The gift economy isn’t new. In fact it is so old that it is funny that we think about it as a new age phenomena.

Life has always been a gift. Ever heard of nature asking us to pay? Nature gives to whoever dares to take a chance, step forward, plan, create and do.

In fact nature is so flexible, so abundant and so colossally smart that it is able to take care of all of us. Provided we recognize the basic principles of life, we can apply the same principles to the problem of how to live on the planet. Let’s get clear on our purpose on this planet.

The basic purpose of our life in a holistic global sense is NOT to make money or conquer a problem, but to just live. Money must be defined in such a way that it recognizes the basic reason why it is needed. It is needed primarily as a medium of exchange. Therefore all other roles of money such as store of value are secondary to money being a medium of exchange.

Life is a gift. Therefore money should be seen as a gift. Money should be gifted to people to do cool things. When people are allowed to gift using their free will, they are often far more generous. They are also fair to themselves. At heart we all know that you and I and all of us are one. When we take away barriers to experiencing our humanity in our daily life, we give and receive equitably. This is also a basic yoga principle and as such, a principle of life. It works.

I do most of my work by donation. Instead of telling people how much it will cost, I ask them, how much would you like it to cost? how much is it worth to you? and also how much  can you part with, without feeling like you wont have enough for your physical needs? I suggest a certain amount that helps me live, the rest is upto you.

Ideologically–or metaphorically even, how much is 1 hour of peace and calm worth in time of great suffering? how much is it worth to have a drink of cool water in the middle of the desert? how much is unconditional love worth, when you feel broken from the loss of love?

How much would you like to pay to spend a few minutes with your mother? or father? who have passed on? How much would you pay to talk to your most beloved teacher?

Human beings are priceless and worthy. Yet, I’ve heard this a lot: “I wish my own needs for food and water and shelter were taken care of, so I could spend my whole life doing the work I love.”..If you have ever thought that, know that you are not alone in that feeling of limitation–this feeling is shared by millions and this ennui or discontent of labour is one reason why the definition of money as well as the structures within which work becomes ‘paid work’ or ‘sellable good’ within which money is earned and spent are inadequate to solve the Happiness problem.

I know that one day we will have a deeper understanding of nature and how things work, that will change what we call work. Right now we are limited by our tools and ignorance about what is possible. There are however, cool alternative ideas cropping up. For example BITCOIN.

Bitcoin is a new kind of money, that challenges the structure of how money flows globally and how we exchange money, and ultimately Bitcoin changes which human activities can realistically earn money. Instead of imperialistic structures that were centralized for example like in India or Pakistan, forming colonial governments whose job is to MODIFY indigenous cultures so that they conform with the central authority’s cultural preferences, the new structure of money means that anybody can earn money anywhere, doing whatever they like to do, provided enough people want to buy it. 

So, the change in the definition of money means a total and radical change in our values and what can earn livelihood and therefore the definition of education. Instead of  conformity or adherence to a standard text, the new values will have to be self-empowerment and radical exploration of individual self. It is a bit scary. We will need different kinds of teachers. Our teachers will have to train differently, connecting with their heart, as well as their mind.

The role of government will have to change accordingly. The smartest governments can be proactive and change, so that they swing in harmony with the global shift.

https://bitcoin.org/en/

“By its high decentralization, Bitcoin created a different form of payment network with an increased level of resilience and redundancy. Bitcoin can handle millions of dollars in trades without requiring military protection.”

I come here when I feel afraid of the cost of being true to myself. Being here is my happy place. It replenishes me for the journey.

It is a state of mind that changes everything else. Its existence is more about what it means to me and the doors in my mind that it opens, otherwise it could be just another moment that passes by without conscious awareness. Things are only relevant in terms of what they mean to us, and on their own they don’t have any real importance.

But it drives me. It makes me get up the morning. It makes me take all kinds of risks. It makes me speak the truth.

It makes me work for no reason other than love.

It isn’t  easy but the alternative of not being true to myself is worse. The numbness, the emptiness, the sheer torture of not being real isn’t worth it.

When I was 10 years old, my most pressing issue was, ‘Ammi, why am I me and not you?”, “how come I am here, who am I?”

My mother, bless her, would try to answer and then give up…I’d follow her around the house. I didn’t like school because they didn’t talk to the kids as if we mattered, so I’d get sick and stay home. One day I said that some things have no endings and no beginnings. My sister and mother  laughed. They told my father and my father looked up from his book and said, ‘she is right……tell me, chicken and egg, what came first?’

Being a female  wanna be metaphysical philosopher wasn’t easy. You still had to be a girl. Being a girl was often about being pretty and I enjoyed fashion, but things change and the cost of being real is that one changes.

I now think fashion is a waste of my time–I love beauty still, but  time is so precious because my dream is so huge and not for one life time but for perhaps dozens or hundreds of lifetimes. I want to spend every minute in service to living in abundance.. A new Earth where human beings live in harmony with nature and consequently each other.

When I visit Pakistan, my sister and mother both turn to me for advice on fashion. Oops. I have no idea anymore how to embelish myself to be more pleasing. Isn’t being clean enough? aren’t I beautiful already?

The last time I was there, my sister’s big eyes looked at me, ” but you were the fashionable one, what happened to you?”

I don’t know. Or wait, I do know. I realized that we all have to go one day, and I had to pick that which was truly important to me and do that, rather than waste my time in stuff that had no potential of giving me real happiness.

What happened to me was that I took every opportunity to search for happiness.  Choosing this, meant giving up stuff that wasn’t relevant or I had no resources left over for it. yet, I wanted this vagabond life, rather than the life of bloat and perpetual discontentedness. Meditation isn’t a money making business, it is the business of caring for other people enough to sit with them through the hard job of becoming real and being paid for that soul centred service rather than exploiting people’s needs (which is what many businesses are about).

Meditation made life simple for me in other ways. If I have a cold I usually don’t take medication. If I need a dental job, I don’t take anaesthesia, instead I simply talk to my nerves. People may be unaware of it, but hypnosis was used for operations, before the chemical type intervention of anaesthesia and it totally works. Our mind is very powerful indeed and we are barely recognizing who we are. Our potential as human beings is vast and largely untapped.

My happy place is in communion with myself. I get happy, sillily happy, seriously child like happy when I am alone….and by alone I mean when there is no thought of others, what people think, don’t think, what I should do!. The space in my mind is (to me) worth billions of dollars and the space under my feet is a necessary cost to care for the body. Maybe a day will come when our currency, our medium of exchange will recognize this reality and make the stuff that we need for the body a basic right, rather than a purpose of life itself.

This ‘space’ i..e, being ‘here’ is all I have and I think that’s true for everyone–the space in the head makes life worth living…and when we lose that space, life becomes heavy and miserable.

As time passed, and I came to realize this more and more, I needed less and less from life and what was valuable to me was so simple that I questioned all the things I used to surround myself with. I didn’t miss anything instead, I felt free…it meant I had more time to think, dream and create beauty.

Life is about pursuing happiness and joy. Happiness is our right and it is a gift that’s given for no reason, it is within our souls, like an implanted microchip:) that beeps when we find our happy place. We must follow that spark of joy and let it take us where it will, because that’s our destiny.

I relate to simple peasants more than the urban angst ridden ‘professionals’ and the depression of  industrial discontent, which we have wired into our children, telling them they are not enough unless they do this or that. We tell them in so many ways that, ‘It is not ok unless we have the latest or best in life or you are the best and smartest.” We tell them life is horrible and tough. Then we wonder why our children don’t talk to us.

On the other hand, the life of people who live close to the soil  is spent close to nature and most of it is about just ‘being.’ I remember my time in Sindh’s villages with such fondness. Not because my other friends in urban areas weren’t awesome, but because the people in the village were more happy. They were here, because their lives were simpler.

A day goes by so quickly. What is the point of this great blessing of a life, if all we can do with it is worry?

Being Here is the only place we can ever truly be.

It is someone else’s problem

I have enough on my plate

It isn’t really that big a problem

Personally, because that’s just how it is

Enough, air, food, water and shelter

For everyone?

Are you joking? Seriously, I don’t have enough

How can anyone else matter?

Maybe in the future, when we/they all die

Why think about it now? I mean isn’t it

Enough that we finance a mortgage

Why do we have to finance the Earth?

I have too many problems of my own

My health, my family, my income

Let someone else take care of this one

I will continue to buy whatever I can

To live a comfortable life, it is my instinct

To have, to amass, to enjoy!

I am a religious person and god told me

To enjoy the bounty of the planet

God is in charge didn’t you know?

It isn’t for mortals to concern themselves

With the problems of nature, because

God will figure it out!

Yes, that’s it!

God will do it!
Bugger should take care of something

Once in a while at least!

Flip the channel.

Click out of facebook

Text my latest love interest

If I really believed in god,

I’d be shouting and crying

But I am not crazy, thank god

That’s why I can successfully

Numb the pain of being alive

And watching it all die

While I party for the 100^th time this year.

Tell the hermit to knock elsewhere

Not my door, no not my door

I am too normal, honest and successful

Yawn…..set the alarm for 6am

Gotta get that raise this year.

I am passive. I am silent

I am Earth

I have given unconditionally

To each of you

I do not discriminate my bounty

I give to all of you equally

I am food, water, shelter and nourishment

I am the custodian of your light

This place  Earth

Was never meant for you to own

Ravage, pillage and control

How can you ever own me?

We gave men the power to guard

The life force, instead they made it

A reason to make themselves grand

And give suffering to the gentle

You kill yourself when you kill my creations

I watch you suffer as you struggle to understand

Who you are isn’t what you own

You are my children and not my owners

You are visitors of my vast guesthouse

Stop living as if you will never die

Death is just a heartbeat away

Make peace the mission of your life

The only way home is peace

I live in a little old town, where the houses have eaves. Eaves are old fashioned roof overhangs that give a cosy feeling to the home. The only intrusion of reality is computers.

Otherwise, you could be anywhere in a post colonial world.

What would Shakespeare’s greatest hero, Hamlet have to say about modern life? He could say: “what a world has come to pass, that our laws are so corrupt. We create laws that benefit the few and thus we manufacture and sell plastic without any difficulty. Our convenience is more important than our health. Can it truly be so Horatio? Why have we betrayed the mother?’

I am not sure what Horatio would have said, from what I remember, Horatio had little to say to his vastly more intellectual and verbose friend.

But, candidly, selling non bio degradable materials shouldn’t be possible. A rational government would first ration oil and plastic. The environmental and health issues point to the elephant in the room…and that’s petrochemicals and oil.

The new age environmental movement is up against an extreme use of petroleum by- products. A vast array of consumer products from personal care to household products which incidentally also give rise to endocrine issues, fertility problems and cancers are available abundantly. That sort of abundance is actually like a cancerous tumour. It isn’t real. In fact it creates ill health–both mentally and physically, for very short term pleasures. It is not true wealth.

So why do we want it? why do consumers want it? it is just an addiction, a habit that has been well ingrained because of the constant barrage of advertising and easy lending?.

Why is money being thrown at people, when clearly being resource efficient is the wiser choice?

Before people actually have money they’ve spent it. Any suburban family will tell you about the pressure to make more money to buy more stuff. Because that’s the definition of happiness in a capitalist consumer society. If we use a more holistic economic model to understand the flow of goods and services, it becomes clear that individual streams of income should not be called income in truth, because that money has no way of actually staying with people. The way the banking system is set up, the money has to rapidly flow from individuals through the economy, thus allowing banks to double or even treble their lending portfolio (their assets).

The banks are set up to make money from all human activities. Nobody has any real money in this system. That’s why there should be minimal to 0 resistance to a resource based green economy, where land protection is part of the constitution. For many societies around the world it is normal to recognize a higher power or bigger picture  as a purpose of life and that concept was part of every day life, laws and values.

Please stop making it so easy to destroy the planet. You can contribute so much, by saying no to plastics, no to consumerism, no to irresponsible consumption and yes to gifting, sharing and otherwise helping those who are bringing the new consciousness on to the planet.

Voluntary poverty or discrimination in the use of money will lead to:

1. Greater efficiency in the use of resources.

2. More opportunity to take care of health.

People have all kinds of dreams. Mine, as long as I can remember, was to live in a cottage by a river with flowers around. I’d write all day and dream all night. Then get up, bake some bread, walk around, talk to the trees and then write some more. That’s all I really wanted. I didn’t think of fame or wanting to sell what I wrote. Because selling would mean that I now had to write what others wanted to read. My ambition was to be a vagabond free spirit hippy who isn’t answerable to anyone. I dreamt of freedom, not of grandeur, ownership or success. Writing was never about being popular for me. People would say with your imagination you could be the next J. K Rowling. Why don’t you write like Kamila Shamsie? Write like so and so to be considered ‘good’.

Writing was never about success for me. I was and am a vagabond spirit. I like to write because it wants to be written, for no reason, for no real purpose or outcome other than the sheer delight of being alive, of having fingers and a mind, and thoughts–delicious toasty and gooey in the right places. ‘What a hobo you are!’ people would exclaim and I experienced hatred for no reason other than I existed as me.

The real problem and the  most difficult thing was finding a safe place to write. Where is the sanctuary and freedom to create? Quite clearly, living in the world is about conforming to the demands of the world. Somehow life wasn’t simple enough to just write. You had to write a certain way, for a certain audience to make a living out of it. Otherwise it was a hobby and one had to find a different way to pay for housing.

I spent years holding back the river that runs through my heart. I had to do so much just to have the free time and space to write. I had to conform to so many social and familial expectations, before there was even a remote sliver of a chance to be me. Thankfully, better sense prevailed and I quit the rat race. The other day I was looking for a home to move into where I felt safe enough and that worked for my son, so I could steal a few hours to write. Just a few hours of untroubled, peaceful time to think–are so difficult to get in the world.

Living with my family was not an option. As time wore on, the fact that I was me became an issue with a few people. That’s life as a writer for most of my kind. I had to run and hide.  I’ve yearned for my son to graduate. Or for me to find a lottery ticket. A job where I wasn’t so drained mentally that I could sneakily write in the afternoons. A blog that paid. I’ve taken up alternative professions, so that one day I could write. I’ve plotted and plotted schemes that lead to: Destination > Hermit.

It was always the wrong time, wrong place, wrong ticket, wrong job.  Until one fine day, I just quit. I resigned. I said to my employers and me, that if I did as much work as I do for you, for myself, I am bound to survive. It meant discipline, focus and total vulnerability. 1 or 2 years of poverty followed, but I worked very very hard. I started and maintain a couple of blogs, and created more content–as it flowed naturally from a place that is beyond time and space.

Overcoming my fears of rejection, I reached to other Reiki healers, tarot readers, psychics, local kind hearted brigade of fellow creatives. I found the emotional and mental support that helped me unfold the tight and uncomfortable wall behind which I felt safe.

Finally I began writing the living in abundance blog that I’d planned since 2010 and had purchased the domain name.  Eventually the angels delivered an affordable attic, which allows me to squeeze most of my time into creative projects while doing freelance websites and group events.

The wonderful thing about writing for no reason, for no outcomes is that it flows where it will. My writing is like my mother’s garden. She never wants to organize it. She never wants to prune the trees. She simply loves each bush, each dainty flower into form.

Living like this is unthinkable where I come from. Artists and writers aren’t respected, unless of course they write for popular opinion and approval. ‘Good’ parents don’t hope that their children will paint or play music or dance. Instead parents hope that their children will be rich and successful. They make fake plastic people who live fake plastic lives. That is the definition of success. Fear. Fear. Fear = Success. Money. Success.

The perfect society for corporate control, environmental disaster and violence is the obedient society.

A River Runs Through It

A ramshackle cottage with an unhinged door

Sits upon the doorway of my heart.

A river runs through it,

under it

across it

behind it.

Interlaced possibilities

Gleam with discontent

Be me! He shouts, ‘You aren’t enough as you are!’

Be me! She screams. ‘You aren’t going to get away with that!’

Be me! Or me! Or even me!

But, I am me. I don’t wish to be anyone else

Life is too short for halfway measures

Almost being here is the same as not being here

Let the river decide the way to the ocean.

The real cost of living is far higher than accounted for by the cost of food, shelter and share of utilities.

True cost of living should included the discounted value of air and water. It should also account for the amount of forest that is cut down to create housing of any kind. If we use any financial model to accurately reflect the true cost of living for one human being during a lifetime of 99 years on the planet, given the current consumption patterns, we would find that every person in North America is taking the share of at least a billion people. That’s conservative.

One low to average income person is gobbling up the resources that are meant for a billion people? and chances are that this person isn’t even feeling fulfilled. Chances are that this person still feels ‘poor’ and probably compares himself or herself to people who did better in life.

The above is a small example of the insanity of the current model of life.

For centuries humanity has focused on a morality that elevates ‘family values’, ‘family creation’ above any other lifestyle. Morality and virtue and all things nice such as safety and security are about a household where a man is the head and ‘provides’ for his family.

Human population is doubling and trebling because people think its moral to have a family.
What has morality got to do with Costco? Nothing much, as it turns out.

What is moral, vs what is not moral should be a personal choice. Having a family or not having a family should be a choice. There is no superiority in having a big family or clan.

There are people who sit and cry about how much they’ve had to do for their spouses and their families, how much sacrifice they’ve had to make and how depleted they feel as a result of family obligations. Then there are those who feel they have no choice but to depend on people whom they feel hate them and betray them.

Beneath the surface of ‘family’ is a volcano of un met emotional needs that are hidden, in order to protect the family name and values.

Everybody’s so happy, except that they are miserable. In a nutshell, we live in world where;

There’s an environmental crisis because of uncontrolled capitalist greed and corporate manipulation. This is serious stuff.

People are mindlessly following a system that is making them poorer, they are completely deluded that it will make them richer in real terms. In fact the harder they work, they will have less. because the entire paradigm is about scarcity. The scarcity principle dictates that the more you have, the less you actually have.

People still join this system because of family values which dictate that people should live a certain lifestyle.

But people who are in the rat race because of family values and obligations aren’t even happy.

Things make people feel a bit better about themselves and they feel as if they have more status, but happiness isn’t about filling a bottomless pit of low self-esteem.

So, here we are, we live in a world where one person consumes a million people’s resources and chances are that person isn’t happy. It isn’t enough. He or she needs and wants MORE!

Scarcity as a guiding principle of life–with greed as its motivation is a nightmare with no wake up button.