(image via flickr user Ben)
“Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the sky is not cloudy all day…”
Goooooood Morning SuperForest!
It is a splendid Sunday morning here at Zero One. The cat is asleep on my lap, “helping” me type out this post. I woke up before dawn, walked outside and let the chickens out. When I got back into bed I heard one of my smaller chickens crying out in fear and pain. I ran back outside just in time to see lovely orange Fire cat fighting furiously with another cat, who looked as though he might be making moves to put one or more of my lady chicks in his belly. Fire gave the other cat a proper rollicking, disappeared, and when he came back (and I had seen that all my chicks were alive and accounted for) I gave him a saucer of warm milk for his brave service and protection of the flock. Great catro, this Fire cat.
So now we sit together, the Fire cat and I. I with my coffee (black) and he with his milk (white). Together we are feeling good and calm. To make Zero One the magical place that it is takes all of us, and our many varied skill sets. I can plant papayas, and rake mulch, and build things, but I cannot eat a dead rat head first. That’s where Fire comes in and plays his part so well.
Thinking about having to eat a dead rat head first makes me think about Team SuperForest, and how straight up difficult and confusing it can be at times to be a member of this excellent team of folks.
When people join Team SF, they are invited to post on the site all that makes them feel good, uplifted, makes them think. But this is just one aspect of being a Team member. It also means that they must read the Humanifesto, take its words to heart, and then to explore the impact that its words have on the way they live their lives. Bringing good manners to every interaction is harder than it sounds, especially when you factor in low blood sugar, full bladders, mental stress, smooch-less nights, and an external world that seems imperiled and masochistically bent on self-destruction.
I have spoken much on this site about the human mind, and how easy it is to change the way it’s programmed, once you know that it is indeed programmed. I expect myself and the members of Team SF to examine their lives, and to begin the process of training themselves to react positively to everything that comes their way.
A tire blows. Yay! A trip is planned. Yay! The trip gets canceled. Yay! A random and unforeseen event throws you for a loop. Yay!
To SuperForest at a very high level means to slow down your reactions to the point that you are able to react with love and joy to every wave that hits you. This is not easy. It’s like training yourself to enjoy swallowing a rat.
Our culture (Western/American) has taught us that it’s right to get upset. We are taught that revenge and anger and retribution are perfectly acceptable modes of behavior and thinking. That might makes right. We are taught a lot of rather unhelpful nonsense, in my opinion.
To be a member of Team SuperForest means to examine all of that teaching, and to begin to replace unchosen, raw response with chosen and considered action. To thoughtfully slow down and create new responses where old responses no longer achieve the desired outcome, which in this case is peace and joy. To turn the other cheek. To react with a smile when given a frown. To share the aloha, even when it seems like there is not enough aloha to share.
As I said, SuperForesting ain’t easy.
Behind the scenes of SuperForest a delightfully intense dialog has been taking place about a great many thoughts. The main one seems to be: What does it mean to be a member of Team SuperForest? Is it a club? An exclusive club? Can anyone join? Can my friends join? If so, how can they join?
When I started SuperForest, I wanted to start the 4chan (wiki) of positivity. For those of you who’ve never seen 4chan, it is an amazing online message board/meme generator where anyone who wants to can post anonymously. I wanted to have a site with so many members and contributors that it created a flood of positivity. This in my mind would create a place that was free from the negativity of traditional media, and help jump start a new culture of awesomeness and love.
But opening up the doors to everyone raises some questions. If anyone can post, then what about quality? What about the message? How does this all work? What happens if someone posts something that I think is “bad?”
Truthfully, I cannot see into the future. I’ve simply tried to do my best in each moment and be open to change and to other people’s involvement. Over the years as peeps would email me links to inspiring tidbits, I would often ask them to join the Team, and thus a new SuperForester was born. By being open to new members and their ideas, SuperForest has grown into what it is today. Who knows what it will be tomorrow?
To build SuperForest, I simply wrote the Humanifesto and then said: I’m going to explore this document, and share the results. Would anyone like to join me?
The site is the result of that open invitation. Beyond good and bad, high quality and low quality. Trust and love have brought us together and created this site.
For three years a nucleus of people have worked very hard to get SuperForest to this state, with 27 members of Team SF and nearly 750,000 readers thus far. Amazing.
Now, I’d like to share something with you. I want you to be a member of Team SuperForest. I want everyone to be a member. I want a planet of SuperForesters exploring manners, sustainability, love, joy, sharing, and creation. I don’t NEED it. I’m not waiting for it. I’m not attached to it. It’s simply a vision that makes me smile.
So we’re working on making this site better serve the needs of a planet-wide net of SuperForesters. To break down the wall between US and YOU. I don’t want an audience, I want people to play with me this game called “Let’s save the world, starting with the world inside our own head.”
This shift towards a more open, egalitarian SuperForest means that we will either have to step down from our soapboxes, or preferably start building and handing out soapboxes for others, that they too may stand tall and proud and say: “I am a SuperForester, I have something to share with the world and that something is me.”
To use SuperForest as the catalyst for a movement of positive growth and change. To inspire others to copy our behavior if they choose to, and to add new and better behaviors that everyone can learn from and copy. Monkey see, monkey do better and share.
With 27 members, Team SuperForest is collectively a genius. With 2,700 members, Team SuperForest would be something really new and exciting. A human supercomputer of capability and positivity.
That excites me.
If I have to learn to enjoy swallowing the dead rat that is my ego, with all of its bitterness and fear, with all of its hair and claws, in order to create something beautiful, long lasting, and strong, then LOOK OUT RAT! HERE I COME!
I will open wide and swallow the dead rat of fear, the dead rat of isolation, the dead rat of uncertainty. I will be like the lotus, who grows in the muddiest waters, yet produces the most beautiful white flowers, untouchable by soil and rain.
I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, or what today will bring for that matter. That is true. What I do know is that all I have to do to be successful in my own head is not react negatively to what happens in this moment, and the next one, and the next one, ad infinitum. To be peace and joy in every action I take, especially where other people and their feelings are concerned.
Phew! What a relief. That’s it? Slow down? Don’t react until you can react positively?
I can do that.
Maybe SuperForesting is easy after all?
To close, I’d like to thank all of the current members of Team SuperForest for their individual and collective contributions to this site and this growing movement. I’d also like to thank all future members of Team SuperForest for their desire to change the world, starting with the world inside their heads.
We are figuring out how to involve everybody. That is the goal. To share this wonderful energy with everybody who wants it.
Little by little the fires of fear are quenched with the waters of peace and joy. One by one, minds are freed from the tidal eddy of separation thinking. This process is a joy to behold.
SuperForesting is getting easier. We are getting better at using our technology to help unite us.
Team SuperForest, for swallowing the dead rat of fear, ego, and unhelpful conditioning, I salute you. Your bravery and commitment is an inspiration to me.
Love to All,
Jackson
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