True Prosperity

(Transcribed from a talk by Vivian Dittmar at the Global Ecovillage Network conference in July 2023.)

There are five elements to prosperity.

The first is Prosperity of time. Yet what could be more sacrilege in our current system than waste time? Whenever you feel like rebelling, stop.

The more I slow down, the bigger my impact. Rushing doesn’t work. What works is slowing down and connecting, then we’re attuned to what the ancient Greeks call Kairos, the God of the opportune moment. “Now is the moment to do this, now the moment to do that”. You will reconnect to the natural rhythms. You will become part of the change you wish to see in the world.
We are taught that to have an impact you have to work hard, not sleep.
Give thanks to prosperity of time in your life.
Acknowledge the courage it takes to appreciate it.
Take a moment to acknowledge the miracle that this moment is always available to us. 

The second dimension to prosperity is prosperity of relationships.
It has decreased in our societies, especially with great economic disparity.
We have become increasingly lonely. Powerful dynamics create this loneliness. It’s important to re-awaken relationships, community. We created a system that says we don’t need each other, a system that says it takes care of everything – medical issues, unemployment, retirement, insurances. It created an illusion that we don’t need each other. This is a myth. We can’t soothe our need for support, community, for being held by each other with an anonymous system. We need to learn again how to connect with each other in a profound way.
Our independence has given us the freedom to leave relationships that are toxic. That’s fantastic. But it becomes very easy to just kick people out. So we show less and less of ourselves, we show less and less vulnerability.
Prosperity relationships goes way beyond being popular or knowing lots of people. How many people will be there for you in your life? For how many people will you be that person?

The third dimension is prosperity of creativity. 
It means you spend a lot of your life in a state of flow. You develop your talents regardless of their monetary value, and you share them with the world. It is continuously crushed in our society because we always evaluate how it can be converted to money. We have a culture where millions of people listen to one person. We created this illusion that we don’t need other people’s talent. Hitting a button and hearing an artist is a completely different process from me singing or listening to someone else singing. We need all creativity and everyone’s talent.

Acknowledge the courage it takes to show up.

Feel gratitude for when you do things in a state of flow, whatever it is.

Time, relationship and creativity are connected. We need relationship and creativity to enjoy time. We need time to enjoy relationship and creativity.

Inside the triangle: there’s prosperity of spirituality. It is one of the most challenging to put words to. Yet in every traditional culture it will be in the centre and cultivated actively. Inner connection to the Mystery, the miracle, the wonder of this life. We need Ritual and Practice to cultivate this Wow connection. We need to cultivate it to return to sanity. Without it we lose our sanity.

The final one is ecological prosperity. You might ask “could that be the economy?” It is a complete illusion. Like all other species, we are contained within the ecosystem. It is an illusion that the economy is a mysterious magical thing that is separate from the ecosystem.
Everything is about re-connecting: to ourselves, to our talents, to others. We also need to re-connect to all beings on the planet, build relationships that are respectful, sustainable, and acknowledge the needs of everything.
It is one of the most painful dimensions for me. It has been so violated by us. Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects acknowledges that pain. Some laugh at it, dismiss it as “Weltschmerz” and ask “do you have nothing better to do than wallow in pain?”

What is challenging is that we’re all born in the industrial age. We don’t know how to live outside of the bubble of the industrial system. There are limits to changing the system on our own. Ecovillages are places to explore this, they are laboratories, innovative hubs, at the cutting edge of research. But even with an ecovillage there are limits to what can be done.

These five elements of Prosperity give a language to talk with people who don’t understand what this is all about.