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About CHITTAUM
CHITTAUM is a community of individuals—from all walks of life—who share their care for life.
CHITTAUM Community members reflect on our conditioning and conditions, then suggest actions to help ourselves, our fellow beings, and our environment. In the ACTION Circles|Forum we discuss which actions to elect to integrate into our daily lives. The CHITTAUM Community is a Take Action! community—we weave our new understanding into our way of being.
Chittaum is an Anishinaabe[2] word meaning “retracing one’s steps.” During one of my visits to Island Lake, Manitoba, Canada, I asked Sokopun, an Anishinaabe healer, to suggest a name for an intended community. Sokopun in consultation with his father suggested “Chittaum—Retracing one’s steps.”
Chittaum also amalgamates the Sanskrit Chitta and AUM.
CHITTA is the field of consciousness in which all actions of the present, memories of the past, and visions of the future take place.”
AUM is the presence of creativity in and around you. Also understood as the energy of creation and dissolution of the manifest universe and the eternal, absolute, immutable, transcendent knowledge.
The name CHITTAUM, although meaningful, is not that important. The wholesome actions taken by the individual CHITTAUM Community member is the inspiration and purpose of this website, the CHITTAUM Community, and its ACTION Circles.
Retracing our steps
The universe appears incomprehensible. It’s observable matter spreads over a space at least 93 billion light years across and it is possibly infinite in volume. Our planet Earth is home to millions of species, including humans. (Wikipedia)
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
My understanding of our being in the universe is minimal and naturally subjective—one of a possible 6,707,000,000 views! Since I was not born a virtuoso in harmonious participation in life I do not know what’s best—that is claimed by the “Gurus.”
“Guru” is a metaphor for anyone who manipulates others under the guise of “knowing what’s best” for them, whether leaders, mothers, or lovers. (Kramer & Alstad, 1993, p. 0)
Even though I do not know what’s best, I still try to understand how to live a “good” life. I created this website because I wanted to reflect some experiences and concerns about our way of being and becoming—and to create a forum for your suggestions on how to effectively improve our conditioning and conditions.
Thousands of years ago it was suggested there are unwholesome and wholesome ways of living on this earth.
I wanted to reflect on what hinders and what promotes well-being. Of course one could avoid the division of unwholesome and wholesome altogether by embracing the cosmos joyfully—Love what is! All is at it should be! There is no right Go(o)d and wrong (D)evil only right and left and they are the same, for they differ only because of our limited view from our relative perspective.
I also considered the popular view that one should abandon one’s search for truth by realizing that all truth is a matter of opinion, and what is wholesome or unwholesome is relative. I might believe that being a vegetarian is wholesome—good luck trying to convince an Inuit. My understanding may be minimal and subjective but that popular view is not satisfactory—since I want to explore and share my opinions and assess the impact of my behaviour.
Given our present painful and urgent human condition I cannot “Love What Is” but I realize that I can be loving toward what is and with understanding transform and transcend what is.
I believe there are many right answers—for the better of all—and that we do have the Response-Ability to find them.
We are forever being told that we should learn from our mistakes, but how can we learn unless we first admit that we made any? To do that we have to recognize the siren song of self-justification…how it exacerbates prejudice and corruption, distorts memory, turns professional confidence into arrogance, creates and perpetuates injustice, warps love, and generates feuds and rifts.
The good news is that by understanding how this mechanism works, we can defeat the wiring. (Tavris & Aronson, 2007, p. 10)
What is the CHITTAUM Community members’ orientation towards mistakes, conflicts, and being right and wrong?
Please continue with the Right and Wrong topic.
