Sustainability can be defined as: Capable of being maintained at a steady level without exhausting resources or causing damage.
Sustainability is about setting up systems that can continue indefinitely, that endure. While the term is typically applied to green power or building techniques, it really begins with how we take of ourselves and each other.
The Sustainable Life is one in which Physical and Spiritual Health provide us with the energy we need to be a positive force in the world. In my mind, sustainability is about balance.
To find balance in our world, we must first find balance in ourselves. We begin by taking care of ourselves, then our immediate surroundings or family. From this position of strength, we can affect positive change in our community and greater society.
The challenge is to find balance in our personal lives. For many people the demands of work and basic survival are often at odds with the things they cherish most. This separation or disconnect is multiplied over and over again until we find ourselves in a world of endless war and ecological ruin.
The one way we can change the direction of the world is to take control of our own lives, setting an intention that fosters and empowers the things we care about, which in turn give us strength, clarity and purpose.
Each of us follows a different path in our lives, yet we all share a common humanity. In my time as a student and a teacher in a community recognized from the beginning as a school of change, I have identified key components which I believe can help create a life of sanity, happiness and fulfillment.
I will outline in these writings and through these retreats, key elements and goals that you can apply to your own life, things that will allow you to manifest a sustainable life, beginning with the text below this introduction.
Please feel free to contact or email me with your comments, questions or dialog. Thank you for your interest and your attention.
Redefining The Good Life
In the early 70’s, hippie cultural revolutionaries were becoming discouraged by the deaths of leaders like Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the defeat of anti-war candidate George Mc Govern by Nixon and the use of violence by groups like the radical left’s Weather Underground. No longer believing that change could be brought to the greater society by working inside the system or through social political means, many began to feel it was time to separate from the mainstream in what became known as the “back to the land” movement.
Helen and Scott Nearing were early role models. Scott had been a college professor who was blackballed as a communist in the 1930’s. Stripped of his teaching position, Helen and Scott moved to a farm in rural New Hampshire, where they built their own home from the ground up and began to grow all of their food. Their book Living the Good Life inspired a new generation of idealists and became a model for a an existence outside the mainstream, independent of the corporate treadmill.
When I re-read this manifesto recently, I was struck by how many of their ideas and proposals I had maintained in my life, taking them to a new level through life in community. As we all seek to understand how we will survive and prosper in this new century, I find this updated blueprint for a sustainable life to be one that becomes ever more relevant to upcoming generations. Rather than attempting to turn back the clock, it is a marriage of old and new, simplicity working in conjunction with technology. Naturally, we must each define what works for us in our own life, and this may change as we make our way in this journey. What I present here is a package of ideas with a defined direction, one which may be applied as a toolset for re-defining the good life.
As a youth, I came to believe that the purest form of God and Spirit in this existence was to be found in the natural world. Free of ego, identity or dogma, nature is a pure manifestation. When surrounded by nature, we can truly become immersed with peace in the here and now.
It may be you touch this through walks in a park or trips to preserves and federal lands, especially if your home is in a city. Take this one step further and make your home in a rural area. Life in the country is a key component of the sustainable life…more to come.