"I'm already eating from that trashcan ...
It is that, when we think we can escape it, at that point we are effectively within Ideology."
(Slavoj Zizek)
Screenshot:
A Pervert's Guide to Ideology. (Recommended!)
After what feels like ages, a new English post from us.
The Project Conscious Evolution has been busy with various activities, one of which the completion of the book "The Guruparadox", due to be published in autumn.
Yes, we do consider an English translation. But it's pretty tough work and ranking considerably low, so that, thus far, other activities demanded our attention. So, English publishing and newsletters came to a halt.
Regrettably, that is not likely to change anytime soon. Unless there's anyone out there wishing to support such project?
We (temporarily) left the stage of nomadic existence and established headquarters near Cologne.
After years of wandering, that in itself felt like a huge step and changed various parameters. Which need to be evaluated, understood and integrated into the dynamics of an evolutionary project such as we are.
It exceeds my willingness and ability to go into too many details here, sparse example must suffice.
Of course, there have been various short-term King’s Card Games.
A book may be written about these one day …
In summary, try picturing how much preparation goes into these. People, or rather people's structures, get scared when even considering to enter a clear-cut environment that offers no shades of grey to hide from view. A most interesting phase producing all sorts of structural resistance. Right into your face. Already that is a process in itself that needs full attention.
And how much processing it needs afterwards to understand and fit the findings into our frame of reference that we call “The Hypothesis”, described in the book. And, where necessary, to adapt the frame …
(Our apologies, the best summary of the hypothesis in English still remains “The Essay”. You get it via the subscription link.)
But like when that man contacted us from what currently seems to be a very successful -if not the most successful- German community, a strong magnet, attracting people to go there and seek change.
That man had left there from high office, an insider, now ready to combat them. Accusing them of being an abusive sect with a conventional Guru-structure, publicly, trying to prevent them from entering GEN, the Global Ecovillage Network. Mistaking us for his natural allies, since we are opposed to hierarchy.
One really wonders where people take such ideas from. We are not on a quest for and especially not against anything. We're a group of people that seek for new information and insights into the human dilemma, through carefully designed experiments. We are an ongoing experiment, not a solution.
And that man had even read the book!
Anyway, he then became extremely disappointed when we refused to "join forces".
So, out of the blue, and not for the first time, there comes a person first pretending to be extremely interested in our work. Some even obnoxiously so, which makes it easy to fend them off like flies circling ... well, what flies circle around. But some, like him, making it through the bullshit-filters, coming very close, visiting on various occasions, taking part in our meals, our "holy communion", to then simply disappear from view.
Excommunication in its purest form ...
Or when that other guy popped by who promotes a certain Game of which he himself is the Creator. A game that supposedly helps communities to communicate on an eye2eye level, to become authentic, to offer us a free workshop. To which we allowed him to bring friends of his to participate, opening our gates, providing food and shelter to strangers.
To find out that this man actually is a Guru in the worst sense of our current understanding, a sophisticated narcissistic manipulator, almost scary!
To then end up having complete strangers squatting in our kitchen, at our holy communion, talking about the planets where they themselves originate from, where telepathy is sufficient to communicate, where eating is not necessary, and when the poor human beings finally will understand that it is bad to exploit animals ...
Oh, yes, that did explain it: Not strangers these people, real aliens!
As alienated as can be.
OMG! A handfull of wishful thinkers!
In our kitchen!
(If this had been my “private” house, I’d have them kicked out as I would have done with any other ingorant idiots like fascists or the Witnesses of Yehova, I tell ya, … but this here, after all, is King’s Court, and without a decent group process, it is without a King …)
And then (why's this all men?) that guy who asked us to be his coaches, a leading figure of yet another prospering German community, in high office.
(Who, by the way, now is one of our active members.)
But back then, what a monthlong challenge!
Not so much the coaching in itself, we just did what we do best and what we do anyway. But the question whether we actually wish to establish such a hierarchical distinction as is necessary for a coaching, whether we wish to be paid and, moreover, why, what motivations …
Are we an experiment or are we a service … and how do we maintain balance as well as velocity, if we are both?
(Believe us, not getting caught up in the conditioned deal mentality patterns doesn’t work by just saying “donation” when you offer a service. For neither side. Wish as you may, you’re simply not out of or beyond the system by wishing it. And no, you aren't the exception.)
To, and not finally, when we decided to make our work accessible through a seminar.
Yet again the same questions in a different layer, of how to create a King’s Card Game that at the same time is led by a seminar team?
Is that realistic at all, or does the contradiction stall the process?
And if that contradiction is worth taking on, do we believe seminars in general actually can create new dynamics? Aren’t they rather the new opioid that makes people tamely run their predestined old course as truckles in a train towards extinction?
Every single incident putting forth the same basic question of who and what are we?
Like leaving the fully existential experimental stage and going into consolidation. Isn't that in evident contradiction to the purpose of the project?
Wait! Does the project have a purpose, and can it be defined?
Should it be, if it can?
Who is the defining organ to give these answers?
Who defines the questions?
By what process can even that be determined?
It seems self-evident that all this constant metamorphosis demanded and still demands a lot of processing, toppling over and redifining who and what we actually are.
At least in that way, we are still nomads.
Striving to stay in a state of flux and avoid the pitfalls of becoming a stale organisation that we in our book so eloquently dissect as incapable of evolving.
So we won and lost new comrades, gave coachings and a surprisingly successful introductory seminar, as a result of which yet again two new people have uttered their wish to be associated closer to our work. And what does that mean?
So, we're working on that with them and among us, as in how can we integrate into our process who does not live here, what are the clear spaces and guidelines to not have such processes take their automatic course, leading back in an inevitable loop into the old structures that we are set to oppose?
Meanwhile we have been and are organising Online-Study-Groups, again a surprisingly successful format.
We have read Mark Fisher's "Capitalist Realism" (highly recommended) and Byung-Chul Han's "The Agony of Eros" (not at all recommended) and are about to set sail for Slavoj Zizek's commented version of The Communist Manifesto ...
And just yesterday another human, this time female (thank God!), who had been with us in the early experimental stages (if there ever will be an English version of the book, you will read about the experiment in Thailand in which she participated), has requested to be in some way integrated into our pudding ...
My, sometimes it does seem that our generating new insights, the ever enlarging knowledge and understanding is like a balloon:
The bigger it gets, the larger the surface that touches the unknown ...
And on bad days I fear that we may truly have opened Pandorra's Box.
I'm getting lengthy here, and if there's more of you out there, yes I do feel apologetic towards you for us not providing regular information in English, even if only to the sole known English follower from Portugal who repeatedly, even most recently, contacted us over the years, asking us how he can participate, and, regrettably, us not having an answer to his specific needs.
Not yet.
Be well and thank you, dear comrade!
So, guys -and hopefully that includes females as I'm prone to be permanently male and preferably heterosexual- if you are interested in our work, let us know. Make yourself visible!
The more of you we know are out there, the more likely the ever wobbling process takes us into an English speaking direction.
If you remain unseen, we cannot put you into consideration.
Simple as that.
May it serve.