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Sovereignty and Self-Organization

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This week's video is part 2 on the discipline of Agency (here's last week's part 1 in case you missed it.)

It addresses what is sovereignty and how to develop it. It also defines peak attainment of personal freedom as the ability to live like a wild animal... which is deceptively organized, not disorderly, if you really think about it.

A bit more I'd intended to add to today's episode, but ran out of time:

Fascism relies on fear to control people. Indeed, fear chemically short-circuits our ability to think things through and act independently.

If you are someone clinging desperately to hang onto an old identity or story... then you will be especially susceptible to fear-based appeals.

If, instead, you are someone using your precious energy not trying to cling to an old version of yourself, but to actively create and foster a more beautiful world...

Then fear simply won't have the same currency to you. You'll be more prone to appeals to hope.

Don't be controllable by fear. Develop agency.

Stay open-minded in spite of the fear. Don't let them close you down.

Today, there's plenty about our situation to be reasonably afraid of.

But don't take the bait: Don't fear the state.

Fear the loss of your liberties. The loss of your rights.

Fear the loss of people's power to influence and shape the state.

Fear the collapse of ecological and social complexity.

Fear what happens when we don't develop ourselves into the people called for by the moment—urgently.

Fear the realities and futures, the people and the perceptions, born out of fear, aggression, and denial.

Fear the loss of meaning (and with it, life and life conditions).

...AND FIGHT BACK. 👊

Use fear appropriately: to motivate you to apply yourself to the work of making things better.

Yes, it DOES matter.

Better worlds can be born through us... We must not fear the ending of an old empire or an old self. If, as is true if we apply ourselves: the corpse of its broken structures become the fertile environment in which we will remake ourselves more brilliantly in its wake. 🕯️

Summer Solstice in Boulder: June 20th!

Please join us for a simple, sacred, sun-loving gathering on Friday June 20th in Boulder! 🌞😎🌞😎🌞😎🌞

Email or text me for more details. All are welcome!

On Sovereignty

I'd like to share with you my "talking points" notes on the theme of sovereignty that I had prepared for the Yellow Barn Sovereignty Summit held in Fall of 2024.

Albeit in raw form, I hope you'll see the essay and some glimpses into the body of thought work I'm working to put out through Fractal Praxis. I drew upon parts of this in creating this week's video posted above.

Typically I'd release content like this only to my Engager & Embodier members. Engager members pay $8 a month for access to more online discussion and meetup spaces on Fractal Praxis.

Please consider joining as an Engager Member. And, thank you.

  • According to a peer and teacher of mine, Deacon Rodda,
    • Sovereignty is the merger of power and will
    • It implies that what you mean to get done, gets done
    • Power to, but also choice of (selection)
    • Internally developed
    • Applies at pattern level /nested wholes
    • When we think of just one layer of reality, and not in terms of the fractals present in living systems, we are missing out on important understandings.
      • Every person here has been shaped by their conditioning. So it is not a problem, nor surprising, that this event’s framing is biased toward individualism and liberty. Such is the social, cultural, economic context we reside in. However, when we mistake sovereignty as just about individual action, or just about nation states either, we’re missing something. A bigger picture, a context of living systems’ pattern language, that encompasses us, as every iota of who and what we are is an expression of living systems’ patterning.
  • Classically thought of as self-actualization—→ but how is "self" being defined? Let's peer deeper…
  • Sovereignty gets glorified by anarchists and freethinkers
    • Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, said Crowley.
  • But it is not individualism. Endowing ones power into the hands of true leaders or elders doesn't diminish power, it can multiply it.
  • Sovereignty also is not blind faith to an extrinsically imposed authority, whether by law or custom, by culture or religion. If one cannot discern one’s own will from the will of the collective, can self-actualization ever be achieved?
  • When we consider it fractally: Sovereignty is the power to meet one's needs, and another’s. Taking comprehensive responsibility for one’s existence, and reaping the yields of that. To enact one’s will and have that be effective, have it “fit” in the complex system. This is true at all scales.
  • Who is the Self whose will is to be done? What is the culture, the character, the predominant patterns of that self?
    • When the one's raised awareness reaches direct knowing of being one with all life—how then do “you” ACT? How do you define your SELF most saliently?
    • What if the most powerful, effective version of you is the one co-signed, so to speak, not just by your close kin, not just by your extended community, but even by your very ECOSYSTEM—so it felt like everything you’re doing was frictionless, fulfilling, and harmonious???
  • It IS possible to cultivate this life, and live from that place.
  • We all want to be more Self-Regulated—in the way wild animals are Self-regulated. As Gary Snyder has pointed out, civilization conditions us to orient to the idea of “wild” as “disorganized,” “unpredictable.” When in fact, so-called wild living systems are extremely well-organized to the point of being elegant. A mountain lion is “organized” by a dynamic, cognitive process of filtering and acting upon the various signals making up her awareness and her biological imperatives—external signals (like smells and sounds, the contours of the surrounding terrain), and internal signals (like hunger and fatigue). The mountain lion need not import any external resources in order to simply exist successfully. She is in a flow state, continuously responding to her environment, in fluid and effective relationship with it. …We can’t get much freer than that. This singular state combining innocence AND immense, sophisticated intelligence … This is the height of “freedom,” when we stop to think about it… Freedom to be what we ARE. The lion is whole. She is exactly who and what she is. That’s freedom.
  • And yet: THIS POWERFUL LIBERATION IS RIGHT THERE FOR THE HAVING. Our souls, our bodies WANT to re-naturalize, want to re-unify with nature, want to become more natural again. Our tender psyches are constantly pulling us toward this ancient wisdom. It’s like how after an injury, your body wants (and tries) to return to its baseline health. You WANT to become more natural, it’s in your Self-nature… So what artificial and external barriers are obstacles to that?
  • You know you’ll be ready to purify yourself in the ways required of true sovereignty, of responsibility taking, when you’re willing to do EXACTLY what your inner synthesis dictates—and nothing less and nothing more. True freedom, Sri Nisagardatta Maharaj said, is: to do what one must. Not to do what one wants, which is a trap, but to do what one must, which leads to liberation. This language appears ironic when rendered in English—but take your time reflecting on it. To do what one must is the type of freedom the wild mountain lion enjoys. To be self-organized, to be alive, and to be free from any false illusions about who and what we are. 
  • As complex intelligent beings, as self-actualized beings we can expand this to a broader self-definition. The greatest acts of Self, in this understanding, would be to live in service to all that furthers the general and particular conditions for life in the universe. Your unique spin on that, your one-of-a-kind profound role to play in the whole situation… that is what you must refine and offer, devotionally… overcoming all obstacles.
  • To take responsibility is a purification process. Your self-awareness gets deeper and deeper; your praxis adapts and adjusts. Any notion of a self—besides a self as a process in service to life—fades away.
  • To take responsibility is to return to relationship. One obstacle to overcome is the somatic price we’ve paid, the very real wounding that exists, when our ancestors forcibly seized this land and resources for themselves, decimating and seeking to utterly destroy the indigenous people who are original to this place. How can we lay claim to getting free now, when it’s at the expense and in spite of our violence historically (and that continues in forms of institutional racism, displacement, disenfranchisement of native people)? 
  • No, we MUST make the world more whole. Given: All organisms are shaped by their conditions, we (and all “we’s” everywhere) are vulnerable to whatever patterns (and garbage…) we circulate within the commons of existence. So what we MUST do, with great humility and discipline (the sometimes excruciating disciplines required of being in integral relationship!) is GROW BACK OUR SENSES, PROCESS FEEDBACK, TRANSFORM (SENSE-MAKE) WHO AND WHAT WE ARE, AND ACT IN ACCORDANCE. We must relinquish unearned power—and, wield earned power—to facilitate the nature’s own healing processes of re-organizing life into a system more efficient and effective. When we give up unearned power, what we inherit is the profound, blissful experience of our lives being situated in relationships—capable of receiving direct feedback seamlessly and of co-existing with others in a way that multiplies beauty. Harmony, not harm.
  • When you’re truly sovereign, you have the power to be sculpted by your relations, to be self-organized by those relational inputs. Again, it’s this paradox, this dance between autonomy and relationship, that’s how we know we’re truly free.
  • How is the Self and its power cultivated? Here are some pointers.
    • Attune to Self, invite that part or version of you “in”
    • Remain in inquiry—the juicier the wondering, the better!
    • Follow your INNER KNOWING
      • Defining Intuition as the part (or process) within us that synthesizes and integrates knowledge from all available sources
      • What we call INTUITION is an ancient technology of humankind, and in a sense, it is an indigenous technology that functions to enhance the quality of life in general.
      • The meaningful semantic distinction that I use between what is indigenous and what is colonized: indigenous means belonging to a specific place and people, versus exploiting/extracting relations that necessitates a kind of numbness to specific people and places. The capacity to INHABIT a place, to handle being a body IN place, and to BE IN RELATIONSHIP with all other beings encompassing you = the essence of reindigenizing (which is the flip side of deconstructing colonization).
      • So, reconnection is critical. Reconnection in every sense and at all scales heals colonization at all scales.
      • Intuition as an ancient and valid way of knowing. Selecting for intuition (by putting more of your attention there, more of the time) reinforces it, strengthens it. Your wild, self-organizing self is let loose to shape and be shaped by the world.
    • Follow your dreams (segue to the invocation)

Thank you for reading.

Blessed be,

C.