108. Channeling Creative Tension Every Breath

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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?