Remembering

#ammaprema

How can one be a balm to one's own soul and a balm to others in the face of a rising fascism?
How can one have faith that even this horrific time will ultimately be for the good?
I look to my heart which is breaking.
I remember the sea creatures who have swum in so much smelly pollution for so long,
I remember the earth that so needs us to take care of it.
I stand firm in a conviction that one has to say no to bullying and to cruelty,
say no to ignorance and say yes to education, free speech and freedom.
One has to look after the poor, the old, the young and the disabled to enable them to have their own voices and their own aspirations and achievements.
In the current world one cannot ignore the fact that people need money to survive and to eat and to have shelter.
One has to stand firm to retain those rights,
We have to work together and continue to remember that our power to vision and share is a fundamental right.
As vision is clouded we can remember the sun and use all our collective wisdom to blow away the clouds of ignorance and illusion.

On a Return to Social Working

Having just started working in a Social Services office-"Childrens Social Care"; I am amazed to find how dominated our services have become by computer systems.

Social Work used to be about the art of relationship.

Using the relationships we made with people living in chaos, we gently or sometimes firmly helped them to clear their chaos and look after their children better.

Now instead of putting the client first, "service users" have to fit into the needs of the computer system-"Protocol", for information that fits its boxes and timescales.

Instead of giving people the time they need , every second is accounted for by some nameless machine that measures information clocking it into an archive that people rarely read because the interface is so un-user friendly.

Yes it is easy to find what was done and when. Yes it is easy to find who is related to who. Yes it is easy to find a very bad assessment of need done too quickly by stressed staff with too much to do. Yes it is easy for distant managers to easily get numbers statistics for uninformed politicians.

But how does this really help children?

How does it really help parents?

How is the quality of service improved or even monitored by this soulless process that sees stressed skilled people,sitting endlessly in front of computer screens instead of making face to face contact with people?

Is it any wonder that so many "service users" turn away from such a service and deny access or just very successfully avoid interference by such a machine in their lives?

Has the Nanny state just become a rather mad OCD "Big brother".

Who are the geeks that we have allowed to take over our services?

Is this not replicated in all areas of government, health services and social care?

Why have we let this happen?

How do we end it?

Some just suggest non conforming to this computerised world, sabotage through lack of data entry,breaking its rules,-but how does that help anyone? How do we bring back human interaction into our services and let go of the dominance of computerised everything?

I love computers but not that much that I want to support the takeover of the world by them.

Its a HUGELY Costly waste of valuable time when we could be talking to people, caring and sharing.

How do we change this dreadful machine?

How

A Community of Love

A Vision

Hearts desire
Living together in Peacefulness
Open to help each other and to share
A lotus meditation hall
Held in the sacred space of Love.

A living Yoga community
living the teaching of the Sutras,
the blessings of Sri Guru Dev Satchidananda,

Separate living Pods
With communal space and gardens
Opportunities for different levels of committment
Regular community meetings
but with designated roles by two yearly elections
so some decisions happen quickly

Ecological buildings
Non violent living
Harmony with the land
and with the animals.


How to start?
Bring people together to discuss and to grow
Bring heart to the community that gathers with a puja/ meditation time
Vision together
Spend time together.
Build the vision.......

Love and Blessings
Ammaprema