A colleague and I sat down today and began to map out the Gender Equality Project. I’ll help set the project up and finance it but, after that, she and her colleagues will run it.
The first thing we talked about was the power of context.
A context is a state or condition that holds throughout the whole of something and needs nothing to continue existing.
On the one hand, peace applies everywhere and needs nothing to continue existing. Love is in the same category; health, truth, etc. Peace requires no government cabinet to exist, no annual rituals to be performed, no fuel, no shelter. It simply was, is and always will be.
On the other hand, war does not apply everywhere and needs actions to continue existing. People need to be firing weapons at each other for war to continue. Munitions need to be manufactured and transported. People need to be taking committed action against their “enemies.” Stop doing these things and we fall back into the default, the context, which is peace.
A context is umbrageous, all-encompassing; the other state (war, ill health, hatred), which Werner Erhard called a “condition,” (1) is not umbrageous or all-encompassing. Peace is a context; war is a condition that goes on within the general context or default of peace.
A context is a place we “live” in, a place we come from. To live from a context is also called “holding the space for it.” For it to show up in, that is. Others then join us in our context and that’s how meaningful change actually happens and spreads.
A context shows up like a doorway into the transformed space; no, it is a doorway in. I’m in the transformed space right now, as a result of our discussion. So to be clear: our conversation was powerful enough to boost me into the transformed space. Contextual conversations have the power to do that.
Gosh, I hope I made that clear because the subject is so important now and will only get more important in the future.
The context we created in our meeting was “a gender-free, gender-equal and gender-respecting world.” And we (re)committed to the timeline of achievement by Jan. 1, 2018.
The challenge for us now is to live always from this context – that a gender-free, gender-equal, and gender-respecting world now exists, even though at this moment it may only exist for a very few people. Our commitment was that we would not abandon this context to go into agreement with those who espouse a gender-bound, gender-unequal, and gender-persecuting agenda. The tide must now go our way and not that other way. Not any longer.
We’re not recruiting. There’s little to do, no form to fill out. If you want to join us, simply assent to live from the context of a gender-free, gender-equal and gender-respecting world.
And don’t thereafter abandon the context. In fact, make it normal and natural. If we lightworkers do what I’ve just asked, the effect will be viral. A Fibonacci series. Geometrical.
What has this done for my colleague and me? It has given our lives new purpose and meaning. It either frees up something or delivers power from somewhere because both of us feel more power-filled. It lends a certainty to our lives because it tells us where we are committed, where we have driven a stake into the ground, what ground we stand on, etc.
You and I have talked again and again about presencing the Self. You remember that I said that such things as telling the truth, sharing a withhold, making a commitment, making a promise, declaring yourself, and so on, have the ability to presence the Self.
Well, now add to that list the creating of a context and then living from it, no matter what.
Footnotes
(1) Werner Erhard, The End of Starvation: Creating an Idea Whose Time has Come. San Francisco: The Hunger Project, n.d., 5-6.