August 31, 2013

Spirit of change / on being a gift & a giver

"…each person is the carrier of something that the village desires. The proof of this is in the fact of birth itself. A person’s coming into this world testifies to the fact that one is a giver." - Malidoma Some, The Healing Wisdom of Africa
Dear one,

This time at Auroville, I noticed a growing awareness that the projects and experiments here are no longer always the leaders within India when it comes to creating innovation in practices of sustainability. Which is wonderful, since it means that other parts of the country are beginning to want to participate in creating a systemic change.

Of course, in Auroville the imperatives of social, economic, and ecological change are seen as part of, and tied to, efforts towards the evolution of consciousness. That already makes the qualia of the experiments being carried out here different.

There is something else too. I’ve also heard people say about Auroville (as also about the Bay area) that it is a pity so much good effort and talent is concentrated here; that all this talent, all these gifts should spread out to the rest of the country rather than being amassed here.

But this assumes that only some are gifted while the others are not, that only some can contribute while others cannot.

This is one of humanity’s deepest wounds: the forgetting that we all are bearers of our own unique, individual gifts into this world.

Yes, all of India, the whole world, must shimmer with the beauty that individual and collaborative gifts, efforts, and contributions can bring; and perhaps Auroville is an exemplar, in a very small scale, of how things can be when everyone is seen as bearing a gift and capable of fulfilling a purpose, and allowed to do so.

I’m imagining a thick mycelial network of gift and purpose spreading through our communities, our several homes, in contact and play with the spirits of the place and ancestors.

Love,
M

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