Cultivating culture(s) of action orientated hope
Universal Abundant Income in practice
This year, 2023, is moment that I recognise and stand in all the learning and ground of practice that I have developed and been in with others.
The foundations of the work that I am imagining and crafting is based on the understanding that we can’t change other people or make the world the way we want it to be. And yet, we can change our perception of what we are in together, and notice our interdependence and realise our fate is collective.
We can see ourselves, each other, and all life as part of an inseparable living tapestry.
What we do and who we are matters.
Not because the Universe, a divine being or some other expression of the whole cares, in a judgemental or outcome orientated way. It matters because we care and we love. This is, for me, our deepest nature that we have been unfurling our awareness into over many, many, millennia. This orientation to life and the living is what becomes damaged, twisted or forgotten when hurt and harm, whether from a stand point of guilt or innocence, become our centralised navigation point.
image from unsplash
Remembering that we are the embodied reality of life being passed on, and that we have that capacity to pass on life too.
Remembering our ancestors, the structure of time and culture they were born into.
To remember collectively, all of our ancestors. The places, the lands, the ways in which they gathered and created culture together.
To know and acknowledge how the sun, the light, the darkness, the temperature, the landscape, the life around them, the lived history, the beliefs and stories that made sense of the world and the universe, the personal and collective imaginations that were alive.
To know pain, grief and sorrow, anger and hurt. To remember the dead and the ways in which they died and to not be left with the lingering and the longing for what was, to be different.
We can cultivate altered perception that bring us closer to connection and care for all living things, including the dead, and our collective history which makes us different from each other.
We can be in the remembrance and living possibility of a global culture of solidarity; I am and we are and everything is because of each other. We can move towards a collective coherence beyond disagreement, and the harmful, incomplete and violent resolutions of disagreement.We can amplify the active processes for hopeful creativity.
Action orientated hope is not about creating solutions to problems. It is the active participation in remembering our relationship(s) to each other and expanding that awareness. It is welcoming and celebrating our differences and practicing being in the embodied response to this, together. It is being curious and encouraging good intent. It is challenging harm, while being open to each other and movement. It is shifting our focus away from structures that cause and calcify division and embedded world views, like debate, polarisation technology, systems of politics and policy making and working towards orientations that enable openness, trust and belonging to and beyond tribe.
There are many people doing this work. I am one more.
My contribution to the field of cultivating a living human culture of care and connection is to talk about and create a Universal Abundant Income for myself and others. It is to imagine, write, create, curate, facilitate and to support others to design and host gatherings and experiences which bring people together in the in-between spaces. It is to give myself permission and time to parent well, build community around our family and rest, as well as outward activity and creativity.
We need spaces that serve the purpose of building playful, embodied, connection beyond our current eco systems of belonging and beyond financial economic outputs and measures.
We need spaces and practices for story telling, uncovering, being moved, expanding our network of connection and imagination, remembering our ancestors and their stories, and sharing ideas and hopes for the kind of world we want to build together.
These kind of spaces need effort, curation, testing, care, tenderness, radical inclusion and creative tension. They are spaces that work beyond our tribal nature for gathering around a specific call; to save a building, a eco system, to dismantle harm, to stand for or against something. These spaces can include opportunities to actively be engaged in the practices of seeing ourselves and each other in ways which we are yet to understand, collectively. To be in uncovering new feelings, language and postures, together.
I am hosting three collective rhythms of facilitated and curated space like this over 2023.
Online, Remembering our ancestors and the landscapes of our lives zoom sessions
Coming soon
The income from contributions to these gatherings will not cover the time and costs of creating and curating such spaces and supporting the practices of rest, self care and parenting. I am creating a Universal Abundant Income for this work and you can find out more about supporting this here www.jamiecolston.com
I am also seeking a small number of opportunities for financially abundant, remunerated work in line with generative work, alongside any invitations to collaborate,
This orientation and choice towards life comes not from being well resourced financially. It comes from complete dedication towards creativity, hope for our children, and a philosophy that we need to build the emergent future and it will be resourced. If we never do things because the money isn’t there yet, then we will always orientate towards where the money is.
I trust in a future that financially resources well, the humans that are actively exploring what is possible beyond what we know. I will continue to work to describe and create on this basis. If you can and feel inspired to, please share your financial abundance with me and the others I am co-curating with.
As always, with the gratitude for my living and deceased ancestors who encouraged me to dream and act, and occasionally tell me to get a “proper job” and yet somehow understood.
