The fact that we need to form Tribes or, as I like to say “non-biological extended familes” seems obvious to me. That we need each other – at every level - existentially, emotionally, practically - seems obvious to me. And as the dominant global culture becomes more and more alienated from the magic of the natural world, community more and more fragmented, and people individually more and more disassociated from their own deepest hearts – our need of each other seems not only obvious to me, but more and more urgent.
So Tribes – yes! And Conscious Tribes because – again, obviously (I hope you´ll agree): only people who are on the path of becoming conscious can co-create a conscious culture – a conscious culture to take the place of the superficial and sef-destructive, unconscious culture that dominates the world today.
So the basic idea of a Conscious Tribe is that we are on a journey together, as a closely-woven extended family – a journey of presentness and intimacy – a journey of becoming the people who could populate a new, conscious culture.
And this deep, shared journey as a Conscious Tribe – obviously (I hope you´ll agree yet again!) - needs to express itself not only internally, but in the external, material, physical world as well. The journey can´t just be about “becoming conscious” in our private, personal meditations! That would be another perpetuation of the material/spiritual split. No. The journey of becoming conscious together also needs to overflow into learning to relate to each other consciously, and learning to plant and harvest and cook and craft and build consciously together.
I created this simple diagram to show this visually. As you can see, the shared journey of the Conscious Tribes is about (1) each person learning to stay in their own, unique experience of the moment, (2) learning to relate to each other in that consciousness, and (3) co-creating a way of life based on a conscious way of relating - to everything!
The beauty of “each person staying in their own experience” as the foundational principle of a Conscious Tribe is that it allows everyone to have their own path, their own faith, their own understadings and intuitions, and so on – and (because everyone acknowledges that they only have their own, limited, subjective experience) it creates a foundation of humility and equality and respect and, ultimately, love.
And “staying in our own, unique, subjective experience of the moment” is itself a path. To stay-with what we are actually experiencing - and realise we can´t define it, only feel it – takes each one of us into a more and more intimate relationship with the sacredness of existence itself.
So the foundation of “staying in our unique experience” unites the Conscious Tribe on a profound and beautiful existential journey.
And obviously, the more we are able to stay-in our experience, the more we are able to relate-from our experience. And just as staying present, individually, takes us into the undefinable sacredness of existence – as we learn to meet each other, and see each other, and let ourselves be-seen-by each other - without pretending to have anything more than our unique experience of the moment - we remember and see and feel each other´s sacredness! We see, and are-seen-as, unique expressions of existence. And that seeing is an ever-deepening, ever-more-textured love.
And obviously (yet again!) - that same seeing, that same way of being, isn´t limited to other people. Simultaneously, as we learn to live in deeper intimacy with others, we learn to live in deeper intimacy with the animals and birds and insects, with the trees and the hills, with the elements and the seasons. We naturally gravitate towards permaculture, eco-construction, local economics, holistic healthcare, free-form education, and so on. In other words: a natural, community-based way of life emerges from the consciousness we are travelling in together.
In my book ´Love & Revolution´ I discuss all of this is great detail. I offer many practical suggestions for forming a Conscious Tribe, and techniques for practicing Conscious Relating. But the diagram above presents, I hope, a useful outline of the Conscious Tribes approach.
And as I mention in my previous post on ´Conscious Localism´ , Conscious Tribes of 10, 20 or 30 people can then combine to form Conscious Local Communities. And Conscious Local Communities can then combine to form a new Conscious Culture... Is that ridiculously utopian? Hopelessly idealistic? I´ve no idea!
But I do feel it´s absolutely obvious that whatever culture we now co-create will be shaped by the conciousness with which we co-create it. So that if we want to co-create a conscious culture, we need to co-create consciously.
And I feel it´s also absolutely obvious that to co-create consciously we need each other. In other words, that we need to form Conscious Tribes.
Mark the Mystic Activist,
Aragon, Spain,
March 2024.
CONSCIOUS TRIBES
Seeds of a New Culture
Image by Duy Huyn