Response to London riots

Community spirit emerges in Clapham

This morning I awoke early and began trawling the mainstream media. I wouldn't normally begin my day this way,but like many others I am following the extraordinary events currently unfolding in London and other cities across the UK.

My mood was buoyant and optimistic. Yesterday evening  I was cheered by press images of doughty Brits bearing brooms aloft reclaiming the streets of Clapham. Clean up groups were mushrooming online, powered by community spirit. I joined a facebook group: Stay Home and Drink Tea. A feeling that the worst had passed.

Alas another troubled night of violence, with more and more urban centres affected. I live snuggled away in Glastonbury, a peaceful new age nexus. No high street chains to loot here; when Woolworths closed in 2009 the premises re-opened as a wholefoods store and organic cafe. It is unthinkable that violence and rage would penetrate this far.

And yet, cycling past the Co-Operative store in the early evening I counted five police vehicles and one very sorry looking miscreant being detained.

The high drama continues then. It is real and it is happening now and I am feeling affected.

Looting

Firstly, I feel a sadness, a soreness, that London is suffering. London is my birth town and where I spent my early childhood. I returned as a newly hatched teacher in the early nineties and grafted hard in inner city schools in 'troubled' areas for ten intense years. I do have a genuine sense of personal upset and loss.

I am also feeling the deep poignancy of the inevitability of it all. The death throes of a  paining, dysfunctional society, writhing in anguish as its structures collapse. Volatile finacial markets, plummeting shares are the economic backdrop to this; money systems across the globe are destabilising, on the verge of collapse. Society is burning out*

I feel deep compassion for our troubled urban youth; a generation of lost boys and girls raised on poor diets, in ugly environments, conditioned to worship celebrities and to desire and expect a lifestyle they could never afford or attain: luxury branded goods, expensive personal media and technologies, fast cars and beautiful bodies. The crisis of a life lived without depth or meaning: lacking any intrinsic sense of belonging, self-esteem, dignity, value or worth.

Celebrating with community at Paddington Farm

I read the violence as the expression of the repressed contents of collective consciousness,  a volcanic eruption, as described by progressive mystical psychologist Carl Gustav Jung a century ago.

From his perspective, modern western civilisation is largely soulless and thus profoundly unreal and imbalanced. The psyche is a self-balancing mechanism and as we have gone too far in a certain direction this reaction is an unavoidable consequence.

Contemporary teacher Eckhart Tolle commenting on the cataclysmic events that rocked our world in September 2002, uses the expression collective insanity:

The collective insanity that is in the human mind has a grip on the world and has enormous momentum

It becomes obvious when we see such a violent manifestation of it, violence inflicted by humans upon each other, it is a manifestation of the human condition 

There is something arising now on this planet that is different, that is new, that is not part of that insanity 

There is an acceleration of the new energy coming in and an intensification of the old which is playing itself out, that is the core of the madness

The sickness or insanity can only be dissolved in the individual, because the collective is only the sum total of the unconsciousness in the individual, the collective follows

A personal teaching: any outer circumstance affords me a window into my own soul, I ask myself:

What am I learning about myself? 
How am I moved by this? 
What are my responses and my reactions?

Drinking tea for peace on facebook

I am grateful that what is missing in the lives of my brothers and sisters in the cities is present in my life. Glastonbury is a spiritual, creative community. Here you can experience belonging.

Far from perfect, yet we endeavour personally and collectively to practice what we preach; growing our own food, sharing resources, joining together to pray and celebrate. Love and caring circulates here. I recognise it, I value it and I wish it for others.

On the inner level; I am becoming more and more established in knowing my inviolable value and worth. Shifting from an identity based on the external self, what I wear, what I have, how much money I have or even the work that I do or don't do. We were created by a loving source, we are here, we are good enough.

I have been singing songs of peace and chanting mantras, primarily to calm myself. We can all be agents of peace. Creating tranquility and harmony in our individual lives is a meaningful contribution to the collective energy field at any time and particularly now.

This beautiful prayer, is buzzing around my head comes from a song by Adrian Freedman who performed it  recently at a concert in town:

Dear God our Divine Mother, our Divine Father

Please help us to hold the light in our hearts

Please help us to transform our pain

So we may live our lives in peace and dignity

Aho to that.

Resources:

*Charles Eisenstein investigates current state of society and presents a future forward vision with authority, eloquence and compassion in his books: The Ascent of Humanity and Sacred Economics.

Peace invoking, healing, sacred song from Adrian Freedman. Buy, listen and sing to yourself and everyone you know.

Audio interview with Eckhart Tolle Even the Sun will Die recorded September 11 2002

Read Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconscious in his collected works, Volume 9 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

Facebook group Anti-riot Drink a cup of tea