Managing the Spiritual Neighborhood; Preface

Preface to the Bound Edition

How to Read This Book

The introduction and first seven chapters of this work originally appeared online in HTML format.

This book was conceived as a testimonial. The author had awoken to the human condition and wanted to share the excitement of that epiphany with others. In my political naïveté, I imagined there was a higher intelligent authority, a benevolent government umbrella that would respond favorably to my report and to the grass-roots activity it documented. It wasn't until later that the true awakening would take place. The imagined umbrella did exist, but its intelligent qualities proved illusory. My ideal government became a dark, distant entity that did less to protect you than to keep you in check; that was more suspicious than supportive, more impassive than responsive. Moreover, the people operating the umbrella seemed unable to comprehend my exposition. I had thought my analysis so clear that anyone who read the English language could follow the thread, that they could see the validity of the logic and the importance of what I was proposing. I still want to believe that is the case, but I've had to reconsider who my audience is. With this in mind, I've endeavored to make the book more user friendly—not so much by altering the text, but by offering instructions for attacking the material and constructing an outline that highlights the main arguments. The text contains some dense passages, and readers may give up on it before seeing the logical thread clear through to the end. But there may be a deeper problem preventing proper appreciation of the work. It's the trouble most of us have with thinking logically to begin with.

I touch on this point in the introduction and elsewhere, but I'd like to draw special attention to it here because logical thinking constitutes the foundation of the book. When I say "logical," what I really mean is clear. Logical thinking comes out of clear thinking, but interestingly, not the other way around, and difficult as it is for some of us to accept, it's not a given that we all think clearly all the time or even most of the time. This is a critical point for anyone who wants to make sense of life and make the best decisions about his or her future, not to mention his community's future and society's future.

So what does it mean to think clearly?

It would be nice if we could point to some clear thinkers and instruct the reader to "think like them." Point, say, to an Emerson or a Thoreau, a Dostoevsky, a Blake or even an Einstein. We all have the capacity to not only think like those great minds did, but to be like them; to uncover equally great qualities in ourselves. And why stop with mere mortals. We could point to the Buddha, or Lord Christ, or Krishna and ask people to think and be on Their divine level.

Do I mean to suggest this work is a divine expression?

Perhaps, but to say your humble neighborhood watch organizer has achieved god status would be a stretch. It's more like this: There are higher patterns of thought reflecting loftier views of reality. Those giants of the past experienced such patterns, cognized such holier thoughts and bore the standard for the rest of us. This observer believes he has had a glimpse or two of the higher reality and would like to offer some useful linguistic expressions of it.

What I'm presenting in this book are words on paper, but what I'd really like is to get you off the paper; to get you out of the book and into the world. Here we must consider what your occupation is; what role you play in the community. As you read through the material, you'll discover this book is about engagement and leadership. I hesitate to say it's about politics because our view of that field is so sharply negative in this age, but the work is, in fact, a political essay. Politics, government, law and justice—that's the arena we're playing in. We do, of course, have many people already occupied in those fields—professionals, as it were—and I truly wish there were individuals among them who could appreciate what I'm proposing, but I'm afraid that with few exceptions, all of those government types—the lawmakers, magistrates, executives and functionaries—are so tightly bound to their rigid mode of operation and hamstrung by such limited vision for the future that it's futile to approach them with any mold- breaking ideas no matter how sensible is our argument. But approach we must because there is simply no alternative.

This is where you come in. And this is where your second instruction applies. To appreciate this book, you must forget all your preconceived notions of government—wipe the slate clean. Forget constitutions, legislatures and congressional assemblies. Forget states, borders and national sovereignty. Forget treaties and contracts, tariffs and taxes; writs, orders, permits and licenses. Forget executives and cabinets; committees and commissions; courts, quorums and parliamentary procedure; lawyers writing laws, cops making arrests, juries passing verdicts, judges passing sentences. Forget campaigns, polls and political pundits. Forget prisons and lock-ups, wardens and jailers, forced confinement, forced compliance or forced anything. The entirety of this gigantic legal apparatus, every last bit of it, at every level, is secondary, derivative and inconsequential compared to the type of government we talk about in this paper. The loudly trumpeted, great and grand authority of conventional government is puny and pathetic compared to the inherent power of our alternative government.

What is this other government? Where will it operate?

It's already in operation, and it's very close to us. In fact, by taking an interest in this book, dear reader, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .text truncated

Getting back to putting yourself in another's shoes: Before you can put yourself anywhere, you must first understand what your "self" (or the self) actually is. And this is tricky. You must pivot your attention 180 degrees, from an outward to an inward orientation. It turns out you don't need to calculate all those billions of possibilities to know the correct course of action because the little 's' self belonging to you intersects the big 'S' Self that is the collective spirit of everyone on earth. We are all manifestations of the same cosmic mind, and the more in tune you are with that intelligence, the more life-supporting and evolutionary your actions will be. It's all automatic. There's a cosmic administrator who takes care of the details. Thus, to put yourself in another person's shoes, you must start by putting yourself properly into your own shoes. Then, when the two of you connect, it's like sympathetic waves reinforcing each other. In physics they've discovered that the observer affects the outcome of an experiment simply by the observation. Similarly, you, the subject, with your individual vibration, merge with the vibration of the object—the other person. When you realize everyone is intimately connected this way, it becomes impossible, or at least very difficult, to harm anyone because you would, in fact, be harming yourself. All of this takes place in the present, at this moment. This is where clear thinking starts and ends—in the here and now.

Preface

This book reports on the progress of a continuing social research project. The project is on-going in the sense that the author of the research is still actively involved in the community where the project was conducted. This same community is also the place where the researcher, your commentator, has resided for fifteen years: the Camp Springs/Westchester neighborhood of southern Prince George's County Maryland. The project had no sponsoring agent, is affiliated with no particular institution and has yet to identify a qualified body to review its results. It was a personal endeavor that began without pre-determined parameters or even a definite goal, but instead unfolded gradually, in phases, over a period of about six years. The full extent of the research and the various reasons for conducting it will become clear as you read through the report.

Broadly speaking, the project has taken on four distinct aspects: (1) an exercise in crime prevention through grass-roots community outreach, (2) an instrument with which to engage and challenge the established political leadership, (3) an attempt to develop a logical underpinning for responsible civic action and (4) a proposal to create a new profession and a new kind of government. The underlying rationale for this research is to determine what might happen if a moderately clear-thinking individual applied his intellect toward the solution of a modern social problem, proceeding as if he were solving a problem in mathematics or the objective sciences. It should be noted that the individual in question, though compassionate and possessing a reasonably sound comprehension of life's fundamentals, nevertheless exhibits an unspectacular intellectual ability. This point is important because the conclusions reached might appear quite out of the ordinary and even revolutionary from a social science standpoint. Yet they formed in the ordinary mind of an ordinary person. The implication is that a different thought process is at work, something that most folks, however intelligent, don't commonly experience. We will come back to this point in the discussion that follows. Note also that the development of our solution includes both a theoretical and an empirical aspect, just as there would be in the hard sciences. This undertaking may not qualify as applied mathematics, but it does deserve consideration as applied mathematical thinking.

The logic we will present, though arguably mathematical in flavor, will not approach the complexity of even the most basic proofs you find in pure mathematics. We are not revising the laws of gravity here. On the surface, at least, the social issues addressed in these pages appear quite straightforward. The question then becomes, why do such problems still exist? Many great thinkers have come and gone over the centuries, and there is no shortage of creative minds among us today. What we will argue is that the problems identified in this book—fear, apathy, isolation—are far more important to the health of humanity than any scientific discovery, engineering feat or artistic creation. Thus, we are challenging not only the political leadership, but our leaders in the fields of science, education and culture. We would like people who demonstrate genius in other areas to take notice of issues that directly affect the quality of life for all of us.

The new government we speak of is not meant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .text truncated

What you will find in this report is a frank discussion of issues most people don't care to deal with. Unpleasant issues, like crime. Some will say I've become morbidly obsessed with crime, that one person can only do so much and by focusing on the gross and limited aspects of reality, we lose sight of the boundless beauty of existence, that we are letting the negative side of life dominate the positive. My response is there is much important work to be done in the field, as it were. Someone needs to be working in the real world, with real communities. Someone has to address these issues straight on, to take them as his or her duty. Perhaps it's my dharma to work in this area. Perhaps it's yours too. If you haven't thought about getting involved in community service, this book might provide the incentive to do so. You may thus consider this an invitation. You are cordially invited to participate in something meaningful and to perhaps contribute to the positive evolution of man.