Dancing the Path of Love

 

PILOTOPIA

Imagine that you are part of a Ring of friends, meeting together to explore developing into Pilots. The Ring might contain up to 12 people. You have chosen one another because of a sense of companionship and some compatibilities of interest, outlook, activities, and forms of functioning, and above all because you all subscribe to the Pilot’s Creed:

  PILOT’S CREED          

I am evolving consciousness, the exquisite flowering of my life energy, God’s experiment in Free Will.

I receive input from my senses, my thoughts, my emotions, my memory, my instincts,

all the different sources.

I decide what to do with this input and act accordingly. I do not identify with the input.

Thus I Pilot this body thru life and extend the consciousness of the Great Mystery.

I can receive Guidance from any representative of the Great Mystery or from the Great Mystery Itself; however, I can only understand this Guidance thru the filters of my programming, which may distort the message. I therefore recognize that Guidance can be incomplete or less than perfect. I am willing to debate and compromise.

I choose the best way to express my talents and thereby contribute to society and to the consciousness of the Great Mystery.

I choose my values and do my best to implement them in every aspect of my life. Specifically:

I choose to walk the sacred Path of Love in all that I think, all that I feel, and all that I do.

I treat all others with the respect that an equal being deserves.

I celebrate the creative energy that is bubbling thru me, which I can send out in any direction.

I take joy in life, celebrate life, give thanks for life and for all that I learn.

My aim is to heal our relationships with one another and with our Mother Earth. With reverence, all things are possible.

When your Ring of friends meets, imagine good vibes of love and trust passing back and forth, appreciating one another’s spirits, loving the harmony and joy you are creating together. Imagine the sparks of recognition that flash between you. When you make the transition from not knowing who you are to knowing who you are, it’s an amazing leap of bliss. You are free from compulsions. It is good to celebrate that.

Perhaps for months you meet once a week, or every two weeks, exploring your interpersonal relations, your intents, how much you want to work together and be together, how you experience holiness. Perhaps one or two transfer to another Ring, seeking the most compatible fit, and new folks join your Ring. Perhaps you decide you all want to live together and hold an appropriate ceremony to commemorate this event. Realizing that love is not possession, perhaps you choose to move toward polyamory. You want to leave the old patriarchal values behind. The more love the better, physically as well as emotionally. You explore how a plural marriage might work. Would you change partners casually as the mood hits? Or would you have a regular schedule, perhaps rotating on a weekly basis? Or have one regular partner and occasionally sleep with somebody else? Or ??? Perhaps it’s worth exploring how Rajneeshies and other free love groups operated. Perhaps your ceremony to celebrate living together would be a group marriage. Or perhaps not. Pilotopia has no requirements in this regard. If you want to live together as singles or monogamous couples, that is not a problem. Perhaps some of you are polyamorous and some are not. You decide what’s going to work for you, and you try it out. Since you are all Pilots, it should be possible for you to avoid the major jealousies and contentions that this kind of relationship frequently brings. It’s good to share love, it’s good to celebrate life and love in all ways. As Pilots explore various living arrangements, the more successful strategies will emerge.

If you want to explore further how a polyamorous Ring might work, you can buy my 1997 novel, The Birth of the Motherings, $20 including s&h in US and Canada, $25 elsewhere. Email me for details, donangelo@spiritualadventurer.com . For me a relationship is not just sharing mutual activities and interests. It is going deeper, really seeing and appreciating one another’s Spirit. Our society likes to instill in us the notion that everyone has a potential soul mate out there somewhere, a perfect match of energy, interests, and challenges for learning. While this may be true for some, it’s also possible to make deep connections with another in some ways even tho you don’t connect in others. Regardless of what sexual arrangements you make, it is very important to make a deep spiritual connection with every other member of your Ring. This builds our sense of family and gives us strength. Appropriate rituals may assist these deep connections.

You pick out a large house, or adjacent houses, or an apartment complex, perhaps some acreage outside of town, whatever it takes. A group of a dozen people living together offers enormous advantages over a nuclear family. Perhaps one or two of you become full time cooks. With everyone eating together and having an official cook or two, you can get away from packaged foods to preparing everything organically yourselves, and have a much better diet than you might otherwise. Perhaps you have a large lot or a neighboring lot, and some of you undertake to grow a vegetable garden, so that a fair proportion of what you eat is your own homegrown food. Perhaps you move to the country and choose to have chickens or a catfish pond. Perhaps you install a windmill generator or solar panels or solar hot water heaters, so that you can all live as ecologically as possible. Perhaps you elect to share vehicles, while some of you use bicycles or mass transit, so that you can get by with fewer vehicles but everyone has some access to a vehicle when necessary. Thus the Ring would have fewer vehicles than individuals living separately, and much less fuel consumption. Perhaps everybody has certain jobs or rotated jobs to perform basic maintenance to keep the house clean and functional. Taking care of oneself and one’s community is always a good discipline. Everyone should have their own room, so that there is always a degree of privacy. This means that a couple might have two rooms, to be allocated however they choose.

Perhaps your Ring is mostly in their twenties and decide to start families, and agree that no woman should have more than two kids, and only one is preferable. Because we want to grow Pilotopia as much as possible, we don’t restrict ourselves to just one child at this time, altho we recognize that later this is a highly advisable approach. According to some estimates, the present population is over three times the carrying capacity of Mother Earth, and if we do not reduce our numbers as well as our consumption, we are all doomed. Therefore, a one child policy is appropriate. Particularly in that case, raising a number of kids together in a Ring provides great benefits for socialization, as well as making childcare a standard part of the family instead of farming the kids out to daycare.

In time, the individual Pilotopia Rings can grow into an organization. The basic Alpha Ring may function to run the household, if you have a household; to explore the Path of Love in the challenges that arise; to process any personal or interpersonal stuff that comes up; to plan how to make your operation more ecological and efficient; perhaps to take part in neighborhood and local school actions; and to ritualize and ceremonialize so that all can appreciate the holiness and joy of this life, and our connection to the Great Mystery. Feel the reverence!

Each Ring can decide for themselves whether they need a moderator or coordinator. When there is a sufficient number of Rings in an area, perhaps between 6 and 12, each Ring can elect a representative to a second level, or Beta, Ring. The Beta Ring will be concerned with coordinating and sharing among the Alpha Rings, and possibly with area concerns, city wide or county wide. If you like, you can imagine calling all upper level Rings representatives “sailors,” because they sail between Rings and the term does not suggest elevated status.

As Pilotopia continues to grow, up to 12 Beta Rings can elect a sailor to a third level, or Gamma, Ring that at first may be state wide and concerned with state issues. When enough Gamma Rings form, they can elect sailors to a fourth, or Delta, level which might be regional in scope. A fifth Epsilon level might be national, and a sixth Zeta level international. The beauty of this system is that every sailor is directly responsible to the 12 folks who elected hir. They constitute a support Ring to help clarify issues, and also will minimize any possibility of corruption. In time we can elect our own legislators to state and national government, who will each have a support Ring to keep them in focus. Thus we can escape the corporate bribing of our politicians and sponsor legislation to bring humans into balance with our Mother Earth. Second only to creating a shining example of loving, ecological living, this is our most important task at this critical cusp in human development – to resolve global warming, ecological health, sustainable population and consumption, a fair economic system that is not full of parasites, maximum freedom consistent with the rights of others, and a system that is caring for those in need. I do not envision that we be a separate political party. The dismal 20 year record of the Greens shows the folly in that. Rather, let us be Green Democrats, working within the Democratic Party until we can either take it over or break away with sufficient strength to be viable.

Interest or issue Rings will spring up. These Rings may take place largely on the internet, perhaps using Facebook, Twitter, or whatever, but face-to-face contact has many advantages, and is not to be ignored altogether. Folks from different Rings who are specifically interested in rock climbing or model airplanes or computer games or indymedia or whatever may join together in an interest Ring for joint adventures and to share information and friendship. Likewise, folks who are specifically concerned about the potentials and dangers of nuclear power or genetically modified organisms or the state of the oceans or whatever else may join together in an issue Ring or progressive Ring String so that they can develop hard facts and concrete proposals. They can then advise the appropriate level Ring for legislation or concrete action on their issue.

As Pilotopia grows, the Rings will develop appropriate businesses – food co-ops, bank and insurance co-ops, farming co-ops, perhaps manufacturing co-ops, so that Pilotopia can function independently from the larger society as much as possible. I recommend that such co-ops always be organized into at least two competing companies, so that we can take advantage of the efficiencies of competition. We can use some of the positive aspects of capitalism while avoiding the patriarchal and predatory pitfalls.

Thus the average Ringer might belong to three or four different Rings – the basic living Alpha Ring, a Ring at the co-op business where s/he works, an interest Ring for sail boarding, spelunking, whatever, and perhaps an issues Ring working on carbon credits or how to prevent endless government deficits.

Finally, as Pilotopia grows, we can make all kinds of transformations. For example, perhaps experts will get together and devise a more accurate alphabet and more efficient, logical spelling rules. We may be able to reduce the number of letters we use in words by 20 or 30%, which will lead to our reading and writing that much faster, and remove the burden for children trying to learn the ridiculous illogical spelling we have now. Perhaps we will invent new words to eliminate the patriarchal possessiveness built into the language with phrases like “my wife,” and add indefinite personal pronouns to eliminate the use of “their” when we mean “his or hers.” Perhaps we might even patent our new alphabet and encourage manufacturers of computers, smart phones, etc to make models to be used by us and anybody else who wants to. We cannot arrive at the future we want unless we are willing to dramatically improve the present.

Similarly, perhaps we will change the names of the months in the calendar. The names we have now make no sense. January, March, April, May, and June are named after defunct gods; July and August are named for Caesars; and September thru December are names for the seventh thru tenth months when in fact they are the ninth thru twelfth months. We could name the months for values we treasure. We cannot name them to reflect the seasons, because the seasons are opposite in the southern hemisphere. In the North February may be “fever month,” but in the South it is the heighth of summer. We can also change the way we write dates to conform with computer simplicity. If we write year, month, and day as in 080901 for September 1, 2008, a computer can keep our files in order by date without any special programming.

Perhaps we will go for a 13 month calendar so women’s moontimes will be much more in sync, on the same day each month. We might consider changing the names of the days of the week, since the present names represent the sun, moon, four defunct Norse gods, and one defunct Roman god. In the same vein, our family names are largely meaningless. If you are Smith or Baker or Schuman because some ancestor was a smith or baker or cobbler, what does that have to do with you? When you become a Pilot, I think it’s appropriate for you to choose your own name, one that reflects the values you treasure or perhaps your totem. Until they reach an age to choose their own names, girls can carry their mother’s last name and boys can carry their father’s. There is no good reason for a woman to change her last name just because she marries. That’s just a patriarchal holdover. We may even choose to have special clothes. Just as the Rajneeshies wore red and the Hare Krishnas wore orange, we might on suitable occasions wear green to reflect the heart chakra and the greening of our society.

All these changes in spelling, language, the calendar, etc. may seem trivial, but they will define us as emphasizing improvement. They go right along with our new spirituality, redefining sexual mores, innovative housing arrangements, extensive business cooperatives, and setting up the Rings decision making process. These are all things we can do for ourselves without depending upon legislative victories. They enable us to be a model for the rest of the world, with the clear invitation to everyone else to join in.

Do not imagine that I will be leading Pilotopia just because I am writing this. I am old, becoming ancient. We are all equal beings, and appropriate leaders will emerge from the election process. However, we seem to have an instinctual love of power, and some spirits among us are naturally attracted to the power of elective office. They are not necessarily the best ones for the job. It’s fine if they are. But look for those characteristics of organization, diplomacy, and clarity that make for an effective representative. Perhaps the most valuable trait is the ability to think consequentially: if we choose course X, the likely consequences will be A, B, and C. Vote for that person, even if they think they are the last possible person for the job. I believe in the long run that will give us a stronger organization. Those into power attract opposing power, and I would like to rise above that particular game if we can.

We are babies, just growing up. We are designed to be the farthest advance in the consciousness of God on this planet, but we have to move into the knowledge of what we are —developing consciousnesses learning to handle diverse inputs – Pilots! We can then go out and joyously create the Path of Love, in this life, on this earth. This is the destiny of those who choose to do it, and it is utterly beautiful.

I give thanks to the Creator,

for creating all that is

I give thanks to light, thanks to the sun,

for enlightening all that I see

for all the ways we have learned to use light

and rainbows

I  give thanks to Mother Earth,

for all she gives of water, earth, air, fire, and beauty

I give thanks to Civilization,

for all that it has provided for me –

plentiful food, warm dry house, running water, electric power,

for love and the Golden Rule

I give thanks to family and friends,

all I associate with,

and all who support our civilization

on its path to green harmony

And I give thanks to myself

It’s such a Grace to be me

so thank you to the Creator

and to this entire Creation

You too can choose to see yourself

as the Grace that you are

and give thanks

before bursting forth into life

with limitless enthusiasm.

Please send questions or comments to

  donangelo@spiritualadventurer.com