Communique` from Occupied DC: Day Five

Yesterday, Jason, Martin and I were standing in front of the White House with our drums, wondering where the heck the march was.  It was the first time I’ve ever seen the White House and it’s overly vibrant green lawns, surrounded by granite and marble buildings that seem imposing and venerable, just as they are supposed to.  On one side is the Eisenhower building, which feels oddly gothic and gray, as if one part of Washington DC at one time was taken over by an ambitious Emily Bronte fan; on the other side is the white-columned Treasury Building, which, I kid you not, sits directly cross from a matching building that hosts Bank of America and PNC Bank.  With truths like these, you really don’t need to play anything up for the cameras – or, in this case, the blog.

Skipping meals has become the new diet craze for many pagan cluster folks here at Occupy DC, and as light-headedness is starting to set in, Jason and Martin suggest heading off to go get some food.  We begin to head off, but my spider senses are tickling, telling me that the action is somewhere nearby.  One of the things I like the most about doing this kind of thing is the way that my intuition seems to hone and flourish exponentially, and I dawdle behind them, trying to pinpoint exactly where the energy is coming from.  It feels like a sound that I can almost hear at the furthest range of my aural senses, but also a simultaneous fraying of the edges of my perception and a sense of being drawn one way, so that any movement in another direction feels off-kilter and wrong.  Yes, no.  Yes.  Over there, somewhere – no, too far.  That way.  A building.  Not dangerous.  A swelling.  Here it comes.  It’s coming this way.

“Wait!” I tell them.  They stop and look at me, and for a moment I feel foolish, wondering what I’m supposed to say. 

And then the march turns onto Pennsylvania Ave., way off down the street, a blur of people and signs and police cars and a pulsing sense of power and friction and hope all rolled into one.  As we get closer to them and they get closer to us, I see Banjo, a fellow who was in the non-violent direction action training that I helped lead at McPherson Park the day before.  He smiles widely as we join them, and then as we begin the first few beats of our drums the crowd erupts into cheers of welcome.

One thing I can say about the Occupy DC folks is that they are masters of cheers of welcome and unity.  Any time a car passes and honks, they cheer. Occasionally even some of the folks in the sleek black, probably bullet-proof vehicles will stick their heads out of the window and smile in encouragement, and they cheer.  If it’s a fire engine or taxi or work truck, the cheers are even more rowdy and exuberant.  As we march pass the cafes and restaurants and shops, people wave and give us the peace sign in greeting, and Occupy DC cheers.  They are cheery folks.  Literally.

“Occupy Wall Street!  Occupy K Street!  Occupy everything and never give it back!” the chanting starts up, and we drum.  Magically, Elaine materializes beside me with her bell.  A fella with a bass drum finds us, as well, and the next thing you know we have ourselves a band.  

We leave the White House and begin marching back towards McPhearson Park, where Occupy DC is based, and as we move down 15^th St., the chant shifts.  “We are the ninety-nine percent!  You are the ninety-nine percent!”

It’s a message of empowered unity and a shared desire for change more powerful than any of the other experiences I’ve had as an activist.  It goes beyond political parties, age, occupation (if you are lucky enough to have one at the moment) and how you feel about abortion or who you think should be eligible to marry one another.  It’s the rallying cry of a world that has finally noticed that those who would hoard power and resources have stepped beyond what is tolerable.  It has all the makings of world-revolution – even if it’s just in its fledgling stages.  Occupy Wall Street has swelled to marches with thousands of people.  Occupy San Francisco has actions planned everyday this coming week.  Occupy Raleigh starts next week.  Occupy Sydney – as in, Sydney Australia – recently sent #OWS (that’s the twitter hashtag – or search moniker – for Occupy Wall Street) a message of support and inspiration that quickly spread throughout the twitterverse. 

The march, which was hosted by the folks in McPherson park (Occupy DC) versus Freedom Plaza (Stop the Machine) came at just the right time for everyone who’s here protesting: earlier in the day, we experienced our first incidence of violence when the security guards at the Air & Space Museum pepper sprayed some 50-100 people who attempted to enter the building to raise awareness about romanticizing weapons and warfare (the action was much bigger than that, but only those at the front of the crowd were attacked).  Jason was there – he’s fine – but I was still back at Freedom Plaza, doing a consensus and facilitation training, because my entire life here has become about trainings and consensus.  Somehow, that rascally Starhawk has roped me into her nefarious plans of world domination through non-violent direct action trainings and educating people in effective consensus process. 

When spirit calls me to this work, she isn’t always clear about what that means.  Since I’ve come to Washington DC, I’ve found myself in a dizzying schedule of meetings and trainings.  On Friday evening Jason and I volunteered to facilitate the General Assembly for Stop the Machine, which may be one of the most difficult things that I’ve ever done in my life, or at least in the last couple of years.  At 7:55pm, Jason was asked by one of the organizers to facilitate; at 8:05pm, we were standing in front of 300 some folks, many of whom had never worked with consensus before, and others whom seemed to be openly hostile about the process.  Beneath the harsh glaring lights of the stage and the omnipresent eye of the livestream feed, we proceeded to dissolve into chaos and confusion yet somehow came out again on the other side with a plan for the next day and a new sense of ownership of the process and our actions. 

Now it’s Sunday night and I’m sitting in a completely peaceful General Assembly being facilitated by Linda, another person who’s been running with the Pagan Cluster lately (it’s been almost an entirely PC lineup – last night Starhawk facilitated).  I’m struck, as I sit here, about how the demographic of the two groups Occupying Washington is becoming galvanized – the crowd here at Stop the Machine seems to be mostly older labor folks, Code Pink folks, and such, whereas the General Assembly that I just left in McPherson Square where Occupy DC is are younger and grittier.  I’m also struck how remarkably calm these folks are, given the fact that most likely the cops will come tonight to try to toss us out. 

Tonight, our permit runs out at midnight. So far the police have looked the other way about the fact that people are regularly breaking the law for camping in the federally-owned space along Pennsylvania Ave., but our guess is that when the permit for our day-time event here expires tonight, things will change. So the conversation shifts from announcements and committees to strategy and justice and revolution, and I find myself questioning my previous decision not to get arrested.   As usual.

Occu-Pee / Occu-pie

Tonight, as Starhawk, Eddy and I are finishing up planning the last details of the Non-Violence Direct Action Training we're teaching with a local DC organizer, Jason is talking on the phone with local farmers.

For some reason, he's having a hard time getting them to accept the offer of our very nitrogen-rich, urine soaked straw bales.

At this point, they are actually just theoretically urine-soaked straw bales.  Apparently, we don't yet own said straw bales, nor have we rented the truck we'd need to haul them to and from the event.

"Hello?  Oh, hi, my name is Jason and I got your number from so-and-so, who said you might be able to help us... You see, we have these straw bales we'd like to give you for your crops... no, no, they don't have any fire retardant in them... they have urine.  No, not my urine.  I don't know who's.  It's for this thing down at the plaza.  It could be anyone's."

Later, Jason tells us that he can hear the guy on the other end of the line, muffled because his hand is over the receiver, calling to his wife upstairs.  "Get a load of this," he says.  "This guy's calling to give us a bunch of straw soaked in pee."

Jason is shaking his head as he's telling us this, as if it's the weirdest thing in the world that the farmer won't take humanure from the masses.  Starhawk, across the kitchen table with her usual midnight cup of tea in front of her, is positively cackling in delight.  I don't blame her -- I'm laughing so hard that I feel like I might pee right then and there, straw or no.

"I tried calling a bunch of people, but none of them would take it," he says.  "You know, it's the hardest thing in the world out here on the East Coast, trying to get someone to take your pee-straw."

He has this deadpan way of saying these things that occasionally gets me even after all of these years, and poor Eddy is quite often deceived by it.  "You're not in the Bay Area anymore," she says, seemingly earnest.

"I think if I could just finish explaining to them what a valuable resource it is, they'd be overjoyed," he says, still deadpan, no mercy.  "They might even offer to pick it up themselves so we don't have to shlep it all the way down there."

This discussion eventually devolves into a conversation about Home De-poo, where you can drop off your humanure and get paid for it, and the Pagan Cluster's new affinity group Occu-pee, who's mission is to create a place for folks on Freedom Plaza (where the Stop the Machine encampment is) and McPherson Square (where #OccupyKSt is) to relieve themselves in an ecologically beneficial way.

Personally, I'm not all that into Occu-pee, but as the night winds later and later, I find myself getting rather excited about the idea of Occu-pie.  Occu-pie was originally conceived as a way to keep folks who want to put the lid on the Occupy Together actions' recent flood of popular media as folks have become more and more convinced that anything with the word "Occupy" in it is being systematically negated within internet search engines like google and yahoo.  That may or may not be true, but the real treasure in the solution that more savvy and paranoid individuals than I have come up with is the possibility it presents for some serious kitchen-witchery-activism.  I'm imaging a sweet cob oven arrangement at Freedom Plaza that could serve up Occu-pie Pecan, Occu-pie Dutch Apple, and of course, Occu-pie Chocolate Mousse.  If we had Occu-pie Chocolate Mousse (gluten-free Occu-pie, of course), I'd feel pretty darn happy about being there whether or not it was for a good cause.

Soon all four of us are holding our sides laughing, probably keeping up the upstairs roommates who had enough sense to go to bed early.

Given it's the night before the big action, it only makes sense that you'd want to sleep, but as with many Action-eves, I find it hard to feel sleepy.  The giddy, zany laughter and discussion is the only thing I can imagine working for me right now -- it takes the edge off of my nervousness.  There's still so much we don't have planned, and so many dreams still to realize.  Is it really starting tomorrow?  Will our sacred waters purification system work?  Will we have enough pretty altar cloths and prayer flags to create the space we want for healing and ritual and magic?  How many people will come?  What will we do once we get there?

And, of course, will we have a place to pee?

No one can say for sure -- it's all a mystery.  For now, stay tuned.

In love and solidarity,
Riyana

The Holonic Shift Will Not Be Televised - But You Can Glimpse it on YouTube

I woke up to the sound of sirens getting closer, confused, wondering where I was and if they were coming for us.  After a moment of tense listening, the fire engines passed. I realized, as I raised up my groggy head from the thermarest and the cold air of the tent helped clear my head, that I didn’t have any reason to be afraid of sirens.  There have been times, in times past, that there were pre-emptive raids and snatches off of the street.  There have been other actions that were like that, where they came in the middle of the night and rammed the door and came in with weapons drawn.

But those are other days, actions of the past. 

Whatever is sweeping the country right now is different.  There have been no preemptive raids, no tear gas canisters stinging the air with their metallic flashing, no horses with hooves pounding down the road.  Certainly there have been some bad moments.  Overall, though, with the freshness of the crowds and the slightly mystified reactions of the press and US populace, the powers that be seem stunned into inaction.  People have criticized #OccupyWallStreet for not having a clearly defined message, but that may be because the intensity and reach of their message is incomprehensible to many people, even those who in the past thought they were in the know:

We do not want your dirty capitalism, your backroom deals that have stripped us of our homes and jobs, your power-over based purely on a financial system that is essentially a house of cards stacked in favor of those who have always had the power and the money anyway.  We have woken up from the slumber of the American Dream that you used to keep us complacent for so long.  This was an experiment, this thing called Liberal Capitalism, and it has proven a failure for 99% of us – the many to your few.

The entire country seems to be waking up to sirens and full of confusion, just as I did today from my post red-eye nap, hearing the wail getting closer and closer and then just as suddenly seemingly disappearing into nothingness.  And as the threatening keening of those sirens dissipates, in the silence that follows we are finding ourselves with the opportunity and responsibility to ask, “What do we truly desire, and what do we believe in?  What do we stand for?  What is the biggest dream collectively we can envision that will serve the people and the planet, and how can we get there?”

Well, when you’re asking questions like that, it only stands to reason the answers may seem obtuse at first. 

These are the kinds of questions and answers that wind their way down the foggy and mysterious path of the Third Way, or as we witches sometimes call it, the Good Road.  It may not be easy to navigate, but it is the only way to get where we need to go.  We’ve used up the luxury of time available for greed, oil, and wars.  We find ourselves suddenly dedicated to figuring out how to navigate the Third Way because we’re realizing that the other two lead off to certain destruction for humans and planet. 

As my mentor Joanna Macy says, is time for a new level of human consciousness on this planet: the holonic shift.  To Joanna, who for many years studied Living Systems Theory and ecospirituality, the time is ripe for the next evolution of consciousness.  

Consciousness as we know it was born when little particles bonded together to living cells, which then bonded together to become simple organisms, followed by more complex organisms with organs bonded into body systems.  Now, it’s time for us as separate organisms to develop a consciousness where we as individuals can bond together to be able to respond rapidly and effectively to the crisises on our doorstep, which is different than succumbing to mob mentality or fascism.  Like every species and every ecosystem, either we will evolve or we will be lost to the sands of time.  But we have a special opportunity, as well, because we can actively co-create our world and our destiny in this process of evolution.  We just need to be present enough, and brave enough, to do it.  

“It would seem that such a holonic shift is necessary for our survival,” she says in her essay, The Holonic Shift and How to Take Part in It.  “Since Earth's carrying capacity is limited, and since the ecosystems supporting us are threatened with collapse, we must learn to think together in an integrated, synergistic fashion, rather than in fragmented and competitive ways.”

As I’m sitting here in an unfamiliar and yet sweet home in Takoma Park, which is lush and green and swathed in brick and stained glass and quirky 5-way intersections, I feel like I’m on the edge of a precipice into something equally unfamiliar that I’ve been waiting for my whole life.  And that’s okay, because I feel like I at least have a road map.  It's a twelve-step process, and as I think about it, I realize that we've already mastered some of the steps...

The Holonic Shift and How Occupy Wall Street Fits In

By Joanna Macy & Riyana Sweetwater

1. Attune to a common intention. Intention is not a goal or plan you can formulate with precision. It is an open-ended aim: May we meet common needs and collaborate in new ways.

We are occupying everything, in cities and towns with a single voice calling for justice for our stolen homes and retirement funds and hopes.  As the Official Statement from Occupy Wall Street states, “As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.”

2. Welcome diversity. Self-organization of the whole requires differentiation of the parts. Each one's role in this unfolding journey is unique. 

It is exactly this diversity that the pundits use as fodder for their assertions that the new wave of protests are “disorganized” and “confused,” but that shows more about how stuck they are in old paradigms than about what is going in the streets and the city centers across the nation.  Dan Gainor, who writes for Fox News, claims, “The protest began with no stated goals, no public spokespeople and many of the most ridiculous attendees you could imagine – socialists, Code Pinkers, anarchists and more. (Anarchists are notoriously poor organizers.) Their slogans (they have many) include: ‘We are the 99 percent’ and ‘This is what democracy looks like.’

What folks like Gainor don’t realize is that yes, we have different ideas about how to create the world we want, and different priorities, but this diversity is our strength and not a weakness.  Many of us have born the brunt of greed of wealthy corporations, but in many different ways: some by the criminal destruction of the environment, others loosing their homes, still others fighting for their very lives as they demand safe accessibility to healthcare and healthy food.  Some of us have felt the brunt of the misdeeds of these transnational institutions here in the United States, and some of us have felt it in other nations around the world.  Some of us have been victimized for our skin color, our choices in who we love, our ages, our genders, our political affiliations, and more.  But our diversity is not the “reason we will never win,” as some conservative writers are claiming, hoping to dampen the collective spirit that is rising. 

3. Know that only the whole can repair itself. You cannot "fix" the world, but you can take part in its self-healing. Healing wounded relationships within you and between you is integral to the healing of our world.


Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Together protests have been criticized again and again for not putting out a specific list of issues of redress or agenda as their ancestors, the Students for a Democratic Society did (the Port Huron Statement), did forty years ago.  

What mainstream conventional political analysts, who seem to have a kind-of middle school crush on the movement-- simultaneous fascination mixed with constant, unremorseful bullying – miss again and again is that the fact that the Occupy actions are not claiming to have all the answers, or an instant fix, is part of their strength and one reason why they are succeeding and might continue to succeed where their worthy predecessors did not.  Combining the open-minded experimentalism that comes from the youth movement and the wisdom of experienced activists who spent years getting beat up and burned out before taking time off to study less ego-driven belief systems like yoga, Buddhism, earth-based spiritual paths, and deep ecology, these groups truly moving out of the American mindset that claims that the only way to get ahead is to use callous rationality to create systems of oppression and dominate those that don’t agree with your ideas.   

4. You are only a small part of a much larger process, like a nerve cell in a neural net. So learn trust. Trust means taking part and taking risks, when you cannot control, or even see, the outcome.

These Occupy actions are springing up across the country, like a web, bound by their common intentions and yet often not having any more connection with their counterparts than a twitter hashtag.  Folks from all walks of life are gathering in large actions, from unions to college students to out-of-work mothers and children.  They are not embroiled in constant debates over strategy or priorities – and again, this is part of their strength, because in moving slowly yet with trust they are able to move out of the false-beliefs that have been cultivated by the powers that be to keep us constantly separate and therefore constantly disempowered.  Of course the actual steps towards creating the new structures and systems do need to happen at some point, and it will mean difficult conversations and choices.  Yet, in spite of knowing that, we can stand up together now – because we know that together, with our many minds and hearts, we will come up with those answers.  Our collective wisdom is stronger and smarter than the cunning of the CEOs who are as ruthless in their attacks on one another as they are in their attacks upon the poor and working classes.

5. Open to flows of information from the larger system. Do not resist painful information about the condition of your world, but understand that the pain you feel for the world springs from interconnectedness, and your willingness to experience it unblocks feedback that is important to the well being of the whole.

For a long time, we in the US have had a cultural blindness to the harms of the worlds, but as the markets have collapsed and the corporations and wealthy watched as our numbers of hungry and unemployed have risen and folks without access to medical care have died, we are waking up to the voices of our allies around the world whose journeys for liberation and equality are bound up with ours.   For a long time, we believed in the American Economic model and basked in the privilege and relative wealth that the ultra-wealthy allowed us, all the while avoiding thinking about what would happen if those people who so eagerly exploited the needs, rights, and lands of others became so powerful that they no longer felt the need to keep us moderately satiated or decided on a different strategy: that of crippling us so deeply that we were willing to take whatever scraps they wanted to toss down.  What they didn’t see coming is that this new strategy has backfired, and our eyes and hearts are open now.  We know that American businesses, when headed by greedy uncaring CEOs who are willing to profit at our expense, are not our true brothers and sisters (not to mention that those businesses are no longer truly American businesses, but international institutions who would rather plunge this country into some of the worst unemployment rates and the largest financial inequity we have ever known).  We are interconnected with the many people around the world who are fighting this same fight: London, Greece, Spain, Egypt are just a few.

6. Speak the truth of your experience of this world. If you have persistent responses to present conditions, assume that they are shared by others. Willing to drop old answers and old roles, give voice to the questions that arise in you.

(more from the "We Are the 99% Project here… )

I'm not claiming that we have mastered the holonic shift just yet -- but as I get ready to try to drift back to sleep, thinking about what tomorrow and the Occupy DC and Stop the Machine Actions may hold, I feel restful and filled with hope.  I want to commit to memory - if not in the exact words, at least the impressions that resonate so deeply in my heart -- the rest of the map that Joanna has laid out for us, which promises so much, if we're willing to go there.  I know that her words may be the best advice there could be in the days to come:

7. Believe no one who claims to have the final answer. Such claims are a sign of ignorance and limited self-interest.

8. Work increasingly in teams or joint projects serving common intentions. Build community through shared tasks and rituals.

9. Be generous with your strengths and skills, they are not your private property. They grow from being shared. They include both your knowing and your unknowing, and the gifts you accept from the ancestors and all beings.

10. Draw forth the strengths of others by your own acknowledgment of them. Never prejudge what a person can contribute, but be ready for surprise and fresh forms of synergy.

11. You do not need to see the results of your work. Your actions have unanticipated and far-reaching effects that are not likely to be visible to you in your lifetime.

12. Putting forth great effort, let there also be serenity in all your doing; for you are held within the web of life, within flows of energy and intelligence far exceeding your own.

In love and solidarity,


Riyana

International Protests, Changing the World, and also, Baby Seals Are Really Cute

This afternoon, stepping into the café, I was greeted by an amazing headline on the New York Times: “As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around the Globe.”

The authors go on to draw a line between the protests in Egypt, Libiya, Tunisia, Israel, London, Greece, Spain and now, the Occupation of Wall Street in New York.

“They believe life can be more participatory, more decentralized, less dependent on the traditional models of organization, either in the state or the big company. Those were the dominant ways of doing things in the industrial economy, and they aren’t anymore.”

“Protesters say they so distrust their country’s political class and its pandering to established interest groups that they feel only an assault on the system itself can bring about real change.”

“Mr. Levi, born on Degania, Israel’s first kibbutz, said the protests were not acts of anger but of reclamation, of a society hijacked by a class known in Hebrew as ‘hon veshilton,’ meaning a nexus of money and politics. The rise of market forces produced a sense of public disengagement, he said, a feeling that the job of a citizen was limited to occasional trips to the polling places to vote.  ‘The political system has abandoned its citizens,’ Mr. Levi said.

THIS WAS ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES, PEOPLE. 

REALLY.

I could hardly contain myself as I read the article aloud to Jason, who in a mostly uncondesending tone told me that he thinks my ability to get overwhelmed by hope and passion is endearing.  Alright, it's true that I do have a picture of a little baby seal with white eyes as my desktop wallpaper.  So it might be true that I naturally gravitate towards all that is wonderful and dewy-eyed.

I see this little fella everyday when I open my laptop.  Awww...

But you've got to admit, this is just beautiful:

“Increasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web…”

After months of seeing headlines about how fourteen tea baggers did such-and-such, or a rally of forty so-called-patriots did this or that, it feels like a huge breath of fresh air to finally see the hard work of hundreds of thousands of progressive activists across the globe recognized.

There are so many people who have devoted their lives towards doing the work of web-weaving activism and earth healing, and although I’ve known in my heart that we are part of something that is a global pheneomenon – what Paul Hawken calls the “Largest Movement in the World that Nobody Saw Coming” – it’s still so incredibly inspiring and encouraging to read the words of other people around the world reaching out and meeting one another in an energy of connection and allyship, especially when you’re reading those words on the front page of one of the largest media outlets in the US. 

Tomorrow, I’m meeting up with friends from all over the country to go to the “Make Banks Pay” Action in San Francisco, and next week I’m traveling to Washington DC to be a part of the “Stop the Machine” Occupation of Freedom Plaza. 

I’ve always wondered if, looking back, I’d be able to see the Great Turning happening in hindsight, because it can be hard to really track these things as they happen in the present.  Well, today I can feel it unfolding beneath my feet, unfurling like the bright green soft stem of new growth.  This is the Great Turning happening now.  Welcome.  I do hope you’ll join in.

The NY Times Article

Make Banks Pay Action, San Francisco

Stop the Machine

Thinking about this thing called Destiny, Fate... & aren't you Special?

Today I listened to a lecture about sourcing our power to realize our own destinies from the greater web of life – for the third time.  For something as weighty as the topic of realizing one’s destiny, you really can’t assume that you’ll get it all just by listening to a teleconference over the internet once. 

I mean, I guess one could say that for a topic as weighty as destiny, trying to figure it out or learn anything of value through a podcast, internet teleconference, twitter post, facebook update is either foolhardy or delusional.  But, I’ve been through all that before.  That’s the voice of my inner naysayer.

I adore the concept of destiny, even those times when I don’t believe in it.  Which is to say that when I’m in ritual space, or after a beautiful experience making love with someone, or under the influence of certain psychoactive plants, or simply on a day when the sun is shining and I feel stress-free and connected to our great mother’s pulse, I know that there is a deeper meaning to my life, your life, and the lives of all of us who were born during this time of great upheaval and great transformation.  When I’m stressed out over paying my car insurance or when my cell phone drops a seemingly important call, it’s sometimes easy to believe that those things are Real Life. 

While listening to Claire talk about destiny and “aligning with the agenda of the intelligence of the universe to activate the deepest parts of our selves,” and “bringing forth our gifts in ways that will be the greatest contribution to all life,” even though it was the third time I’d heard her say the exact same words, I suddenly found myself shaking with soundless tears as a rush of energy moved up and out and through me. It was as if the deep part of myself she was talking about had suddenly broken through a dam made of credit card statements and student loan promissory notes and grocery store receipts and report cards and a thousand other paper tigers, and like a river of living energy was flowing through me. 

“Our universe has an agenda: for us to create a world that truly reflects the beauty of consciousness itself – heaven on earth,” Claire was saying, when I came back to myself and could hear her again.  “We’re waking up with a desire to express our gifts in ways that give our lives meaning because they contribute to an evolutionary process of transformation.  This is us waking up to our destinies.”

There is a beautiful distinction in her definition of destiny as waking up to our highest potential as co-creators of the evolutionary processes of life, as compared to fate: destiny feels light, right, and open in my body and heart, whereas fate feels heavy and stuck, like something with its talons clawing into my back between my shoulders where I can’t reach back and dislodge it.   Fate is the inertia of the social and political systems of the past, the trauma of ancestral stories not yet healed, the limitations of our own minds that come from a culture that doesn’t support dreams and imagination, the way our lives will be if we don’t wake up from the sleep-walking trance of consumerism. 

When I was a little girl, my father used to joke with passersby that I was the messiah – an assertion based mostly on the fact that I’d managed to come into the world despite the good intentions of not just one but two forms of contraception.  He said that they’d look at me, confused, and say, “Isn’t the Messiah supposed to be a man?”  To which he’d reply, “Where in the Torah does it say that?”  No one, apparently, knew.

I knew he was joking, but beneath the joke was something deeper and more resonant – I knew that my father thought that I was very special, and because he felt that way, I did, too.  I’ve never had any illusions about being the Jewish Messiah, but in my heart I’ve always felt like there is something important that I’m supposed to do, something big and beautiful and meaningful that I’m meant to be a part of. 

Many times in my life, I’ve felt ashamed about those feelings, convinced they were a reflection of American egotism and our perpetual myths about the individual hero who rescues the world.  And yet, even when I’ve tried to disown the feeling or downplay it into something I considered to be more politically or spiritually correct, it’s never been truly gone.  And, what’s worse, is that the feeling that I’m somehow not living up to that potential of beauty and power is painful even when I’ve attempted to tell myself that I shouldn’t have those kinds of aspirations.  So I’ve been living with the pain of feeling like I’m too much and not enough at the same time – for a long time. 

The beautiful thing that I’m waking up to, though, first through Joanna Macy’s teachings about the Great Turning and now through the work of Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas, is that there are many of us – probably all of us – who feel like we were born to do something wonderful, important, beautiful, and powerful and that whatever that thing is, it is needed right at this precise, perilous moment of the history of our planet.  And the other thing that I’m seeing is that if I believe that about you, and the guy that is driving the Bart, and the people I meet in the grocery store line, and perhaps even my cat, there’s nothing egotistical or self-centered about it.  Believing, as my father did, that there is something uniquely special about me is not the same as saying there is something about me that’s so special that it makes me more valuable or important than anyone else. 

So I’m starting to breathe and release into a sense of wonder and curiosity and amazement, free from my own self-judgement, about this thing I’m calling destiny.  Not just my own destiny, but also Jason’s, destiny and the destinies of the people in my community and the people who live in countries that I will never visit and who’s faces I will never see.  We’re all in this together.  What could we do, if we were all actively pursuing those things that give our lives the most meaning, that will make the grandest, most potent contributions to the lineage of our human ancestors and descendents, to our wider family of earth-beings, to the development of that great intelligence which makes itself known through the dance of the stars and planets and time and space?  

I feel inspired and juiced up just thinking about it.  The next step is figuring out how the heck to do it.

Awakening Authentic Power-From-Within

Right now I’m doing one of the most powerful, innovative things it feels like I’ve done in a long time, and I can sense a power and magic here that is radical, fresh, and invigorating. 

I know on the outside it doesn’t look like I’m doing much.  I’m sitting in a café in Southwest Berkeley on San Pablo Ave., an area patchworked with tire repair shops, dive bars, up-and-coming restaurants, and not a few empty, unmarked buildings.  I’m wearing jeans, skater shoes that hide socks with holes in the toes, a black shirt, and I have earbuds in my ears as I type this.  But what you can’t see from this surface glance is the revolution that is pouring through me, on digitized sound waves that come from far away, and that connect me to the collective wisdom, intelligence, hope, and passion of 1500 women from 53 different countries that share a desire to manifest a different way of being on this earth. 

Even if nothing else came of it, the money that I paid to be a part of Feminine Power: the Essential Course for the Awakening Woman would have been well spent to be part of this bright, wide-cast web of wise women who want more from the world than what we’ve been offered by corporations and institutionalized religions, and who understand that we must come together to break through our inner glass ceilings to contribute to Life in the ways that that we’ve felt Called to do for so long. 

It brings tears to my eyes to hear the voices of the women from Los Angeles, Ontario Canada, Australia, Japan, Haiti, Costa Rica, Bosnia, and Vietnam speak about a shared longing for bringing their dreams into full manifestation, to co-create the world that they know is possible in their hearts, to contribute to their cultures in ways that will create a long-lasting heritage of compassion and peace for their children to inherit, and to be part of the deep healing of the little garden planet we call home. 

I have long been an ardent skeptic – even a downright naysayer – of online education (it makes my cheesedar ding).  I most certainly had my doubts when I first went to the website for Feminine Power and noticed that the color scheme employed could have been taken straight from a Victoria’s Secret catalog.  And the constant email traffic before the course that told me creators Katherine Woodward Thomas and Claire Zammit would help me “activate my magnetic field” and give me the “key to personal and planetary change” really turned me off.

Sometimes.  

Most of the time, even.  With every new email, I’d gleefully hit the tiny gray trashcan button on the corner of my screen without bothering to read most of them, resting back into the satisfaction of the completion (and, often times, simultaneous dismissal) of many other previous forays into spiritual practices and women’s empowerment courses that promised similar things without delivering the transformative experiences they advertised.  

But other times, the times that I was feeling more quiet and gentle inside, I found myself listening to a little voice that kept saying things like, “But – what if they can help me activate my magnetic field?  What if they can teach me how to access the power to transform my life and fulfill my destiny?  What if there is something different here – about this work, and about where I am in my life right now – that makes it possible to open the gate into a whole new way of being?  Isn’t that what I want?  Isn’t it worth trying for?”

That little voice’s hopeful, idealistic whispers would have fallen on deaf ears if it were not for my friend Ursula, who is the person who first mentioned the course to me.  We may not be the closest of intimate friends, but there is something about her kind, frank, authentic approach to life and the things we have in common – being massage therapists, birth workers, and priestesses of women’s mysteries – that always inspires and intrigues me.  Ursula is not hippie-dippy, nor new-age-y, nor does she appear to be someone who purchases countless things from fuchsia and silver websites promising to change your life and find you the perfect mate.  She told me that she had been doing the Feminine Power work for ten months with a study group, was still actively involved, and had gotten a lot out of it. 

“Beyond all else, what I appreciate about it is its intelligence,” she said to me.

That stuck with me, despite my inner naysayer.  In fact, it even helped the Inner Naysayer calm down a bit, because the Inner Naysayer values intelligence above all other things (it prides itself on being my most intelligent self, buying into the myth that being analytic and being intelligent are the same). 

The intelligence that Ursula was talking about was something that I could feel coming through the emails and in the free telecourse that I listened to late one night.  The thing is, the founders of the course don’t come at it “from the beginning” like so many others do, but from a place honors past experience and the work that we’ve already done to self-actualize and awaken into “our real lives” --  those lives that we feel just on the edges of our experience, hovering on the periphery of our vision but not yet fully manifested. 

“We know you’ve done spiritual work and had transformative experiences.  We know you’re the kind of people that are already creating change in the world.  But you’re still not where you want to be – yet,” Katherine and Claire were saying to me in those emails, again and again. “There are hurdles in the way that seem invisible, invincible, artifacts of a reality you didn’t consent to.  We have been there, and we have some tools that we can share to really break it open.  We have developed tools that can help us co-create the life and the world that we all want.” 

My Little Voice likes that kind of talk.  She gets all excited by it.

Eventually, I had to let Inner-Naysayer and Little Voice duke it out.  As usual, on the surface it seemed that they were arguing about the money and time commitment involved.

“What if it doesn’t do anything?” Inner Naysayer asked.  “What if its just like all of the other things, and ends up being a big waste of money and time?”

She was saying this in an effort to sway the Decision Maker onto her side, because she knows that Decision Maker is very touchy about the subject.  Both are resources that are scarce in my world, and Decision Maker rations them out with great care. 

“What if they’re just glossy faces making all kinds of promises without anything to back it up?” Inner Naysayer went on.  “We will feel so dumb.  We will feel ashamed about the money we wasted.  That will suck.  Stop being so naïve, Little Voice.”

Decision Maker nodded.  Those were pretty good points.

But Little Voice was not to be so easily dissuaded.  In fact, Little Voice wasn’t feeling as little anymore.  She rose up to her full size, looked Inner Naysayer right in the face, and said, “Fuck off, Inner Naysayer!  So what?  What if those things are true?  Even if it doesn’t do any good – well what good do you ever do?  Where have you gotten us?  Not far, I can tell you that.  Nowhere, in fact!  All you do is naysay, and that’s not only boring and lame but it’s not anywhere near as productive as you seem to think.  So shut up already!”

You’d think Inner Naysayer would have quickly retorted about how she keeps us safe from the danges of the world and all of that, but, surprisingly, she did not.  She bristled as if slapped in the face, turned around, and silently went off into her corner to sulk. 

And that was that.  The next thing you knew, I’d paid my dues and was very eagerly awaiting my course materials.  It was as if Little Voice had been emboldened by her victory over Naysayer and had brazenly taken over the reigns of the whole operation, infusing all of me with the excitement, freshness, innocence, and bubbling passion that is her hallmark.   

Listening to women all over the world talk about things like activation, catalyzing transformation, global movements, hope, fulfillment, and destiny, I know now not only that I made the right choice listening to that little voice, but also that by doing so I have stepped into a positive feedback loop that strengthens and empowers that part of me. 

What I’m learning is that there are many beliefs inside of us that influence our decision making, some of which we’re aware of and some which we are not.  These beliefs are the lens through which we experience the world, and they self-perpetuate themselves by providing evidence of their own validity.  So, when I’m living within the worldview of naysaying, belittling, and demeaning those things that my heart and spirit crave, I will experience the world in ways that confirm that pouring my heart and soul into what I want is not safe, will not be appreciated or successful, and will bring me pain and disappointment.  Which is to say that when I put on the lens of that belief and that worldview, I am co-creating that reality by doing so – even if its not what I want deep inside of me.  I act in ways that make it difficult for others to support what I am doing.  I pull back from projects that are gaining momentum because I don’t believe they will be successful and I’m afraid of getting swept up into a tidal force that will leave me bedraggled and beaten against a rocky shore.  I disengage from things that I love to do and want to develop proficiency in because I don’t feel like I’ll ever be good enough at those things to make the time and effort that I put into them worth it, and that becomes the self-fulfilling prophesy, because without that time and effort I don’t develop the skill and competency that I desire. 

But there’s a bright light at the end of that tunnel, because by stepping into the belief-lens that my most hopeful, connected, inspired self espouses, I’m stepping into co-creating a different life for myself where those beliefs can be validated every day by success and ever-more connection, hope, and inspiration.  There is a lot of self-responsibility in doing this, and that self-responsibility is more empowering than it is frightening.  So often, when I’ve thought of self-responsibility in the past, I’ve felt it as something that deadens my enthusiasm and represses my spirit.  But this is a different understanding of it.  It’s the understanding that by taking responsibility for co-creating my experience, I am empowered to shift and shape it into that which I most desire.

Simply listening on the phone to the voices of women across the world talking about what they want for themselves and their communities, deep in their hearts and through the wisdom of their bodies and intuition, I feel it happening.  I am connected to a web of bright light that feeds on itself to become brighter, an upwelling of wisdom that is gaining momentum.  I am also writing easily and freely for the first time in months, because life feels like its happening through me and not to me, and that's what I need in order to have my creativity flow through me and onto the page (or screen, as the case may be).  

This feels like the beginning of a wonderful adventure.  I hope that you folks out the blogosphere are excited to experience it with me.  I know that I am very excited to begin.  

Where There is Fear, There is Power

I could barely hear the man at the podium speaking, and the voices in the hall hushed to hear him.  We'd all been sitting there at the public comments hearing at the California Public Utilities Commission meeting for over an hour and a half, and folks were getting restless, their rancor most notably directed at the slightly plump young woman with the bell who's sad duty it was to ding you when you're one minute of airtime was up.

The man's white hair, which stood out starkly against his dark skin, fluffed out to the side, giving him a distinct likeness to Albert Einstein.

"I was a veteran of Nagasaki," he said, or at least I think that's what he said.  He spoke with the very slow, barely audible mumble of someone well over seventy, but the woman with the bell had enough sense not to try and ding him -- whether because she knew it would send the already disquieted crowd into outright chaos or simply because her mother had raised her right, I don't know.  "I've served this country for along time.  But now... (mumble, mumble)... PG&E rate increases (mumble)... I was without heat in my house for five months this winter.  I lived in a cold house for five months.  (mumble, mumble) ...do not allow PG&E to increase our rates any higher."

Watching him, I was struck by his quiet power, the clarity I felt from him in spite of my confusion over his specific words, and the sadness of this small personal truth -- that this old man, and undoubtedly countless others like him, was going without power in the dead of winter and had traveled here to the pomp auditorium at the San Francisco Civic Center from West Oakland early in the afternoon in the pouring rain to challenge the CPUC's approval of smart meters.

At first when Jason suggested that we go to the public comments hearing to talk about Diablo Canyon, I had thought that it didn't make much sense.  We've been positively obsessed with organizing around shutting down Diablo Canyon since the catastrophic events at the Fukushima Daiichi plant earlier this month.  Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant sits on not one but two active fault lines, one less than 1000 feet from the plant.  These faults are in the same system as the one that caused the quake in Japan, and overall, there has been a growing amount of seismic activity in the Pacific Rim in the last ten years.  Excitingly, DCNPP is built only to withstand a 6.7 earthquake, has relatively no preparedness plan for a seismic emergency, is under such intense scrutiny that their backup safety mechanisms were not working for over 18 months, and is located about 250 miles from my house.

But, obsessed or no, I couldn't see what our arguments against Diablo Canyon had to do with a public hearing focused on smart meters, and I didn't want to distract the CPUC to get confused with too many issues at one meeting.  But as I heard the old man speak, and the countless others who had come, I felt a surge of intense emotion and a sense of belonging -- belonging to this group of people passionate, desperately passionate in some cases, about protecting our lives against corporate interests who are willing to take risks with potentially armageddon-inducing technologies just because the risk-to-benefit analysis somehow makes sense to them on their little calculators.

Elaine spoke first, then Marg.  Jason and I had to wait a long time, and by the time it was my turn to go, I felt my whole body shaking with emotion and was sure that I was either going to be moved by spirit to say things I would never remember but other people would think were pretty good, or would collapse into a pile of tears and gibbers like a total fool.

The auditorium is not set up to benefit the nerves of public commentators.  You stand off to the side, below a stage where the commissioners sit behind a tall desk in plush cushy chairs, seemingly completely at ease while you struggle to figure out how to adjust the mic to go near your mouth.  As I got up to speak, I noticed that while most of the commissioners appeared to be rather bored and trying to appear interested, they did at least look at me.  That was a good sign.  I decide to go for it.

Well, I don't remember what I said, but other people seemed to like it.  I know that I said something about the fault lines, and how we need to immediately shut down these reactors until the seismic mapping is completed and can prove that DCNPP is safe -- which simply won't and can't happen.  Jason went next, and as I watched him, I was struck by how incredibly sexy I find it to see him in his power, speaking strongly for the things that we're fighting for -- speaking in defense of the earth.  He told the commissioners that they would be held accountable for not shutting down the reactor if and when something goes wrong there, and I could see how that unnerved them.  Which I think seems like a pretty appropriate response.  After all, it's a pretty unnerving situation.

Now, a couple hours later in a cafe, I'm no longer thinking much about the commissioners, even though I do have a fantasy where they announce tomorrow that they've seen how dire the situation is and will immediately shut it down.  What is striking me is how beautiful the hills are around Diablo Canyon, green and covered in trees, like a small peace of heaven.  We've been given the keys to eden, and the sacred covenant of caring for one another: humans young and old, non-humans of infinite and majestic variety, the land herself which rolls like waves along the coastline where we've built this thing of terrible, awesome power.  Most of all, I'm remembering the thing that Starhawk says that I've heard so many times that it's almost cliche: where there is fear, there is power.

Immense power.  Sometimes, overwhelming fear.  Sometimes, immense power that helps us overcome our overwhelming fear, even in places as unlikely as bureaucratic meetings and from people as unlikely as you, or me, or an old man who's voice can barely reach above a murmur.

Which makes me think of something else that I know about power -- that it's in each of us, and that it grows when we're together.  I can feel that I'm at the beginning of another journey with this Diablo Canyon thing... I hope that you'll come with me.