The Next Step

Like my story, your path to engagement probably doesn’t have a lot of lines, either. There are no straight lines among the living. The reality of this principle is that there are no straight arrows involved. Even people who appear to have made logical progression through Heartspace haven’t done so. In nature there are few perfectly straight pathways, while even the line on the horizon bends to the curvature of the Earth. 

As you’ve begun your practice, do no harangue yourself if you haven’t seen sensible progress or reasonable outcomes. Sometimes Heartspace is best viewed with the lens of an astronaut, miles beyond the situation, while others call for the scientist’s powerful microscope that zoom in a thousand times. Other times there is nothing that we are capable of observing.

Part of the practice involved here is simply releasing our engagement by allowing Heartspace to simply work for us. We can learn to experience these lasting connections throughout our lives as gigantic pillow beds that we can joyfully turn from, throw our arms up in the air, and fall back into with gracious ease. Life is meant to be lived, and Heartspace allows us to live it to the absolute fullest.

The other part of the practice is to know that you know the truth right now. More than 200 years ago American revolutionary ideologist Thomas Paine wrote, “However our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, 'tis right.” Your simplest voice has been guiding you through Heartspace all your life, constantly affirming what is true to you. If you’re engaged in something that doesn’t seem true to you, you disengage in one form or another.

Your life to this moment has happened exactly as it was supposed to, and from here it will happen exactly as it will. The principle of engagement is working for you throughout. If you feel like you’re veering or stopped then you can correct yourself or start again. If you think you are going too fast or consuming too much, then you can slow down or reduce, reuse, and recycle. Each of these steps relies on the principle of engagement. Now that you’re aware of Heartspace, you can choose how you’re doing to proceed.

The forests, fields, beaches, and mountains do not need our paths in order to carry on. They did just fine before we came, and they’ll do well after we’re gone. Bees, birds, bears, bass, and belugas behaved before we tread on their spaces. The cosmos spun in the right direction and the atmosphere breathed well. The universe goes on. 

Understanding Heartspace, now we see that our concern for our individual path through eternity is almost silly. Whether our paths are crooked, straight, long, short, smooth, or rough is irrelevant. The principle of engagement holds us in right timing always, in all ways. Our job is to simply take the next step in front of us.

10 Ways to Stay Disengaged

This might be the hard part!

We have a lot of valid reasons for not being intentionally engaged within ourselves and throughout the world around us. We may not have the opportunity, or quit too soon once we were engaged. Oppression, repression, and depression leave an impression on our minds and hearts that can seem challenging to erase. Our own best intentions to engage can be undermined by ourselves, too. Following are some explanations for why people do not engage on purpose.

1. Passive Decision-Making. We often resist engaging when we’re involved in passive decision-making. This happens when we deliberately refuse to make a decision about a choice, or when we appear to give our ability to make a decision to someone else. However, both of these are actually forms of passive decision-making. We make decisions by not making decisions. For instance, we might be in a grocery store trying to choose which type of new yogurt to try. However, rather than choose among those options, we grab the container of cottage cheese we always get. This wasn’t simply “going with the same old, same old.” It was deciding not to try something new. This is a very disengaging practice that doesn’t allow us to activate a connection in our lives. Passive decision-making is one reason we do not engage.

2. Constant Decision-Making. When we’re constantly “on”, we can actually turn off. Doing too much decision-making without relying on our intuition or others reinforces a sense of martyrdom and overt authority. It is our responsibility to deliberately turn over the reins sometimes by allowing others to make decisions for us. Constantly telling yourself you’re the decision-maker is exhausting, distrustful, and ultimately disengaging.

3. Filter Against Reality. Letting our fears, doubts, frustrations, and anger color our perceptions of the world is exhausting. Making the world out to be happy, enlightening, and easy all the time can be taxing, too. We might refuse to acknowledge situations as they present themselves. Instead, we focus our sights on cynicism, negativity, positivity, and optimism. Constantly impressing our vision for the moment onto the moments we live can exhaust our desire to be engaged. This type of projecting is as if you’re telling the Universe you don't believe it can operate in infinite perfection, and that your opinion is better than the will of all things, all ways. Filtering against reality like this is disengaging.

4. Jump on the Fire. Neglecting to learn about the lives we live, exploring ourselves, critically examining our actions and ideas, and not learning the possibilities of life is disengaging. We passively teach ourselves to be ignorant by throwing ourselves on the fire by living in ignorance. There is a difference between living fearlessly and living recklessly, and this is that line. The adage of jumping out of the pot and into the fire is not always the best way to foster engagement.

5. Defeat Ourselves. When we defeat the things we know, feel, believe, or think with the actions we take, we defeat ourselves. This is ultimately disengaging. It’s like waiting until you truly know something to refute what you believe. Telling yourself that you’re wrong, that you do not have the time, patience or interest in what you know, or working to undo everything you believe can end your engagement, too.

6. Deny Engagement. Saying things to the effect of, “I don’t have time for that right now,” or, “It’s enough that I’m present, I shouldn’t speak up,” ends our engagement. When we speak up and show up, but stand in the way of letting our own engagement be felt, we deny our engagement. This undermines our self-confidence and self-authority, and denies the role of going through the Cycle of Engagement.

7. Sabotage Engagement. When we do not do the things we need to in order to sustain our engagements, we deny ourselves. When we act in opposite ways than what we’re truly engaged in, we contradict ourselves. However, when we defeat ourselves by working against the lasting connections we have throughout our lives, we sabotage engagement. We do this by undoing our actions with ideas and negating our emotions with our actions. Acting as if some engagements are better than others, we give up on ourselves and undermine the things we care about the most. We also sabotage engagement by believing others know what we should be engaged in better than we do for ourselves.

8. Insult Connections. When we are engaged in something it can be important to support that engagement with our actions and our words. Publicly insulting the things we’re connected to disengages us from those things. There are many ways we publicly insult ourselves and the things we’re engaged in. These include denial and negating, and getting frustrated out loud. We also overwhelm our engagements by relying on them too much, and this is actually a form of insult, especially when we show others.

9. Manipulate Engagement. When we try to convince ourselves to be engaged in something that is clearly not right for us, we become disengaged. We may try to convince ourselves that social acceptance, self-beautification, or money are more important than the inner warmth of self-acceptance, but Heartspace knows better. No matter how we try to make external forces responsible for our personal engagement, there is no force more powerful than ourselves. Squeezing lasting connections out of ourselves can suffocate engagement. When it’s all said and done, telling yourself that you simply used a connection with people, places, ideas, experiences, memories, issues, emotions, and so forth in order to get the benefits of engagement can actually end your connection with those things. Knowing that actually happened can seal it off.

10. Punish Yourself for Getting Engaged. When we become enthusiastic and lastingly connected to people, places, ideas, experiences, memories, issues, or emotions, sometimes we figure out why we shouldn’t be so connected. After we spend hours, days, weeks, months, and years becoming engaged, we still can tell ourselves we’re undeserving or the engagement is not wanted. We can let our engagements rot on the vine and even spoil them through over-attending to them. We can also teach ourselves that being engaged hurts. All this serves as a punishment for engagement, and ultimately leads to disengagement.

Becoming engaged gives us opportunities to richly reward, enrich, and otherwise live engaged lives. While we can become disengaged, Heartspace is a resilient space that enforces its principle with grace and kindness. So while we can become disengaged, we also maintain engagements without effort too. All of this is good for us, and simply shows another way that Heartspace operates in perfection. Our choice is whether or not to tap into that harmony.

Defeating Adultism by Design

Our society is deeply entrenched in adultism, which is bias towards adults and consequently, discrimination against young people. It is prevalent throughout the institutions of our society. In order to re-negotiate adultism, we have to identify what support has to exist throughout society. I call this support "scaffolding". I call this re-negotiating "youth integration".

Youth integration will occur in two steps: The first step is desegregation, which is deliberately ending the segregation of young people throughout society. Today, segregation happens implicitly and explicitly throughout society, including schools, at home, in commerce, and in law-making, enforcement, and courts. Desegregation will address the tools of segregation, including policies and practices, as well as the attitudes and opinions that reinforce them.

The second step is integration. When young people are re-established in equitable relationships throughout society, including their relationships with parents, teachers, youth workers, police, and others, integration is present. It is a deliberate step meant to stop and reverse segregation.

SCAFFOLDING FOR YOUTH INTEGRATION


Supporting young people as they're integrating throughout society has to be done with deliberation and determination. Challenging adultism and fighting discrimination against youth must be situated in the larger struggle for nonviolence and social justice across our society. Awareness of these struggles and attuning with great legacies of transformation positions young people as the substantive leaders in social change they have been for more than 100 years.

Following are three central elements in the scaffolding.

Column One: Culture. The first column of scaffolding for youth integration is Culture. Culture is made of the beliefs, habits values, visions, norms, systems, and symbols within a specific and definable community. Adultism is made in the fiery furnace of culture, as groups of people work together to define and reinforce stringent perspectives that re-enforce adultism. In the same way, culture can help examine those assumptions and redefine them in line with social justice through youth integration.


Column Two: Structure. The named activities, policies, strategies, processes, allocation, coordination, and supervision of people throughout a community happens through the structure of a definable group of people. In schools, structure includes school rules and curriculum; in society, it includes laws and policing. Structure makes things happen, enforces those things, and encourages them. Structural change promoting youth integration requires deliberate action for transformation. It should actively engage young people in equitable relationships while establishing and maintaining adult allyships.


Column Three: Attitude. Where culture and structure belong to a group, attitude belongs to individuals. "Your attitude determines your altitude" applies to adult understandings of youth: "Adult attitude determines youth altitude." In our adult-dominated, adult-driven society, young people are subject to and subjugated by adult opinions, actions, attitudes, knowledge, and beliefs. This is the full effect of adultism. In order to counter this effect, we must change our own attitudes and provide opportunities for the people around us to change theirs, including youth and adults. This takes new ways of communicating, interacting, and being. It takes personal engagement within our selves and throughout the worlds around us.

We must address each of these elements when we seek to integrate young people in any part of society. Each is present throughout all the formal and informal institutions throughout our society. You can find culture, structure, and attitude in individual homes, schools, governments, and other places. By creating scaffolding for youth integration, we can re-negotiate adultism throughout our lives.

Youth Integration Strategies

"Integrationist!" I stood gawking, carefully looking out at the audience. Suddenly the woman started laughing. When everyone else laughed too, I joined in. I thought they hadn't got my point, but luckily somebody had.

I recently spoke at a conference about Youth Integration. Youth integration is the essential next step in the movement The Freechild Project as been at the forefront of for the last 10 years.

After all these years of promoting youth engagement and youth voice, I have decided to further the conversation by addressing the root of the problem. We don't need youth voice because adults aren't listening. We don't need youth engagement because youth are disengaged. Society needs more than youth voice, youth engagement, youth involvement, youth empowerment, and all these approaches because young people are segregated currently. Society needs youth integration.  

Youth integration happens in many ways. Here are some strategies I have identified.

Youth Integration Strategies

• Policies, rules, and laws prohibiting youth segregation.
• Prohibit all age-based discrimination and replace them with ability testing or other approaches.
• Teaching all young people and all adult professionals about youth integration.
• Teaching parents about youth integration.
• Creating public education / social marketing / marketing campaigns about youth integration.
• Dedicating budgets that reflect and address youth integration objectives.
• Teaching all tops levels of government decision-makers about youth integration.
• Strengthening all current youth integration activities, including youth councils, service learning programs, community organizing campaigns, and school-based programs. 
• Fully equal integration of youth on all public boards including school boards.
• Increased support for and facilitation of youth integration programs.
• Increased recognition of the positive, powerful ways of young people.
• Change curriculum of schools to diversify how and what students learn about young people.
• Public workshops for strengthening youth integration throughout the community, parenting, and family life.
• Strengthen the capacities of educational, social service, and nonprofit sectors to co-ordinate, monitor, and evaluate youth mainstreaming.

These are some systems-oriented strategies I've discovered that can integrate youth. What would you add to the list?

The Sound of Sunshine

I came to know Heartspace by name exactly when I needed it. Divorced for three years, I had left a steady job during the recession and was struggling as a single dad. My work wasn’t satisfying me, and I couldn’t put a finger on why that was. In the meantime, my spiritual life was unsettled, too. What my parents taught me as a child lingered in my mind, but I was displeased with religious organizations.

During a time of need, I began examining the experiences I’d had throughout my life looking for threads. I’d done this earlier in my life when I was studying community engagement, but had never focused on my own life. I found what American environmental hero John Muir wrote was true when he said, “I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” The sound of sunshine taught me that the answers were within!

Suddenly I began to discover that many of the patterns that emerged in community engagement applied to my own life, too. The lessons I’d learned about meaningful involvement, tokenism, reflection, and so much more were equally poignant when I thought about how I’d lived and learned all my life. Suddenly I found the connections that lingered in my mind between the experiences I’d had in my rambunctious youth and those I had as a professional.

One of those experiences was that of failure, and another was the idea of loneliness. Both ideas entered my life young, and grew roots deep within my psyche throughout my teens and young adulthood. As a struggling social entrepreneur, I felt like the absence of business was always pushing me toward getting a regular job, while as a single dad I felt like my child needed the full-time presence of a woman in my house as much as she needed me. Since I didn’t have steady business as a businessman and a life partner, I often felt like a failure and a loner.

I read a barrage of literature to lighten my psychic burden. In the midst of that, and writing extensively about my life, I began to uncover the principle of engagement. Mapping out the different connections, the quality of connections, and the length of connections I’d experienced throughout my life I began to understand how Buckminster Fuller, Paulo Freire, Mother Jones, and Frank Zappa were related. I also saw how the tales from the streets of my youth, homelessness in my childhood, and the disjointed determination of my adult life were all related.

Around the same time I became re-enamored by pop music, including a wonderful ditty from a singer-songwriter named Michael Franti called “The Sound of Sunshine.” This catchy ditty had a guitar and gruff voice half-rapping, half-singing about the realities of life, including losing jobs, living poor, and the power of friendships. On the chorus a choir of strong voices joins in and everyone sings, “That’s the sound of sunshine coming down,” repeatedly. The song is about the mystery of life, and how all things work in apparent harmony, “when the sun goes down.”

Heartspace appears to be largely indifferent to our well-being or interests in the world. There’s no manifestation, guilt, or admonition that we need to learn about in order to embrace Heartspace. Instead, we can arrive simply as we are and continue living the lives we already live. However, much like the sound of sunshine, Heartspace operates in infinite perfection. All the engagements you’ve ever suffered were there with all the intention and purpose you’ve ever given to the best things you’ve ever been engaged in.
The times in life that have seemed too hard are never so hard that you couldn’t make it through to here. Your life has never given you a challenge you couldn’t handle. Heartspace is the reason for this. From point to point throughout our lives there is a string of relationships and opportunities we have. The quality, depth, breadth, and purpose of these relationships and opportunities determine whether we’re truly engaged with them. If we are engaged, then they support and sustain us. When we’re supported and sustained, we make it through anything towards the next thing in front of us. This may appear as coincidence or “just the way it works”, but without the principle of engagement there’s no point.

Because of Heartspace, life works harmoniously all the time, even when we don’t see that harmony. We don’t have to worry about causing perfection, because the universe knows no other order for things. Chaos, disconnection, suffering, and pain exist in right relationship to order, connectivity, abundance, and pleasure. Our experience of the latter is in direct response to our engagement with the former. Another way to say that is that you cannot know the light without having been in the dark. Heartspace ensures that you have all the support you need as you enter any extremity, as well as any point in between. All we need to do is allow ourselves to be in the lasting connections wherever we are. That’s Heartspace at work in our lives right now.