When I learnt Environmental Management (back in the 90’s) there was the Waste Minimisation Hierarchy. The 3Rs. First reduce, then reuse … if you can’t do that, recycle. In the ways of laziness and general ignorance we have all gone weeeeeee – Recycle! Ignoring the first two precepts of waste minimisation has resulted in mountains of burning plastic in Mayalsia; now exports are banned and unrecyclable recyclable plastics are piling up in a town near you… with nowhere to go.

It’s another lowest-common-denominator moment.

The same can be said about “new age” spirituality, and often is. We have recycled everything with joyously optimistic consumption and ended up stockpiling a mishmash of unsustainable myths in our minds. We feel great in the moment (it’s recyclable!) but cannot transform our resources into the promised land of the 3Ps – Personal Planetary emPowerment.

So let’s back up. Number one. Reduce.

Not only to prevent angry Asians serving subpoenas to stop us sending recyclable rubbish; reduction also aligns our spiritual compass with a true path to the 3Ps.

“Whatever she sees she must see because she wills to do so, and what she deliberately ignores must be literally non-existent for her. The more vital and energetic the souls efforts become, the more successfully will this aim be achieved. The pupil must avoid all thoughtless gazing and listening… in this way fewer and fewer unconscious elements will intrude in her soul. Only by such strict self discipline can the 10 petalled lotus receive the form that is proper to it. The pupil’s inner life must become one of attentiveness, and she must learn to keep away everything to which she does not wish or ought to pay attention to.” Rudolf Steiner – How to Know Higher Worlds.

So why let an algorithm chose not only our friends, but also highly manicure the message that scrolls past our face? Booked into Hotel Socialmedia, we delude ourselves that we choose our newsfeed… and can we ever leave?

Reducing exposure to this algorithm, with its gambler-inspired bleeps and bling, becoming more limited daily, grooming us to be pets in a surveillance and mind modification machine… is a priority for obtaining the 3Ps.

That’s essentially what AI is : machine intelligence. Not artificial (“our egos feel more secure in categorising this intelligence as something fake or not real” George Kavassilas) and not augmented (“an ideology that propagates a narrative that humans are inferior” George Kavassilas), but simply technical intelligence : TI.

Social media is TI, and that’s a technical, not a personal, development path by its very nature. Reducing daily integration with the faux spirit meme feed, its glam pix of pruned perfect lives, and simple persistent distraction of externalisation into the other – is number one action in the 3P hierarchy.

Next, reuse.

It’s all here, already. Our personal planetary empowerment doesn’t need to be turned into some fancy packaged item made of biodegradable materials we can just whip off and waste once we’ve consumed the transmission.

Real spiritual development is infused into a life lived in planetary presence. It is available in entirety – for free, full of catalytic juices and ripe for reusing throughout generations. The recipe has not changed, although the myths embellishing the simple narrative are culturally appropriated. This is the key to real knowledge : it resonates across cultures and ages because it is essentially the same message. In this repetition we will recognise truth taught. It never needs repackaging… indeed this dilutes the wisdom. And it really is free.

Simply clean the jar of perception and you will have not only a clear view of the way forward, but also a worthy container to hold those wish-fulfilling jewels. Hopefully it is deep, because depth of practise, not breadth of modalities, is the alchemical crucible. Change takes place in patient day in day out exertion in an ecosystem – a school, a sangha, a nature temple. Reducing our TI time helps us to refind the nuance of spiritual growth in daily verbal face to face (face to tree, face submerged in sea) interaction. It helps to converse with sought and selected real peeps on real paths, rather than algorithm-chosen slick back-lit digital ideals, because real life is neuron awakening, myelin making stuff. Fleshly encounters co-create divinities within.

Nothing new is needed.

Not in the material realm, not in the spiritual realm.

Reusing these practices fully, thoroughly, wisely, consistently, with care and attention. It is in this sacred space where the human biosystem synchronises and magic happens. It’s ALL about reuse. Every day a daily practise, again and again.

Energy flows where attention goes. I am what I pay attention to. Attention is narrowed by intelligent algorithms channeling technical intelligence. Embodied practises – yoga, dance, sport or music – protest our increasingly cold, headcentric civilisation, and keep Yoginis on track.

Third and last, recycle.

Recycle this : in our great grandparents’ era people possessed sufficient kindness, compassion, intelligence and trust to require very little of Governments/incorporations. They also had more time. We did not need permits to obtain water, shelter and food. We did not pay income tax, and the dollars we earned were the value of something tangible called gold. Sure, there were plenty of drawbacks in sexual equality and religious freedom… trash those.

As Juliet Carter states regularly, “the new paradigm will not come from better government, stricter policing or a more democratically organised global community. It will arise from a community that needs no governing at all.”

What really needs recycling is human dignity. Can we recycle our community attitudes – that real relationship with each other and the land we lived upon? In returning to relationships with the real we can achieve personal and planetary empowerment. Use the 3Rs: reduce our focus on the technocratic sphere of internet bling, reuse the wisdom handed down for generations, recycle what was good and healthy from the past with the new technologies of personal development and self-expression to produce a future worthy of humanity, and indeed, all sentient beings.

“The new paradigm will be spun from the amalgamation of awakened consciousness transmitted by a unified people whose collective connection to source will be fed into the bio-spherical membrane of Earth’s morphogenetic field.” Juliet Carter.

And that – as more and more of humanity awaken to the truth of technological takeover and decide to use the 3Rs to achieve the 3Ps – can become our reality. We need to go right back to the nineties, find the Waste Minimisation Hierarchy, and apply it to the whole of our lives for personal and planetary empowerment.

If you would like assistance innerstanding and integrating any of this, you’re welcome to get in touch with me 🙂

How to Know Higher Worlds – Rudolf Steiner free pdf

George Kavassilas on Technical Intelligence youtube

The Template – Juliet & Jiva Carter free downloads