GWDF D6A
Characteristic 108 Channeling Creative Tension Every Breath
As I've before
written and said, there are two ways to bring radical change - show up with enough
guns and kill or threaten to kill until you get what you want, or show up with
enough loving bodies and die until you so evoke the humanity of onlookers that
pressure comes to bear from them and you get what is rightfully yours. Violence and unviolent action; 1. Destructive
Tension, and 2. Creative Tension.
It is essential to
understand these the two ways of creating tension, and it was with Dr. King
that I first saw that the concept of creative tension (actually I first saw the
concept from MIT's Peter Senge in his book “The Fifth Discipline,” but the
earliest reference I've seen is Dr. King), that all advance for humanity comes
from, not the absence of tension, but the near unbearable creative tension:
seeing on the one hand an impending horror and seeing on the other hand the
slimmest chance of averting that horror, particularly for dearest loved ones;
tho for the INSHE warriors, ALL are their dearest loved ones. This is really at the bottom of what Gandhi
spoke of - truth force – the emotive truth of how things should/could be and
the truth of the horror of how they are now or are about to become; unless
prevented, stopped, averted, replaced….
We are not bricks, we’re
not trees, we’re not cats, we’re not birds.
Our DNA would have us be human beings and as humans we are motivated by,
moved by, tension. We’re driven away
from something by the tension of fear, by threat of force, by actual force. We’re drawn to something by the tension of
passion, sense of solidarity, desire to alleviate someone else's pain, or
threatened pain, and thereby alleviate our own which we feel vicariously,
empathically.
Gandhi on hunger
strike was a tsunami of creative tension for ultimately millions, maybe
billions around the world. It was excruciating,
it was e-motive, that is, moving, was e-motional, motional. Wave after wave of people in India marching
simply to get salt that had been taken from their oceans that was rightfully
theirs, clubbed unrelentingly, kicked in the groin over and over, but did not
raise a hand to protect themselves, channeling creative tension to millions
around the world via vicarious learning, empathy, the royal road to hacking our
defenses and awakening the heart.
Alice Paul and her
sisters in prison 30 miles South of here on hunger strike, being force-fed
simply for demanding what was rightfully theirs, the right to vote as full
human beings. This channeled immense
creative tension.
And that's what I
seek to do, every breath, to bear near unbearable creative tension and thereby
channel it into the world to be available for others to take it on, and if
others do take it on, and too begin channeling it thought every moment of
action, and thereby spread the fire, then, and only then will there be
hope. Unless others succeed where I’ve
failed, which I pray, but don’t see happening, or even tried.
There are only two
ways to bring radical change and only one brings radical change to the world
permanently, that is life. They both can
lead to permanent radical change. Much
more of the violent kind, destructive tension, the violent tension, will
conclude Armageddon, environmental Armageddon and in the Middle East it may
spark global Armageddon, nuclear war.
Creative tension is
the one that adds to the complexity of life, which is to say it expands, it
enriches human life, possibly forever. That's
the direction of evolution. That is loving.
That is the force of loving. That
is the truth force Gandhi spoke of, the soul force. And that is what I seek to be in every cell,
every atom, every molecule of my body, with every breath, because therein lies
all hope.
And you?
