Earth Interbeing Food Commons Workbook

Read about the different perspectives on how we might relate to food.  Access Chapter Two here.

We all have eating food in common. Food keeps us alive, growing, becoming. It brings pleasure, relationships, creativity, celebrations, sharing, remembering loved ones, and connecting with the sacred.

Yet, we take food so for granted that we do not remember its nature. We participate in a very complicated food web and depend upon other life for our own. The ways we obtain the food we need from other life we call our food system.

The direction of the current global corporate food system causes the need for the Commoning Food Sovereignty Workbook, written for people wanting to transform our food system, people who want their community to survive the great harms the global corporate food system inflicts on people, other life, and the Earth. We need a sustainable food system, one that meets the needs of the hungry, protects the right to grow food, preserves cultural diversity, and restores our wholeness with the Earth and all life. Throughout this workbook, we will highlight the deep changes needed in our Western beliefs and views for a commoned food system to emerge, a transformation already in process, which local examples will highlight.

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Commoning Food Sovereignty Workbook Overview

Viewing food as a commons rather than a commodity allows us to address the inabilities of the current food regime to provide food for those who cannot afford the market price point. A commons defines a shared management of an essential resource to ensure equitably shared access and use by the community that manages the resource.

The Commoning Food Sovereignty Workbook will deepen the community understanding of a local commons food system within the greater Ypsi-Ann Arbor community, grounded in the past and present and opening to the future.

Before acting in the world, we need to move away from behaving like privileged white educated western people. Blacks have made a great effort to explain all the ways we discriminate against them, even if we should view ourselves as their allies. Paulo Freire described what white privileged people who want to ally with the oppressed must understand. When we join liberation struggles, we generally act like colonizers. Oppression does not cease by just wishing it away. We do not stop acting like an oppressor just by acknowledging our privileges.

Freire describes what he calls the marks of an oppressor, behaviors of privileged white people wanting to free others of oppression. Looking backward, I see these marks within my social change work and in the social change work of other white privileged people.

White privileged people believe we must lead the social transformation. We believe we hold the revolutionary wisdom and vision that we must bestow upon the oppressed and fully expect them to follow our lead. As a result, we act for the oppressed rather than with them in the struggle. Unsurprisingly, we find it hard to relinquish power to others.

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Bessie the cow here, your Earth Interbeing messenger.

Well, actually, you already live within the Earth Interbeing. We have never separated from you, and you haven’t ever separated from us except in your mind. How could you be apart from the whole of Creation? You may deny the spirit, but that never meant that the spirit denies you. You just don’t feel like you belong because your beliefs in exceptionalism and denial of the sacred make you want to have power over us and to take what does not belong to you.

We see you play the Imperium game in your mind, a delusion that unfortunately has real consequences to the wellbeing of the Earth Interbeing because your behavior does harm us, as you have observed. You play the Imperium game to win but get entangled within all its rules. The Imperium masters keep changing the rules to their advantage when they see you gaining on them. Our culture has only one rule, to care for the Earth Interbeing, the one rule you do not allow yourselves to follow because that would make you an immediate loser in the Imperial game. Go figure.

You understand perhaps the importance of healing your deluded beliefs, cutting back on consumerism, dialing back your anger, and quieting your fears so that you can begin to see where you live. You live with us even though you don’t know us. We understand how you must feel like a stranger in a strange land.

Right now, you likely feel like a visitor with us, just passing through until you get back home to the Imperium. Some, however, may decide to settle down here, which we want you to do, so let me make some suggestions on how to get along with everyone.

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The I Ching teaches us what is important in life. It gives us insights into the fundamental issues of our lives and instructs us on how we can nourish the virtues necessary to connect with the spirit and to manifest its ways within our lives and in the world. You can access Louise’s I Ching hexagram essays at wayofhumanity.net.

We asked the I Ching what it wanted to share in its fourth Meat, Complicity and Thou reading. We received from the I Ching Hexagram 12 with moving line in the 4^th and 5^th places. This appears below, using Louise’s hexagram essay.

Hexagram 12 – Drawing Apart

Image: The hexagram represents a time of disintegration, marking the 7^th month in the Chinese calendar (August to September). The Book of Changes holds that the union of spirit and Earth produces life. When the season for growth has ended, autumnal decline sets in, an unstoppable withdrawal of the conditions for growth.

This seasonal change illustrates the hexagram image of the Creative and Earth Interbeing moving apart, numbing all things. In such a time within the world, confusion and disorder prevail. Those lacking a spiritual path dominate others harshly.

When selfishness and hostility increase, the ways of the spirit decline. The life-destroying forces prosper and oppress all. In this disadvantaged time, the selfish and powerful increasingly produce more dangers as they willingly harm others for self-benefit without limits, creating ever greater imbalances and marginalizing the wise. The declining human devotion to the spirit makes it difficult to discern the path toward restoring harmony and balance.

Self-cherishing and hostility disrupt the flow of life and sever our communion with the sacred and Earth Interbeing. When we value wealth, power over others, materialism, and indulgence more than the spirit, we become an object among objects and subject to external influences . We suffer and cause the suffering of others. Mistrust prevails in community life. The influence of the sage dwindles within the world.

Those who benefit from domination and exploitation of others and the Earth resist and deny the sacred. When entangled with what harms, the false dominates and the real departs. Wisdom has no influence over those whose unchecked self-cherishing and willingness to seriously harm the Earth Interbeing degrades the conditions upon which all life depends.

When the destructive forces of oppression block sages from benefiting all, they do not allow themselves to be turned from their principles. If conditions prevent them from exerting their influence within the world, sages retreat. While waiting, they further develop their spiritual being and preserve the spiritual path. By not yielding to what harms, they succeed. When the times change, the path forward reemerges.   Read more.

by louise

When I considered writing for Meat, Complicity, and Thou, I nearly rejected the idea because I feared how others would react to me proposing the spiritual path as the means to overcome the Imperium. I saw you rolling your eyes for my foolishness, pitying my deluded state. Others would surely dismiss me as a serious social change agent for I obviously have stumbled off the edge. Some might get angry with me for disrespecting their beliefs or criticizing their strategies to reform the Imperium. However, I decided to share my beliefs. While I do not expect everyone to share my worldview,  l cannot let my fear of others rejecting me keep me from doing what I need to do.

In truth, I had no option. My fear for the Earth Interbeing trivialized my fear of abandonment. To not do MCT would have only deepened my complicity in conforming to the expectations of the Imperial culture. We have no control over what arises in our experience, but we have complete responsibility for how we respond.

Fear comes in many forms, some which save our lives. However, knowing the Imperium’s  endangerment of the Earth Interbeing stands front and center of my fears. The Imperium manipulates and controls us by playing our fears like a virtuoso. We have internalized the myth of our exceptionalism and the denial of the sacred Earth Interbeing to the degree that we consider it not only normal but the truth. Each of us have our own root fears that the Imperial culture stimulates if we think about tampering with its roots. I have the primal fear of abandonment. Can you name yours?       Read more

We have a different creation story than Westerners. You have two stories. In the first one, God created the Earth and gave his chosen male people dominion over women, all other life, and Earth. In your second story, creation happened within a microsecond some 14 billion years ago, the Big Bang. Everything that came after that moment merely unfolded the potential of those initial conditions according to the laws of cause and effect, a process that will continue until the end of time. Both stories strongly influence the Western worldview.

We hold creation as an ever-changing, dynamic flux of reality that lies within all beings, Earth, all forces, and processes. We have a relationship with this flux of creation, the Great Spirit, that which makes us one within the sacred Earth Interbeing.

Within this ongoing creation, the Earth Interbeing balances chaos and order through interrelationships, a constant give and take of energy, information, resources, and caring. These interactive interrelationships have greater importance than material forms.

From a single virus to the whole Earth Interbeing, life survives and thrives because it adapts to ever changing conditions. We find ways to preserve and renew the dynamic harmony and balance of life within the creative flux. The Earth Interbeing dances to the rhythm of the spirit.

Without this precious balance between chaos and order, life ceases. Imbalances may cause conditions to change too fast for life to adapt; or large relational networks and systems of the Earth Interbeing may suffer devastating damage; or a disease within interrelationships may disrupt flows of energy, information, resources, and caring. Without this balance between chaos and the order of life, interrelationships, and forms of being dissipate and dissolve back into the flux.

At the root of adapting to this constantly changing balance, we find caring, both an attitude and a direction. The Earth Interbeing harmoniously cares for the Earth Interbeing, creating a synergistic outcome for the planet, beings, and forces, held together by a vast array of interrelationships, networks, information flows, and interdependencies. The ongoing survival of the Earth Interbeing within the creative flux depends upon this caring within all relationships.

We consider reciprocity as the fundamental law of Earth Interbeing. Every being receives a constant flow of gifts: sunlight, water, air, soil, place, food, seed, warmth, healing, shelter, food, companionship, relationships, love, and the spirit, to mention a few. Every gift we receive comes from a sacred being, a being with its own love of life, its own knowledge, its own intentions, its own sacred offerings that it gifts others.

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The I Ching teaches us what is important in life. It gives us insights into the fundamental issues of our lives and instructs us on how we can nourish the virtues necessary to connect with the spirit and to manifest its ways within our lives and in the world. People who consult the I Ching have a complex relationship with it. Many approach the I Ching as a spiritual teacher. However, the I Ching shares more than wisdom; through its readings, it offers a conversation.

Louise for the past several years has worked on her own I Ching commentaries, a collection of hexagram essays, which she calls The I Ching of Interbeing, a project, she says, remains very much a work in progress. You can access her I Ching commentary at wayofhumanity.net

We asked the I Ching what it wanted to share in its third Meat, Complicity and Thou reading. We received from the I Ching Hexagram 1 with a moving line in the 3rd place. This appears below, using Louise’s I Ching hexagram essay.

Hexagram 1 – Creative

Unceasing power.
Boundless.
Entire.

The hexagram represents the Creative and its powers. No fixed condition within the universe bounds the Creative. As the all-encompassing Creative power, we call it sacred. As the sacred within life, we call it spirit.

The Creative has no form. It makes itself known through its all-powerful creativity. Its great laws subject the sacred Earth Interbeing to its sacred ways

We experience the Creative as the mystery, the unknowable yet known. We have no way to apprehend the Creative except through the power of its laws, its deep love and beauty, and our sacred relationship. It has no form nor measurement. We have no language to speak of the Creative, yet it speaks to us within our hearts.

The Creative extends and transforms, causing all things to flourish. We experience the never ceasing flux of the creation as change. Change does not impede but serves as the means to make the potential actual. The stages of change unfold in a clear sequence: first the manifestation of the Creative and then the conservation of Creation. The Creative powers the cyclic forces of change on which life on Earth depends.

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by louise

[Note: In this essay, the words we, us, and our refer to white Americans (U.S. residents) who benefit from colonial privileges derived from the enslavement of Africans, the theft of land from Native peoples, and their ongoing discrimination. Imperium denotes the global corporate-state empire of Western Europe and North America and its continuing colonialism.]

The spiritual path to overcome our complicity with what harms has three main practices. Last time we looked at avoiding complicity with the harmful consequences of living beyond planetary ecological boundaries by reducing consumerism. Now we turn to the second practice: undoing our exceptionalism by overcoming our arrogance.  (See the box below for examples of arrogant behavior).

Feelings motivate behavior, and our behavior manifests feelings. Deep caring for the Earth Interbeing depends upon feelings of love and gratitude for our interrelationships with the Earth and other beings. However, the Imperial ways of living separate us from the sacred and disconnect us from others, all life, and the Earth through its culturally-embedded beliefs in white exceptionalism and the arrogant and hostile feelings it generates.

The plague of great inequality and divisiveness inflicts the world. Privileged people do not face and resolve critical problems that threaten their privileges, leaving problems to fester and worsen. Once separation has reached the extreme, the task of reuniting presents itself. (For more on how our privileges advantage us and disadvantage people of color, see here).

The obstructions of arrogance, hostility, and selfishness block our unity with the spirit and Earth Interbeing.  Life motivates us to bite through these obstructions by imposing ever greater levels of suffering until we finally exert ourselves to put an end to our problem behaviors and return to the ways of the spirit. If we persistently ignore a life lesson, we suffer increasingly severe consequences for our wrong-doing.

Only those free of arrogance and the willingness to harm others for self-benefit, who persevere in taking care of the sacred Earth Interbeing, can create the conditions necessary to overcome exceptionalism and the corporate-state dynasty of the Imperium. Unexceptional people know how to bring to life the ways of the spirit by constantly yielding to what benefits all and the Earth.

We have the responsibility to care for the Earth Interbeing, which necessitates us to heal ourselves of our exceptionalism and complicity with what harms. We cannot struggle against our exceptionalism and complicity directly as that will entangle us more deeply in them: we cannot solve a problem by using the hostility and arrogance that caused it. Only through the spiritual path of love and Earth Interbeing can we heal ourselves from the disease of exceptionalism.

As soon as we sense within ourselves arrogant beliefs and feelings, we must recover our harmony by reconnecting with the Earth Interbeing and spirit. Healing begins when we know that caring for the Earth Interbeing has a much greater importance to us than our exceptionalism and privileges. Through love, we have the courage to live in harmony with others, with the Earth Interbeing.

Until it becomes a way of life for us, we need to persistently turn away from the ways of the Imperium toward caring for the Earth Interbeing. Whenever we see ourselves feeling and acting like a privileged white person, we can step back and see the dangers of living that way.  We can choose a different path and a different way of responding to whatever situation had elicited our arrogant reaction. Our choice depends upon how deeply we know the dangers of living the ways of the Imperium and our courage to change ourselves.

It will take times for our abstract understanding of the interbeing of Earth and all life to deepen into love, into a feeling of family. And so this practice actually begins with our family, however we may define it. We practice living the harmonious ways of kindness, respect, wisdom, humility, and justice within our daily interactions with family. I now have greater awareness of the many ways I have acted out my arrogance in my family. Yet, once I prioritized caring for its harmony and balance, I could apply those behaviors to ever wider circles of relationships.  See here for more on how to do this practice.

It takes a persistent effort to set aside hostility and arrogance. Only through holding a sacred love within our hearts for Earth Interbeing can we find the strength to face and move through exceptionalism and complicity with what harms. Knowing that others share this path, however, encourages us to live this way. Some Aboriginal peoples have never stopped living this way, and we can find support from their wisdom. The reality that we have to start relating to others in humble and caring ways to make it through the omnicidal plague of the Imperium has my full attention.

The practice of overcoming our arrogance and hostility for others eventually opens the door to enacting within our community ways of living that ground themselves in the equality of all beings, the sacred Earth Interbeing. Before we can go through that door, however, we have to first lose our sense of privilege, our arrogance, our exceptionalism.

By resting within the spirit’s love, we always have a refuge to which we can retreat when we feel overwhelmed by the burdens of life. We preserve the connection between the mystery and Earth, between interbeing and ourselves, healing our separation through the mystery by connecting lovingly and humbly with everyone.