The Third Flame: The Worldwide Mystical Renaissance

I feel compelled to share some excerpts from Andrew Harvey's book, "The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism." If you resonate with these words, I would strongly suggest you check out the book. It has helped me immensely with processing the gravity of our collective crises, and has helped me find a greater peace and purpose.

I also found a recent teleseminar podcast that you can download for free. It's a 90 minute recording of a dialogue that sums up the theory and practice of Sacred Activism. You can access this and a whole series of free podcasts about emerging manifestations of spirituality. http://beyondawakeningseries.com/blog/archive/

The Third Flame: The Worldwide Mystical Renaissance

Excerpts from "The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism"

It is no coincidence that as our desire to exploit and dominate Nature at all costs reaches a climax of destructiveness, a complete, transfiguring mystical awareness explodes from within the human psyche. Anyone who is coming to understand the universe as a incessant dance of opposites will come to see the interconectedness of these seemingly "opposed" phenomena with a smile of hope.

At a time when we are ruining the wold and devastating all forms of life including our own, the Mother that creates, evolves, and lives in all things is returning to us to illumine our minds with her knowledge of interconnection, to inflame our hearts with her passion of compassion, and to awaken our bodies by the revelation of her living ecstatic presence. This causes the birth of a humble, exalted, and practical being, a Sacred Activist whose action inspired by the Mother can potentially transform all realms of earth life.

Through this potent return of the Divine Feminine and all of its aspects, the Sacred Marriage of Mother and Father, Immanent Godhead and Transcendent Absolute, can now take place within the human race. It is a return to nothing less than the evolutionary power of Divine Love and Wisdom, at work in constant transformation on all the levels of the universe.

As the crisis deepens, the drive to experience this empowering marriage of opposites within us will become more and more insistent and more and more vital to our survival. We are being compelled, through the logic of our own secret destiny, to take a quantum evolutionary leap. This leap could transfigure us and transform all existing social, economic, and political systems so that they honor equality, harmony with nature, justice for all sentient beings, and a sacred way of life that will bring peace to our earth. This is the Hope I have dedicated my life and work to, the Hope that illumines my vision of Sacred Activism.

Return to the Circle

Divine timing! It just so turns out I have a need for these tools... The Universe provides...

Last night at Occupy Boston General Assembly I was handed a copy of a book that will surely inform the way I seek to build community in profound ways. It's called "The Little Book of Circle Processes: A New/Old Approach to Peacemaking." This is something that everyone concerned with creating a healing culture of restorative justice should check out. I'm looking forward to discussing and developing these tools with my comrades at Occupy Boston, as we co-create a new way of relating to each other and the Planet.




From the back jacket:

"Our ancestors gathered around a fire in a circle, families gather around their kitchen tables in circles, and now we are gathering in circles as communities to solve problems. This peacemaking practice draws on the ancient Native American tradition of a talking piece and combines that with concepts of democracy and inclusivity."

This book is a brief introductory volume, and I was able to put a large dent in it during a short sit in the unseasonably warm park this afternoon. Looking forward to checking out the other related books which were donated to the Occupy Boston library.

I'm so excited to learn that Western/European people have been redisovering these techniques in more recent time, and making them accessible to those who have become disconnected with the old ways. We are all going to have to come together in a fantastic act of co-creativity if we're going to manifest a world that works for everyone. We are broken people coming from a broken society, and we could all use some tools to help us heal, together. The Peacemaking Circles may prove to be an invaluable and transformative tool...

An Overview of Circle

A Peacemaking Circle is a way of bringing people together in which:
-everyone is respected
-everyone gets a chance to talk without interruption
-participants explain themselves by telling their stories
-everyone is equal - no person is more important than anyone else
-spiritual and emotional aspects of individual experience are welcomed

Peacemaking Circles are useful when two or more people:
-need to make decisions together
-have a disagreement
-need to address an experience that resulted in harm to someone
-want to work together as a team
-wish to celebrate
-wish to share difficulties
-want to learn from each other

The Peacemaking Circle is a container strong enough to hold:
-anger
-frustration
-joy
-pain
-truth
-conflict
-diverse world views
-intense feelings
-silence
-paradox

Sounds like some powerful stuff, huh?


There are some resources online, such as this. The short book I'm reading is available for $4.95 at your local bookstore.

I'd be happy to discuss these topics with anyone, so feel free to comment tweet me up @radicaloptimist (or say hey at OB).

Walking Creation

Walking Creation
I am Breathing Creation
All is connected!

Competing Narratives: Empire and Earth Community

I was flipping through an old book and found the following passage is way to applicable not to share. I highly recommend this book, as it was instrumental in shaping my understanding of the crisis we are in, as well as the transformation in which I believe we are now taking part.

“The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, ” by David Korten

Competing Narratives

Empire and Earth Community flow from sharply contrasting worldviews. The narrative of Empire, which emphasizes the demonstrated human capacity for hatred, exclusion, competition, domination, and violence in the pursuit of domination, assumes humans are incapable of responsible self-direction and that social order must be imposed by coercive means. The narrative of Earth Community, which emphasizes the demonstrated human capacity for caring, compassion, cooperation, partnership, and community in the service of life, assumes a capacity for responsible self-direction and self-organization and thereby the possibility of creating radically democratic organizations and societies. These narratives represent two sides of a psychic tension that resides within each of us. One focuses on that which divides us and leads to ear and often violent competition. The other focuses on that which unites us and leads to trust and cooperation.

These competing tendencies are expressed in the tension between the feminine predisposition to bond for mutual protection in the face of danger and the masculine predisposition to fight or take flight. Yet while one tendency or the other may be more fully expressed ina given individual or sociey, both reside in each of us -- male or female-- which helps to account for the wide variety of the human experience. Healthy social function depends on maintaining a balance between these tendencies. Empire’s five thousand years of male domination demonstrate the tragic consequences of imbalance.

The competing narratives are also reflected int he range of qualities attributed to God in different cultures. At one extreme is the wrathful God of Empire who demands exclusive loyalty, favors one people over another, lives apart from his creation, rules through anointed earthly representatives, and extracts a terrible vengeance on his enemies and the unbelievers. At the other extreme is the universal loving God/dess of Earth Community, the intrinsic, omnipresent living Spirit beyond gender that manifests itself in every aspect of Creation.

Love and fear are both integral to our human nature and necessary for our full development. Love is a binding spiritual force that opens our minds and hearts to life’s creative possibilities. Fear alerts us to real dangers and focuses our attention to ensure that we do not neglect our own survival needs. However, when fear awakens our defenses, it also evokes our capacity for violence, including violence against those we love. How we resolve the tension between love and fear has major consequences for the course of our lives - and our politics. The deep democracy of egalitarian civic engagement that is integral to Earth Community necessarily depends on a mature sense of mutual trust, responsibility and caring.

Meditation is a waste of good shopping time - Occupy your Mind

*Note: This post was written largely on November 27, 2011, but for legal reasons, was not posted until now. It took until March 2012 for the case to be heard in front of a judge, as I would not accept a plea bargain for crimes I did not commit. A jury of my peers found me NOT GUILTY, so now I'm free to talk about it... Enjoy. (Next I have to write another post about lessons learned from the case. Stay tuned.)

“Meditator arrested for ‘disturbing the frenzy’ at the mall on Black Friday.”

The pictures and comments had already started circulating through social networks before I was even released from the 7 foot cubed holding cell at North Attleboro PD. In that cell, I had 7 hours to myself to reflect on the significance of the action I had just participated in, and how that significance was highlighted by the very fact that I now sat in a locked cube for doing it.

It was the day commonly referred to as “Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving (or as it's known by others: "Buy Nothing Day," the day after “National Day of Mourning”)

It was on this ritualized shopping holiday that a small group of people, including myself, decided that rather than shop, we would hold a group meditation in a small circle in the center of the local shopping mall. The idea was to connect and bring calm to the storm, to make a simple statement:

Mindfulness is a legitimate threat to an economy that relies on mindless consumerism and on our disconnection from the Community of Life.

Behind the central staircase of the Emerald Square Mall, we took our place between “lanes” on the consumer footway, open to the two levels above. In a circle, we sat in silence and without interruption for several minutes. We drew the attention of only a few of our fellow humans, temporarily distracted from their obligatory role as consumers (a necessary condition, it turns out, for entering this privatized zone). We eventually entered a deep round of “Om's” (wonderful acoustics in the mall, by the way). After 30 minutes of what ended up being a very deep meditation experience, we arose with little distraction from the radio-wielding men in white. We circled hands for another round of "Oms" and finally, a quick mic check to close:

Meditation is a waste of good shopping time.

Conscious people make poor consumers.

Stay separate. Stay Scared. Keep shopping.

We broke circle and made our separate ways toward the third floor parking garage. Unfortunately, I was met by two men in police uniforms at the base of the escalator. After trying to explain my need to get to the third floor, to my car, they instead offered to escort me out of the first floor exit and into a police car. It's difficult to decline that offer when you're in handcuffs.

The charges included: disorderly conduct, trespassing, resisting arrest (of course), and perhaps most ironically, “disturbing the peace.”

(Oddly enough, the radio inside the car was playing popstep at a subdued volume.)

For those wondering “How does this connect to the Occupy Movement?” (the action, not the music);

When I ponder the question, I realize that it will take me quite a while to explain how many ways meditation and mindfulness relate to the root causes and root solutions of the Occupy Movement (remember: everything is connected). So, I will start with the one that is most apparent and significant to me: Mindfulness is a legitimate threat to an economy that relies on mindless consumerism and on our disconnection from the Community of Life.

I’ve decided that I’m going to break this post into several installments, this being the first. Future posts (and perhaps guest posts?) may examine at greater length how this action and use of meditation relates to such topics as: the role of predatory capitalism in the privatization of public spaces, the loss of free speech areas, cultural homogenization, systematic violence, marketing, public relations, brainwashing, food justice, animal rights, deep ecology, colonization, decolonization, and so on…. (We can see where it goes.) This format will allow for some extended exchange and discourse through the wonders of social media, so please comment and share your own thoughts, reflections or objections on my original post at changethedream.blogspot.com.

What does mindfulness have to do with the economy?

“Consume, consume, consume until we have no planet left to consume. What you need to do is buy things that you don’t need, that’s the best way to support the economy…. Meditation is a waste of good shopping time. Miserable people shop more, so please stay miserable for as long as you can.” -The Love Police

"Until we have no planet left to consume..."

The dominant world economy today relies upon constant growth and expansion. "It's a system in crisis," as Annie Leonard explains it so succinctly in the first installment of the “Story of Stuff” animated film series. “It’s a linear system and we live on a finite planet, and you can not run a linear system on a finite planet, indefinitely.”

Humans evolved on this planet, but somewhere along the way lost connection with the rest of the Community of Life on this planet. Fear-based marketing and programming campaigns carried out by ever-increasingly invasive corporate entities have fed upon, and reinforced, this cosmic divide. It’s this disconnection which has allowed us to create a mindless economy with which, as Leonard puts it, “we’re trashing the planet, we’re trashing each other, and we’re not even having fun.”

Through mindful practice, one is able to regain some perspective on the interconnection of all things and interdependence of all Life. If people are able to rediscover and maintain this connection, we will not be able to perpetuate or recreate a system that relies upon isolation, destruction and disconnection. Together, we have the creativity and compassion to co-create a mindful economy that works for everyone, including the Earth. That is why it felt appropriate and meaningful to make this type of direct action at the shopping mall on this ritualistically mindless holiday.

"What is an economy, anyways?"

To take a step back, let’s look quickly at what an economy is supposed to do. One definition, provided by the makers of the film Zeitgeist Moving Forward, is:

Economy: efficiently and conservatively orient the materials for production and the distribution of life supporting goods.

You don’t have to be an economist to realize that what we have is hardly efficient or conservative, or even approximating its purpose. Instead, what we have is a system of wealth extraction that converts the natural beauty of the planet into imaginary wealth and power for a minority of members in the community of Life.

"The Economy is a Reflection of the Connections Between Us"

(From a great little flier that I picked up at the Occupy Boston Summit)

“Yes, the 1% got us out into the streets but let’s name the true culprit: the rampant egotism in human nature. Acknowledging this problem will be the first step toward controlling it. Redistribution of wealth without a moral awakening of the entire world will yield no positive results. In fact, the bitter experiences of the communist revolutions in the previous century are warning enough that this is not the way to go. Instead, the means toward stability and prosperity in our future is the human connection and a unified, heartfelt effort toward a common goal… Every desire, act and thought that is dedicated towards the all-encompassing system of humanity will bring balance, peace, and prosperity to one and all. “ - #AsOne

Through meditation, prayer, and other practices or experiences, as we remember our connections to other living things, we remember our universal love for all living things. All cliché’s aside, universal love and compassion has the power to change everything. We have the ability to make these realizations as individuals, and also as a society.

"Love is the felt experience of connection to another being. An economist says 'more for you is less for me.' But the lover knows that more for you is more for me too. If you love somebody their happiness is your happiness. Their pain is your pain. Your sense of self expands to include other beings. This shift of consciousness is universal in everybody, 99% and 1%." ~ Charles Eisenstein

Update: Check out the short film that was released March 1, "Sacred Economics," (and the book by the same name, by Charles Eisenstein.) This guy is really onto something.

I've come to realize that full appreciation of the connection between meditation and the economy requires the recognition that we are in the midst of a global transformation of consciousness (what some may call “The Great Turning”). In my belief, as well as that of others, the Occupy Movement is a manifestation of, and a vehicle for, this transformation.

#OccupyYourMind

Meditation is a time-tested and demonstrated tool for personal, and by extension, societal transformation (see the DC Crime Study). The act itself is a statement of noncompliance with the cultural programming designed to keep us consuming and complying blindly, in isolation and at a huge cost to all Life on this planet. As a movement, and as human beings, we must transform our consciousness and remember our interdependence.

Various forms of meditation provide many paths to doing just that.

Take a few minutes out from your hectic schedule

to acknowledge your connection to Mother Earth

and to all of your relations.

Breath.

Connect.

Then let’s have ourselves a Revolution (of Love.)

[Please feel free to leave comments/feedback/etc, as this should be a discussion, a process. I’m just connecting some dots here, and would appreciate your help on part 2!]

Decolonize Thanksgiving

Occupy the Media

Here are just a few of my favorite recent videos related to the Occupy Movement.




John Ford - Occupy Boston Librarian (Kinetic Typography)

"We stopped into Occupy Boston filming for the documentary "Bailout: The Dukes of Moral Hazard" to talk with John Ford, the local librarian, about the Occupy Wallstreet Movement. Here's a short clip of what he had to say about the movement."

John Ford: Occupy Boston Librarian from Endless Eye on Vimeo.

Colbert Super PAC - Occupy Wall Street Co-Optportunity

If Dick Armey's FreedomWorks can co-opt the Tea Party, then the Colbert Super PAC can co-opt Occupy Wall Street.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Colbert Super PAC - Occupy Wall Street Co-Optportunity
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Colbert Super PAC - Stephen Colbert Occupies Occupy Wall Street

Hilarius and such a great look into the OWS movement. And I love Ketchup!

Stephen heads to Wall Street to gain the trust of Occupy Wall Street protesters and take over the movement. (07:20)

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Colbert Super PAC - Stephen Colbert Occupies Occupy Wall Street Pt. 1
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Stephen presents the dramatic conclusion of his Occupy Wall Street co-occupation.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Colbert Super PAC - Stephen Colbert Occupies Occupy Wall Street Pt. 2
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Josh Kahn Russell mic check at OWS 11/6: Tar Sands Action

An animated Joshua Kahn Russell spoke about the plan to encircle the White House on Sunday, Nov. 6 to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. Here's Russell's speech at OWS:

Tim DeChristopher Letter read at Occupy Wall St. 11/5: Tar Sands Action

Incarcerated climate activist Tim DeChristopher made a written appearance at Climate Action day at #OWS. DeChristopher encourages occupiers to protest the proposed tar sands pipeline in DC on November 6th. You can read his entire letter here - http://www.peacefuluprising.org/tims-call-to-join-nov-6-tar-sands-action-2011...






Occupy Boston - The Beauty of Unity - 10.15.11


"Trying to capture the beauty of unity. There are too many police brutality videos out there that defeats the purpose of this movement. This is how I see the revolution. "
[music: The Album Leaf]