18 Feb 2014
Your ‘Step Up’ moments: No.8: Mihai Abagief
Looking back now, it feels that I have been Transitioning since I know myself. As it happened with many people in Transition movement, for me it started with increasing a sense of objective investigation of the inner and outer world. I come from a background of Buddhist meditative practice, which itself at some moment started to seek for expression in the outer world, to balance the inner and the outer environment. Also this and an inner bias towards helping people, put together with a predisposition toward Nature as source and a solution.
For some years I did some volunteer work in a few ecological NGOs in Romania, but none felt like it was home. Time and books read passed and what I remember as a important moment, like entering on a new path in life, was reading Daniel Quinn’s Ishamel, followed by Derrick Jensen, Thoreau or Charles Eisenstein. And when I first learned about permaculture, that was like a Big Bang, from that moment things have started to connect fast and Transition Towns movement was just around the corner.
In a way, I saw a need of the moment which Transition seemed to fulfill both in my personal life as well of the people around me, like finding something that was so obvious and made so much sense, but never knew it existed so well defined. Thus perception determines action and I acted upon it, nothing more and since then a lot of my life has been revolving around growing Transition movement in Romania.
As I perceived them in my inner mechanics, Permaculture and its social friend Transition Towns, are the very potent tools for social change. It is the way I describe it to friends, a balanced blend between a logical reasoning of the material world in the topics such as energy, peak oil, natural, human or economic environment, and the Heart sense, due to its connection to Deep Ecology/Permaculture, as it goes towards the Inner Transition that each person needs in one way or another. A good mix of common sense.
As everything in nature, all is in constant change. I get inspiration and energy from the perfection of nature, from the people I meet, from the future that awaits us, in the clarity of the clarity and the sense of doing the right thing and many times from the silence of the moment found in meditation.
Now things are moving in a rapid pace with projects, events, connections, tasks and deadlines always awaiting to be done. Thus the biggest challenge is to balance inner and outer life, family vs Transition vs. day-to-day job. However, experimenting with life as it is a Transitioner is quite fun. What I do gives me a good sense in life and only rare I imagine doing something else.
