Surviving Samsara: An Integral Approach to Preparedness: Justin F. Miles
Last night I fell asleep reading Ken Wilber's book, Integral Buddhism. Afterwards I had a dream that Ken, my friend Corey Devos and I had a conference call (which was awesome) and then I was awakened by a call at 2am from my daughter letting me know she arrived safely to Denver, Colorado. After we got off the phone, for some reason I grabbed my laptop, spontaneously wrote this and then immediately fell back asleep. Enjoy and I welcome the feedback.
Surviving Samsara: An Integral Approach to Preparedness
Preparedness or survivalism often evokes ideas of making it through the apocalypse, killing zombies or stockpiling food in order to last long enough for events on Earth to return to livable conditions. However, for most people preparedness rarely includes working with the everyday and inevitable chaos of human life.
Preparing for chaos is actually not a bad idea; everything changes and we should be ready to respond to that universal maxim. But we don’t take into account what EVERYTHING means. It literally means everything. Not just the conditions of society but our emotions, patterns of thinking, relationships, bodies, values and even our level of awareness and ability to take perspectives.
As a “prepper” (yeah I got food and shit saved up so what), its become increasingly apparent to me of how unprepared I am to handle the types of challenges that I face on a day to day basis. I’ve also become more and more aware of how preppers (including myself at one point) seem to take on the view of preparing with the mind of samsara (endlessly acquiring goods for provisions or trade and never being satisfied) or trying to achieve some nirvanic state of preparedness where I will never have to experience the fundamental instability or groundlessness of life. In order to really check myself to make sure im not buggin’ out (get it?), I ask myself questions such as: What is the underlying truth in prepping? What do I integrally need to prepare for? How do I take into account the variety of ways to prepare? What type of prepper am I? How do I expand my view of preparedness?
The foundation of any path is motivation. Why am I doing this? What is the basis of my intention to prepare? Well, that depends on my ability to be aware of my values in relation to consciousness. What the hell does that mean? It means that as my consciousness expands and I take on the ability to take on more and more perspectives of the world (perspectives that already exist), my values and intention changes.
I remember when I was first starting out around 2006. I decided to carry a toiletry bag with me wherever I went. I had the basics: toothbrush, toothpaste, washcloth, soap, q-tips etc. Just in case the SHTF my ass would be clean and my breath would smell decent. I also had my passport and $1000.00 just in case I needed to get out of dodge. My plan was to buy a plane ticket somewhere out of the country and having money and a passport allowed me to do that…if I could even get to the airport. Later in my prepping career I included guns, ammo, training in indigenous technologies, a bug out bag, planned and practiced routes to a bug out location, long term food storage, biochemical defense suits, gas masks etc. I was all in but only for me. All I could see was me. People would say stuff like, “if anything goes down i’m coming to your crib” and I would be like, “you better start preparing to take care of yourself because I’ve only planned for myself”. Which sounds bad but the truth is that we should take care of ourselves, not neurotically but as an act of self care. Things change and if I genuinely appreciate my fortunate human birth I need to be able to take care of myself. However this approach is shortsighted. Not only should I not see all others as potential threats to my survival but I also shouldn’t live in a fantasy world where I’ll be able to summon the will to be able to survive on my own. A small force of moderately trained and armed men and women could easily take all I have, no matter how much my ego thought otherwise. I than began to think, “if anything goes down, I’ll escape to nature”. I save seeds and can garden. I have weapons and will hunt and fish. I know how to build a rudimentary shelter. All of those things may be true, but what is not true is the guarantee that the benevolent spirit of nature will take care of me. As good as Gaia is, and as much as she provides for us she provides little to no comfort from the reality of the elements. Nature is dark and hot and cold and dry and plentiful and scarce and sometimes you’ll make it and sometimes you won’t. Nature loves you but not just you. Despite the uncanny ability to adapt to the environment due to this nifty opposable thumb, one wound to that thumb greatly limits my ability to take care of myself. Also, I wasn’t raised in the woods. Hell even people raised in rural areas weren’t raised in the woods. Most of us have tv’s, cell phones, wifi and live pseudo comfy lives far removed from our aboriginal ancestors. We ain’t ready for the stings, bites, bruises and blisters that await us. I had to begin to think rationally about this.
Honestly, what are the types of crisis that I’m going to face in the near future? Global-thermonuclear War against a rogue AI? Economic collapse? Foreign invader? Terrorist attack? Climate change? Food shortages? Statistically and historically speaking no.
The types of things that environmentally threaten my existence and that happen to me regularly are storms, wind and snow. That’s pretty much it. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m prepared for the other stuff too but those things are easily mitigated and actually don’t cause me a great deal of suffering throughout the year.
The truth is that depression, economic mismanagement, anxiety, fear, anger, lethargy, not taking care of my body and addictions are more frequent than the three days of the year where I have to stand in long lines at the grocery store to go buy bread, milk and toilet paper (seriously, who buys bread and milk as survival food? Why?). Why do I spend more time concerned about what COULD happen than I do being concerned with what ALWAYS happens?
I get depressed pretty often and caught up in regrets. Rumination on my past keeps me up at night. I’m getting fat and my blood pressure is too damn high. When I get paid I act like I won the lottery and am broke within a week. Never…ending…suffering. But awareness of suffering is not suffering. There is no suffering in the present moment (Trust me I’ve looked. Don’t trust me go look). The more that I could do to allow myself to experience the reality of how I cause myself suffering, the more I was no longer held hostage by them. By allowing them to arise in my immediate awareness I had control over acting on impulses, memories, ideas, associations, feelings and projections. I could own them. Just look at them. Ask them questions. Allow them to teach me something. Plan time to experience them vs. being jumped by them when I’m not paying attention. Behaviorally I could find a therapist, meditation group, join a gym and use a monthly budgeting template. Seeing the root of my suffering as worthwhile and not worthless, as well as behaviorally addressing my challenges with modalities and entities outside of myself allows me to address everyday change beyond hope and fear. Also, seeing others as preppers who are in the same boat as myself, desiring happiness but moving in fits and starts, helps me to see that there are no enemies; no one to prepare against necessarily. Well maybe i’m preparing to do battle with myself as the non-dual, life eating, walking dead on a search to maintain my humanity. But maintaining humanity means coming in contact with it: Trying to relate to the softness of my heart, being genuine, cultivating compassion, equanimity and wisdom. Turning my mind towards sanity. Being of benefit to others. Those practices help me to see a wider view of why, what and who I am preparing for. The truth is that if we don’t prepare to take care of each other and the Earth then we won’t survive anything. As important as it is to be prepared for emergency we must also plan for emergence; to being forth something new into the world and to be prepared to rouse the emergent energies of others.
Samsara and nirvana are not two different sides of a coin. The endless desire to be happy through methods that do not produce happiness does not exist independently of you, nor does your liberation from that desire. Nor do they exist at all. Preparing to deal with change means realizing that no matter what you do you will never fully prepare for change and the inherently instability of each moment, nor is there anything to run after aside from addressing what’s now. No one knows what’s going to happen, or when or how their going to deal with it when it arises. We’d like to think we do. We’d also like to be freed from our suffering which is a good thing, but that desire to can cause all sorts of trouble and confusion. Both samsara and nirvana are unreal because life is already what it is and will be; a constant fluctuation of causes and conditions coming together and falling apart, while riding a wave of emptiness without a surfboard. If we can fearlessly prepare for and address the real objective and subjective changes in our lives by increasingly widening the perspectives we take (allowing more beings into your conscious), neither running towards illusory pleasure, aggression and self ignorance, or believing that there is something to be free of, there is a chance that we can all survive samsara. Still…get a bug out bag.
Justin F. Miles MA LCPC LCADS
Miles Institute of Integral Living
Director of Integral Preparedness