Simple Living in a Complex World
Simple living “gives people a fresh set of eyes to look at old habitual patterns to discover for themselves empowered new ways of doing things,” observes Vicki Robin.
Part Two
URBAN SIMPLICITY
Although many people have found moving to the country approach works well for them, it’s not a necessity. Jeff Beal, his wife, and child live in the Los Angeles area because that is what works for their careers. As a songwriter and singer, respectively, the Beals prefer the city setting, although they do feel that moving to a more country setting may be in their future. “Because I’m an artist, some of the things that mean the most to me as a composer don’t generate the most amount of money. I’m concerned with having a lifestyle that isn’t so extravagant that I have to sale my artistic soul to support my lifestyle.”
The Beals have managed to live simply despite their urban setting by becoming more conscious of what they spend their money on. Rather than trading in their cars every couple of years for new models, they’ve chosen to keep their older ones. Around the house, they’re much more likely to try to fix a broken appliance than rushing out and buying a new one, as well as making their own home repairs rather than hiring someone. Eating out is another place where they’ve been able to save substantially. “People in L. A. tend to eat out a lot,” observes Beal. “We’ve found that when we do it less, it’s more enjoyable when we do go out.”
Penny Yunuba is another example of someone living the simple life in the city. She quit her job in 1988 to live her life the way she wanted. She rented one of her bedrooms to someone and sold her car because public transportation and friends made it possible to live without one. She volunteers her time to an organization that in turn pays her health insurance. In this way, she has designed a life far different from the get-ahead treadmill of her previous career in micro-computer sales. Yunuba says one of the side benefits of living a simple lifestyle is the depth and closeness of her friendships. Although it was not something she expected, it is one of the greatest joys in her life.
Simple living “gives people a fresh set of eyes to look at old habitual patterns to discover for themselves empowered new ways of doing things,” observes Vicki Robin. “It’s the joy that comes from that awakening that leads to tremendous savings and feelings of freedom and control.”
One of Vicki’s favorite stories comes from a family who followed the steps outlined in their book to simplify their lives. After following the program for a while, they suddenly noticed they were not using their dining room, preferring to eat their meals in the family room. So, they sold the dining room furniture. They, then, converted the room into a spare bedroom and had a couple move in, trading room and board for yard work, housework, and childcare. The room became known as their “$6,000 room” because they calculated they had been spending that much for those services. Such creative ideas become the norm when people begin to take back their lives and have time for what’s truly important to them.
THE INNER ROADS TO SIMPLICITY
As Mark Burch points out in his book, Simplicity: Notes, Stories, and Exercises for Developing Unimaginable Wealth, simplicity starts with a fundamental shift in consciousness, otherwise, you will continue to be uptight, worried and stressed, whether you have a lot of possessions or you have none at all.
For Burch, simple living “does not begin with discarding personal possessions and then searching for alternative, simpler ways of meeting the same needs. Rather, the technology begins with the cultivation of mindfulness. As we grow in our capacity for and enjoyment of mindfulness, then the outer aspects of our lives eventually and progressively come into alignment with this changed consciousness.”
As Ann and I continued along our path of simple living, we found this process occurring naturally and with little effort. Even though we enjoyed living in Greensboro NC, a mid-size city in the central part of the state, we found we shared a hidden fantasy of one day living in the mountains, so we began taking weekend trips exploring likely locations. In the process, we found the mountains soothing to our inner nature. It gave us both a feeling like we had come home, even though neither of us had ever lived in the mountains.
One area, in particular, beckoned to us, but we heard from everyone we talked to that it was a resort and retirement community and far too expensive an area to settle in. Still, we couldn’t get it out of our minds. We each sat with it, meditating and praying. A few months later, upon returning from a spiritual retreat in Alabama, I swung out of my way to drive through the area once more.
Within less then 30-minutes of returning to our “favorite spot” I discovered the perfect house for sale. On further investigation, we found that since the home had a lower level apartment which could be rented at seasonal rates, we could live exactly where we wanted to in a larger home for significantly less money. It even had not one but two decks. Such synchronicity seems to run hand-in-hand with the mindfulness that Burch speaks about. The inner knowing becomes clearer as one becomes more focused in life.
Another aspect of the inner journey of simplicity is the willingness to simplify mentally, emotionally and spiritually — to let go of old ways of thinking that no longer serve you, old emotional wounds of regret, jealousy, and resentments. As Birch points out it also means for many of us, letting go of what we think we know about God. “I had to let go of huge hunks of stuff that I was taught in the name of religion,” says Birch who was raised as a Roman Catholic.
Over the years I have come to realize as I simplify my outer world, that my inner world deserves equal time. A simpler life provides this time to focus, to stop, breath, and reflect on what needs to be released as well as examine what is really important. Whether this is done in a quiet mountain setting, at the local coffee house, or privately in one’s home, the opportunity to reflect upon one’s life is an important one. When one takes the time to do this, one of the things they realize is that there is a close relationship between simplicity and spiritual growth. Often, it is also a part that terrifies many people.
“What happens if I turn off the TV and there’s silence, then what?” asks Burch. “That idea is so anxiety-provoking that usually we keep the TV on, or go to the beach, or get a new car, or stay busy and in motion? But if I turn off the TV and it’s quiet then what do I do? Where will I point my mind and what will I do with my will? The spiritual writers tell us that if you will stay with that, stay in that quiet, in fact, enter it more deeply, and you move beyond the feeling anxious and be in the silence and emptiness of that moment, then grace and God be willing, you will know God a little more.”
Ernest Callenbach, the author of Living Cheaply with Style and the classic, Ecotopia, says it more bluntly. “I don’t think it’s possible to live a rich spiritual life if you are very concerned with buying and selling as the main thing about your life. Leading a reflective life requires you to detach from a lot of petty, passing human concerns, and consumerism is about the most petty and passing human concern that we’re exposed to.
“To my knowledge, all known religions, including Christianity, recommends, not austerity, but simplicity as a spiritual discipline,” continues Callenbach. As it says in the Bible, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
“I think we can translate that pretty directly into modern terms. If you are caught up in the consumer economy to the extent that it impoverishes the rest of your spiritual being, you certainly aren’t going to obtain any kind of enlightenment.”
If however, one uses the practice of simplicity to free up some time, then uses that time to deepen spiritually and emotionally, it tends to motivate the person to simplify further which leads to more free time. For some, this newly found “free time” may lead to a renewed level of creativity; for others, the time may be spent more introspectively in meditation or other spiritual practices; still, others may find their time spent in service of their fellow human beings. “You’ll find what your time is for once you start to have it,” observes Vicki Robins.
SIMPLE LIVING AND GAIA
Many of the people who choose to live a simpler lifestyle, do so, at least in part, because it allows them to walk gentler upon the face of Mother Earth. According to the Yearning for Balance study, environmental sustainability is an important question for many Americans, with 86% of the survey respondents saying they are concerned with the quality of the environment, and 93% of them admitting that an underlying cause of environmental problems is that “the way we live produces too much waste.”
“The level of consumption that we identify with success is utterly unsustainable,” says John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America and the forthcoming Reclaiming Our Health: Exploding the Medical Myth and Embracing the Source of True Healing (H.J. Kramer). “We’re gobbling up the world.” Many Americans are still coming to grip with the fact that the world’s resource base is limited. More and more, living simply is not only a good idea, but it is also becoming paramount to our survival. “Prosperity based on pollution is not prosperity,” continues Robbins. “It’s short term profit, long term disaster.”
Robbins, the heir-apparent to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream fortune until he walked away from it at the age of twenty-one, has an interesting perspective on the affluent lifestyle so long held as the American Dream. “I had the privilege of growing up in a very wealthy family. Among my parents’ friends were some of the wealthiest people in the world, and, I must tell you in all honesty, they were also some of the most neurotic people in the world. So I’ve had the opportunity to learn first hand that acquiring things can be a total distraction. What we’ve done in our society is to make greed into a lifestyle; we’ve almost made it into a religion.”
In his book, Living Cheaply with Style, Callenbach points out that, as with other aspects of simple living, leading an ecologically responsible life doesn’t mean self-sacrifice or austerity. It does, in fact, result in a richer, fuller, longer and healthier life. One way to understand this is to consider what Callenbach calls the Green Triangle. The three points of the triangle are environment, health and saving money, with the basic connecting principle being, “Anytime you do something beneficial for one of them, you will almost inevitably also do something beneficial for the other two — whether you’re aiming to or not.”
Callenbach claims this principle holds true 96–98 percent of the time. He cites as an example, people’s diet. The American culture is obsessed right now with eating less fat in their diet. Interestingly enough, “eating a lower-fat diet also saves you, sometimes astonishing amounts of money,” says Callenbach, “and of course, it’s also good for the Earth since raising cattle is ecologically destructive.”
Dick and Jeanne Roy are two people who have not only promised to tread lightly on the earth but are also teaching thousands of others how to do the same through their nonprofit organization, the Northwest Earth Institute (NWEI) in Portland Oregon. For over 20 years, the Roys have held true to their promise, despite their six-figure income from Dick’s job as managing partner of one the largest law firms in the Northwest, a position he retired from in 1993 to work full time as a volunteer at the Institute.
NWEI offers three discussion courses in workplaces, churches, and schools; Deep Ecology and Related Topics, Voluntary Simplicity, and The Bioregional Perspective — Discovering Your Natural Community. Says Roy about the Voluntary Simplicity course, “Once you’ve gone through the course, it’s hard to live in denial. Fundamentally, people find that simplicity is taking control and through simplicity, you enrich your life. It’s hard not to come to that conclusion.”
Unfortunately, according to the Yearning for Balance study, although Americans realize something must be done, many are “waiting for somebody else to act first: their neighbors, big corporations, or the government.” Others feel that technology will be our environmental savior. As one participant of the study said, “technology will make your life easier and cheaper and environmentally …safer…as it develops. I don’t think simplifying your life is going to do one bit.”
If such thinking persists in our culture, we may be in for a rude awakening within the not-too-distant future. “Probably in the 2020’s we, as a planet, are going to hit an ecological wall,” predicts Duane Elgin, author of The Awakening Earth: Exploring the Evolution of Human Culture and Consciousness, and his 1983 book, Voluntary Simplicity, which is considered a classic by many people pursuing a simpler life. Elgin has chosen to take an “earn as you go” approach to simple living, rather than build up a nestegg and living off the interest. “I don’t think there is going to be some magical transformation within the year 2000. There might be a TV special, but that’s about it. If we have not prepared for this, in terms of evolving our culture and consciousness, and in terms of creating tools of mass communication so we can talk our way through it, we’re going to descend into resource wars, massive civil unrest, and a huge die-off of people on the planet. The combination of the ecological adversity and the psychological and political problems could send us into an evolutionary detour.”
THE NEXT MILLENNIUM: GLOBAL COMMUNITY OR THE NEXT DARK AGE?
In November 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists met in Washington DC where 1600 of the senior scientists, including a majority of the living Nobel Laureates, endorsed a statement entitled, “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.” It stated: “A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.”
These are decisive, pivotal times for the evolution of humankind, points out Elgin who, after twenty-five years of studying the situation, says, “I’m not all that heartened by the swift mobilization of the body-politic to respond to all this. I think we’re sitting on our hands, for the most part.”
But humanity’s future has not yet been engraved in stone. We still have time to make the difficult decisions that lay before us. Necessity is, after all the mother of invention. Although our future is uncertain, we need not be paralyzed by despair. Interestingly enough, arising with the challenges we face are the solutions, both in technology and in consciousness.
Building a sustainable future is well within our grasps if we are willing to take the steps necessary. In The Awakening Earth, Elgin says two of our priorities which will need to be addressed are: breaking the cultural hypnosis of consumerism and developing and maintaining ecological ways of living. But perhaps our most important priority is the creation of “compelling visions of a sustainable future. We cannot consciously build a future that we have not imagined,” writes Elgin. “Many people can visualize a future of worsening crisis — ecological destruction, famines, civil unrest, and material limitations — but few have a positive vision of the future. Without a hopeful future to work toward, people will tend to withdraw into a protected world for themselves and focus on the short run.”
Our destiny has never been more in our hands. If we live in a complex world, it is one of our own design. Perhaps it is time to create a new vision of a sustainable, simpler, more spiritually directed world — one based on our mutually shared intrinsic values rather than one based on the value of a dollar.
I believe the Universe is on our side, deeply committed to our success while at the same time completely unattached to the outcome. We each have the opportunity to choose, moment by moment, what kind of world we bring forth. Perhaps we will find after so many years of running so hard just to stay in the same place, that there really isn’t anywhere to get to. It could be that in slowing down we’ll find that we’ve been living in the land of plenty all along. Now, it’s time to start taking care of it.
W. Bradford Swift has enjoyed a combo career as a writer and life coach for over thirty years and now coaches aspiring authors to write that someday, one day book TODAY. http://wbradfordswift.com/writing-coach/
