If you need money, for example, to buy the food, just give the people a little plastic card and type in a code number or write your name and the food is instantly paid for. If you want cash, use the same card and go to a cash machine or a bankteller. The money comes pouring out by the handfuls.
You want light? Flip a switch. Water? Turn a handle. New clothes? Use that plastic card again. Want to talk to somebody? Autodial their number wherever you are from your cell phone. Need to go somewhere? Don’t walk; use a machine: bicycle, car, bus, train, boat or plane. Machines take you rapidly and comfortably anywhere in the world.
We forget how absolutely astonishing the modern world is. We live in a culture and a time where wonder-filled technological conveniences rule our lives. In this “heaven” we can’t imagine that there could be a problem. But there is. The problem is that we are born high up on a technological ladder. We are skilled at living a modern life within technology. The technology is not the problem. The problem is the gap between us and planet Earth.
We subconsciously sense that the rungs below us on the ladder of technology are missing. If we dare to look down, we realize, deep in our guts, that those rungs are no longer in place. If we were to take one step down or somehow slip, we would instantly be in danger. A hidden ceaseless fear rumbles silently deep in our belly.
The rungs disappear the moment we forget that we and planet Earth are one. In our headlong rush toward the tantalizing modern comforts of tomorrow-land, we have forgotten how to live without technology. We have high-tech but we are missing low-tech. We cannot sleep without a bed, eat without a supermarket, see without a streetlight, move without a car, or be with ourselves without distractive media.
We have screwed ourselves. We have lost the original technology that created civilization: fire starting, food finding, clothes making, shaping shelter and tools out of whatever comes to hand. The loss of low-tech knowledge creates a lethal gap between us and our planet, and that gap is now filled with unconscious fear: technopenuriaphobia.
There is already a significant body of research proving that harm is done to motor skills and hand-eye coordination by placing children in front of computer and television screens in the years when they need to be developing three-dimensional perceptions and physical dexterity. This psycho-emotional damage may be irreversible. Technopenuriaphobia is an additional damage caused by longterm exposure to a profound fear that we are not aware of, and have no culturally embraced cure for.
TPP is a particularly Western affliction because you must first live with advanced technologies for a generation before the next generation forgets that you ever did not have them. One-hundred-thousand years of hard-earned life-knowledge vanishes from our common inheritance during one generation of being a city dweller. Considering the virulent Westernization of the rest of the world, technopenuriaphobia will quite likely infect millions if not billions more in the near future.
Getting dropped into the gap between planet and technology can happen in an instant when the elevator stops between floors, the batteries go dead, or the store is closed. A million different accidents can puncture the illusion of our comfortable little techno-world. We know bodily that if we were to somehow be separated from our conveniences – even just a few of them – we would be on very shaky ground.
Unless we have made special efforts to train ourselves in outdoor living skills, we all have technopenuriaphobia bothering us deep in our soul. TPP decreases the number of options from which we can choose, and thereby forces certain lifestyles upon us that we assume are without alternatives – “What do you mean I could wear out my old shoes before ordering new ones on the Internet?” “What do you mean unplug the TV?” If a high level of technology must be supported, we become like goldfish living precariously in a glass bowl in the desert.
So what can we do? How can we heal ourselves from TPP? How can we get free of this insidious fear?
Assuredly it takes work to heal oneself of TPP. Work and time. You can approach the work as fun work, but time to do that work will not come without you making it. Listed below are ideas for Edgework experiments to heal yourself of this modern-day affliction.
By the way, TPP Edgework experiments are excellent activities to share with children. Antitechnopenuriaphobia measures are powerful interventions that safeguard the basic sanity and self-esteem of your children for their whole lives. Your efforts may last for generations because your children could well pass the benefit on to their own children, and their children’s children after that.
MAP OF TPP DETECTION
We live in fear that our modern technology will fail us. The fear is called technopenuriaphobia (TPP), the fear of a lack of technology. We are born high up on a “Ladder of Technology” created during the last centuries. The rungs beneath us on the ladder are missing because we have forgotten how to live on Earth without high-tech. This gap in skills can be lethal.
Please remember that I am not proposing a back-to-nature antitechnology movement. I am not promoting medieval or tribal lifestyles. The point is to fill a gap where we are noncommittal, hollow, and inauthentic due to a deep abiding terror. I am encouraging us to reclaim nontechnical options in our everyday actions and thoughts. Installing low-tech rungs in the ladder of technology fills the gap between you and planet Earth, and builds a stable foundation onto which you can relax.
MAP OF TPP HEALING
Healing technopenuriaphobia (TPP) is a gradual process of learning low-tech skills that install lower rungs in the “ladder of technology.” Each skill erases a bit of TPP and reconnects us in natural and sustainable relationship with the earth. Learning low-tech skills is “Edgework” and creates extraordinary human relationship with our partner and children. We gain a bigger picture of what the “Good Life” is.
While reading through this sample list, mark which Edgework experiments are attractive to you, and note others that you may think of. This does not mean that you promise to do these Edgework experiments, or even that you know how to do these Edgework experiments. You are simply marking or creating Edgework experiments that might turn you on.
Counter-TPP Edgework Experiments
Go Barefoot: Taking your shoes off and exposing the sensitive soles of your feet to the textures and temperatures of the surface of planet Earth adds dimensions to your experience. Walk barefoot, even in the rain. (Leaving bare footprints in the snow really makes your neighbors wonder about you.) Take your shoes and socks off at the office. Whose office is it anyway? Make your house a shoes-off house.
Do Without: Try fasting for a day or three. Just drink water, tea or juice. Walk instead of using any machines to get you places all week. Walk through stores and do not buy anything. Put away the TV. Have radio-free days. Clean out your garage and attic. Enter your weekend without a plan. Be silent for three days. Do without speaking. Do without sugar or meat or coffee for three days.
Go Camping: Just get outside into nature for an hour, a day, a week, a month. Step away from the containment of civilization and live on a wide open sandy beach, in the middle of a forest, in the rocky desert, on top of a mountain, beside a freshwater lake. As you become adjusted to camping, practice taking less and less civilization with you. Start with leaving behind the CD player, the bicycle, the camera. The lighter your backpack, the more the TPP gap is filled in.
Sit in the Mud: Mud has strong cleansing and healing properties. Mud is the earth. You are made of mud. You do not have to sit in it, but stop considering mud as dirt. Our mothers trained us to be so clean, to keep our clothes clean, to keep our face clean. Heal yourself and get dirty! Hold mud. Get in contact with mud. Paint yourself with mud. The kids can show you how.
Grow a Garden: Even if it is only potted tomatoes on your balcony, those tomatoes will taste different from store-bought. Vegetables grow in the dirt. There are bugs. There are gophers. The sun matters. The rain matters. Vegetables eat cow manure and rotting dead stuff. Then you eat the vegetables. This is Edgework.
Eat
Bugs: Yes. There are 1,462 recorded species of edible insects. Get fried grasshoppers with chili, salt and lemon in Mexico; fried cicadas and silk moth pupae in Japan; roasted termites and crickets in Nigeria; snails are a delicacy in France; and you can get canned baby bees, chocolate covered ants, and stir-fried meal worms in the U.S. Suck the back ends of water bugs at vegetable markets in Thailand, and eat witchetty grubs and Bogong moths in Australia. And don’t forget gnat soufflé! The menu is wide and varied, and rich in protein and vitamins. For recipes check out The Eat-ABug Cookbook by David George Gordon.
Take Things Apart and Fix Them: We are so accustomed to giving things to repair people or throwing things away that we do not have a relationship to fixing things anymore. Instead, try to fix things yourself. Simple little things, big complex things – simply give it a try. Even if you have absolutely no idea how, grab your screwdriver, take the broken thing apart and follow your intuitive wisdom. Fiddle around. Just make sure it is unplugged first and then you will not blow yourself up. Even when professional repair people say it cannot be done or cannot be fixed, try your best guess yourself. Be bold and trust yourself. Your successes will serve as reference points for creating possibility in seemingly impossible relationship situations.
Walk Twenty Miles: We know how to pilot a one-ton internal-combustion ground-machine at speeds of seventy-five miles per hour, but can we walk twenty miles when our car breaks down? Six leagues is not so far. The old California missions were built about twenty miles apart because the monks could walk from one mission to the next in about a day. Knowing that you can walk twenty miles whenever you want to makes the whole planet your home again.
Other anti-TTP Edgework experiments might include learning to use ancient hunting tools such as a boomerang, blow gun, sling, and bow and arrow; identifying and using wild edible plants; visiting third-world cultures; eating only whole and raw foods for a time; weaving cloth; making your own soap, candles, pottery, baskets, paper, and shoes; writing with feathers; flaking stone implements; starting a fire without matches, and milking a cow … all are excellent to do with your children.
SECTION 7-D
Intimacy Edgework
Intriguingly, love alone is insufficient to sustain extraordinary human relationship. Intimacy is also needed. In exploring the Map of Four Bodies in Section 5-A we noted that each of the four bodies has its own kind of food, its own kind of pain, its own kind of ecstasy, and its own kind of intimacy. Since relationships thrive on intimacy, the edge question here is, “How intimate can I be with each of the four bodies of my partner?” Edgework experiments in the four kinds of intimacy produce an inexhaustible range of intimate experiences for nurturing extraordinary human relationship.
MAP OF FOUR KINDS OF INTIMACY
1. PHYSICAL INTIMACY: sex, foreplay (what isn't foreplay?), singing, eating, washing dishes, walking holding hands, sauna, sports such as: roller-skating, biking, tennis, skiing, swimming, etc., martial arts, dancing, massage, doing holdings, physical therapy, brushing their hair, brushing their teeth, cutting their fingernails, bathing them, dressing them, a private fashion show, traveling, making art, body painting, gardening, playing with the children, action games such as charades, going to the zoo, remodeling the house, and so on.
2. INTELLECTUAL INTIMACY: talking, discussing, philosophizing, debating, writing poetry, writing proposals, running a business, meeting, planning, strategizing, designing, creating, learning (such as languages), playing games (cards, chess, Scrabble, 20 Questions), entertainment (opera, theater, concerts, shows, movies), museums, circus, reading articles out loud, telling stories, telling jokes, humor, sharing memories, creating possibilities, and so on.
3. EMOTIONAL INTIMACY: sharing the experience and the expression of feelings with 1000-percent trust, saying “I feel mad, sad, glad or scared becauseÉ,” vulnerability, openness, acceptance, deep listening without discussion, grieving, contact, simplifying, revealing wounds, sensitivity, warmth, compassion, generosity, kindness, weakness, confusion, depression, jealousy, ecstasy, joy, delight, passion, and so on.
4. ENERGETIC OR SPIRITUAL INTIMACY: being present, “being-with” the other, prayer, ritual, meditation, appreciation, being in the presence of saints or sacred artifacts, respect, dignity, nobility, being in the space of Love, moving at the speed of Love, communion, oneness, Countenance, evolution, transformation, development, expanding the Box, radiance, teamwork, family, community, holding space, serving Bright Principles as a couple, and so on.
The Map of Four Kinds of Intimacy is not given for the purpose of isolating various activities into only one kind of intimacy. Certain activities by their very nature open into multiple intimacies simultaneously. The map is given for the purpose of inviting you to engage a much wider range of Edgework experiments as ways for being intimate together. Not only can you transform monotonous chores of daily life into intimacy Edgework experiments, with this map in hand you can also mix and match intimacy Edgework experiments in wildly creative and very interesting combinations! You can be doing physical and intellectual Edgework experiments exploring more than one edge together! We have many opportunities on a daily basis to create and explore intimacies with our partner. We often overlook them. Distinguishing four kinds of intimacy Edgework experiments opens up huge, fresh and stimulating opportunities for Edgework experiments.
Sample Intimacy Edgework Experiments
Discover Slowness Together: Experiment with “velocities of being” other than the normal high speed of the intellect. Try not talking so fast, not jumping from one subject to another so fast, not moving so fast through experiential spaces. Stay in one experience for extended periods of time; sniff a rose for fifteen minutes, not one brief sniff. Hold still together. Savor the nuances in flavors, colors and sensations. Appreciate subtleties of your partner like an art lover absorbs artwork in a museum. Make use of how the opportunities unfold rather than following a pre-made plan. For example, don’t be afraid to speak before you know what you are going to say, to gush a little, out loud, in poetic detail, marveling at your partner’s qualities of being, even if you have appreciated them before.
Get Dangerous Coaching: Bring pen and paper to your partner and read them the following: “Do you have a minute to coach me?” (If they say yes, keep reading. If they say no, make an appointment to read this to them later.) “Here is a pen and paper.” (Hand them the pen and paper.) “Would you please write down at least three specific experiences that could add a new dimension to my personal development and that would be useful for me to learn about.” Do not say a word while they write. When they are finished, do not read what they have written. This quick interaction does not involve any discussion. Do this same exercise with two other “dangerous” people, meaning people who know your weaknesses, people whose Boxes are significantly different from yours, whose Gremlins are bigger than yours, or people you regard as having authority. Then make a plan – for this next week – to undertake two of the experiences suggested to you on the papers. Your experiments can be done solo, with your partner, or with a friend of the same gender as you, whichever serves best.
Heal the Big Wound: More women than you might suspect have been physically or sexually abused in their childhood by men. When such a woman wishes to have physical intimacy with her man, there may well be memories and vows locked in her body from long ago that interfere with her relaxing and pleasurably enjoying herself. A healing is called for, and her man can participate in that healing process. As partners in this experiment, you should read through and talk about this process beforehand. When the woman is ready she should tell the man, “I am ready to begin the Edgework experiment.” In this experiment the woman determines everything. The man follows her instructions as sensitively and as gently as he can, particularly without speaking and in complete acceptance. This is her experiment. In complete privacy, with both man and woman fully dressed, stand facing each other with the greatest distance between you as permitted by the room, but at least ten fe
et apart. Just stand. After three minutes the woman may say, “Stop,” having decided that the experiment is over. The experiment continues the next night (or morning or afternoon, as requested by the woman). Start off each time in the way determined by the woman, in this case fully clothed, ten or more feet apart. This time the woman may say, “Take one step forward. Stop.” After a minute she may say, “Take one step backward.” And that may be the end of the session. It is so important that she says the word, “Stop,” one or more times in each session. Next session she may say, “Take three steps forward. Stop. Slowly reach out your right hand. Stop. With one finger reach toward my left shoulder but don’t touch me. Stop. Take three steps backward.” End of session. After more sessions she may gradually come to say, “Take your shoes off. Take your outer shirt off. Take three steps forward. Stop. Put both hands on both of my shoulders. Stop, take your hands off. Put your hands back on. Stop, take your hands off. Take one-half step further forward. Stop. Kiss my forehead. Stay there and don’t move. Stop. Unbutton the top button of my blouse. Stop. Button it back up. Take three steps back. Stop.” And so on. Every move is orchestrated by the adult woman, in her own time, as she observes and digests her body’s subtle reactions from the past. The realization that her feelings and reactions are from another situation in another time with another person separates these reactions from the totally different circumstances in the present. In the present circumstances with her man she has the power to say Stop, about any and every detail of the interaction. Exercising her power to say Stop gives the woman back her power to say Go. In a few weeks, this Edgework experiment can totally heal even the most terrible old wounds and give you each a fresh start to be physically intimate together.
Radiant Joy Brilliant Love Page 38
