Last week, I wrote about the abundance mindset — which is not about having more than you need, but rather about having exactly what you need at all times and recognizing that what you have, is plenty! My vision is an abundance of health, wealth, space, and time for all. Because, why not?
This week, I want to share the ‘how’ — the strategy for achieving this world of abundance. I believe that the key to success is to bring together a group of courageous, thoughtful, and committed individuals who share in this vision.
Have you ever been part of a really good team — a team that functions like a well-oiled machine — like a singular superorganism?
In such a team, the individual members are able to transcend their egos and go from an individual ‘I’ to the collective 'we'. They still are unique individuals with unique abilities. But their skills blend together so seamlessly that it feels like the work is being done by a singular super-talented person.
“We are not amused.” — Queen Victoria
Let’s talk about the use of plural pronouns like ‘we’ and ‘they’ by singular (pun intended) individuals. In the past, kings (and queens) used the ‘royal we’ or the ‘majestic plural’ to refer to themselves. This was an invocation of the Divine Right of Kings — indicating that it’s both God and the King who is speaking.
More recently, non-binary individuals — those who don’t identify with either gender — have started using they/them as their preferred pronouns. But the more subtle and common use of plural pronouns is by individuals who are speaking as an organization. Here’s an example:
“So what do you do for work?” I enquired.
“I work with Aerotyne International,” he replied. “We are a cutting edge tech firm out of the Midwest, awaiting imminent patent approval on a new generation of radar equipment.”
Note the switch from the singular 'I’ to the plural ‘we’. The person says that he works with Aerotyne International but then speaks as Aerotyne International in describing what they do. Similarly, at our workspaces every day, we assume a collective identity and we become our organizations. A good indicator of the success of an organization is the seamlessness and completeness of this switch from the individual to the collective identity.
“When the white man goes to church, you talk about god. When the Native American goes into his tipi he talks to god. When we conduct our Vodou ceremony, we become our gods.” — Anonymous Haitian Priest
In his magnum opus Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That's Lost Its Mind, Jamie Wheal writes about the 3 different possible relationships with the divine:
The third-person relationship (talk about God): This is where we are talking “about Jesus” or any other deity (in) a third-person he/she/it kind of conversation. There’s Us (the subject) talking about Them (the object). Arm’s length. Relatively abstract. The realm of academics and scholastics counting angels on pinheads.
The second-person relationship (talk to God): This experience of the divine—what philosopher Martin Buber memorably called the I-Thou relationship — is most typically expressed in direct supplicative prayer: “Dear God, please help me/give me/spare me/save me.” It’s definitely more intimate than abstract third-person discussion.
The third-person relationship (become God): Finally, if we enter the rarefied world of mystics like Saint Francis of Assisi in Christianity, Maimonides in Judaism, Rumi in Islam, Padmasambhava in Buddhism, and Ramakrishna in Hinduism (to name only a handful), we see the grammar collapse. It moves from I-Thou relationship into a straight mystico-unio I-I communion. First-person humanity recognizes its own first-person divinity.
“Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However, if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God,’ they’ll laugh and say, ‘Oh, congratulations, at last, you found out.” — Alan Watts
“The next Buddha will be a Sangha.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
A Buddha is an awakened being. To be awake is to recognize that the individual ‘I’ is an illusion and that the True Self is No Self. It is the recognition that you are Nothing and you have Everything. A Buddha strives (without striving) for the awakening of all sentient beings to the abundance that’s present here and now.
A Sangha is a community with a shared ideal. To share an ideal is to work together to realize it. While the word Sangha has been used to describe religious communities, it can just as well be used to describe any community.
There’s a new type of organization emerging today — a DAO or a Decentralized Autonomous Organization — which is an entity with no central leadership. Decisions get made from the bottom-up, governed by a community organized around a specific set of rules enforced on a blockchain. [Source]
You can learn more about DAOs from this story on ConstitutionDAO — a decentralized organization formed to buy an original version of the US constitution. You can also read more on the Etherum website.
I believe that DAOs are the future of organizations as we move on from modern private limited corporations. They are driven by decentralized collective intelligence and have the flexibility needed to thrive in the post-modern world.
I started this post by sharing my vision. My strategy for the realization of this vision is to facilitate the creation of a DAO that is committed to an abundance of health, wealth, space, and time for all — a Sangha that is a Buddha.
This Sangha that is a Buddha will be composed of individuals with unique abilities that blend together seamlessly — they will be able to think, speak, and act as one being. This Sangha that is a Buddha will be the incarnation of the divine feminine and the divine masculine — Mother Nature and Father Future. This Sangha that is a Buddha will strive (without striving) for the awakening of all sentient beings to the abundance that’s present here and now!