I think the Goddess suffers because after giving birth to the multiverse she saw that it was dead. As magnificent as it is, creation has no self-awareness. It just is. It does not realize that it is.
I think most of us are the same. We are zombies. Look in someones eyes. Just keep looking into their eyes and watch what they do. What do they do? They look away. They look away to stay asleep.
We are the walking dead. Why else would we eat junk food from terrorist companies who murder ecosystems for the illusion of profit? We are numb. We are sleeping.
We hold beliefs and assumptions and interpretations and conclusions unconsciously. We react unconsciously thinking that because we feel incomplete-emotions re-triggered from our childhood that it
means something - something important enough to start a war over.
If we repeatedly do things the way we've always done them, the way our parents did them, we think we are justified - or we feel justified by doing the opposite. (
We are as well imprisoned by what we oppose - this is why the OCCUPY# movement provides its greatest value when people implement new systems that make the presiding systems plainly irrelevant - and clearly not as much fun.)
We do what we're told and assume that we are good. We do what everybody else does and assume that we are safe. We are unaware that we are choosing unconsciously because we never considered that we have another option.
But we do have another option. The other option is to go
pirate. To take responsibility for things which we were taught cannot be taken responsibility for. This is called
radical responsibility.
Radical responsibility is uncommon, because if you stand in radical responsibility there is no one to blame for what happens next except yourself. On the other hand, when there is no one else to blame, who has the power? Being responsibly and consciously at source for what is, and for what happens, can be exquisitely pleasurable.
It is possible to live in a culture that is
centered in radical responsibility. This culture is called
next culture, the culture that comes
after patriarchy. It is
archearchy, a culture of initiated adult women creatively collaborating with initiated adult men. You do not get into such a culture without growing up. In modern culture there are no grownups. Not even the United Nations tells the adolescent and psychopathic personalities who have done whatever it takes to climb corporate-political hierarchies,
"Stop it! No! That is not okay! No lying, no cheating, no stealing! Don't even think about touching that! It's not yours! Clean up your room! You are grounded!" Without adults, another species was just exterminated.
We make many moment-to-moment choices. Because we are mostly sleeping, most of our choices are unconscious. One of the most important unconscious choices we make is where we place our attention, because
where your attention goes your energy flows. This is why corporations pay billions a year trying to get your attention. If they get your attention they've got your wallet. The embarrassing thing is that advertising costs are more than compensated by our easily-seduced weak-willed attention.
You wonder why you are burned out? You wonder why your relationship is weak? You wonder why you're exhausted? Do you know where your attention is going? Where your energy is flowing?
It is easy to prove that you have the ability to consciously choose where you place your attention. (To do this experiment, stop reading for a second, look at your finger. Look at it until you feel your attention on your finger, then look back here and continue reading.) You can consciously choose where to place your attention, but for the most part we place our attention unconsciously.
You could change your mind about leaving your attention open for others to use. You could go
pirate. The kind of pirate I mean is when you break with custom and takeover choosing where and why you place your attention. You can develop your attention muscles until you can walk through a train station and not even once give your attention to the half-naked women splayed across advertising posters. (That photoshopped image, by the way, is
not the Goddess...)
After you can consciously place or not place your attention somewhere for as long as you choose, you can start learning to split your attention.
Human beings have the designed-in capacity to split attention. We split our attention unconsciously every day. For example, we ride down the street on our bicycle chewing gum, listening to our MP3 player, thinking about our plans and checking out the babes all at the same time. Splitting our attention five ways is normal for us, unconsciously. We can also split our attention on purpose.
There are many exercises for strengthening your capacity for consciously splitting your attention. Look at any object, for example, a lamp. Then in your mind, while remembering that it is a lamp, call it by a different name, such as cranberry sauce, frying pan, anaconda, or ski pole. Then look at another object and keep going. You can think up and practice a completely new attention-splitting exercise each day.
Just remembering the idea to practice attention-splitting exercises requires that you keep your attention from getting knocked unconscious by your daily squirrel-cage routine. A warning: Developing your attention-splitting muscles takes you beyond the grip and thoughtlimits of modern culture.
Bringing creation to life involves one more experiment. Split your attention, then place part of your attention on where you are placing your attention. Notice what you are noticing with. See how you are seeing. Watch yourself watching. Become aware of what you are aware of right now. Say to yourself,
"What I am aware of right now is..." Do this for awhile and the space will shift. You will find yourself in the
waking state. How long can you stay in the waking state? In the time that you are being conscious of what you are conscious of you have brought the bit of creation that you are to life. By bringing a part of creation to life you alleviate the suffering of the Goddess.
She does not let such efforts go uncompensated...
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Dear Andrew Gains, Bill McKibben and anyone else
reading this blog (which reading is not accidental, by the way...),
Please see Bill McKibben's pull-no-punches article in
Rolling Stone here:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719?fb_action_ids=10151036814169722&fb_source=hovercard
...and Andrew Gains request for going further here:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Response-Bill-McKibben-4464707.S.138670896?qid=0982fdb9-aaf0-453a-b10a-be47d590793b&trk=group_most_popular-0-b-ttl&goback=%2Egmp_4464707
...and now my engagement of this consideration:
Yes, my friends, I, (and perhaps we
all), deeply resonate with the idea of shifting wholesale to a good-willed,
sustainable, next culture... and...
I want to remind us what Morpheus told Neo in Matrix: There's a
difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
I say: Whole systems change
starts at home.
I am tired of preaching to the choir.
I am finished with standing around
in the choir being preached to.
I will do whatever it takes to awaken the sleeping pirate in each of
us - the one with enough daring to uproot our lives wholesale from the suicidal systems of modern culture even when we
don't know how. The secret to successful pirating is recognizing that we won't know how until we have already committed ourselves.
I think the universe conserves "know-how." The universe only
provides know-how to those who already commit to the next outcome by pulling
up their own stakes from the capitalist patriarchal empire and heading out.
I put my water-pistol to your nose and demand to know from you point blank: What can YOU personally do NOW to jump ship and leave the rats behind on the rapidly sinking wreckage of modern civilization?
How will you personally shift to sustainable culture? By when will you do this?
I, for one, with a small group of pirate friends, have closed all
debts, ended all insurances, cashed in all investments, ended all rents, stashed our things, and with a backpack and a netbook will head out mid-September 2012 for an
indefinite period of time to empower whoever the universe puts in our path with
next culture pirate skills. Harbigaar!
I think there are more pirates in action than most of us realize: over one million ecovillages initiatives and projects online as of July 2012! www.ecovillage.org.
Daily I connect with more next culture pirates, and I am glad of it! Something better than civilization is waiting for us. (Daniel Quinn)
One Little Hint:
for ongoing inspiration it helps to subscribe to John Robb's Resilient Community blog :
http://www.resilientcommunities.com
Clinton
