By now, looks like everyone with a keyboard and a mouse has offered up something to the blogosphere about the Occupy movement. I don't think that fellow in Canada ever imagined in his wildest dreams that his call to action would have this kind of global response.
Still, I keep getting email asking me, "So what's your take on it, Arjuna?"
Ok, they asked. So here it is.
My first response is "Yeah!"
I can follow that up with, "Yeeeehaw!"
And if you still want more, I'd say, "About time."
Many years ago (visualize me stroking my gray beard as say those words) when I was a young man at Cambridge University, all my friends were becoming Marxists. Demonstrations, protests, sit-ins and strikes were the thing to do if you wanted to be cool (and get laid). Back then, I took a slightly different route. All my friends were focusing on the enormous injustice that a huge percentage of the world's wealth is controlled by a tiny percentage of the world's population. How can anyone argue? Of course there's something wrong with that picture, when a few people have access to the absolute best of anything, more than they can possibly enjoy, and there are children dying from lack of food and clean water.
The question that nagged at me all those years ago was, "What is it that creates this situation?"
It would never happen, for example, in your family. Imagine sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner where you and your closest ones get the best of everything, and the distant cousins at the end of the table eat dry bread and contaminated water. Couldn't happen, right? When you're with your family, you share because you feel close, you feel connected. The sense of "us" is greater than the sense of a "you" and a "me" as separate.
I've always had the sense that the fundamental ailment in our world is not just economic or political, but to do with this underlying feeling of separation.
When I was living in Bali many years ago, I got to hear about a Japanese company clear cutting large areas of old growth teak forest. The trees were loaded onto boats, supposedly headed for Japan. It seemed like a shame, as these were very old trees, but the real shocker came when I heard that the boats weren't actually taking the trees all the way to Japan. Halfway there, in the middle of nowhere, they were getting dumped off into the ocean. The motive? By buying up old-growth teak in Indonesia and keeping it off the market, the company was able to maintain their high price for the rare teak already available in Japan.
When you hear a story like that (and of course we could supply an endless number of similar stories today of senseless greed), you've got to ask yourself, "What causes someone to make a decision like that?" Some people might call it a savvy business decision, but what is the state of consciousness underneath it? How do you have to feel about yourself, and about life, to make such a decision? I'd say it is all coming from a feeling of being separate: separate from the earth, separate from other people, separate even from your children, who are later going to have to deal with the messes we are creating today. So early on, I developed a keen interest in discovering what creates this feeling of separation, and what, if anything, can cause it to dissolve.
Whenever any localized society has created the kind of imbalance of wealth we have today, it has eventually resulted in destabilization and revolution. The Roman Empire collapsed as the rich and powerful in Rome never ran out of greed for dominating the less fortunate. The French revolution, the Russian revolution, right up to the fall of Colonel Gaddafi a few weeks ago: People will only tolerate greed and abusive power for so long.
There has always been a problem, however. Revolutions change the balance of power, but generally don't get rid of the feeling of separation which created the imbalance. Under the Czar in Russia, for example, working people were starving while the aristocracy lived in palaces. But the Bolshevik regime that took over simply replaced one form of elitism with another. When Yeltsin and Gorbachev ended Communism in 1991, again, it just rearranged the players on the board. The dynamic of separation, greed and corruption remained just as strong.
So here are some things that I love about the Occupy movement, and which inspire me to repeat that passionate "Yeehaw!" and to raise my glass that this might be an upgrade to revolution-as-usual.
My hope and prayer is that this could be a different kind of a revolution. A revolution in the way we have revolutions. In other words, not just the same old, "You guys are greedy and rich and you stink, and we're going to take you down, yaaahh! Here's a bottle in your windshield, you b**stard." We can be, and we are being, more revolutionary than that, by moving beyond separation. This is a bold step. To ask ourselves, "What's the state of consciousness that causes someone to behave the way they do?" "What would somebody have to be feeling (or unable to feel) to have an insatiable lust to have more of everything, and to not care about other people's needs?"
When we sit with these questions, we realize that we are actually ALL victims of the economic system that is now collapsing around us. The factory worker who just lost their job, who is paying 28 percent percent in credit card interest, who is in foreclosure on their house, is an obvious victim. It takes a leap to see that the banker in his private jet, mansions on every continent, and the best of everything, is, in a more obscure way, also a victim. Whoa, Whaaaaat? Yes, think about it. You ever hung out with someone living this way? Selfishness and isolation is not a fun way to be. It's often accompanied by rampant substance abuse, broken marriages, an inability to feel gratitude, to feel good about yourself or that you've made any real contribution.
The way that the Occupy movement can be a revolutionary revolution instead of a run-of-the-mill ordinary revolution is if we start with ourselves. We can start by dropping our attention deeper than thoughts, rigid beliefs, reactive emotions and prejudice. We can start by discovering the dimension within each of us, not so far away, which is limitless and free, which needs nothing, but offers everything. Then you become a spiritual activist, an empowered mystic. You take a stand not against something or someone, but for something. You take a stand for life, for celebration, for generosity, for values that make everybody stronger.
So for those of you who asked, that's my answer. I thoroughly support occupying everything in sight, and lets start with yourselves.
Occupy the limitless space, free and open like the sky, which is your true nature.
Occupy the unclaimed love which you always knew was there, waiting to be owned.
Occupy your capacity to forgive, to find common ground.
Occupy the place where you move beyond blame and differences, and find empathy.
Occupy Yourself, Occupy your true nature, and then whatever else you choose occupy will naturally become a better place for everyone to be.
To me, that's revolutionary revolution.
So there's the story of why, instead of becoming a social activist, or a film maker, or a political commentator like many of my friends back then, I have developed the Awakening Coaching Training. Today I train coaches to become facilitators of awakening, to guide people to move beyond separation, and to start with themselves. We need a good political or social revolution from time to time, and I believe that there first needs to be a Translucent Revolution within.
I'm going to be hosting a free tele-seminar about Awakening Coaching this Friday, November 11th at 10am PST. Feel free to join us. It will last 75 minutes, and so will include the magical moment, never to be repeated, of 11:11 on 11-11-11.
Register Here, for the live call, or to listen to the replay.
Follow Arjuna Ardagh on Twitter: www.twitter.com/awakeningcoach
Why do you have to be "spiritual" in order to have convictions? I have strong convictions I feel passionately about and i'm certainly not "spiritual". Spirituality is a vague word that means entirely different things to different people. It's an attempt at a "catch all" term that for some means god and religion, for others means supernatural, and for others just means physical things that are actually based in science, people just don't realize it.
"Then you become a spiritual activist, an empowered mystic."
What the heck does this even mean?
Jefferson said we need a revolution every 10 years.
I hope Jefferson like you mean a Non-Violnet revolutions. Gandhi, used economics and business non-violent competiton (cutting consumption of the British Empire for Cloth and Salt industries)
This is what we in America must and can do and it may be part of OWS. We as consumers and workers could quit using Banks, quit buy the necessities the both parties are barely supporting. Hoping to eek by, creatting lower wages and more profits, until the worker accepts lower jobs, less wages and more tax. So the business cycle can return to even Higher Profits.
" Let every nation (attacker of the Constitution Foreign or Domestic) know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.'
-JFK
I would TODAY and believe JFK would substitute for Nation, "Any Foreign or Domestic Attack on the Constitution of the United States of America". The Oath of Office of Executive, Legislative, Judicial and Armed Forces
Still walking on earth has it physiological needs of which saving the poor, ending sickness or establishing justice is no less a real deficient need than nourishment itself. But our enlightenment is relative to the cause and effect of our earthly actions and deficiency needs around us. This is the constant battle of fighting the Yoke or submitting to the Yoke. As the rich make the Yoke tighter in the material world it adds for a greater struggle of submitting to that Yoke. Our Cross and our Journey is ours alone, but here on earth standing with others like OWS can be an enlightening experience and an expression of Spirit upon the earth. It is your journey and ours to express with other Spirits if we choose to spend our Karma.
OWS "can be an enlightening experience and an expression of Spirit upon the earth". Really? Then why is it so primarily chaotic and non-loving in the actions of the majority of those involved? In my opinion, it is a true example of the power of "evil energies" and how easily it has the powers to decieve so many (choosing the weakest initially, the young and inexperienced, like puppies ventring out into the light with fragilities beyond those strong enough to discern "evil from good?" Most of these people arrived "asleep" and forgot to wake-up! They are as lambs being led to slaughter. They cannot and refuse to SEE THE LIGHT!
I must admit, however, I was stopped at the plug for your work,,,,not because I disagree with the work but because the plug stood as an 'out' in the energy and gift of the writing.
I do appreciate the work you speak of and I understand it.... intimately
these protests are simply the effect of an economic ideology that puts profits over people.
the universe has laws or principles or whatever. it is a cause and effect universe when we factor in consciousness.
when a person or nation goes against those laws problems arise.
communism socialism and capitalism will all end up self destructing. americans have yet to figure this out yet even when the evidence is all around us.
as humans are not perfect their economic ideologies will not be perfect.
think of the earth as one big school house, ok a small one if we consider the size of the universe.
watching america self destruct due to its own unawareness of these spiritual laws can be a valuable learning experience for an interested observer.
religion knows little about these spiritual laws, the repub debates are evidence of this.
But standing as one symbolically in the gross vibration of the earth can be useful here, but there is is but one
In this gross vibration of earthly matter, the sightest influence can ripple can chance the face of the entire lake.