else. Two, it is navigating this complexity which makes it interesting and each of us unique. Three, the spectrum brings color and light to life, embrace the intricacies as life flowing experience.

Language is not black and white either, though it might look it sitting on the page in colored ink and white space. It is a fluid breathing beast that roughly translates what we have inside us to others. Metaphors are never perfect. It is all messy. And therefore everything that we do through language is already and always to some degree imperfect and unpure. Scientists, theorists, and other black/white seekers might want rigorousness, but as long as they use language, there is always a resonance of poetry and multiple meanings and multiple interpretations. Multiple frames of understanding and relevance. There might be more and less appropriate, but there is little black and white, right or wrong.

Thus we have play…difference…complexity.

Collaboration and Complementarity

by

Collaborate with others to build your visibility, their visibility, gain access to resources, share access, increase value. Complimentarity. And I mean something pretty simple with this–who compliments what you are doing? Who has a similar market to your which will allow you both to increase your visibility to your target? What products and services compliment what you are offering? How can you leverage that compliment to build your revenues?

It matters significantly less what your competition is doing (unless you want to stay in red oceans) and does significantly matter who you have explicit and implicit cooperation with.

See Blue Oceans.