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ProposalThe Cooperative Life & Spirituality Projectby Mushin J. Schilling - contact: info@thelivingfield.com SummaryAn increasing number of people care about cooperation, spirituality and the life of this planet. Experiencing themselves as embedded in continually expanding networks and environments they are seeking genuine, open and constructive dialogue and mutual support in their work towards a better world and spiritual wholeness - one planet on which all beings are at home. This emerging participatory, cooperative culture can rightfully be named Human Globalization: a grass-root movement that engages a growing minority of people across the planet. The Need: The Project: Funding Requirements: Organisation & Expertise: The NeedLife enhancing values and practices
have been generated so far almost entirely in “vertical structures” and
this is especially true in the context of life-guiding or spiritual/religious
structures of learning, practicing and living. In many ways the Internet has provided a way to transcend and surmount ‘vertical structures’ - P2P, Wikipedia, open source programming, sharing economy, distributed research, Web 2.0 etc. This seems to be part of an evolutionary movement towards a new quality in human relationships and the organization of information, production and life in general. As these horizontal, network-like – often called peer-to-peer – structures grow there is at the same time an immense lack in providing such a networked, cooperative, dialogical structure to finding, communicating about and practicing ‘spiritual values’. Hence the need for creating such a structuring element – an Internet-Platform with the purpose to foster the development of dialogical, cooperative, participative values. This platform must be 'down-to-earth' and easily accessed by most people and integrate cooperative, networking and participatory approaches now available all over the net. And finally, wherever dialogical, cooperative, participative
values are expressed they are expressed mostly in English. Therefore
the platform envisaged is to be a multilingual effort (German, Czech
and English to begin with.) (Please
make your comments and remarks here.) The ProjectThe Goal Objectives
Within the next half a year to nine months:
In one year:
In two years:
Monthly evaluations of what has been achieved and what not, and possibly necessary adaptations of the course to be taken are part of the process. Staff
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until end of December 2006: | Project management: 1500 € |
until end of January 2007: | Project management:
1500 € |
until end of March 2007: | Project management:
3000 € Translations & secretarial work (all languages): 1000 € Equipment & Software: 4000 € |
until end of May 2007: | Project management:
3000 € Translations & secretarial work (all languages): 3000 € Server etc.: 750 € PR activities: 3000 € |
until end of August 2007: |
Project management:
4500 € Translations & secretarial work (all languages): 3000 € |
Total: 28.750 € |
These figures are very much 'rule of the thumb', except project management
- 1500 € is a minimum that will keep me & my family alive.
Regarding the secretarial work: in general I would love to be able to
pay the secretary more than ca. 400 € per month.
Regarding translations: Since book & platform are to start in 3 languages,
translation is needed. The figures are not quite clear as the amount
of content to be translated is also not clear. The figures given are
probably a minimum.
Regarding hardware & software: audio & video equipment
and server-side software to manage streams is needed. I hope to find
(and chances are very good) a Server & Provider as a sponsor, nevertheless
some costs will have to be met (750 € being very much 'rule of the
thumb').
Regarding PR: I would like to get professional help on this and 3000 € is
prob. the lowest possible cost for this. The more money we can get for
this, the better. (Please
make your comments and remarks here.)
Navigation | Subpoints | Explanation |
Sponsors | A list + link etc. of those sponsors that would appreciate this | |
Learning | Online | "How to" courses |
Offline | Seminars & Events | |
Community | Dialogue (Chat) | Audio & Text |
Blog/Vlog | members have space for own blog/vlog | |
Projects | members projects (for instance open cooperative spirituality research projects) | |
Services | Calendar, seminars, books, conferences, learning material, etc. | |
Ecology | information | |
projects | ||
Media | Audio | |
Radio | Spirit Radio One | |
Video | ||
Spiritual | Theory | |
Practises | ||
About us | Philosophy, Mission, etc. | |
Contact | Form | |
Help | Persons | Speak to a volunteer (member for some time) - Audio-Chat |
Faq | ||
General remarks:
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(Please make your comments and remarks here.)
Cooperative Spirituality - embedded in the richness of life
1. Foreword/Introduction
2. Who am I? Who are you? What is between us?
3. Living in a Universe of Relationships, networks & systems
4. From the vertical view towards the cooperative/network vision
5. Communication, genuine dialogue & communion
6. Community
7. Work, practise and daily life
If I trace the
strand in my development that put me on the trail of a dialogical,
participatory, cooperative spirituality than I would have to mention
my assistance of Sanji when she did a community building day at
a place called "Energy World" in 1996. This was my first
deep experience of what could be called "collective consciousness" – there
was a moment someone said, "I feel like we are one being with
40 heads and 80 arms and legs." Nevertheless at that time
I wasn't yet ready to truly understand what that implied because I
was still very much going for my personal enlightenment.
The development that consciously put me on the path I'm now on was a
question by one of my trainees during the first Living Field Transformation
Training in the summer of 2006, "How come, Mushin, you
never speak about the 'we'?" Being quite happy with what I
had achieved on my path, acting as a spiritual teacher to some people,
teaching what I had learnt – and helping people to partake of 'transpersonal
spaces' – this question hit me.
So I read Martin Buber "Ich und Du" and "Das Dialogische
Prinzip" which started putting me on the trail of a spirituality
that is neither in me nor in you but rather between us. Going
deeper I started to question my position as a 'spiritual teacher' and
inspect the way I run the community that I started here in the Czech
Republic some years ago. And then I stepped down...
Inquiring into the way spirituality makes sense in the world today I
stumbled across the incredible amount of abuse (power, sex, money) by
people that I had deemed, so far, as beyond all that, and I started to
look into the reasons for this. I found an important one in what I call "The
Patriarchal Temptation", and after some further heart-searching
put it all together in an article of the same title (published in abbreviated
form by the German magazine Connection last month).
All this investigating and the consequent change in my life and the seminars
has not been good for my financial situation, to say the least. It seems
generally that the people I was working with were much more inclined
towards a spirituality in the patriarchal mode where the facilitator
positions himself as the source of all the good things happening
and the competent authority for all good and true things in life & spirit.
And as I was getting more and more into the asking mode – "What
did you experience? How did that experience come into being? What do
you take to be its meaning? etc. – proceeding to inquire into
what is happening between us, I didn't fulfill the role-model of spiritual
authority anymore. Asking, "What are you competent in? Which
of your skills in interfacing with the spiritual do you want to enhance?
How could we do this together?" and so on, I lost two third
of the people that used to participate regularly in my seminars and trainings.
I've come to realize that this is probably because I haven't clearly
positioned myself in the spiritual arena. What I'm up to, and what 'cooperative
spirituality' is all about has to be clarified and brought to people's
awareness. This is one of the reasons I want to write a book (with contributions
of Jorge Ferrer, John Heron, Ed Harris, Richard
Tarnas, Christian de Quincy, etc.
asking them to write for 'real beginners') and create a website that
can function as an information–rich
platform for communication and collaboration of people inquiring into
a truly innovative spirituality that can leave the 'vertical school'
behind, and make the richness of deep values available to everyone. (Please
make your comments and remarks here.)
What the emerging participatory, cooperative culture is about:
Cooperations across all kinds of borders are happening in science, business, art, psychology, philosophy and spirituality - and it is moving from being an 'accidental phenomenon' towards a growing trend. This seems to indicate that in mankind as a whole the old spiritual dream of 'oneness' is moving from a spiritual reality that formerly existed only in visions and transcendent realization in more or less enlightened people to a manifest reality in which ordinary people can participate. Being one is moving from a potential to an actuality, or so it seems.
So as a loose, informal network of individuals and groups we are shaping our paths in life from the creative wellspring within, evolving new forms of living, spirituality and work appropriate to our day and age. At the same time, we honor and let ourselves be inspired by, selectively and adaptively, the spiritual practices and beliefs derived from a diversity of sources, ancient and modern, worldwide.
To begin with we propose three interrelated criteria which apply in varying degrees to each of us individually as we are continually awakening the cooperative life and spirituality in and between us - not definite criteria and therefore open to further dialogue and change:
As autonomous and unique, yet also always interconnected beings we sense ourselves to be co-creative collaborators of a participatory culture emerging worldwide. To inquire into that culture, to support and turn it into an forever stronger force, is among the most important motives of a cooperative way of life and spirituality.
Both book and Internet platform are designed to further expand this philosophy and make it popular. (Please make your comments and remarks here.)