We offer a few tips to build a better space immediately around you. You can try them, or you can ignore them.
Without Shame
Shame comes from fear - but all it does is suppress stuff and promote silence, which doesn't help! Root through your stuff, untangle your shame, and chuck it out - and be gentle enough to relax the shame of others.
Without Blame
Let's say a window gets broken. If a bunch of people spend half an hour fighting over who is to blame, is the window fixed one bit?
It's one of those social games which only hurts people and does no good. Skip it, and focus on cleanup and repair.
Without Rules
Rules are a temporary framework, an agreement among participants. They can never match reality, however. Even the most simple of rules, like "don't stick knives in people," would prevent people from getting life-saving surgery.
Care about the reason for the rules, but things like lives, the happiness of living things, and a working world are more important than how you get there. Do the right thing, regardless of the rules.
Without Labels
You are a living being with complex thoughts and feelings undergoing a journey in life. A random kid you meet is a living being with complex thoughts and feelings undergoing a journey in life. A small insect crawling up aa branch is a living being with complex thoughts and feelings undergoing a journey in life.
Reducing living beings to simple labels - "men," "women," "children," "homeless," "black," "white," "gay," whatever - erases a whole world of complexity of experience. It also risks othering, which creates dehumanization and sows the roots of interpersonal crime, conflict, and loss of empathy. Everyone is a whole story!
Without Coercion
There's a thing called "perpetuation-induced trauma," and if you're spending all your time fighting with people trying to make them do stuff, you're both hurting yourself and creating simultaneous sensitization and desensitization - extreme reactions, withdrawl, and the like.
Try to live without coercion or manipulation. You'll create a better world.
Without Heirarchy
Heirarchy is a lot like blame, a self-reinforcing social game where everyone tries to fight their way out from the bottom.
It is equally useless.
Mild Indulgences
We'll let you in on a little secret : you are supposed to feel a mild sense of bliss at all times.
It's our natural state. All else is just the stress you're under, and that's no good.
Body Pleasure
It's really, really hard to feel bad when your body is radiating a perpetual sense of bliss at you. Here's a few tips...
• Stretch everything.
When everything is stretched out, your body feels good, and that makes you feel good.
There are lots of instructional videos for hatha yoga for free online. Aikido or jujitsu locks, runners' stretches, or ballet stretches can also help.
• Take a bath.
Seriously. Grab a few LED candles (or real ones) and soak in a nice, hot bath. See if your body feels better.
• Progressive Muscle Relaxation.
Lie perfectly flat, and close your eyes. Take an inventory of your body from the toes to the top of your head, feeling where there are aches or tension.
Then, one area at a time, tense each muscle, and relax. Curl your toes, point your feet, flex your thighs... all the way through, and relax each one after you do it, until you feel yourself melting into the floor or bed or couch or whatever.
See if your body feels better lying there relaxed, instead of all tense.
• Massage Yourself (and others).
Rub yourself. Work your fingers into the muscle and dig deep. Beat your muscle tissue softly.
If you have a washcloth, you can soak it in hot water and drape it over parts of your body for heat to enhance your massage.
By actually taking care of your body, you can have a reserve and bulwark to prop you up against the stresses of life. When your body feels good, you feel better!
Consider Tea
Tea is a minor miracle because it gets you to boil water instead of dying of dysentery.
It also has a benefit that little sips of bliss are often completely free... and if you're starving, soup and stew are just "extended tea."
• Common, inexpensive teas can be tea.
• Most of your spice rack can be tea.
• A number of herbs not normally thought of as food are sometimes used as tea.
• Sugar, starch, and the mucilage of various food seeds and cactus (it's like snot, but it's not) can add body to tea.
• Nuts, actually, are sometimes used to flavor tea. Make sure to cut the little nib off and return it to the wild if they didn't come to you pre-roasted.
We deeply feel you should experiment around until you have thousands of your favorite beverages. Then, you can make your life better, more or less for free, one little sip at a time, any time you need.
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