The time has come my friends.....
...To Rethink Everything in your life and in all life in general! That is the heart of KUA, this site and myself. Rethink! Rethink! Rethink! And not just the safe stuff. Manners, Morals, Good Parenting, Government, all types of Relationships, Success, what makes a High Quality of Life, Truth, Reality, Society, Health, Good/Bad, Time, Space, Survival, Evolution, Identity, Spirituality, whatever you want! What is my truth? Is this my truth? How should we do things? Should we even have "shoulds"? How could we do things differently? What makes me happy (without thinking about what others expect of you)? Learn to love challenging out there sentences that make you think, like "a mind is a terrible thing; waste it"(Brad Blanton) and learn to love being open-minded enough to keep open the possibility of accepting them someday, even maybe today. Recover your inner child's curiosity and ask as many questions as you want... especially questions addressed to yourself. See your Universe as an open canvas where nothing is going to stay true forever except the canvass underneath(meaning, you and your inner-truth). Try new things... and not just simple stuff like "try new foods". Start simple but eventually find amazingly crazy ideas like inviting your friends to a yodeling party in the middle of downtown. Stay grounded in who you are, but always leave much room for evolution, for healthy people are forever changing. Find your community that will support you and start by supporting others the best you can. You are strong, you are amazing, you can do ANYTHING... we ALL can! You can go beyond any limit you ever believed there was. But community helps. It helps to heal and to speed up growth. And that's what I'm here for. What I'm trying to do is guide you through Rethinking Everything by offering all the insight that I can verbalize. I'm still working on it but don't let that postpone your birth as a Rethinker. I'm doing it alone in some ways and so can you. Then more and more people will join and we can become an unstopable creative force in the world. Will you join me by joining yourself?
A Letter from Me to You.....
It is every child's birthright to have clean water, clean air, clean food, loving parents, a community that is deeply connected to life and some may argue trust, respect, responsibility and freedom. We all grow up, we were all children once, we are all one continuous line. So why children in particular? Children are pure, they see things from the perspective of truth, they know not the influences of artificial programs on our modern life. That's were rebellion comes from. Despite what people may have told you... teenagers and parents CAN have wonderful, healthy, mutually beneficial relationships. There is some proof of this in the relationships of Radically Unschooled parents and children. But it's still not enough.
Deep down, kids start feeling that something just isn't right. But they don't recognize it consciously. Why would your parents lead you to believe that this artificial path is the way to success (which means true happiness in most people's eyes) if it isn't? I mean... they're your parents. You start from the very moment of your conception with the assumption that your parents will take care of you in all ways. You have no idea that they're so disconnected from life that they don't even know who they truly are and what they really truly want in life. And they go on working themselves deeper and deeper into the negative aspects of our society under the mistaken impression that they're "helping" us.
So I have one plea to the world of potential parents. If you have kids... ask them the questions. Start from the assumption that you may not know everything or even most things, and that they are capable of answering all of life's questions you've never been able to find out for yourself, in time, if you don't mistakenly corrupt their minds by telling them that you know what's best for them. Yes, I know that's the craziest thing you've ever heard. But if you don't knock down your own ego a few pages and get down to an even playing field with all life, chances are that you'll never consciously realize the true issues in the world. Therefor you will be unable to target and fix those issues. Thereby never allowing yourself to be truly happy with yourself. And on top of that, you'll be bringing children into a world that puts as much silent pain on them as it did you. Do we want that for our future? I don't know about you, but it sure doesn't sound worth living for me.
Of course it isn't easy. People need help to get back in tune with their inner truth after being so far off track for so long. So try reading some books on ancient wisdom like the Continuum Concept, stuff on Unschooling, Democratic Education, Attachment Parenting. Rethink your place in relation to not just "the world" but the actual earth and all forms of life therein. Think about different definitions for "need" and "survival" and "want". Try seeing yourself as a true reflection of whatever your god is. What you want is what should be, but only after much reflection. Listen to your truth because we all have every answer within us, we just have difficulty accessing it in our current situation.
Don't have time for reflection and questioning every thing that you've ever blindly accepted as truth? Well make time. It is after all the most important thing you'll ever do in your life. Do it for your children, for other people's children, for the world and for yourself. Because if you never come to terms with the truth within yourself, you'll never find what you're looking for. I can promise you that.
Need resources to help you get back into your childhood mind? Check out the "resources" section on this site. I'll be updating it often, starting right now. So good luck with your decision and thank you for even reading this in the first place! :)
~Kaya
My Life Statement (draft)
I hope that my main accomplishment in life will be raising children in an acceptable environment and in an acceptable way. It is my belief that if you have a family untouched by the money game, in constant contact with the natural world, involved in providing for there own survival needs & in a free school type environment &/or surrounded by a village of other happy families who practice things like Attachment Parenting(including the more "out there" concepts like Elimination Communication), Unschooling, Radical Honesty & general respect, equality, open-mindedness, reflection, community & authenticity... those children will grow up to be the wisest, happiest, most insightful, most empowered, most resilient, most compassionate & most healthy (in all areas. mental, physical, emotional, spiritual.) children that our world will have seen in a lllllong time, if ever. Poverty? Solved. Hunger? Solved. Depression? Solved. War? Solved. Lousy Parent/Child Relationships? Solved. Not that it'll be easy, but I do think it's as simple as that.
My Work, My Life
http://www.youtube.com/DemocraticEducation
Visit The Ringing Cedars Revolution
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My vision is a world made up of...
Self-Governed, Intentional Community, Self-Sufficient Villages (with democratic schools/unschooling resource centers, Attachment Parents, non-hierarchy self-government, Family/Kin's Domains, community gardens, community centers & educational centers(for people wanting to learn about this kind of lifestyle, before it's everywhere)). These communities provide a healthy social, emotional, physical and mental environment, more free time for thinking(which is the KEY for peace between people, communities and nations. even within yourself.) & ultimate freedom and independence. We can jump off the wheel of working, being told by other people what we need, consuming those things we've been told we need and then working to pay for them. This wheel is the biggest part of our lives and it's how our modern lives are made possible. But this system doesn't allow for many people to feel true joy and IT"S NOT SUSTAINABLE. We're ruining our children's future. For explanations on each of these points, see my New Culture Communities section.
Nature Reserves (Bill Mollison has said "if we loose the Universities, we loose nothing. if we loose the forests we loose everything". What he meant by that is that a naturally evolved environment is the best teacher you'll ever have. Unfortunately, there is very little land that can teach us the most important lessons left. We are cheating evolution with our medicine, messing with animals natural habitats & becoming completely dependent on man-made stuff. We have to allow nature to re-establish it's natural order or we're all in trouble.)
Festival(Communities meeting) Grounds. Festivals of Communities coming together involve cultural sharing, kind of like we have today between nations and states; we will go to meet new people from outside our immediate community; we will trade and barter if we decide that that is still a good idea; we will discuss issues if there are any; we will share and explain various things(like in classes/workshops)and we will have fun.
My work is to take the small steps I can take to move towards my vision(and i wouldn't mind being able to make big steps too)
My life is my work and learning things(through experience to books to informal experimentation) that help me continue it.
Voices From The New American Schoolhouse (a documentary about a Sudbury School in Maryland)
Trailer:
Movie(sorry, it's a little mixed up, but it still makes sense this way):
Buy the DVD if you wanna support the work that was done to bring this to the world! http://www.newamericanschoolhouse.com/
