E.C.C.O. is an acronym which stands for the words Earth Coincidence Control Office.

The name comes from a book titled Dyadic Cyclone written by John and Antonietta Lilly.

“I was a Prada-suit motherfucker. I was running a limousine company. But when the last financial crisis hit, I lost all my lines of credit and the whole thing came apart. I felt too old to start again. My wife would come home from work and find me still in my pajamas, reading magazines and newspapers. This was in August—when school really starts to crank up.

I kept seeing these articles about underfunded schools: no art, no gym, no music. My kids went to private school, so these conditions were hard for me to imagine. It seemed sensational.

So one morning I got on the subway and took it to 135th street in Harlem. I couldn’t have been more arrogant. I walked through the doors of the first elementary school I could find, asked for the principal, and said: ‘I’m here to try to break the cycle of poverty.’

She assigned me to the lunchroom, and that’s where I started volunteering five days a week. I was just going from table to table, talking to the kids. But they gravitated toward me. They listened to me. They called me ‘Mr. Tony.’ At home I was just ‘Dad.’ I was kinda a dick. I was old news. But Mr. Tony was bigger than Barack Obama. These kids loved the shit out of me.

I had nothing to give, nothing to promise. But they acted like I was Santa Claus. Each one of them reminded me of my own kids. It was the exact same goofiness. So when I learned that almost half of them were living in homeless shelters, that shit drove me crazy. It tore me up.

I was looking for some way to help-- anything. Across the street from the school was an old community garden that had been abandoned. It was full of junk: car over here, engine over there. The kids called it the ‘haunted garden,’ cause it was nothing but cats, rats, and scary old people.

So I contacted the Parks Department. I did the paperwork. I got the license and the key. Then I started hauling out the junk, one piece at a time. It took me six weeks. The kids kept asking me what I was planning to do, but I had no idea.

Then one morning a little girl tugged on my shoulder. A tiny little thing with glasses so big. Her name was Nevaeh. ‘Heaven’ spelled backwards. And she said, "Mr. Tony, why don’t we plant something?"

I knew nothing about gardening. But I knew how to google. So I looked up some easy stuff to plant. Turns out it’s hard to mess up herbs. So I went to the clearance rack at Home Depot and got some herbs. All of the soil was contaminated, so I backed up a dump truck full of organic soil. Nevaeh’s kindergarten class came out and planted the first seedlings.

There wasn’t much structure in the beginning. A lot of times I’d just sit around with the kids and look at clouds. But over time the garden became a sort of outdoor science classroom. All of us were learning together. If something died, we’d just try a new spot. We learned about worms, and lady bugs, and praying mantises. Then we learned about food systems.

I couldn’t help but notice the diets of these kids: all sugar and processed food. Some of them couldn’t name a single vegetable. But how could you blame them? There are 55 fast food restaurants in this community, but not a single supermarket. So we started growing vegetables in our garden.

Not all of the kids were into it. But in every class there would be two or three— who were always around, and involved. Nevaeh was one of those kids.

She came to all the camps. She came on the nature walks. She just stuck to me.

At first her mother was skeptical, but she could see the consistency. And soon she was bringing Nevaeh to work with me in the garden on weekends.

In the beginning Nevaeh was sorta quiet, and off to the side. But over time she took ownership of the garden. Those became her plants, not mine. Whenever volunteers came to help with composting-- Nevaeh would take the lead. And if you were doing it wrong, she’d grab that rake right out of your hands.

Ten years have passed since we planted that first garden. And Harlem Grown has expanded to 12 different urban farms. 6,000 pounds of organically grown products have been given to the community free of charge. But the plants are just a byproduct. We’re trying to grow healthy children. But not just children. All of us are learning together. Today our most important employee is Nevaeh’s mom. She’s learned more about gardening than any of us. And she’s the Agricultural Director of all our farms.

When you sit in this garden on a summer day—you hear things. There are fourteen homeless shelters within a four-block radius. So when it’s hot outside, and the windows are open, you can hear the stress of poverty. Sometimes mothers will yell at these kids like they’re grown men. They’ll call them names. They’ll tell them: ‘you can’t,’ and ‘you won’t.’ After awhile the kids start to believe it.

When they first come into this garden— they’re so freakin’ happy. Especially the really young ones. But at the end of the day, they’ll say: "I’m going home." And home means the public children's shelter.

It’s an epidemic, man. 115,000 kids in this city are living in shelters. It’s a freakin’ epidemic. But it’s invisible. You’d never know these kids are homeless, because they’re so happy. But something happens around 9, 10, 11 years of age. I see it all the time. Those eyes dim. It’s their life. There’s too much stress around here. And they grow up fast. They lose that light.

I just want to slow it down, that’s all. I want them to have a safe place where they can just be themselves. That’s all any of us want, right? To slow it all down so we can find out who we are?

I was such an arrogant motherfucker when I first came here. I was unhealthy. I was 52 pounds heavier. I was depressed. My entire life was about things and money. I was doing it all wrong. Yet I came to this school thinking I knew all the answers. I thought I was going to fix these kids. But they were so fucking happy, and I wasn’t. They didn’t need to become like me. They needed to stay like them.

It hurts my heart to say, because it means I’m getting old - but Nevaeh is all grown up now. She’s sixteen. Straight A student. Honor roll up and down. I still do my best to help her whenever I can. Recently she had a C in math, so I said: ‘Let’s find you a private tutor, I’ll pay for it.’ But she wouldn’t let me. She grabbed the rake out of my hand. She said: ‘No Mr. Tony, I got this myself.’ And she got a 93 on that final test. She was the tiniest little thing when I met her. With glasses so big. But even back then she had everything she needed. It just required a little protection. And a little time. She just needed some space to grow.”

From Humans Of New York

In one's life there can be peculiarly appropriate chains of related events that lead to consequences that are strongly desired. After such experiences, one wonders how such a series of events developed. Sometimes there is a strong feeling that some intelligence (greater than ours) directed the course along certain lines which It/He/She was/is programming. Several years ago, I enunciated a format for such concatenations of events. It goes like this:

There exists a Cosmic Control Center (C.C.C.) with a Galactic substation called Galactic Coincidence Control (G.C.C.). Within this is the Solar System Control Unit (S.S.C.U.), within which is the Earth Coincidence Control Office (E.C.C.O.). The assignments of responsiblities from the top to the bottom of this system of control abides by a set of regulations, which are translated by E.C.C.O. for humans somewhat as follows:

TO ALL HUMANS:

If you wish to control coincidences in your own life on the planet Earth, we will cooperate and determine those coincidences for you under the following nine conditions:

1) You must know/assume/simulate our existence in E.C.C.O.

2) You must be willing to accept our responsibility for control of your coincidences.

3) You must exert your best capabilities for your survival programs and your own development as an advancing/advanced member of E.C.C.O.'s Earthside Corps of Controlled Coincidence Workers. You are expected to use your best intelligence in this service.

4) You are expected to expect the unexpected, every minute and every hour of every day and of every night.

5) You must be able to maintain conscious/thinking/ reasoning no matter what events we arrange to happen to you. Some of these events will seem catachlysmic/catastrophic/overwhelming. Remember: Stay aware, no matter what happens/apparently happens to you.

6) You are in our training program for life. There is no escape from it. We (not you ) control the long-term coincidences. You (not we) control the shorter-term coincidences by your own efforts.

7) Your major mission on Earth is to discover/create that which we do to control the long-term coincidence patterns. You are being trained on Earth to do this job.

8) When your mission on planet Earth is completed, you will no longer be required to remain/return there.

9) Remember the motto passed to us (from G.C.C. via S.S.C.U.): "Cosmic Love is Absolutely Ruthless and Highly Indifferent. It teaches its Lessons whether you like/dislike them or not.

(Excerpt from the book Dyadic Cyclone by John and Antonietta Lilly)

When E.C.C.O. needs to move you, for example from one job to another job, or from one place to another place on Earth, etc., it wants to move you using the least amount of energy. The more mass you have, the more energy E.C.C.O. must use to move you . The kind of mass that E.C.C.O. cares about is your Box's psycho-emotional Reactive Baggage. This kind of Baggage includes: Denial, Confusion, Reasons, Prejudices, Projections, Assumptions, Conclusions, Expectations, Positionality, Judgements, Beliefs, Stories, Lying, Resentment, Manipulation, Revenge, FantasyWorlds, Reactivity, SelfDeception, and Justifications. You can become more interesting and practically useful for E.C.C.O. by getting rid of more and more of your Baggage so it is easier to move you around when needed.

The more Agency you have in a wider selection of skillsets, the greater variety of jobs E.C.C.O. can adopt you in. If you are specialized in only one or a few areas, the longer E.C.C.O. may have to leave you on the shelf between jobs, trying to find something that fits your limited expertise. As Robert A. Heinlein says, "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." There is an old saying that says, "A Jack-Of-All-Trades is the Master of none." What this idea overlooks is that the Jack-Of-All-Trades is a Master of the Jack-Of-All-Trades Trade, perhaps the most difficult and yet useful of all the trades to master. It is the trade of using the Rules Of Chaos. It is also the trade of the Possibilitator.

If your time is fully occupied by your commitment to your daily or weekly schedule, then there is not enough slack in your life for miraculous coincidences to occur. To become more available for E.C.C.O., shrink your NOW down so that it is smaller than the Gap beteen moments. This is when you will notice opportunities for accepting Nonlinear and Unreasonable offers of E.C.C.O. which you could not perceive before. It is not as if you were ignoring the offers. You actually had no Free Attention with which to perceive the offers because all of your Attention was occupied by your plans. If your NOW is as big as your weeky schedule, then there are no Gaps through which you can perceive the offers, and E.C.C.O. has to pass you by.

Who can you talk to? If there are certain people you cannot talk to because your Child Egostate is too afraid of making a mistake, or Prejudiced against them (or for them), or because that person is beneath (or above) you in Status, or because your Gremlin cannot be stopped from creating Low Drama with their Gremlin, or because they do not have the same religious Beliefs as you do, or because your Box and Gremlin freak out being seen talking with someone who is too fat, or too perfect, or too poor, or too weird, or too powerful or too powerless or too whatever, E.C.C.O. has to regard you as handicapped and boring. If you can connect with anyone and create interesting conversations with High Quality Questions or Nonlinear Space Navigating, if you can provide anyone with Nonmaterial Value, if you cannot Improvise in an unexpected or uncontrollable situation, E.C.C.O. must go look for another Possibilitator to slide in and do the job at hand.

Your Box defends its sovereignty by claiming to know. Learning something new challenges your Box’s knowledge dominion. Since Boxes defend their territory with a vengeful Gremlin, your first step in learning is to unlearn, to dismantle the certainty with which your Box paints its interpretations over your direct experience of the world. Adopting unlearning and Not Knowing as part of your daily practice keeps you Liquid enough that E.C.C.O. can move you even during the course of your daily life. When you relocate your Point Of Origin from the Purpose of Defending Yourself to the Purpose of Expanding Yourself, suddently E.C.C.O. has the sense that you are on its side as a powerful ally.

How to make yourself light enough, versatile enough, interesting enough, available enough, and liquid enough that when the Team at E.C.C.O. has a job for which you fit their specifications, they can snap you up, move you into a different gameworld, and give you work to do that serves the Evolution Of Consciousness?

Now... isn't that a different sort of question?

It is the kind of consideration to take before your Possibility Team or get radical support in your 3Cell to find answers to.

The answers will probably all invove becoming a different sort of you, almost like learning the wide variety of skills needed to be a spy, but working instead for E.C.C.O. - a 'four letter Agency' - rather than working for any of the 'three letter agencies' (CIA, IRS, FBI, NSA, DIA, NGA, DEA, etc.). It is a bright future for you and your gameworld when your services are being used by evolutionary forces of the Universe.