What is so New about the New Year?

1st Jan 2012. We call it a start of a New Year. But I can't understand what is so new about it? I can't feel the coming of a New Year. It is so disconnected from Nature. Nothing much has changed in Nature. I still feel the cold. I don't see new leaves bursting forth to clothe the naked trees. The sun is still mellow in the northern hemisphere. The days are still shorter than the nights that induce me to sleep more than I do in summer.

But the darn clock on the wall would not let me do any of that. I would have to get up and run and rush playing our daily games by the rules that we (my friends and I) have set up. I would have to adapt to the timepiece and all the other routines that are entangled with it. I am continually caught out of breath in the vortex of meaningless rituals into which we are desperately trying to breathe life into to create the inauthentic lives we lead. I am not allowed to adapt to the rhythm of nature as per my own natural tendencies and inclinations. But still we keep shouting hoarse asking people to follow their hearts and save Nature and adapt to her ways to prolong our continuation of life on earth.

Wonder as to why we have gradually synchronized with thousands of mental concepts and constructs that we formed with impunity and fancy aided by a system called formal education much of which goes against basic human rights that might have otherwise allowed us to live like members of the human race. For whom? For what? For whom the bell tolls? What is so special about the human race that makes us believe that we are separate from nature?

Do we exist as individuals?

What made us follow thinkers and leaders who till date haven't been successful to create the 'desired future'. Are we still continuing our nomadic journey through the heavily inhabited deserts of our unkempt minds in search of the 'Promised Land'. Where might be this land? Whose land is that? The Capitalist got it wrong. The Communist got it wrong. The socialist did not get it any better. The religious teachers got it wrong. The scientists got it wrong. The Gurus got it wrong. The Governments got it wrong. The lives of common men and women continue to be crushed and even the thin line left behind after their death is mercilessly obliterated by the grinding wheels of our 'structured civilization' that takes no cognizance of such events and phenomenon. We are still no where. Our food, clothing, shelter, living, meaning in our lives are all threatened. That surely isn't civilization.

Where did they all go wrong? I think it is our ritual of honoring the false concept of 'rise of the individual' based on the belief of a 'self identity'. Therefore, we want to improve ourselves. Therefore, we search for definite traits of a creative mind. Therefore, we are madly searching for so called 'leadership traits' that make us better leaders to lead organizations and masses. Therefore, we define ourselves, the things that we see around us, the factories, the organizations, our love or sense of belonging, in fact everything around us. And then we define what is good and what is bad and what is desirable and what is not so desirable and what we must do to improve ourselves and what we must do to get richer and better. And then think as to how we might teach others the same thoughts that formed our clever mental constructs. We are so concerned with being an individual. All these are simply 'false'.

This is a lie that can never be supported. We simply can't live alone. We are never ever alone. We live in relationships -- with other humans, animals, plants, objects, the energy fields that fill up the cosmos or the universe itself. And as the nature of our relationships changes we evolve in terms of strength, quality and complexity. Caught in the web of numerous relationships we are constantly being modulated and changed. Our choice, therefore, lies in the way we pay attention to those various relationships, constantly responding to the pulls and pushes of those relationships, living for those who bring meaning into our lives and learning from those modulations that move our relationships. It affects our collective mind, health, learning and living. Death is experienced in the closure of a relationship giving birth to a new one or strengthening an existing one.

Dialectics of Relationships is the Secret Key

These relationships are teeming with thousand possibilities of every kind that we need to care about, provided we learn from the continuing dialectics contained in each relationship. It allows us to see truth in different perspectives and dimensions -- all valid but never totally encompassing. It brings in the possibility of the 'excluded middle' as the real possibility of creative living or living as a real member of the human race. 

Since it is all about relationship in the dialectic mode it is not about improving ourselves and making ourselves better, stronger or richer independent of everything else. It is all about improving one or many relationships that entangle us. We are as good as the web of relationships itself. The individual improves through the dialectic motion exhibited by the relationships one is entangled in.

We can't live the path unless our web of relationships becomes the path itself. There is no shame, guilt or fear of being such a changing path informed by the nature, quantity and quality of the connected and interdependent relationships. This is because the path is constantly evolving to new states of becoming through its constant movement shaped by dialectics of the relationships. The path goes nowhere in any linear fashion but evolves to the subsequent complex stages. We can only ride the change by remaining open & attentive. There is no manipulation. We don't play a zero-sum game. We don't need Gurus. There is no need for any personal ambition to excel since all improvements are matter of co-creations. The relationship evolves or gets stuck.

Be the Path & Live it

The co-creation would depend upon recognizing reality through detached application of discrimination.

Such co-creation would be creative only when it flows from insights gained from a situation.

Such co-created evolution would be about actions that spring from the depth of choices made by the elements within the web of relationships fuelled by the collective will power of the relationships.

It is about harmony, melody, dancing to the rhythms of nature and enjoying the freedom of flow that comes from being centered in the middle of the dialectic play of energy fields within relationships.

Our collective ability to negotiate increasing complexity of such collective evolution would depend on whether the relationships bounded by space, energy fields and time acquire the --

1. Right Dialectic Mindset of viewing reality

2. Right Centering, Attention & Intention

3. Right Will and the power of communications

4. Right Practice

5. Right effort to co-create, design and facilitate the higher and complex evolution of relationships

6. Right Learning

7. Right Living

8. Right Actions to bring forth into reality the lessons learned from living the relationships

Emergent Nirvana

I call this "Emergent Nirvana" that has a rhythm of a collective moving through cycles and exhibiting patterns, which gives us the power to design our own lives centered on co-evolving relationships developed through co-operation, collaborations and co-creation.

To be this path of Emergent Nirvana and to live this path we would be our own Gurus where the existing relationships would offer us the necessary lessons of Relevance, Resilience and Reliability to be the change and evolve to increasingly complex planes of a fulfilled existence.

Conclusions

1. The secret of all improvements lies in the dialectic stuggle experienced in all relationships.

2. The web of relationships that entangles us determines the way we live, work, build, engage, design, exchange values and evolve to improve our living conditions.

3. There is no need to follow this path or that; we can create our own path and be it to live it properly. Freedom or Nirvana lies in our attentive engagement with continual emergences such a path throws up. Such emergences offer us the possibilities to learn, adapt, create and design our future without fears or doubts. All that we need to learn and do would come from our life's emergent experiences. Therefore, Nirvana is never a one time experience. It is a continuous experience of life itself in its true dialectic form. Hence the power of Emergent Nirvana unfolds the joy of living with honor.