[OSList] Perspectives from outer space (Follow up, long)

[Alan Stewart]

G'Day All


Further to my earlier post on this topic I am encouraged by
appreciative responses
both on and offline to post these reflections.


Astronaut Chris Hadfield was in Australia recently to be a speaker at
a National
Science Week <http://sciencealert.com.au/spaceoddity/> and associated
events. He received a lot of media exposure on radio and TV. What I did
happen to see or hear focused on his activities as a resident in outer
space, his account of the spectacle he
described so well from his vantage point of our tiny blue planet, 3rd from
the sun. And also on his rendition of the David Bowie cover!


Nowhere else in the media interviews, apart from the one I mentioned
earlier, was there mention of what was a seminal point, in my opinion.
Which was that we humans are one, we wish for the same things in life. AND
how long it took him – the many times he had travelled above and around our
spaceship earth – before this idea/realisation dawned on him!


“And I think probably the biggest personal change was a loss of the sense
of the line between ‘us’ and ‘them’.


… It slowly grows where the line between us and them is. I’ve been around
the world thousands of times, 2, 593 times - and that line we impose on
ourselves of where us ends and them starts, just keeps diminishing and it
wasn’t conscious. I noticed maybe a third of the way into my half year
stint up there that I just started referring to everybody as ‘us'.
Unconsciously there was some sort of transition in my mind that ‘Hey, we’re
all in this together.’ “


Which is in accord with:

"We're all we, although some of us don't know it yet."
*Jeff Schwartz via Tom Atlee*

No doubt you would have your own ways of ‘knowing it’, being so deeply
embedded in many faiths.

An offline commentator said:

“Personally, I feel that one of the most provocative and meaningful
positions in the present turmoil is found in christian scriptures:

Love your enemy.

Usually, I hear that the central message is "Liebe Deinen Nächsten wie Dich
selbst" (Love thy neighbor as thyself") which I think pales next to “Love
your Enemy.”

It might be the next step after saying "Hey, we are all in this together",
as the chap in outer space said.”

Another noted:

“Alan, you have put your finger on a shift - a return home - that I am
experiencing in my organizational and community work. Years ago I and
others were inspired by the lovely book The Home Planet
<http://www.amazon.com/The-Home-Planet-Kevin-Kelley/dp/0201151979/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1409501957&sr=8-2&keywords=planet+home>
with its profound poetry and photography and essential message *we are one.*
Much later now my lived experience, especially in contentious situations,
is precisely that.”

Does this resonate with us, as practitioners of OST who do 'know it' as our
lives, professionally and personally, are guided by the principles on which
'it' is grounded?


If so is it part of our role to demonstrate this way of being publicly? And
to bring to the attention of people in the forums we are privileged to
facilitate that the way they engage with each other in these contexts is a
model for how to treat anyone they meet in everyday life?


Not that such enhanced understanding comes as an epiphany – as noted by
Hadfield! More likely a slow dawning through beginning to notice what
happens when we listen more carefully, pay more direct attention to the
person(s) in front of us ‘in the moment’ (minimally non judgmentally!) and
say and do things that will likely bring pleasure and evoke a smile in
whoever it is with whom was are conversing.


Could this be a contribution to fostering ways in which 'we', ie all of us
address the massive climatic and other changes looming?  For handling these
constructively is going to require more than ‘resilience’- making do. It
will take what Paul Raskin, Director of GTI - Great Transition Initiative
<http://www.greattransition.org>(who I visited with in Boston in 2010 and
of which I am a longstanding participant) suggests:


 ‘Massive participation in healing the planet becoming a great source of
pride for the global citizenry is the only hope for the future of our
species, and the ecosystems of which we are a part.’
*Slightly paraphrased by me*


 I wonder how these musing resonate with you?


Looking forward


Go well



Alan
Adelaide
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