Many
moons ago, we were living in a sleepy village of the Adelaide Hills, and we’d
just started our market. The war had
broken out in Iraq, and we drove our old Ford with hundreds of statements of
peace written on it as a mobile petition to Canberra………… And that time was almost like a mini Summer
of Love. All sorts of folk from all the
stratospheres of our culture came to our market and got loved. It almost became a cult how loving our market
was. It was a standard of care that we
had for everyone who chanced upon us on sunny or stormy Sundays, no matter who
they were or how they looked. As the top of the supposed hierarchy of the
market, Currawong and I had a unique opportunity to give the power to
everybody. And turn it into a circle, where
everyone was loved and appreciated no matter how obnoxious they were. People came and attacked us, and died with
us, and sneered at us, and fought in front of us, and generally brought some of
their worst behaviours to the commons, and we all just loved them and us and it,
and did our best to treat everyone as equals.
People also came with their best and their most eccentric and generous
and trippy and vulnerable behaviours and we loved them even more. And I’d love to keep going as I’m sure you
can tell, but the market is not really part of the story I want to tell. It was an amazing time and I’ll write about
that another day, but for the purposes of this story, there was a particular
event that really changed and challenged my perception of the world.
There was
this fella who’d been a hermit for about 15 years. And he chose the market as the place to come
out and play with people again, and he decided to organise a meeting for peace. Because he’d been a hermit for 15 years he
really didn’t have a huge social network, and as it was a small town, not many
people turned up. So there we were early
one evening, Currawong and I, the ex-hermit and another friend, sitting in a
chilly hall to talk about peace. The
first thing he asked was what peace was.
And we very quickly realised that all we knew about peace, was what was
absent from it. We knew all the things that peace wasn’t, and when there
weren’t any of them around, then that would have to be peace. We were looking at the photo negatives of
peace, rather than looking at the colour photo. And then we started
wondering……..if we didn’t know what peace WAS…….then how the hell could we
create it? And how much have we
collectively created all our own hell and strife, with our focus on all the
things that peace isn’t, so that we can have it?
So many
of us spend our precious creative energy on all the things that are wrong with
the world, and each other, and the government, and corporations, and Monsanto,
and our modern day diets, and the list is endless of all the things that we’re
trying to stop for the good of us, and the planet, and those poor children, and
the people over there, and if we all just do the right things and stop doing
the wrong things, then it will all get better and we’ll all be
happy…………….. In fact we’re so focused on
educating ourselves and each other about all the wrong things with the world,
that we’ve forgotten that we’re creating it all with our thoughts, and
forgotten too, that maybe one of the most liberating, enlightened,
revolutionary and loving acts we can ever perform, is that of creating magic
with our thoughts and our minds, and in the creative energy of dreaming a positive,
peaceful, respectful, honourable, honest and healthy future. And present reality.
Now I
really got into the more creative aspect as environmental activism, after
watching The Secret, and feeling despairing and disempowered after watching An
Inconvenient Truth. I came up with all
sorts of ideas to create a more positive focus for our collective futures. Planting hemp along the roads, and in any
spare place, to soak up carbon dioxide and be turned into paper, neo plastic,
and all the gazillions of things hemp can be made into. Creating public focus walls, with folk and groups
and schools doing tiles of all the wonderful things they wanted in the future
world. When we were school shopping years ago, we spent time at a Maharishi
school, where they had a whole wall dedicated to what the kids wanted to see
more of in the world, and they meditated on it every morning. There was more rain, reforestation, safe
biosphere, and all the other sorts of things that make a person feel good
thinking about. I also wanted to try and
write about it, and create a positive future vision rather than the more easily
available apocalyptic horror stories, that are put about in mainstream media as
possible futures.
Growing up in an apocalyptic fundamentalist cult, I’ve been thinking about ‘the
end days’ for most of my life. Even
after leaving my childhood religion, I came across channellers, and mystics,
and talk about the ‘great wave of consciousness’ and all the 2012
conspiracies. And now we’re here. And the most curious thing has happened! I’ve always contemplated a future after ‘the
shit hit the fan’ as being mostly agrarian based. Primitive.
No electricity or technology.
Hard work. And Currawong’s been
having this love affair with science, and in the last couple of months, for the
first time ever in my life, I’ve been dreaming of a future after whatever shift
is on it’s way has happened, with science and technology and a quasi mystical
science, that creates things based on cohesion and harmony with the environment
rather than money. Sustainability rather
than greed.
And I
wrote this thing years ago in the period I was just talking about, and
revisited it lately, and found myself adding technical bits to it, and it felt
goodJ I want to keep having my
internet love affairs after ‘the shift’.
I want to keep being able to travel in freedom. I want abundance and gardens and flying
machines and funky earthship style homes and little pockets of communities
where anything that people can dream up as a lifestyle can be lived
respectfully.
So here’s
what I wrote years ago with some added bits……
The earth is me. Microcosm’s of macrocosm’s abound. Remember that model in the 60’s who
asphyxiated slowly to death when they painted her skin? We were doing that to the earth before. Before we realised that we’d created it
through our fear and pain that we really were seperated from all that we
saw. Before we realised that we were
creating it all, and could simply take our attention away from our complete and
total destruction, and instead create a happy, joyful, peaceful, greatfull
reality with our thoughts. Pull up the
concrete and the hard building scabs on our skin and let our skin breathe. Isn’t it funny that most of the most watered
and fertile land on the planet was covered with concrete and bitumen. Before we realised. Before we pulled it up and travelled back
along the yarn to the times when we moved around a lot, owned few and well
loved things, took care of the earths skin like our own. Before we realised that all the gentle
metaphors the many prophets, seers and poetesses had given us were literal
advice stories and instructions to living a better life. Isn’t it wonderous and lushsome that we all
collectively got it. Got our
oneness.
Flowmads made their artistic ways
throughout the countryside and cityscape, pulling some of the scabs off our
skin, letting the white and shriveled parts of our flesh see the sunlight
again, breathe the blue skies, grow weeds then flowers then fruits in our flesh
again. Wherever they went they left
green ground and tent sites, sunbreathing shelters and coloured flags, lush
gardens and freebreathing trees. They also
left life enhancing sculptures and weavings and sounding pieces that aged along
with everything else.
When all the human animals remembered
their animal selves and stopped being tamed lions pacing round their cages, they
took up the artistic, shamanic, and percussive arts, telling stories and
leaving inspirations. They all started
pulling up the scabs in whichever ways they could. Peeling back the hard encrusted beliefs and
bitumens and crumbling ways.
They started birthing in colourful
tents and underground grottoes, cool river pools and warm salty baths. Their births became ecstatic and orgasmic,
private moments of a families deep connection and love for each other. Babies were welcomed into the world gently
and quietly, being left to acclimatise in whatever way they needed and their
families felt drawn to. A soft lit, easy
slide into life and awareness outside the womb.
A simple instruction into the arts of birthing human animals. And safe
and respectful medicines and procedures sat quietly in the wings, in case they
were needed.
Their sexuality was allowed to express
the myriad of ways and paths imagined by the unique collective consciousness,
and understood as ways that the universe had found to express itself. Everyone’s sexual journey was seen as
increasing and improving compassion and empathy for the vast sea of possibility
that is sex.
Death became far less traumatic, as we
made it more part of life. We formed
elaborate and soulful rituals around letting go, washing and dressing the body,
singing and playing music and telling final stories. Carrying the dead around the places at home
they liked best, and then burying them in the gentle folds of the earth, and
planting tree’s on them, so we could always eat fruit from the tree and know
that we were eating of the essence of our loved ones.
We realised we were all one literally with the cosmos, our planet, other
animals, each other, and ourselves.
Everything we did, we did to ourselves.
And we created it all with our thoughts.
We started creating a beautiful, unified, loving, greatful, diverse,
respectful wholeness. A healing for us
all as a planet and everything. Letting
the waters and ourselves flow.
Because we’re all made up of mostly water, and we drink it, swim in it,
bathe in it, eat it, use it and love it, as it carries memories of all the places
it’s been. Water and energy, that moves and flows constantly. For whom stagnation is death. Water and energy that is affected, changed
by, and remembers thoughts and where it’s been. Water and energy that’s melted into our
atmosphere from interstellar journeys, bringing knowledge and memories and
connectings with us and our water already flowing. Water and energy that travels an 8 million
year cycle of plunging into the depths of our earths heart, and then floating
up to the seabed again through hydrothermic vents. Water and energy that remember being locked
in rooms to make bargain goodies. Water
and energy that are a constant flow of stories and memories and learnings to be
heard whenever we want. Water and energy
that contain the ingredients for everything.
And who respond most of all to love and gratitude.
We became flowmads and caretakers, and whatever else we wanted, and we
lost all the baggage that politer religions suggested we leave behind, as we
started living the reality that everything around us is us. What constructions did we like on our
skin? What elements did we want in our
water and blood? What did we want to do
with our fertile valleys and shores that begged to have food grown from
them? How did we thank and love the
other animals, our brothers and sisters and diverse parts of self, who provided
so much for us?
We told ourselves the truth about how our ownership had become a burden,
and we relinquished our burdens for the flow.
We strived to retrieve our animal natures, our noble sovereign natures,
and placed ourselves back in the wheel of equals. We set up Human Animal Wildlife
Sanctuaries…….where human animals can just be.
Can remember what it feels, looks, sounds and tastes like when life is
lived in bliss, being simply who we are.
Putting love, thanks and respect into our food, our clothing, our
habitats, our water, our families, our lovers, our children. All of us animals living cohesively,
respectfully, co-operatively, lovingly together.
And then we met together with all the other animals and traded, and
played, and danced, and sung, and created community together. Created the magic of community that gave form
to our glimmering dreams of sharing tasks and learnings. Community where there was room for everyone,
and everyone was loved and thanked for the unique magic they brought to the
whole. Where we understand that what we
focused on we got more of. And the best
and most fertile ground for this community to grow in was the bed of a
market. Spontaneous, fertile markets
that erupted from daily living and life around the areas we cohabitated, or on
the trails of flowmads.
Technology exploded into radical places when we got rid of the money god
from our psyches and explored and invented for the good of all. We searched the depths of the deep deep seas
and found the secrets down below. We
sent off crafts to the outer reaches of our galaxy and beyond, exploring our
neighbouring life forms. Sky craft
became our motorized mode of travel, avoiding the need for highways, cutting
out completely the toll of dead animals taken by roads, and freeing up our
means of travel. Run on water and
built with hemp and recycled parts, they revolutionized the way we move. Solar, wind and water power became the
standard, and our esteemed spiritual scientists worked out myriad ways of
cleaning up the messes our ancestors created.
Our homes became far more natural, nestled into hills for insulation,
passively solar and well placed for growing gardens within, on top, and
without.
And we collectively grew up, married the matrifocal mother to the
patrifocal father and welcomed their learnings from the lengths and breadths of
where we’d been in our evolution. We all
woke up from our self induced coma, and recognised that the time for change was
now, and we really were the ones that we were waiting for all along. We’ve explored the far reaches of human
potential, and now it’s time to meet up again, take notes, and put it all into
perspective as we evolve into an age of enlightenment, love, thanks, and
consciousness. We all knew the toll,
deep down, that our greed and hungry culture has taken on ourselves and our
earth. And we made the changes necessary
to make it a whole lot easier not only for ourselves, but for all of our
brothers and sisters. We take responsibility for shaping the world as we want
it and need it to be for a long, healthy and happy future for us and many many
generations to come.
