Waldorf News

“Young people are, by nature, Anthroposophists”: Orland Bishop

Orland Bishop is the founder and director of ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles, where he has pioneered approaches to urban truces and mentoring at-risk youth that combine new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge. ShadeTree serves as an intentional community of mentors, elders, teachers, artists, healers and advocates for the healthy development of children and youth. Orland’s work in healing and human development is framed by an extensive study of medicine, naturopathy, psychology and indigenous cosmologies, primarily those of South and West Africa. Walter Siegfried Hahn from info-3 spoke with Bishop on his way to a conference in the Phillipines.

You grew up in British Guyana and came to the US when you were thirteen. What was life like in Guyana?

My father was an engineer and my mother was a housewife. She was, in fact, a “social entrepreneur”. She had developed an unusual form of economic life with some of the other women. Every week, each of the members of the group made a pre-determined contribution and one of the women then received the entire amount. There were about five or ten women involved at any time. This is only one example of how she was interested in new social forms and community.

I take it that what you experienced as a child from your mother came back to you when you had grown up?

She was involved with every possible way of working with people that I can think of, especially giving, which for me is the key to solving today’s problems. She had the gift to be able to share everything that she had and always be richer. We didn’t have much money, but we had a social context where whatever there was, was shared. There were seven kids in my family and there was always room for more, whether friends or relatives. If someone didn’t have something, she went to a neighbor. It was a living economy of exchange, lending and giving.

Looking at what you do today, what would you say is your main field of work?

The most important thing is community building. How do you help someone find healthy relationships and community? Contained in that are two aspects of health, a social and an individual aspect and they work on physical, mental and spiritual levels. Health is the basis to finding purpose in life and making that purpose visible through creative work. Health, that’s my central field of work.

How did you come to that?

It was through a friend’s health crisis and I felt the call to help. How can a person become healthy? I think that my primary activity is healing.

Healing people, so that they can become an integral part of community?

Exactly.

You do your work within the ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation. Can you tell us about it?

The ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation was founded in 1995 by myself and a group of friends with the goal of helping young people. We were already involved with work like this. We were never “organized” with an office and all the trappings of a social work enterprise. It was a matter of a voluntary coming-together. Later, we started the foundation because there are people that wanted to support us in this work.

And how did it work? Financially, for instance?

Each one of us had a job and a career. Alongside of that we started this work together. It was completely integrated into our lives. The first people that we took care of couldn’t have lived without us.

How did they come to you?

It was just how I grew up and this was part of my surroundings. There was no “organization” that took care of things. The community took care of itself and that meant, that you shared what you had. If someone didn’t have a roof over his head, then he stayed with us. That’s why these people weren’t “clients” and for us this wasn’t “work”. We developed a relationship.

And how did it begin with spirituality in your life?

My earliest recollection of an impulse to take care of other people was when I was five or six years old. I began to notice what a person really needs and I started a daily practice to spend two hours in contemplation before I went to school.

You started that when you were five years old? What was that like?

I remember something from school. In Guyana the children are sent to school at a very young age. The teacher was trying to tell me something, but something was distracting me. When I gave her my attention, I noticed that she was debating with herself whether to punish me for my lack of attention.

Oh!

I observed the whole process and asked myself why she should do something that her heart didn’t want. At that moment I resolved to never go against my heart. It was as though I woke up and knew how to make sure that nothing should enter my consciousness against my wishes. I knew that I couldn’t trust this environment, so I started getting up two hours earlier every day to meditate. I wanted this space to observe what is real within myself. . .

There is nothing that cannot be saved through the right conversation. “With whom do you need to speak in order for your story to become true?” That is the question of our time.

(Orland Bishop continues with questions about his meditative practices which he started at the age of five.)

Did you have a particular position?

It was all the same. I sat on a chair or stood at the window.

What did you observe?

I observed processes and “pictures”. I made pictures for people’s problems. I created a picture of their conflicts and their challenges.

How did you feel your way into these pictures?

It was more a feeling from the heart, in stillness. How do I have to be, in order to participate in this particular reality? What do I need to know? I observed their conflicts and made a picture from that. I considered what it would it be like for me in that situation and I worked through possible decisions

Do you create a kind of inner etheric reality which you then enter into?

Exactly. I realized that it was possible for me to enter intuitively into quite complex events which people are wrapped up in and to show them a way forward.

When do you carry out your practice? When you do something for a long time, it gradually becomes part of your whole life. Do you experience consciousness when you are asleep?

Often more than I would prefer. Sleeping is an extension of a certain kind of questioning. I am constantly occupied with some question or other. In general I feel restored by sleep, but during sleep I’m quite conscious of the goals that I’m pursuing. In sleep I experience a higher form of communication with spiritual beings. The process of coming to understand something can take hours of ongoing dialog, backwards and forwards, clarifying, asking more questions.

You are intensively involved with Anthroposophy at the moment. What is the significance of Anthroposophy for you?

For me, Anthroposophy is a path to the supersensible. It contains our memory. It reminds us how to recreate our connection with the highest planes of reality. It gives us a process whereby we can take steps to participate in higher reality and discover the highest levels of human potential. It allows us to discover the fundamental spiritual nature of the human being.

I think that in the course of our biography and in the evolution of consciousness, we are given intuitive leadership that takes us to the threshold of initiation. At different times in the development of humanity, there have been representatives who have articulated the nature of this belonging. I think that Steiner’s contribution is exemplary for Western people.

My connection to Anthroposophy has arisen through people who take it up as a way of life and also as a kind of service for those who cannot live in this way. For my work, this second point is crucial: To help people who are not yet capable of entering higher states of consciousness. I work with agreements which have their home in this realm which these people are not yet conscious of.

Where do you get the energy from to do your work? What does your spiritual substance consist of?

Anthroposophy is something we apply in everyday life. If it cannot be applied to daily living, then something is wrong, or at least does not match the intention with which Anthroposophy was brought. When I speak of the everyday, I mean that we shouldn’t separate ourselves from the time in which we are living, from the culture in which we are living, or the problems which exist today. We should work on healing and transforming from within.

If a conversation is sufficiently intense, even with those who lack philosophical, religious, or scientific education, then this conversation will become scientific, religious, and philosophical, because this is the nature of conversation. Conversation follows certain laws. In conversation I am nourished. In our work we find sense and meaning and it is this sense that carries within itself the potential for something higher.

Are there people that you exchange scientific or meditative ideas with?

My contact with Anthroposophical groups is connected with social dynamics and youth and I believe that, to a certain extent, young people everywhere bear an Anthroposophical impulse to renew our culture. Anthroposophy looks directly at how to do things and the ultimate potential. Young people, whether they know it or not, are by nature, Anthroposophists.

Young people have a talent for looking at society through a certain lens. This leads to us having to be honest. They know how to make the contradictions in which we live become transparent and there is no science and no philosophy which can be more truthful than young people.

How do you as an American regard your President Obama?

Obama stands for ideals for which we have worked for a long time. He stands for the American dream. Los Angeles is closely connected with this dream. A lot of the work to overcome apartheid was done from LA.

Many Americans claim that even Obama is just another puppet of powermongers. Critics point out that he’s revived nuclear power after decades, Guantanomo is still open, and tens of thousands of troops are still being sent to Afghanistan. The question is, is he simply more likeable than Bush?

He has changed many things, particularly our ideas of who can live in the White House. Race is a huge topic in America. Obama stands for an America that could be, an America for everyone. He also stands for the shadow, since America has projected its own shadow onto the black people for a long time. Through him, this shadow is being healed, or at least beginning to be healed. He can’t repair everything, but at least it’s a start in making visible the hidden aspects of America.

This president believes in democracy. It’s very meaningful to me when I receive an email from the president of the US. Even if it isn’t personal, I take it personally, because this is the first time a president has seized this opportunity. That is Obama. He gives one a feeling of belonging. On Election Day, peace reigned in one of LA’s most violent neighborhoods. You could talk to everybody. The veil was lifted and hope reigned, if only for a day.

At the same time, it’s not just about Obama. This togetherness affects the whole world. Obama is in many ways a successor to Abraham Lincoln, who longed for this day. For Lincoln, the issue was not merely the freeing of slaves, but the freeing of all mankind. Obama took this idea into his presidency. It may have taken two hundred years, one small step at a time, and we too have to make our own small steps.

These small steps are part of the continual process of change.

“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” -Nelson Henderson