We do not choose to breathe.
We have each been naturally and effortlessly breathing since we came out of our mother's womb. We do not choose to breath. In this book and while we are reading, Terry Mollner invites us to study our experience of breathing. We discover it is the universe that is doing our breathing. This has us also realize that the universe is an indivisible whole or it would not be able to do our breathing. We also discover this is the accurate fundamental fact about our human lives. He then guides us into understanding that we are not born with the skill of self-consciousness. Like riding a bicycle, it is a skill we can learn. Also like riding a bicycle, there are smaller skills that build on one another and at maturity integrate into the mature skill. The only thing that keeps us from self-consciously enjoying the fact that the universe is an indivisible whole is that we have not mastered the smaller skills of all seven layers of maturity of the skill of self-consciousness. He describes them and points out that we already know the rst three because they are common knowledge. We learn them as we mature during childhood. However, the fourth one is the discovery when we are teens that we have the ability and right of individual free choice. This means that to learn the last three we must self-elder ourselves into the mastery of them as the result of free choice. The focus of this book is on how to do that. It can be accomplished by our twenties. When we have mastered all seven smaller skills of the skill of self-consciousness, we can know the experience of what is often labeled "enlightenment." However, there is only one relationship activity that sustains this experience as the context of everything else we are experiencing: eldering. It is each moment giving priority with what is right in front of us to what we each judge to be our best relationship action for the maturation of the universe. We are going somewhere. Not primarily in the mutually agreed upon illusion tool of separate parts that allow us to create human languages and in turn become self-conscious. We are going somewhere in the reality of the oneness of nature. It is self-evident that the universe is maturing. For human beings, it is primarily building accurate knowledge on top of accurate knowledge. Maturation as the fundamental process in nature is particularly obvious by its evolution through us into simultaneously having the skill of self-consciousness in billions of locations. Now we each have to master the last of the seven layers of the skill of self-consciousness we still may not know to enjoy eldering the rest of our lives.
About the Author: Terry Mollner was one of the earliest pioneers of socially responsible and community investing. A founder of the Institute for Community Economics, he guided fifteen leaders from around the country in the writing of one of the first set of social screens for investing. With Wayne Silby those screens were used to establish the Calvert Family of Socially Responsible Mutual Funds. The team at ICE was also the creators of one of the first "community development financial institutes." It made loans to low income housing projects, social and cooperative enterprises in low income communities, and microloan programs. This led to Dr. Mollner taking the lead to create the Calvert Foundation to raise capital from investors to fund this industry. Dr. Mollner continues to serve on the board of the Calvert Foundation and is now on the Calvert Advisory Board of the Funds. In 2000 he stepped up to assist Ben & Jerry's in its need to be bought by a multinational to deal with its distribution requirements as it was becoming a global brand. As part of its purchase by Unilever, he and the board arranged for a contract that allowed Ben & Jerry's to continue to operate as an independent company, and obligated Unilever to allow it to continue to spend the same percentage of its annual budget on social activism. Ben & Jerry's is the only socially responsible company from the last half of the 20th century bought by a multinational to sign such a contract. Terry has been on its board since its purchase in 2000. Dr. Mollner is also the founder and chair of Stakeholders Capital a socially responsible asset management firm. Since 1973 he has been the founder and executive director of Trusteeship Institute. Its current projects are the creation of Trusts for All Children, Inc., and Haiti Orphanage Sponsorship Trust consistently fund an orphanage in Haiti with thirty-five children in it. He is also the author of The Love Skill: We Are Each Mastering the 7 Layers of Human Maturity, Common Good Capitalism is Inevitable, and Agreement Nations: Eventually We Will All Be Citizens of Two Nations, a Geographic Nation and an Agreement Nation and two books and many articles on the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque Region of northern Spain. As part of his experiments to learn more about re-villaging our lives in a modern context, he is one of the founders of three intentional communities that continue to exist: Spanish House, Hearthstone Village, and Friends and Lovers Community.