Challenge for the Quest What is suffering?

Vision means reconstructing the dilemma we began with, from the inside out, so that it ceases to exist. Learn more.

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Be willing to suffer, to give up everything, in the service of something greater than oneself. Do not seek pleasure or security first. Submit to inconvenience, suspense, and uncertainty. Give until it hurts.

Throw your life into question.
Combat whatever is given by nature and culture.
Fight for inner liberty.

– No electronic media (Televsion, Internet, cell phones…)
– No politics, entertainment, religion, nationalism.
– No materialism (Buying or selling).
– No artificial mood changes (Recorded music, drugs or alcohol…)
– No small talk

The anthroposphere encompasses the total human presence throughout the Earth. Stop everything. All time-wasters. All self-glorification. The way you think of your own happiness.

Brave the anthroposphere
Do not escape.
Do not lie to yourself.
Be willing to suffer.
Fight for inner liberty.
Don’t believe anything you are told.
Resist every automatism.
Put an end to banality.
Recognize your mediocrity.
No politics, nationalism, religion.
No authority, no ideology. No philosophy. No teacher. No belief.
No small talk, gossip, entertainment.

Money: Free yourself from economic servitude.
Politics: Free yourself from the political narrative.
Culture: Free your mind from social control.

Resist all forms of external determinism, including biology, culture and ideology. Refuse to participate in anything that is false, illusory, idolatrous, illusion, trivial or degraded. Avoid artificial sources of mood changes. Do not glorify the tangential. Stop peer consciousness. Do not succumb to the pressure of the everyday. Conquer the strange lethargy that fortifies mere self.





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► Put the fair and good (what is beneficial, not harmful) into your mind.
Do not waste your life on trivial pursuits
Stop participating in the illusory, idolatrous, superficial, and degraded.

► Stand up for culture that calls you to your higher nature.
Defend the gentle virtues (purity, gentleness, affection, beauty, humility, vulnerability, and simple goodness)
Stand up against superficiality, manipulation, and degradation.

► Every work of art is a challenge to address the world
Don't think of a show (movie, television show, play, etc) mainly in terms of it being pleasing. It is the value of what is depicted that is of most importance.

► Try to understand what a work of art says.
– Reflect on every show, exhibit and song that you experience
– Ask for meaning at any cultural event or situation you participate in, including movies, television, internet, sports, performances, bookstores, etc.
– Ask what a work of art says, and what view of life it promotes. What is the hope of the authors? What lies next to their hearts?
– Think about how art affects you and society.
– Understand what a work of art says.
– Try to understand the purpose and motive of the piece.
– Seek the good, true and beautiful.
– Don’t participate harmful cultural activities
– Look for an invisible reality.

Do not submit to publicly induced consciousness. Free your mind from social control. You are responsible for what the artists you appreciate do in their lives!

“When there is no escape from the movement of sorrow, then love is.”
“If we are able to face that emptiness, to be with that aching loneliness, then fear altogether disappears and a fundamental transformation takes place.” J. Krishnamurti

“Use suffering to grasp the ultimate.” “Turn suffering into a song.” Abraham Heschel

Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering.
“Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering, including personal contact, visits, images, and sounds. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Fourteen Precepts

Don’t compromise, don’t take the easy way.
“It is always possible for an afflicted man to suffer less by consenting to become wicked…The alternative punishment is a mediocre life, and in what way is a mediocre life preferable to affliction?” Simone Weil
“Pain is a holy angel who shows us treasures that would otherwise remain forever hidden; through him men and women have become greater than through all the joys of the world.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Principles for soldiers
– There is a standard higher than national victory.
– Take responsibility for your actions as a soldier.
– Be sensitive to your own humanity and the humanity of your opponents.
– Accept costs to oneself. Be willing to sacrifice.
– Understand the causes of the conflict and the suffering, grievances and needs of all sides.
– Join with friend and foe, soldier and civilian.

Pledge for civilians
– Understand the causes of the conflict, and the suffering, grievances and needs of all sides.
– Recognize your own part in creating conflict (including what you do for work, entertainment and in your daily life). Repent for your own brutality.
– Put an end to war in yourself. Become capable of peace.
– Find a deeper resolution and transform the conflict situation itself.
– Look at evil with the eyes of a mother.

Begin with the great no. Stop taking sides.
Don’t believe what you are told by politicians or the media.
Do not accept the assumptions of the status quo (the right, middle, or left).
Do not expect political leaders to solve social problems.
Do not comply unthinkingly with rules or laws.
Don't assume that our present choices are a permanent fact.
Don't assume that needs can be satisfied by commodities.
Never humiliate anyone. (For example, using derogatory terms such as anti-vaxxer or Karen).

Solutions
Listen deeply to views you don’t agree with.
Find the psychological and ethical causes of political difference (character, virtue, and will).
Instead of demanding change ask for empathy, contrition, reflection. Replace force with trust.
Address the full range of our interests (including relationship, autonomy, and beauty).
Address underlying causes first, then external needs. (The opposite of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.)
Respond at the level at which harm is being generated.
Find a way that changes assumptions, that all sides can agree with, that works at the heart level.
Create enough time in your life to engage in current affairs.
Use all of your resources: Time and talent, insight and intelligence, energy and passion.
Vote by what you actually do in your life.

Travel is not just about having fun. It can also be a way to challenge preconceptions, expand our imagination, prepare ourself for a more important future, and help others. On your travels, engage the whole range of what you have, your personal resources: time, talent, intelligence, passion, and, of course, money.
Throw your life into question. Stop being domesticated, mediocrity, superficial. Go into wilderness.

Travel not only for pleasure but also learning, helping and meaning.
Don’t embed yourself in the travel mega-industry.
Learn about and contribute to the communities you visit.
Support local businesses. Shop at local markets, eat at family-run businesses.
More important than local, seek out meaningful businesses and organizations of any kind.
Contribute to local non-profit or social projects.
Have you visited a business or any other place in Alaska that intrigues you, either because it is inspiring or because it falls short of what it could be? Add it to Visionary Society Places.
Attempt to meet fellow travelers and join with them in building a more thoughtful world.

Above all, breathe in the air. Expiration, Inspiration. Prepare yourself, when you go home again, to return with a new kind of energy – the energy of life.