I
By “Conscious Tribe” I mean a group of people who are responding to the current global civilisational ´megacrisis´ - by co-creating a new kind of family in their local area.
By “Conscious Tribe” I mean a non-biological, extended family. Or, more accurately - because it might include biological brothers and sisters, for example, or parents and their children – by “Conscious Tribe” I mean an extended family not limited by biological bonds.
The Conscious Tribe I am proposing is therefore larger than the modern, biological, ´nuclear´ family. And it has a purpose that most modern biological families don´t have: The Conscious Tribe is committed to the path of individual consciousness, conscious relating and conscious action.
II
What do I mean by 'the path of individual consciousness'?
In my opinion, the closer we get to our experience (which is only ever of the present moment), and which can only be felt (we cannot 'think our experience') - in other words, the more honest we are with ourselves: the more aware we become that we are within, and are part of, A Great Mystery - a mystery beyond our intellectual and even existential comprehension - a miraculous, awesome mystery of which everyone has their own, unique, limited, subjective knowledge. This “getting closer” is what I mean by 'the path of individual consciousness'... It is the path of learning to stay-with, and deepen-into, our own, unique experience of The Great Mystery we call “existence”.
By 'conscious relating' I mean the art of relating to each other in this consciousness. To feel oneself to be part of A Great Mystery is to feel oneself to be a Unique Expression of that Great Mystery. And by ´conscious relating´ I mean learning to relate to each other as such: Unique Expressions of The Great Mystery to Unique Expession of The Great Mystery! In other words, conscious relating is about living the path of individual consciousness – in our relating. Which can be exquisite and ecstatic!
Finally, by 'conscious action' I mean the art of relating to our world consciously - the art of intuiting the intelligent, infinitely-complex, indefinable nature of the reality we inhabit and, therefore, acting with deep respect, appreciation and care. On a very practical level, this means aligning our daily activities with our awakening consciousness – it means learning to plant and harvest and cook, and build and make, and transport and travel, and heal and share knowledge in ways that make us less and less depenedent on the alienated dominant culture, and more and more embedded in nature and locally self-reliant.
Individual Consciousness. Conscious Relating. Conscious Action. These are the areas of focus of The Conscious Tribe. They focus on these areas acknowledgeing that few of us were educated to walk the path of individual consciousness, few of us are therefore well practiced in conscious relating - and many of us are so pinned down by work and rent and taxes and pets and schools and shopping it´s difficult to have time for much conscious action! They are realistic. They are realistic revolutionaies! And as such, The Conscious Tribe is committed to a shared learning path.
Together, the members of a Conscious Tribe learn to live-inside and honour The Great Mystery - without being confined to any dogma (this is their commitment to individual consciousness). They learn to honour everyone´s uniqueness (this is their commitment to conscious relating). And their direction is naturally ecological and localist - because they increasingly align their daily lives with their respect and love for the place where they live – even if a lot of it´s buried under asphalt! (This is their commitment to conscious action.)
III
The Conscious Tribe is therefore: a non-biological extended family, committed to consciousness – and a possible evolutionary path for the family as we know it.
As I understand it - the industrial era began the disruption of the extended family. By the end of the twentieth century the production-line, nuclear family was in tatters, and individualism enthroned. And today not only unconscious, but anti-conscious technocratic and transhumanist forces seek to dismember even the concept of the individual.
I see the Conscious Tribe as a simple, profound, actionable and necessary alternative. I see a lot of beautiful personal transformational work taking place – from meditation to therapy to expressive dance to ayuhasca ceremonies. And I see people becoming equipped with beautiful new knowledge and skills – from permaculture to eco-construction to herbal healing to alternative currencies. But what will hold it all together? What holds societies together?
I believe it is families, clans, communities, tribes... Why? Because I see a culture as (1) a group of people who share an Existential Orientation – a way of seeing the world - and who (2) transmit that orientation to their childen - thus perpetuating the culture. And I believe this transmission comes principally through parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts and the people closest to us as we grow up. In other words - more deeply than the way information is communicated, and values and behaviours indocrinated, in our schools.
I believe our Existential Orientation is not predominantly transmitted consciously, or deliberately. I´m seventy years old now – and even now I sometimes catch myself smiling a certain way, and say to myself - “that´s exactly the way my father used to smile!”
My sense is that children feel the way we enter the forest – and immediately understand how afraid, or not, to be. They feel how deeply we look into each other´s eyes, and how deeply we let each other touch each other´s skin – and immediately understand how close one is allowed to get. They feel how much we believe what we say we believe. They feel how much we love the fire, the air, the water and the earth – the plants, the insects and the thunder...
Deeper then words - they receive an energetic transmission from the family or tribe as a whole – one that lets them know which emotions and attitudes are acceptable, and to what depth; what is noble and respectworthy; where tenderness is due – and what is reprehensible, what is repugnant, and what shoud be rejected. ¡This, I believe, is how entire civilisations are perpetuated from generation to generation!
You can´t fool the kids! They´ll adapt - they´ll contort themselves around our contortions – but if we want to co-create new, honest, open, loving communities and cultures, then I feel we need to live in honesty, openness and love. We need to learn to live in an energy field of honesty, openness and love - so that our children (and we ourselves) can imbibe that field. This means becoming self-educating, mutually-supporting, extended families - what I call Conscious Tribes.
I learnt to smile from my father, somehow, without ever thinking about it, without ever intending to learn to smile like that – without ever sitting in front of a mirror and practicing that smile! I also imbibed his sense of humour, and his common sense, and his generosity - and his inhibitions and frustrations and compensations and fears!
I believe our children imbibe what we are, not what we say we are - so in my opinion, our wholehearted, sincere commitment to the path of individual consciousness and conscious relating and conscious action is not only our deepest service to ourselves – it is also the deepest service we can offer to the generations to come.
I believe that our unified commitment to the non-biological, consciousness-committed extended family - the Conscious Tribe – can be the “social glue” we need in order to shape the alternative cultures we seek to co-create.
*
Mark Josephs,
"Mark the Mystic Activist"
Aragon, Spain
Summer, 2024
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