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markthemysticactiv

From Friends to Tribe




DEPTH AND INTENSITY


"Today is a good day to die!" Roman warriors would declare when they went into battle. I can imagine they walked or rode onto the battlefield in what we would call ´an altered state of consciousness´- utterly alert, hyper aware, ´in the zone´, face-to-face with the prospect of death, face-to-face with The Great Unknown.


Similarly, I would say, the more we awaken to the indefinable reality of the present moment, the louder we declare "today is a good day to live!" - and we too are ´in the zone´, face-to-face with the uncontrollable, magical mystery of The Great Unknown.


I feel that the deeper we go, the more intense life becomes. The shallower our lives, the duller they are. Perhaps most of us live somewhere between the two extremes of divine intensity and bored mundanity. But towards which of these extremes do we choose to direct our lives?


In my opinion, the dominant culture pushes us relentlessly towards the extreme of meaninglessness and numbness. It does not promote reverence and gratitude. As I said before, I imagine that if a politician were to extol Universal Love, or Oneness, or the Eternity of the Moment - people would think they´d gone mad! But is that the direction you or I choose to be pushed in? Or do we choose to orientate our lives towards the adventure of the ever-unfolding mystery? Do we choose to say "today is a good day to live!" - and taste and smell and touch the day with wonder?


The point I want to make in this chapter is that if we choose depth and intensity, and want to live deeply and intensely together in this world - then I beieve our Groups of Friends need to become Conscious Tribes. True friends are a blessing - no doubt about it! But if we want to stand together before life as the Roman warriors stood before death, then I am saying we need to take friendship to another level - to the level of a shared existential journey, a shared transformational journey, and a journey of shared purpose.



SPOKEN AND AGREED


I think most people would agree there is an amplification when we unite. When football fans cheer, or we dance together, or pray together, or protest together - our individual cheering and dancing, and praying and protesting is amplified - intensified - by our togetherness. And I feel that, in the same way, when a Group of Friends unites around the intention of becoming more conscious, of opening their hearts through both the pleasure and the pain, and sharing an evolutionary purpose - the depth and beauty of their friendship is amplified. They become what I call A Conscious Tribe.


So how, realistically, can we do this? I feel it is very simple: by making agreements! By making strong yet flexible commitments to each other. By disregarding the social norms propagated by the dominant culture (images of friendship as Pizza and Netflix, a helping hand from time to time, and perhaps a shoulder to cry on) - and boldly and bravely defining our own norms, and making agreements that evoke and support our deepest needs - agreements that unite us in the presence of God, or the Goddess, or the Tao, or the Great Mystery Itself - agreements that unite us in honesty and vulnerability, and in passionate purpose.


And I mean spoken agreements - not assumed agreements. I mean agreements spoken aloud in each other´s presence – existential and psycho-emotional agreements; agreements on vision, direction and purpose; and practical, organisational agreements. This is not something Groups of Friends usually do, of course. It would be a new departure for almost any Group of Friends - but I believe it would rebirth everyone´s life!



EXISTENTIAL AND PSYCH-EMOTIONAL AGREEMENTS


There are all sorts of tribes and clans and sanghas and congregations. Many endure for generations by virtue of their fundamentalism, and rigid hierarchy - which keep people bound in faithful obedience. But for those of us who refuse to sacrifice our own perceptions and intuitions, and bow down to dogma - such tribes are not an option. So what are the philosophical, psychological, purposeful and practical agreements a free-thinking Group of Friends would need to make to become an enduring Conscious Tribe? Let´s begin with the existential agreements...


The first and last existential agreement I believe we need to make (you won´t be surprised to hear!) - is that each person recognises, for themselves, "all I have is my own, unique experience of the moment". This, for me, as I have repeatedly stated, an honest, obvious, undeniable, inescapable, naked realisation. You see your moment, and I see mine. Neither of us sees it all. Nobody sees my moment as I do. We are all unique. And we are all, therefore, Existential Equals.


And as we have also already discussed - the same honesty that leads us to the conclusion of Radical Honesty also leads us to the recognition of our disassociation from our experiencing. With presence comes the recognition of our absence. Our honest self-observation leads us to see our fascination and obsession with thought - and how we tend to live behind a veil of ideas. We also come to see how often we are kidnapped by our emotions - how we don´t “have emotions”, but how “our emotions have us” – making it difficult, if not sometimes impossible, to be with the actuality of the moment. And we see how these thoughts and emotions have entered our blood and cells – how our bodies react in inauthentic, predetermined ways to each other, and to the world.


In short: the introspective honesty that leads us to the understanding of Radical Honesty reveals our inability to live our understanding - and the need to bridge that gap – inviting a second agreement: a shared commitement to self-education, to the learning journey.


I am sure you can see how these two agreements could unite and deepen and transform the energy field of almost any Group of Friends. Especially if they had precise methods for living these agreements - such as the ones I am suggesting in this book!. Then their agreements wouldn´t just be good ideas, or good intentions – they could be the beginning of a dynamic, profoundly intimate, experiential journey.


And then there is the physical dimension – which presents the possibility of an another spoken agreement to unite and energise the new Conscious Tribe still further: agreement on vision, direction and purpose..



AGREEMENT ON VISION, DIRECTION & PURPOSE


I began Chapter 2 with these words: “my impression is that many of us share the vision of decentralised, conscious, community-based cultures embedded in nature. But how to make them real? Or another way to put this question might be "how do we weave ourselves together? How do we weave new social fabrics?” And, of course, this whole book is my answer to that question. But more succinctly: it is by Groups of Friends forming Conscious Tribes that share that vision.


So here is another agreement I feel we need to make that will transform the depth of our togetherness as friends: commitment to action whose aim is establishing basically-self-sufficient, nature-embedded, local communities. I have spoken about the shared vision of Our Own Great Reset in the chapter “A Shared Vision”, and I have spoken about the need to reclaim our time, and establish local community infrastructures, and adjust our everyday living habits in the chapter “Co-Creating Local Community, The Physical Level”. So I won´t repeat myself.


I just want to say that I feel the superficiality of the dominant culture leaves many of us hungry for deep intimacy – so that Gathering as a Tribe and practicing Conscious Relating can sometimes feel like enough in itself. But as I said in the chapter “The First Successful Revolution”, if we only make agreements on the existential and psycho-emotional levels we are basically a support group – supporting each other in surviving the alienation and stress of the dominant culture. And I feel there is no overt, direct, united vision, or united direction, or united purpose in that.

So the third agreement I propose to convert Groups of Friends into Conscious Tribes is the socially-engaged commitment to weaving conscious local community. And (as I said in the section “Alignment & Purpose” in the chapter on “Co-creating Local Community”) I feel this physical, material agreement – the agreement to act (not only meditate and share) – is the agreement that brings complete coherence to our being-mind-heart-body, and aligns us, and galvanises our energy - and turns us into “a force of mass creation”!



PRACTICAL, ORGANISATIONAL AGREEMENTS


Finally, if all of this theory is to become our lived reality, I feel we need to make simple, practical, organisational agreements - like how often we meet, how we structure our time when we meet, how we include the children in the Tribe, and so on. I made lots of detailed recommendations in the chapter “Tribe Gatherings, Recommendations”, but of course, each Group of Friends has to organise its own transition into becoming a Conscious Tribe.


I hear the word ´tribe´ being tossed about a lot. Self-development facilitators invite us to "come to such-and-such a workshop, be part of the tribe"; festival organisers promote their events as ´tribal gatherings´, or ´gatherings of the tribe´; trendy clothes designers advertise their trousers and T-shirts as ´tribal chic´, and so on. For me, this is a trivialisation of the term. For me, to become a Conscious Tribe - a non-biological extended family - implies an enormous letting-go of one´s familiar, comfortable isolation. It implies an astoundingly courageous commitment to fully-live one´s deepest understandings. It implies a radical humility and vulnerability. And it implies a panoramic vision that can see beyond the dehumanisation and degradation of the dominant cultural agenda. Perhaps, above all, for me, it implies giving ourselves to each other – and, for me, that implies surrender - it implies means our guiding star is Love.


Very possibly, if you´ve been interested enough to read this book until here, you and your friends are already somewhere along the path towards becoming a Conscious Tribe. You probably have your individual existential practices, and endeavour to live as ecologically as you can. Here I´m talking about the next step. I´m talking about the spoken existential/psycho-emotional, vision/direction/purpose and practical/organisational agreements that could turn your Group of Friends into an deeply united, heart-woven, powerfully purposeful force for personal and collective transformation.


This is not something that has been tried before. This is a new kind of revolution! Please - talk together about it. Perhaps you´re more ready than you think!




Mark Josephs,

 "Mark the Mystic Activist"

  Aragon, Spain

  Autumn/Fall, 2024


This article is a new version of a previous article, rewritten for

the very expanded third edition of "Love & Revolution"

  (the foundational text of The Conscious Tribes Project)

  due out later this year.


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or buy it as a paperback (at cost of print and post).


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