Obviously, the Rainsnow Project will not be for everyone. This is especially so in the beginning, when it will seem least needed, before the world’s unraveling makes the need for it apparent; and before its very different way of seeing things begins to work its way into the popular culture, making it seem less "strange."

At this early stage, a clear (though open) focus must be established, for a slight error in orientation could undermine the Project, making it either too passive relative to the dominant culture, or too unconstructively confrontational. Just as the first stones laid down for a building must be the strongest, as they will be the foundation for all that comes after, so these first steps of ours must be clear, focused, and strong, leaving no doubt as to our general vision and purpose, yet also, not closing us off from the learning and growth that we hope will take place as we walk along our path.

This having been said, let me define the basic approach which the Rainsnow Project proposes to take regarding the coming global crisis. This way, you will be able to see if this is the right time and place for you to become involved.

The fundamental goals of the Rainsnow Project are to promote the development of a society and world characterized by, and committed to, the ideals of living with compassion, awareness, peace, dignity, fairness, freedom, respectfulness, health, vitality, purpose and meaning.

The Rainsnow Project does not seek to promote a doctrinaire/fixed vision of what such a world should look like, but believes that true commitment to the indicated ideals - as opposed to mere lip service - will require a major transformation of many aspects of our present-day civilization.

Obstacles and forces which threaten the attainment of these ideals, and which must therefore be challenged if these ideals are ever to flourish in our world, include: violence and war, poverty, injustice, exploitation, repression, discrimination, misused technology, environmental destruction, and physically and emotionally destructive and limiting concepts.

The core approach of the Rainsnow Project to realizing its goals, is to seek to deal with the forces that keep us from attaining them, at the deepest, "root level." Fighting on the surface, history has managed to produce only variety, not solutions; only respites, never deliverance.

The guiding principle of the Rainsnow Project is the belief that we, ourselves - we human beings - are the fundamental source of the obstacles that keep us from attaining our ideals; and that in order to construct the kind of world we all dream of living in, we must first direct our transformative battle inwards, winning it on the inner terrain of our own self-understanding, of our own self-development, and our own self-control. Fighting only in the world of external conditions, the inner dynamics which produced those conditions, in the first place, will tend to bring them back again. Victories will become relapses.

Fighting in the inner landscape, however - at the deepest, generative level of our social ills - our personal victories will become lasting. And they will come to be mirrored in the outer world of politics, economics, and society.

The Rainsnow Project holds that the great dilemmas of our world originate, in large part, from our own psyches, and identifies some of these birthplaces of global pain as: fear, insecurity, mistrust, greed, ignorance, aggressiveness, desire separated from awareness, and low self-esteem. All of these forces, located in men of power, capable of dragging nations behind them, or magnified in bodies of people whose "mass mind" comes to be driven by them, are capable of producing individual and collective acts of great destruction.

The Rainsnow Project stands by those wise teachers who have long urged us to focus inwards, and to begin solving the world’s problems in the realm of our own hearts, and our own souls.

However, the Rainsnow Project goes beyond the scenario which envisions the process of many individual acts of self-development simply adding up to produce an enlightened society and an enlightened world. The Rainsnow Project insists on the necessity of consciously connecting these acts of individual self-development, of consciously supporting them, and of consciously linking them to external mechanisms of social change.

The Rainsnow Project sees the process of individual transformation as being based upon a regular "practice" of psychological self-examination, meant to increase self-awareness and understanding; and spiritual work meant to place that understanding in a wider context, and to endow it with a moral vision and a moral will.

But that individual process, it is believed, must be amply supported, not only by resources that empower the individual to develop expertise in this inner work, but also by the creation of a sense of community that will motivate the individual searcher, by lifting him out of meaningless solitude; provide his work with a medium for social approval and reinforcement; and help to sustain his movement "against the current", in the midst of a harsh civilization whose powerful, exhausting energy, furthering opposite values of materialism and egotism, might otherwise overpower, wash away, or reduce to irrelevance, his brave and isolated effort to reach a higher (and more difficult) state.

A fundamental objective of the Rainsnow Project is, therefore, the construction of social links that will connect and unify large numbers of individual searchers. To develop a vast new form of community that will end isolation, build new networks of communication, and draw transformative cultural elements into a closer, more meaningful, and powerful relationship with each other.

A Modern Tribe

In some ways, what is being aimed for is a modern recreation of "the Tribe": a social entity characterized by real solidarity, and by a sense of purpose that will allow it to survive and grow, and become, at first, the seed, and later the vehicle, for transforming the earth. It will be the sheltering structure that protects and nurtures the enlightenment of individuals, and the expanding base from which these individuals move out to interact with and affect the processes and mechanisms of national and global change.

The envisioned tribal structure will consist of a general coordinating body, the Greater Circle, and a large number of "small circles", or groups of individuals consciously involved in creating deeper and more expanded forms of friendship than what is today the prevailing norm. These "small circles" will be local intentional communities, most of them consisting of individuals united by a common purpose, and linked by frequent contact, but not actually living together. These small circles will be primarily urban and semi-urban, and thus imbedded into the cultural center of the nation, where there are greater employment opportunities, frequently greater learning opportunities, and where the power to affect society and transmit cultural changes is most pronounced. The small circles will be supported by resources from the Greater Circle, and linked to each other in a greater tribal network. The Greater Circle will also attempt to link these circles with a smaller number of rural communities and nature sites, so that access to nature can be attained, without incurring isolation, or separation from the life-center of the nation.

It is within the small circles that the key work of human development, which is the basis for global transformation, will take place. There, that people will learn how to live and share as part of a wider social group; there that people will develop psychological insight into their motives, and emotional dynamics, and construct the vision and discipline, while in the midst of a supportive environment, necessary to become capable guardians of the world’s future; there that the individual’s effort to develop his spiritual, compassionate, and aware self will receive the encouragement and emotional protection it needs to survive and grow in a world whose tremendous energy is busy pumping out values of a very different nature, and burying whatever is different.

Besides these small circles, the Greater Circle will also establish contact, and other forms of cooperative relationships, with individuals and pre-existing groups.

The ultimate objectives of the Rainsnow Tribe will be to create an environment in which the spiritual and emotional development of the individual can be nourished and protected; and where a life-giving form of counterculture, based upon the transforming human heart, can be constructed. That counterculture is then to spread, in numbers and effect, throughout the mainstream culture, slowly beginning to enlighten it through the increasing presence and impact of enlightened, interconnected individuals.

The purpose of this cultural enlightenment will, of course, be to transform our civilization as a whole, making it fairer, more emotionally habitable and meaningful, more in tune with our great human potential, and sustainable. Ultimately, to achieve this, the Rainsnow Project must aim for nothing less than the creation of a NON-MATERIAL CIVILIZATION. Of course, this does not mean a civilization without a material base. It simply means a civilization in which materialism is no longer placed at the center of existence, where the production of material goods is no longer the primary goal, in and of itself; a civilization in which life’s meaning, pleasures, and satisfactions are derived more from human relationships and interactions, and human contact with nature, the Universe, God, and self, than from the procurement and use of material products.

The de-materialization (lightening) of our civilization - which is to be accomplished by developing a new structure and mindset of non-material satisfactions and pleasures to take the place of excessive material consumption - is crucial for the survival of our civilization.

To further the defusing of destructive aggression in modern societies, the new, non-material civilization ought to provide and construct cultural outlets which would allow all aggressive impulses remaining after the de-stressing of society, to be non-destructively expressed, through ritual and creative new forms of venting, substituting for lethal violence.

Sexuality ought also to be reintegrated more openly - yet responsibly, and carefully - into such a civilization. It ought to be freed from the unnatural guilt and repression which enrage and frustrate the psyche, and which also sometimes produce unhealthy and exaggerated expressions of rebellion. The importance of a healthy and responsible liberation of sexuality to the overall de-stressing of modern civilization, cannot be underestimated.

Of course, it cannot be absolutely guaranteed that a civilization such as this would be able to avoid the dangers of future wars. There may be circumstances in the next 100-200 years, in which the threat of unscrupulous, ambitious, and implacable enemies will not be able to be peaceably avoided. However, if this is so, the transformed society may, at least, feel satisfied to know that the ensuing conflict is not the result of its own unfair use of, or overdependence on, global resources; not the result of its own political and economic inflexibility; and not the result of its own collective rage, and uncontrollable emotions.

An underlying belief of the Rainsnow Project is that political and economic systems - despite the natural world’s impact on their formation, and despite their own undeniable ability to shape life in our world - are products of culture; and that in order to morally and pacifically transform the political and economic behavior of a civilization, it is, therefore, necessary to first transform the culture which is the base of that behavior.

Our challenge, at this moment in history, is to create a new culture, capable of generating the kind of political and economic behavior necessary for the survival of the earth.

But is anyone, today, truly capable of embodying and representing this new culture: the culture of the humanized, and spiritually-deepened, non-material civilization? After all, though our natural souls and innermost desires are very much in tune with it - have, in fact, envisioned it in the first place - we are also products of these modern times, and this modern civilization: accustomed and acclimated to its deadly culture of self-destruction.

The Rainsnow Tribe is conceived of as the emotional and evolutionary shelter in which men and women will be able to re-acclimatize themselves to their true nature, reacquaint themselves with their true potential, rediscover the true worth of others, and the true value of the earth, and grow capable of living in the new culture upon which our collective survival depends. This capacity, combined with their presence and interactions with society, will generate and diffuse the new culture necessary for the evolution of our political and economic systems.

We cannot emphasize enough, that any attempt to significantly alter our national political and economic behavior before a supporting cultural groundwork for those changes is laid, will only lead to failure. Which leads us back to the critical importance of the Rainsnow Tribe, which is to be one of the creators and transmitters of that culture.

Regardless of the wishes of any given social or political group - and we recognize that many will not, initially, share our views and goals - it is our belief that a major transformation of our civilization, of some kind, is inevitable. Global environmental limits, and the social and psychological dynamics which move history and civilization, leave little room for doubt. It is only a question of how this transformation will be carried out, and what its ultimate destination will be: whether it can be effected in an orderly and humane way, launched by foresight armed with will, and conducted with compassion, leading us towards a place of hope and life; or whether it will be delayed until the last possible moment - sabotaged by denial and weakness - and then carried out desperately, under emergency conditions, at first in waves of panic and chaotic reaction, then under the iron, controlling hand of authoritarian governments and dictatorships - the natural response to anarchy - in times of anger, fear, war, and hardship. A transformation leading to death, and to a new culture of slavery.

It is our urgent goal, as members of the Rainsnow Tribe, to prepare as great a number of people as possible for the coming transformation of the earth, and to actively seek to promote this transformation, while there is still time to "do it right", so that it may be voluntary, humane, and constructive, aimed for a more beautiful world, rather than involuntary, desperate, cruel, and destructive, leading only to repression, and more pain.

Without wishing to oversimplify the dynamics of human affairs, we now stand at the CROSSROADS of human history, at that critical moment in time which will define the future of Humanity for generations to come. Will we struggle to create a culture of freedom right now, one which will be able to survive the changes bound to come our way, by preparing for them in advance, and by seeking to actively guide that transformation in a positive way, towards a positive destination? Or will we do nothing but cling to deadly illusions and appetites, until disaster finally comes, striking out of our blindness and inertia, yoking us to a culture of slavery, which is the unavoidable destiny of all those who will not fight to be free?

Next

Rainsnow Project Contents