The members of a Conscious Tribe walk a path – together:
a path of presence, intimacy and freedom.
What do they mean by “a path of presence”?
They share an intuition, a recognition:
that the only thing each person has is
their own, unique direct-experience of the present moment.
But they also admit that they don´t tend to live that recognition,
that they tend to live “out of themselves” -
not experiencing their direct-experience!
So they are committed to learning to live their recognition, individually –
and to supporting each other in living their recognition.
As they learn, together, to live “inside” their direct-experience
they come face-to-face with the ways in which they are resisting life –
their self-deprecation, their fear, their shame...
And they learn, together, to gently, non-judgementally,
let go of their resistances –
and thus directly-experience the beauty of indefinability -
The Great Mystery unresisted –
and they remember the mystery of their belonging.
*
The path the members of a Conscious Tribe share is a path of presence –
but it is also a path of intimacy.
What do they mean by “a path of intimacy”?
As they learn to stay “inside” their own direct-experience,
and their belonging,
through their daily lives (not just when they´re meditating!) -
they discover that everyone else
is also within their unique experience -
whether consciously or not -
and they come to see everyone as
a unique face, a unique expression, of The Great Mystery.
As they become disidentified from their resistance to the indefinable moment –
and self-forgiving, and self-loving -
they see gently beyond the often unkind ways in which they behave
when they are “out of themselves” -
and they remember the pleasure and happiness
of living “in-themselves”, in their essence.
From their own essence
they naturally see everyone else´s essence -
and learn to relate from essence to essence
(whether others are in or out of themselves).
But then...
because that essence is the same in us all –
when essence that sees
meets essence that sees -
it meets itself.
And the nature of that meeting is love.
Not romantic love.
Not even the love we might feel for our families or friends,
but the most exquisite universal love.
*
The shared path of the members of a Conscious Tribe is a path of presence
(that returns them to the indefinable beauty of their belonging within The Great Mystery),
and it is also a path of intimacy
(that returns us them to each other, to their oneness, and to universal love) –
but it is also a path of freedom.
What do they mean by “a path of freedom”?
As the members of a Conscious Tribe learn to live in presence and intimacy,
they come to know a freedom that is deeper
than any social or political or economic freedom.
They know they are part of life -
and that life itself is free.
They no longer feel limited by the conventions or expectations of their societies.
They become capable of living a more expansive existence.
They become courageous.
The members of a Conscious Tribe support each other in making
minor and major practical decisions
to align their lives with this feeling of freedom.
This process of alignment -
of aligning the practicalities of their everyday lives
with the presence, intimacy and freedom they feel –
is their contribution
to the co-creation of new, conscious cultures.
*
Mark Josephs,
"Mark the Mystic Activist"
Aragon, Spain
Summer, 2024
This article is Chapter 4 of 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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