new blog research

Hi all!

It's been dawning on me that I am ready to develop a new web log. I am looking for a format that supports me contributing something more useful to the public sphere. This involves taking readers' needs more into account than this current one.

Raven, my first attempt at this medium, was originally intended to convey something of a transformational medicine--an alchemical meditation--I have developed piecemeal over a few decades. Having practiced it internally for so long, I have craved to make sense of it by translating it into understandable terms. And to make use of it, by sharing the best of what I have gathered along the way, in service of collective paradigm-shifting.

Raven has been so loosely defined that I end up often indulging in subjective arrogance without useful context and negativity that falls short of transformation. Even when presenting something resembling wisdom, I fear there's often been a lopsided subjectivity that fails to clearly connect with any recognizable phenomena at the root of a given intellectual inquiry.

I want to address a few questions more directly. In a world still so full of delusion-based violence and destruction, haven't we all also glimpsed the benevolent world so tantalizingly near to being born? Where does our inner work intersect with the world's need? How do we offer the medicine that we each bring most effectively to the tasks at hand?

I love David Byrne's blog, reporting on bicycling-related activism he is involved with around the world. It merges seamlessly his global cycling adventures, with existential musings on how cycling intersects with other aspects of the human condition, from ecological circumstances to architectural evolution. Photos accompany his online presentation, creating a brilliant and fun and useful and ever fascinating shared journey with his readers.

That's what I'm talkin' about!

So far I am considering a literary blog, presenting excerpts of transformational literature whose words I have been mentored by, along with the journeys they take me on. I'm thinking for example of the words of giants King, Gandhi, and Kennedy, authors Vonnegut, Nietzsche, Arendt, Tolstoy, Huxley, along with lyricists Utah Phillips, Robert Hunter, gurus Marshall Rosenberg, and other transformational postmodern writers I encounter along the way.

Along with rooting my own ideas in the experiential questions others have reckoned with, this would support my continuing self-education and exploration of new ideas, tuition-free! But the main benefit would be to present the overarching idea that there is a river of life-supporting wisdom we are all privy to, if we but look for it. And just as we can receive what we may need from this river, some of the most important work we may do in this life is to also put into the river. And just as Tolstoy could not forsee who might benefit from his words a century later, we may also find the sublime beauty in the experience of contributing without ever knowing who may find our offerings useful downstream.

I am not yet certain whether this approach may be a subcontext of the new blog, monitoring the movements of the cresting global wave of consciousness...2012, systemic breakdown, anarchic self-regulating new social arrangements, local color, daily practices, reSource-ful remembrances, global music, empathy-based relations, the connectedness of things, deep ecology and bioremediation, and such. Surely there is juice in all this: is there enough of a focus as to be interesting?

Your thoughts and comments are most welcome--