CSC codex

Community Supported Community (it's not just about Community Supported Agriculture anymore), or the modern Underground Railroad out of modern slavery. 

click here for rationale (the why) 

Click here for a more generic Vision and Mission

land and home ownership:

pods (aka families) own* their home and 2 acre land around their home. 

responsibilities of land ownership (at pod level, not individual level. Individual responsibilities are handled by each pod separately): 

1. To produce goods and/or services (these are desacralized by consumer capitalism, but here they are used in a sacred way, as the gifts that bind us to each other and the land, and allow us to express our best) that are needed by at least 3 other pods/families. Training will be available for those who don't already have useful skills.

2. To prioritize providing the goods and services that are needed by villagers to the villagers, before trying to sell or provide them outside the village. Only excess of needed goods and services can be provided to the outside.

3. To prioritize sourcing goods and services (including those needed for one's work in providing goods and services to the village) from other villagers, before sourcing them from outside the village. If a good can't be sourced from inside the village, the next place to source it is from outside the village, but either from nature or another village, and only use the global economy as a last resort for sourcing.

4. To negotiate prices or exchange rates with other pods (could be gift based)

5. To keep looking for new villagers who can close loops and provide for village needs and markets

6. See also Community glue below:

costs:

initial costs to reimburse land owner who paid the global economy for it from their own energy. Scholarships available (from other members and matching donors?). Some worktrade, but have to be careful not to create a have/have-not caste system.

Benefits of land ownership:

1. Each pod has artistic creative freedom, without interference from rest of community (but individuals may be subject to interference or collaboration from within their own pod)

2. Each pod has its own domestic space, where more intimacy is possible. They can choose to invite people into their domestic space for well defined occasions, instead of having to be with other villagers when they just need to be in their nest.

Elder Care

Each pod is responsible for their elders when they are no longer able to contribute as much as when they were younger. Elders are encouraged to provide childcare if they are no longer able to do much else (the amish have made good use out of this match between gifts and needs). They are also encouraged to monitor agreements and make consensus decisions in an elder council about what to do when agreements are broken. Wisdom is hopefully acquired by our elders, which they can share with the rest of the community. And of course elders are valued just for being. And for all they have done before.

Child Care

Each pod is responsible for their children, but pods can form childcare coops or a school together. A school can accept children from outside the community.

Outside Work

Allowed for income, but if there is a need for goods or services from this work in the village, it must be prioritized before outside work (even if the compensation is less monetarily). This can be limited to 8 hours inside-of-village work per week per person, (less if the need can be satisfied with less) with anything over that being optional. The goal is to reduce reliance on outside work, and outside markets and sources so we can be more interdependent with each other and the land. But we need a transition time.

Conflict Resolution

Pods are encouraged to resolve their own internal conflicts by whatever methods they choose. Conflict between individuals in different pods can be brought to the conflict resolution council (made up of 1 representative from each pod),  who will mediate the conflict using NVC and restorative circles. They will get paid for their time by the conflicting parties at an hourly wage that is negotiated at that time. They will thus have incentive to resolve the conflict among themselves before involving others. 

People who are accused of violating agreements have to come to a restorative justice circle, at the end of which the peacemaker council has to decide consequences for them (or none if the accusation was inaccurate). Perhaps the consequences are simply feeling the impact they had on others, but they could be as serious as expulsion.

Animals

Animals must be kept within pod land boundaries, unless otherwise negotiated between pods. Also dogs must be kept from barking outside from 9PM till 7AM (unless they are good livestock guard dogs who only bark when livestock are in danger?)

Communal, pod and individual work

If the community decides to have a community business, this can be an example of communal work, but it could still be subdivided for individual or pod specialties. It is expected that occasions where the whole community will have to work together on something will be rare.  Same goes for community meetings. Most work will be by individuals and pods, allowing for creative freedom, and progressive improvement towards mastery of one's work.

Community glue:It is also expected that people will participate in a minimum of 2 hours per week of community-wide cultural events (with at least 90% of people attending), and another 4 hours per week of cultural/spiritual events that involve at least 2 other people form other pods. Examples include dances, music making and listening, lectures, workshops, storytelling, plays, yoga, heart shares, meditation, chi gung, rituals.

Governance

Most decisions will be made by individuals and pods. If decisions affect other individuals, they have to be consulted. If a decision can't be negotiated between individuals, it is brought to the pod level (if it only affects people within the pod) or community level (if it affects people outside the pod). Each pod affected sends a peacemaker from their midst to the peacemaker meeting to discuss the case. Community meetings  can also be called by at least 2 individuals who find it necessary and then all pods must send peacemakers. Other people besides peacemakers may attend and contribute, but the final decisions are made by peacemakers, in a consensus minus one manner. It is expected that most decisions will be within the pod, not affecting people outside the pod. Each pod can have its own internal governance mechanism. Also, new pods' representative peacemakers have to be approved by the existing peacemakers.

* ownership in the sense of stewardship, like a cell or an organism owns its interior--by owning land that we have to make a living from, and being in a CSC, we enter into a mutualistic relationship with that land and the beings on it. We might consider the whole community a common pool resource for its members, but with Ostrom Principles. Legally, pods would lease land from a non-profit, who would legally own the land.

the magical spell of gaslighting promoting memetic isolation

Xenophobia, the seemingly hard-wired human tendency to see people from other tribes/cultures as a threat, can manifest in intimate relationships, in families, and even among the different parts of one's own psyche. Granted, this behavior must have evolutionary fitness value because sometimes the other person or tribe really does want to harm us. But sometimes they may not and even if they do, it may be diffused with the right attitude and tools, to the greater benefit of all (not just the potential winner). I started thinking about this from watching this video by Dr. Ramani (she is a representative of a whole industry of pop psychology on youtube (and now TikTok) catering to people who want to blame someone for their relationship failures and the general anomie and disconnection of our failing culture).  She mentions several characteristics of gaslighting which I will address in this essay. 

The original use of the term came from a 1944 movie about a man obsessed with obtaining certain jewels from the dead aunt of a woman he seduces and tries to drive mad in order to get her into a mental institution so he can have free reign of the attic where the jewels are hidden. The man is evilly evil in a way that Hollywood and pulp fiction are good at rendering, with not much nuance to his character and motivations, and the woman he victimizes is good, helpless and innocent, but subtlety in character development was not then (is it now?) a way to sell art to the masses.

In his analysis of some cross-cultural trends, the historian, writer and druid JMG tries to understand the process of making sense out of raw experience. The first aspect of gaslighting behavior discussed by Dr. Ramani involves denying someone's feelings and experience. This is a form of emotional abuse, and also makes no sense. Experience can't be denied in any reasonable way, and if someone is trying to do that they are being either irrational, malevolent or both. But interpretation of experience, part of thinking, can be (and should be, as I discuss below, and as NVC has made clear) discussed, negotiated and sometimes disagreed with (never outright denied). It's not always simple to distinguish between experience and its interpretations. The simplest interpretation happens when we assemble raw sensory data into a story, like "this is a chair", or the "sun is appearing in the east".  JMG called this "figuration". It's hard to disagree with figuration, but sometimes it can be done, especially with optical illusions or Rohrschach tests. In an optical illusion or Rohrschach test, we might see several things at once and disagree with each other about what they are or even disagree with ourselves. The next level of thinking dissected by JMG is easier to disagree about: abstraction, and the next level, reflection is the easiest to disagree about.

But without disagreement and passionate yet civil discussion of our interpretation of our experiences, we have no basis for anything but isolated individuals--no relationships, no families, no tribes or cultures. The truth of interpretation and thinking here is an inter-subjective process, unlike the truth of personal experience, where it makes sense to speak of my truth vs your truth. We will never find someone who, without any discussion, agrees with us about our interpretations completely. Much agreement is already there because of common cultural negotiations, upbringing, and sometimes previous childhood brainwashing. Truth is a personal experience only when it comes to experience. But when it comes to interpretation, truth is interpersonal. It requires cognitive flexibility, epistemic humility, and ability to understand other people's perspectives and history. Even if one can reach agreement within a culture, the next level of truth seeking, is to try to achieve it with other cultures, and resist xenophobia. Even in the movie, the deadlock between the gaslighter and his victim is broken by a third party from outside.

Even within individuals, there are parts to the psyche (according to Internal Family Systems Therapy and other psychological theories) that can disagree about interpretations. We want to come to harmony and agreement, but it's a process. It's not an easy process, and it's easier to just label the other people or parts of ourselves as enemies, pathologize, shut them out and hate them. This leads to fragmentation of one's psyche, relationship, family and ultimately culture. If someone is disagreeing with your interpretation of reality, perhaps instead of labeling them as a gaslighter, try to talk to them about it and be open to their point of view (and see if they have the same openness towards yours). Ask yourself it they are denying your experience and feelings, or your interpretation of these? Ask yourself about their motives: do they want you to go mad? Do they want you to question your own experience so they can have power over you, or so they can win an argument and feel superior and in control? Or do they have a different interpretation of a shared experience? Are they denying your interpretation, or merely questioning it and being open to being wrong? But no, none of this for Dr. Ramani. She suggests not engaging with the gaslighter because their intent is obviously nefarious, about control and power over you. This is ironic because the next gaslighter behavior she highlights is withholding, allowing only certain things to be able to be expressed and talked about, or else the relationship or the love will be withheld. But shutting out the alleged gaslighter is the extreme of withholding. Whereas the alleged gaslighter only disallows certain conversations (e.g. about uncomfortable feelings like fear or anger or sadness), Dr. Ramani suggests disallowing ALL conversations with the alleged gaslighter, and seeing them as a power hungry monster is withholding love, with no possibility for an intimate relationship. I suppose if the alleged gaslighter is a real gaslighter, this might be an effective protective strategy. 

The next behavior she talks about is contradicting shared memories. Some people have better memory capability (and it also varies according to whether the memory is short, long, or pre-cognitive) than others and we have much self serving bias in our memories. Again this is where it helps to have written documents, photos, videos, and other people who were there besides a couple, to figure out the truth about the past, part of what motivates formal courtroom law. Again it helps to be humble about one's memory, and also to realize when the other person might be just well intentioned but deficient in their memory capacity, or having different interpretations of what happened. I do agree with Dr. Ramani that an intimate relationship is not just about winning or finding out the interpersonal truth (whether about the past or the present), but about achieving love and intimacy. The gaslighter whom she describes apparently is not interested in intimacy but in power and winning, just like lawyers. However, I would not stop there and condemn this person, but try to figure out where this fear of intimacy comes from. Could it come from their early experiences with caretakers who did not provide for their needs as infants? Did not value and affirm their intrinsic worth? Were lawyers themselves who behaved like lawyers in the home, not just the courtroom (meaning cared about winning and being right instead of connecting and relating and finding out mutual truth)? Did not protect them from harm from others? Did not affirm their feelings when harm happened but tried to divert the topic to something or someone else, or to shame or guilt the child (diversion is, according to Dr Ramani, another gaslighter technique, but maybe it's also trigger for her and others from parents' behavior during childhood)? Could it be that they have protective parts that see intimacy as a threat because they were not accepted and valued for who they were by those who were closest to them? These are some of the early childhood experiences that lead to an insecure avoidant attachment style. I don't mean to pathologize any attachment style, but to understand it and help figure out how to have harmony in a relationship with whatever attachment style one has. IFS has a variety of techniques for dealing with (unburdening) protective parts and exiled inner children for avoidant attachment style folks.

I'd like to be able to question certain ideas of the New Age movement such as the idea that we must be whole within ourselves before we can enter into relationships, because I think this is a two way process, where relationships with others help make us whole and also the higher level couple, family or tribe can have a wholeness and complementarity that is missing in its individual parts and that this is not necessarily a problem, but a feature of all emergent systems. I'd like to question the idea of IFS that constraints in a system are necessarily bad and should be eliminated, because there is much work (see Simon Deacon's Incomplete Nature) on the idea that some constraints are necessary for emergence of higher order systems in the first place, and that though they restrict certain freedoms, they also make possible certain things that were not possible or likely at the lower levels. The individual tree roots are constrained by the mycelial networks underneath from going wherever they want or being selfish about nutrient allocation, and the mycelia are constrained by the tree roots and trunks from doing whatever they want and getting nutrients selfishly and competing with each other as they please. But these constraints enable emergent forest behavior and collaboration that was not possible without the constraints. If I question these ideas, am I questioning people's dogmas, or their realities? Can I be then dismissed as a gaslighter, as a strategy to not have to question one's interpretations of reality? I wonder what can be done with someone who is dismissing others with a label. Perhaps asking them questions about what they feel and why instead of dismissing them back. Maybe NVC can be a tool for figuring out the underlying feelings. Maybe "I feel gaslighted by you" might morph into "I feel devalued when you don't agree with my way of looking at things or when you don't fully believe something that I am sure about".

Some years ago, in an article in TVOL, and in much of the early post in this blog, I argued that if we are going to create a new culture, we need to detach from the mainstream one and obtain some memetic isolation from it. Here I see the opposite problem, where the unity of couples, families, tribes and cultures can be destroyed by memetic isolation, in this case by pathologizing and excluding other individuals (or groups of individuals) in each of these higher order entities. This may be a good thing if there is disharmony due to these individuals or groups, but what if the disharmony is at a different level? What if for example we mistakenly think that our disharmony comes from another individual, whereas in reality it comes from our own internal system of psychological parts and their childhood traumas? Ot what if we can have harmony by ourselves or in shallow relationships with others, but the disharmony with deep relationships is not due to the other person (e.g. gaslighter, narcissist, love bomber, etc) but to our own system? I'm imagining that Dr. Ramani would see this as just a gaslighting strategy of questioning her own reality, and perhaps sometimes this is the case, but not always? Could it be that if she and enough others repeat the spell that gaslighters are evil, power hungry people who want to drive us mad, that people would believe it, just like the germans believed all kinds of things about Jews?

God is alive, but romantic love is dying

When I was a child, the neighbors once left go on vacation and left their dog with us. The dog was very depressed and did not even eat for a day, until my mother figured out that if she said the name of his owner, his ears went up and he would cheer up a bit. Eventually, with enough repetition, he started eating. I suspect dogs brains are similar to people's brains who have insecure anxious attachment style*. Cats on the other hand are less needing of attachment. They are repulsed when someone needs connection from them. They are more going with the flow and seem to have a connection to an inner source. Their brains might be more similar to people with insecure avoidant attachment**. I’m more like the dog and I suffer similarly when I get abandoned emotionally in a romantic relationship (though I tested as secure. I don't worry about the relationship unless my partner is avoidant and unable to share emotions or other information about our needs, then I act like an anxiously attached person. Sometimes I pick avoidant attachment partners, for various reasons). My grandpa died two weeks after my grandma at a ripe old age, from what I think was similarly a broken heart of a secure or anxious attachment person.

Outside of attachment theory, the word attachment has negative connotations. Taken to an extreme, it connotes lack of freedom, an infantile mother projection, and an inability to function without the person one is attached to. We can think of attachment in less extreme forms. Though attachment does originate during infancy and childhood, we later as adults tend to pattern our relationship to our lovers after those early imprints. Forming secure attachments is the golden standard of mental health, and it just means enjoying our partners, caring about their well being, supporting, loving and being inspired (to function in and love the rest of the world) by them, feeling secure in the relationship.  People with secure attachment had caretakers who were there for them and provided good trustworthy care. The other attachment styles can lead to trouble, but they are workable if people understand each other, commit to the relationship, and follow certain protocols outlined in (for example, not limited to) Wired for Love, by Stan Tatkin. The problem with modern romantic relationship is not avoidant or anxious attachment styles, but ideology. Let me explain.

Rumi was a Persian Sufi mystic around the middle ages. He fell in love with another mystic by the name of Shams. At some point Shams left unexpectedly and could not be found again, and Rumi was devastated. The way he found to cope with this loss was to convince himself that what he loved about Shams can be found in himself, and what was in himself was the pure Essence of God.  I suspect Rumi had either a secure attachment style or an insecure anxious one*, because people with insecure avoidant attachment do not get devastated so much by abandonment (at least later in life. The original childhood abandonment is devastating and formative for them). 

On the other hand, insecurely avoidants learned to deal with their initial incoming boundary violations by their caretakers by developing a tough exterior and not trusting people for romantic relationships. They are able to substitute other kinds of relationships, such as with pets or children (much less potential for abandonment by pets of children, at least until the children are grown up), or constantly find something to amuse, distract or consume so that they don’t have to face that primal human fear of being alone, and that primal human need of transcending one’s ego, which according to Erich Fromm, only mature love can fulfill. They might get into BDSM, they might transcend their ego with transcendental meditation, entheogens, or they might find anonymity in a crowd (none of which, in my opinion is a substitute for intimacy with a romantic partner, though they can help as coping strategy for dealing with abandonment trauma). Because they were not loved well as infants and children (their caretakers attentions were even painful), they might think that self love (especially if the self is really the Self, the pure Essence/Presence of inner God/Source/Spirit) can substitute for having an intimate relationship with a lover (it might be a pre-requisite though). They might even have a short erotic fling, but as soon as intimacy is asked of them, they run and pre-emptively abandon. The grief and abandonment trauma was just unbearable and the ideology that Rumi found and passed to future generations is a way forward for coping with abandonment.  Supposedly even people with secure attachment can experience abandonment trauma as adults, because of the sting of betrayal and sudden loss of security, so the strategy of believing that we can get all our security, love and belonging needs from an internal source helps everyone avoid having to deal with abandonment trauma, since the internal source will never abandon us, unlike real people, who can be flighty, unreliable and definitely mortal. Also, the strategy of surrender to the internal source might alleviate the burden of having to make hard choices, or choices that conflict with others' since Source or Spirit will do it for us. In addition, the ideology Rumi and other mystics developed sees it as unholy/blasphemous to not be whole within oneself, since God is whole and God is within, so not being whole in that view just means being disconnected from the inner God. And so looking to others to complete us and fill our holes is frowned upon. But wait, we’re not talking about character defects that need completing. We’re talking about complementarity and specialization so we emerge as a whole couple, family,  tribe or team that is more than the sum of the parts. Is that so terrible and worthy of scorn to the (ironically) non-dual, but oh-so-judgmental yogini?

One of the greatest fears of humans is being alone (though avoidants also fear connection for reasons above). Given that humans (and other primates) evolved in tribes where interdependence meant survival and that humans (and other apes) are born needing adults to take care of them and form attachments to these adults in order to survive, that much of the neural circuitry of sexual bonding uses the same circuitry of infant mother bonding, and that evolution wants us to find mates in order to survive as a species, this fear of being alone makes sense. Given also that confidence is sexy and terror is not, it also makes sense then, that the strategy of finding peace (and abating the primal terror of being alone by showing the believer that he is not actually alone and Source is right there with them, and so are all other souls through Source) and joy through a belief and an experience of an inner Source will spread far and wide. Also, such a belief would make the believer more apt to make wise choices in a mate, coming from a place of calm instead of terror. And also it makes sense from an attachment theory perspective that once one has a child, the fear of being alone can abate, if one can form a secure attachment with the child.

Perhaps many monks also have trouble making attachments to lovers and instead find it easier to latch onto buddhist  philosophy, where attachment to anything (except buddhist philosophy) is frowned upon. Well, except maybe most eastern buddhists only think that attachment to stuff is a problem, because most people in eastern collectivist cultures do make attachments to people, especially friends and family. So is Buddhism with its non-attachment to the world and striving towards the non-dual consciousness just a coping strategy, or is there some truth to it? And if there is some truth, how much and how far does one take non-attachment to the world, and communing with Source? Of course the truth of the experience of unity is undeniable, just as the truth of the experience of duality. I'm just wondering if there is more to unity than an experience.

I don’t know the answer. I would love it if there were a benevolent ground of being that allowed us to transcend our egos, but it doesn’t seem like a way to live except for monks and nuns. The best solution we have found to alleviating our fear of being alone and our need to transcend our egos is love, whether romantic (and particular), or more general love for friends, for the earth/nature, for children and for animals; or through certain kinds of work that make our love manifest, as Khalil Gibran and Erich Fromm have suggested.

In my youth I would sit for hours in beautiful natural places where I was alone, except with the plants and animals and the spirit of the place. I would play my recorder flute and feel a sense of oneness with that spirit and the frogs and wolves would sometimes join in.  So I was not really alone, I was communing with Nature. When I was about 5, I had a recurring dream that I was a disembodied spirit, flying over rows and rows of bald men in robes, seated cross legged facing the direction I was flying. Everyone including me knew that beyond the first row lay waiting the Big Bad Wolf (a child's conception of Evil and Fear), to do battle with me. I never made it to the Wolf, because I would get so scared that I would stop breathing and wake up with my heart pounding. How could a child growing up in Israel, where there was only one TV channel that I almost never watched, know of Buddhist monks? Later in the US I had an experience of non-duality when we played one of Beethoven's symphonies, and all the instruments came in at just the perfect moment. Sometimes I have experienced oneness with a lover, during orgasm. So I am sympathetic to the mystics' vision.

The vision of both the eastern and western mystics is beautiful. To renounce all the superficiality, pretense, and violence of the world and find within a presence peaceful, vibrant, nourishing and deep. And from that inner place of peace and joy to reach outward again and love and inspire people. In this vision, we are like waves upon the loving ocean of consciousness, all connected underneath. Or like windows letting in the light of the sun (consciousness). The ocean/sun alone is permanent, the waves/windows are transient. It makes no sense in that view to form attachments to one's wave/window or other people's waves/windows because this causes suffering when that attachment is inevitably severed with time. Instead, one focuses on the ocean and presumably this creates experiences of peace and joy, although the ultimate sustainable bliss of samadhi is something most can only strive for, or only get glimpses of.

Another metaphor expressing this vision is that we are like parts of one body, and hurting any one part hurts us in return. This is thus not only a personal vision, but a vision for a peaceful and harmonious society.

But how far does one take this? If we can be whole within ourselves by connecting with the Source, why should we join with others in couples, families, tribes, companies? Why bother if they are the same as us, whole within themselves, when we can connect directly to the source through meditation, yoga, and entheogens and skip the "middleman"? Why would ants and bees specialize and form colonies and hives? Why do we form symbiotic relationships with other species? Why would trees form symbiotic relationships with fungi and each other?  Why would our cells specialize to form our bodies? The mystics can answer only the first question, and only transactionally: the lover is only useful as a mirror or tester in the spiritual journey,  and the only love worth anything is the love of God. Perhaps some mystics might concede that this love of God can be experienced THROUGH the lover, by resonating with one's inner God. Here again, extremism is not our friend. The word “hole” sounds terrible as applied to a person, connoting a disgusting deficiency. We might instead view holes as needs that can best be expressed with the help of a lover, a child, good work, a parent, or a friend, even though we might sometimes find weak substitutes to express these needs. And we might soften the extremist view that a person has to be completely whole and happy before connecting to another person as a lover or friend. Being in a relationship or a community helps us become more whole in ourselves, and also more whole as a couple, family, tribe or community.

Try telling a woman whose clock is ticking in her fourties that she should be content to love her inner child or Source, rather than attempt to bear and love a child that she has created in her womb? But it’s OK to tell a heterosexual man that his evolved drive to want to express his power by loving a woman, by giving of himself fully to her, sometimes to the point of sacrificing his needs or even his life, is a pathlogy ("caretaking" or co-dependence), and instead he should love his inner child or get in touch with his inner God/Essence/Presence/Source? No wonder so many men turn to war and other forms of violence. Or a few pretend like they are beyond all desire and need for a woman, like good boys, so they can fit into the ideological herd and be acceptable as a mate to the new ideologues of love. Poor Rumi had no idea what he was creating.

Why hasn’t this ideology taken off and become popular till now? I think it’s because it’s a perfect bedfellow for global capitalism, which selects for individuals who need it more than each other, thus ultimately destroying tribes, villages, and even families and romantic relationships. Profit is maximized if nobody shares and if everyone is utterly dependent on the global corporations. Talk about co-dependence***...

So there are psychological and social advantages to this philosophy, but there are also some ethical issues/contradictions and perhaps also some psychological disadvantages. Let's start with the ethical issues: Could the monks and nuns who can devote much of their time to meditation and inner work still do it if  they weren't being supported by people who produce much of what they need to live, and who do not seem to latch onto this philosophy? In modern times could the people who use money to pay for servants to provide for their basic needs while they meditate, do yoga and have mystical visions doing entheogens, still do these things without the servants or without the money? So in a twist of Animal Farm, we are all One, but some of us are more able to experience our Oneness (the ones with more money and power)

Hypocrisy is also an ethical disadvantage. Those with insecure avoidant attachment style are obsessed with setting boundaries, meaning having to constantly explain to other people what they need for them to do and not do in order for their needs to be satisfied (perhaps because their boundaries were violated at an early age and their parents allowed it to happen), but are usually not willing to even in principle meet a lover's expressed needs because that would be "co-dependent"***, and the lover better learn how to go with the flow (i.e. THEIR flow, not the lover's), and be one with the moment (but when the lover does something they don’t like, they are not willing to be in the flow and accept “what is”, they get triggered). Also, take away their kids or pets and see how enlightened and in the moment and one with the universe they remain.  I don't totally understand the psychology of fear of intimacy with a romantic partner (except what I said above about avoidats' early childhood traumas). Perhaps it is only fear of intimacy with someone one does not trust (reminding of early caretakers), but the bar for trust in avoidants is really high, and our modern world seems to want it higher and higher.

Another disadvantage happens when avoidant and ambivalent or anxious people get together as lovers and the avoidant people decide to abandon the relationship even if they committed to it. The avoidant lovers do not understand that for those with insecure ambivalent attachment there is nothing that can truly substitute for the lover, that the lover is not about providing everything, all the meaning and love and inspiration. That would truly be too much to expect from any human. No, the lover is providing some inspiration, some security and most of all an altar for one's love to be expressed in the flesh and in action. The lover (and work and nature and other friends) can be a gateway to the divine for the ambivalently or securely attached person, an all too human gateway, loved for being human and not perfect. The avoidant people do not realize the devastation they leave in their wake when they abandon the ambivalent or secure person because they have adopted an ideology where the only thing that matters is a connection to the divine and the middleman is superfluous and too much trouble. I wonder if the avoidant people had dealt with their childhood abandonment trauma (and other possible traumas) if they would have acted differently and not needed to establish their boundaries by betraying the agreements to their lovers. It is hard to imagine for me that a benevolent Source would leave a trail of devastation for some people who are trying to express love, due to their lovers needing to connect with Source, unless this source was vindictive and jealous.

Ironically the mystics were all about dissolving the boundaries between all beings and connecting through the underlying ocean, but we need boundaries to form individuals, couples, families, tribes, teams. The boundaries are at the highest levels not just the individuals. The couple needs a boundary to function well as a couple, the family needs a boundary to function well as a family and so on. This how life happens. Connections between parts that form wholes happen because they allow parts to accomplish things that were previously impossible. New boundaries form around the new wholes, and the old boundaries of the parts become looser, while still keeping the integrity of the lower level parts. There is less internal competition (between parts) and new competition between the wholes.

Also ironically the avoidantly attached people who must constantly assert their boundaries do not know the deepest human bliss of connecting to another human being in a vulnerable and open way. They have thrown out the baby of deep human connection and attachment with the bathwater of deep human pain when getting attached to a lover whom one must ultimately lose (and disagree with, which apparently can be devastating for some). This is a fundamental difference also between east and west. The eastern mystics have thrown out all attachment, whereas the western mystics recognize that though there is suffering when attachment ends, there is also resurrection and bliss when attachments can form again. As Khalil Gibran said in The Prophet: But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

How did we go from connecting to everyone with love, to not needing a romantic partner? Or believing that romantic love is but a pale shadow of the love of God? Is it a form of extremism? Between the two claims of "Romantic Love is a shadow of love of God", and "Love of God is a strategy for coping with loss of romantic love or fear of intimacy with an adult human" maybe the truth lies. I'm as perturbed by the state of romantic love in our culture as Nietzche was about the supposed death of God.

* Insecure anxious attachment supposedly happens when there was abandonment (like stopping to nurse a baby prematurely, or more minor "outward boundary violations" like not being fed when one is hungry or not being held when one needs to be held)

** Insecure avoidant attachment is something that happens to infants and sets the stage for adult patterns of relating to others. Their care providers as infants either were not available enough to take care of them, or did it in a way that was painful or unsafe (gaslighting, restraint, or outright abuse or molestation). Here is a good video about these styles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjrzQHesCFQ. When avoidant and anxious attachment are combined, one gets ambivalent attachent

*** Co-dependence was initially about people who are not able to attend to their own needs and understand their own motivations and instead immerse themselves in a lover's needs. Especially when the lover seems to need rescuing because they are addicted to something. Expressing one's needs clearly to a lover and recognizing that those needs can only be met by the lover is a mark of self knowledge, the opposite of co-dependence. There is also a difference between expecting a lover to meet all of one's needs (for meaning, safety, pleasure, collaboration, etc) vs just the need for connection. The term codependency has become overused, referring to any needs that one person needs from the other in a relationship. Knowing oneself, including one's need to be of service, help and love another, is not codependency.

the socially distancing spirituality and its alternatives

Have you ever been in a beautiful natural place and experienced an ecstatic sense of belonging and power beyond your self?  Have you ever adored another person, not just qualities about them, but something essential about them? Or interacted with an animal or child in a way that felt vital? In those instances we are experiencing something other than our selves. It is possible to imagine the immensity of the ocean, its waves and spray,  or the majestic mountains with the clouds below us, but those are just pale copies in our imagination of the real thing and of communing with the real thing. It is possible to imagine the lover or friend, or dream about them, but the imaginings and dreams can not do justice to the person and the delight we find in witnessing their beauty or intimately conversing with them. These things are possible because we interact with something or someone other than ourselves.

And yet it has become fashionable in some spiritual New Age circles to pretend like we have everything we need within us, in our subconscious (Carl Jung, whom I mostly love, but disagree with here*), in our body as trauma we need to release from childhood (Gabor Mate), or as a lost part of ourselves (Esence or Presence or Source) that has some ontological existence that we can regain by revisiting past events (Almaas) or through mindfulness meditation (Eckart Tolle). Now it is fashionable to pretend that communing with a lover is a pale imitation of accessing some forgotten divine part of ourselves instead of the other way around.

New agey men and women (or masculine and feminine identified people) pretend like they don't need each other, like they are complete in themselves rather than complementary. It has become fashionable to try to fill one's own holes through solipsistic inner work, rather than find other people, or nature, to fill these holes. It's a variation on Pascal's "God-sized hole" theory, except now the claim is that God/Essence/Presence is internal or that there is a confusion of the mother or father with the lover, or there is a confusion of losing the mother's love with losing this essential part of ourselves and only Essence can fill the hole. The partial truth that these theories might be shadows of is that because the limbic part of our brains gets imprinted with our primary caretakers' qualities, and sexual attraction is happening in the limbic part of the brain, we are attracted to people who remind us of our parents in some ways. I emphatically disagree with the claim that a lover can't at least partially "fill our holes", based on many social science experiments showing that married people are healthier and happier on the average, and my own experience, which is that my life is better and I have more motivation for life in a loving, stable relationship. Also a tribe or community can fill some of our holes/needs, just like good work or nature can fill other needs/holes. Children and pets still fill holes for many women, though the new agey ones won't admit it. And women as lovers and wives fill these holes for men. It makes sense that when one is needy rather than joyful or confident one is usually less attractive as a romantic partner. And it also makes sense that one can avoid dealing with one's issues and understanding one's deep motivations by focusing instead on a partner (aka codependence). But it's a leap from here to being complete onto oneself, or being admonished for wanting to fill holes by falling in love with someone. Why can't it be that we love the other because they complement us, because there is something we lack that they have and we want or even need to experience that produces extreme pleasure and joy that we can't produce on our own? Why can't it be that we also love them for unselfish reasons, even if it hurts us to love them (as in the case of unrequited love)? In the New Age view, romantic love is only a tool towards Essence or Presence or spiritual growth. Contrast this with Khalil Gibran's vision of love and pleasure from The Prophet:

Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is 

the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,

But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.

For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,

And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,

And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.

Imagine if the bees or flowers heard of Almaas or Eckart Tolle and the flowers started withholding their nectar, and the bees started staying in their hives to do inner work.

and

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. 18To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

This would be cast as co-dependence or caretaking by our New Age relationship Gurus

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;

To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;

To return home at eventide with gratitude;

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

This would be seen as having loose boundaries. Look, I'm not saying the mystics are wrong and there isn't some Godlike Ground of Being. But what if the way to experience that entity is through lovers and friends, nature and work? I think what makes the mystical view so appealing is that it frees people from having to make choices, except whether to align with God (Presence/Essence/Source) or with the devil (Ego or Personality). Being human is hard because one has to make choices instead of letting instincts make them. But now Source will make choices for us and relieve us of this burden.

The trend towards more individualism is also true in art, where it is no longer important to portray something about the world, but instead the prime directive is to express the self: https://www.ecosophia.net/this-flight-from-failure/ and https://www.ecosophia.net/what-is-art-for/. And now we have "social distancing", which is more aptly called anti-social solipsism, ostensibly as a defense against a virus, but I wonder if subconsciously it's the ideology of individualism run amok.

We become whole by admitting that we have holes, by filling our holes in a committed relationship with a good matching partner, in a community of inter-dependent people, doing work we love and that is appreciated by our community. Instead of throwing out the whole personality in favor of some elusive Essence, we could pursue characteristics like courage, commitment, responsibility, compassion, love, beauty and joy and integrate the characteristics of hatefulness, insecurity, fear, jealousy, etc so they don't control us. I am freaking out about this like Nietzsche freaked out about the supposed death of God in Christian Europe. It is a death blow to family and community which have already been under attack by global capitalism. We must resist this ideology.

* My disagreement with Jung is partial. Of course in order to really connect with the Other, one must also have some things in common. So an inner understanding of femininity, the Anima, is a reasonable thing to cultivate and integrate in a man if he wants to know a woman weill, and vice versa for women. Still, there will be some qualities in the other that one might only have in minute amounts or not at all, and those can be appreciated and delighted in.

Eckhart Tolle and romantic relationships

Eckart Tolle writes about how to become at peace and find joy. I think he has helped many people but I quibble with him on his views on relationships, which are also popular among other New Age thinkers.  Here is a quote from The Power of Now:

"As the egoic mode of consciousness and all the social, political, and economic structures that it created enter the final stage of collapse, the relationships between men and women reflect the deep state of crisis in which humanity now finds itself. As humans have become increasingly identified with their mind, most relationships are not rooted in Being and so turn into a source of pain and become dominated by problems and conflict.

Millions are now living alone or as single parents, unable to establish an intimate relationship or unwilling to repeat the insane drama of past relationships. Others go from one relationship to another, from one pleasure-and-pain cycle to another, in search of the elusive goal of fulfillment through union with the opposite energy polarity. Still others compromise and continue to be together in a dysfunctional relationship in which negativity prevails, for the sake of the children or security, through force of habit, fear of being alone, or some other mutually "beneficial" arrangement, or even through the unconscious addiction to the excitement of emotional drama and pain." 

The irony here is that ET blames this dismal state of relationships on the "egoic mode of consciousness", whereas what is new here is the belief in individualism and the New Age philosophy that extols individualism. It's become a sin to look out and comfort/soothe one's partner. It's lumped under caretaking, loose boundaries and codependence. People used to be able to take care of each other AND themselves. Now it's all about "staying in one's lane", which not surprisingly leads to bad relationships.

On the one hand, mystics throughout the ages have had a goal to get beyond the ego/self/personality/individual (which is seen as an illusion, or sometimes as the devil, the source of all suffering), and find a larger Self/Presence/internal God with which to merge. On the other hand humans have a need which starts at infancy and develops further into adulthood, to be authentic to one's self and establish boundaries, i.e. to know one's particular needs and wants and assert them with other people. The human potential movement that started in the sixties extolled the virtues of the self and authenticity, but it  was more nuanced, it recognized other needs besides authenticity and transcendence, as exemplified by Maslow's pyramid. 

The global economy has capitalized on this need for authenticity in order to create more individual consumers and to eliminate competition from other ways that people can satisfy their needs, like families, tribes, and villages. These human organizations satisfy intermediate needs between these two opposing goals/needs of authenticity and communion with the divine. They satisfy the need for intimacy, for collaboration, for belonging to something larger than oneself.

The New Age movement has seemingly tossed out the intermediate needs and just focused on the two extremes of self and Self (what some have called Spiritual Bypass). It's ironic because mystics abhor the self, and capitalists think the Self is fictional (unless it can make them money). 

A new perspective is emerging in biological and social science (see DS Wilson's Atlas Hugged), and in relationship psychology and neuroscience (see Stan Tatkin's Wired fo Love, and Richard Schwartz's Internal Family Systems). For each level of emergent human organization, different qualities are necessary. An individual human has to integrate all her psychological parts to function well. For romantic relationships, individuals have to care about the relationship, not just about themselves and the other, or themselves and some Presence. Sure it's important for each individual to know themselves well and not to project blame onto their partner or use their partner's trauma as a coverup for dealing with their own trauma, but that's not enough. They also have to study and know their partner. They have to put a boundary around the relationship. There has to be a way to resolve differences through rational conversation and a team attitude, not just each person for themselves and accepting WHAT IS, or being taken over by limbic parts of the brain when things get strained. Accepting WHAT IS (or being in the Now, to use Eckhart Tolle's words) works for hermits, or in a romantic relationship as long as both partners' needs are met with what the other person is saying or doing, but as soon as it's not working for one of them, the other needs to be willing to talk about ways of changing course, even if it's still working for them. Otherwise "accepting WHAT IS" is a double standard: You have to accept WHAT IS even if it is not meeting your needs, but I will get upset or dump you if WHAT IS that you are saying or doing doesn't work for me.

Eckart Tolle and a few others say that one should not need intimate relationships when one is enlightened, because then one is whole. In this view, intimate relationships are only a tool for enlightenment for people who are not yet enlightened. And yet all these same people are not able to exist without some intimate relationship, whether it is to their children, mates or pets. If that's the case, then it's not merely a tool but a necessity. The underlying psychological truth that they are getting at is that neediness is not as attractive as confidence and inner peace. There are ways to achieve more of these without a romantic relationship, yet it would be hypocritical to pretend that the needs for intimacy, sex, and collaboration are cancelled by yoga and meditation.

Eckart Tolle and a few others have made intimate relationships instrumental. A tool for the individual ego to obtain enlightenment (the Self does not need tools). Gone is love of another individual for its own sake--I only love you because you are useful to me. In the romantic view, there is a recognition that what we love about each other is unique, something that has to do with the soul of the other and we love them regardless of what they can do for us. The soul is capable of other lovable qualities besides transcendence and authenticity, such as courage, wisdom, kindness, critical thinking; but ET reduces everything to transcendence, and other simplistic New Agers reduce it all to transcendence and authenticity.There is no concept of soul in Eckhart Tolle's philosophy (in The Power of Now, the word "soul" appears only once in a quote attributed to Jesus). There is only ego/self/personality/individual and Source/Self/Presence/God. The mystical view has been that Source is like an ocean and egos are like waves, or Source is like the Sun, and egos are like windows for the sun's light to shine through, both metaphors are one way causation from Source to ego, with no room for emergence, where the causality goes both ways. A soul is like a window which also has its own source of light, not just a passive instrument for the sun's light. Or like a wave which can influence the state of the lake it is happening in, interacting with the air, the ground, and other waves. With a soul, there is the possibility that I love your soul for its own unique sake, regardless of its usefulness to filling my needs. Neither ego nor Presence offer that possibility. Ego is by definition unlovable, whereas Source is lovable independent of someone's ego/personality. A soul can be nuanced, it can have qualities that are lovable (courage, compassion, humility, humor, curiosity, freedom, etc), as well as qualities that are not lovable (greed, cowardice, hypocrisy, fear, etc), as opposed to ego which is all bad in the mystical view, and all good in the capitalist view. There is also a possibility that two souls recognize a connection to each other even without being aware of the qualities in each other that they love, perhaps from having met previous to this life.

Eckhart Tolle might be OK with instrumentality (aka transactional relationship), but not with a responsibility to fill needs for one's romantic partner. In order to fill a partner's needs one must not only be open to requests from ones's partner, but one must study them so one can even anticipate their needs. For all this we need to use all of our faculties including our minds. He feels like partners should fill their own needs by communing with Presence directly, and have no needs except to commune with Presence. The repulsion that some in the New Age movement feel about meeting a partner's needs might be a flash back to patriarchal wifely duty to satisfy the husbands sexual needs. There is a difference between being able to have sex on demand, regardless of one's state of arousal, vs being able to have intimate conversations and make eye contact, or hug one's partner. The former is largely out of conscious control (it is happening in the limbic part of the brain), whereas the latter involves conscious parts of the brain.

"If you stop investing it with "selfness," the mind loses its compulsive quality, which basically is the compulsion to judge, and so to resist what is, which creates conflict, drama, and new pain. In fact, the moment that judgment stops through acceptance of what is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace. First you stop judging yourself; then you stop judging your partner. The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way. That immediately takes you beyond ego. All mind games and all addictive clinging are then over. There are no victims and no perpetrators anymore, no accuser and accused. This is also the end of all codependency, of being drawn into somebody else's unconscious pattern and thereby enabling it to continue. You will then either separate - in love - or move ever more deeply into the Now together - into Being. Can it be that simple? Yes, it is that simple."

No it isn't. While this expresses a beautiful idea when taken with moderation, it is not a useful thing never to judge. One can judge with love and thereby help one's partner meet their needs better or improve their soul. One needs to be able to disagree with one's partner at times in order to figure things out together better than could be figured out alone. Rejecting judgment is rejecting the mind. Better to combine the mind with the heart, judgement with love. ET is correct that judgement without love or self knowledge is harmful to a relationship.

"As you may have noticed, they (relationships) are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world"

Yes, a relationship is not just about happiness, but if we are wired for love after evolving in couple relationships and families and tribes for millions of years, then happiness is surely a part of it if it is done with love AND consciousness. It is not just about our happiness, but our partner's as well. 

"You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next." Actually you can as Stan Tatkin shows in Wired for Love. There are parts of the brain that have to do with survival and others that have to do with generosity, nurturing, respect, etc. Sexual love is however in the same part of the brain mostly as the survival parts (the amygdala). Other kinds of love can be expressed in other parts of the brain or even in the heart or vagus nerve.

"Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain." Partially, but not only. Addiction can also result from an inability to fill a basic need and a substitution of something that mimics the way to satisfy the need, with the same production of dopamine and other pleasure hormones, but only works for a short time and has a negative long term effect. It is also good to face pain and not try to distract oneself from it because it can help us improve our souls, to be more compassionate, more patient, more insightful. 

"Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of ego."

Not if we can love souls instead of egos or vessels for Presence. Romantic love is selective, though for some people it does not have to be exclusive.

In the New Agey philosophy the causation goes: I love you because you can help me be in touch with Presence.

In the older spiritual philosophies, the causation goes like: I love your soul because of its qualities or because I knew it before this life. I want to meet your intimacy and collaboration needs as a result, and you might want to meet mine. Together we can create a relationship which will be a source of joy and safety for others, such as our children, our tribe and our village. The life  of an organism is about lack seeking wholeness outside of itself (see Incomplete Nature, by Simon Deacon). The New Agers have inverted this for seeking wholeness within. And yet they are only able to exist due to other people and nature supporting them from without both materially and emotionally.

"True salvation is a state of freedom - from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging."

In other words, death, or dementia. Because life can sometimes be free from fear and suffering, but not always. And life is based on lack and insufficiency as well as fullness and abundance. Our basic needs can be filled by the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, but eventually we need a refill and sometimes it takes doing stuff we don't like in order to obtain food and water (so not total freedom). With air it is pretty quick. With water we can last longer before a refill, and with food even longer. Yet none of these things are cause for shame or condemnation, and neither are our basic need for intimate relationships, and of belonging to a tribe and land.

Love, courage and wisdom, not just peace and bliss. Ramana Maharshi's "who are you?" meditation is great as an exercise, not as a lifestyle. Neither RM, nor ET are qualified to teach us about how to be human. They have not birthed or raised children, had lifelong romantic relationships, been traumatized in war, famine, or child abuse and overcome these, composed inspiring music, poetry or literature, discovered mathematical structures or scientific mysteries, planted and harvested food.