Say what you like about the
nature of humans, for my money we’re absolutely spectacular. Just sit for a moment and let your mind range
over the many manifestations of our creativity, will, spontaneous urges,
thoughts, theories, and mind sets that you can think of. And consider our human nature’s……….our
excessive capacity for beauty and our extreme depths of horror. All the wonderful and terrible things we’ve
done together, and on our own, and to the planet, and our homes and gardens,
and to our pets and domestic animals, and our wild landscapes, and our
sexuality, and our birthing, and our dying, and our collective human
spirit.
And we’ve done the most
incredible thing, all of us together, that has never been done by any other
species on the planet. The scope and
magnitude of which is absolutely mind boggling.
We’ve pitched our wills against the compelling force and energy of the
synergy and symbiosis of the entire universe.
Against the tidal flows of the natural world that cycle constantly and
eternally all around us. We’ve gritted
our teeth and dug in our heels and refused the pull of all the natural eddies
that shiver around us, and we’ve suppressed our animal self and free born inner
purpose based on ideals, and belief systems, and hierarchies, that demand
trustworthiness of us. And routines, and
schedules, and rule following, and standardised time, and stability, and
settling down, and dream repression, and personality shaping, and a character
and nature that stay…….one……..way.
Otherwise you’d be having your cake and eating it too, and sitting on
the fence, and confusing people, and too potentially dangerous and flexible and
adaptable and changeable and that’s just too damn scary.
We’ve known for a very long time
now how to shape and control the human nature, how to encourage our young to
put on their own blinkers, segregate and divide, and become consumers or
warriors for the great monoculture in the sky.
The Spartans used to throw a baby to the ground after it was born to
create warriors, the Mayan’s would bury the placenta on the battlefield, and we
circumcise our baby boys and separate baby’s from families as soon as
possible. And mothers from fathers, and
brothers from sisters, and divide into age groups, and abilities, and likes and
dislikes and the scene is set for a rollicking good old war drama, as we play
out on the world stage all the inadequacies and fears we hide inside. Fear
of death and mortality becomes a war on terrorism, evolution, and drugs. Fear of sex and birth becomes a war on
homebirth and honest, trusting, relationships. Fear of sickness becomes a war on cancer and
a multibillion dollar industry in medicine and insurance. Fear of our essential human natures becomes
an open slather war on the entire natural world.
So we buy our beliefs, and our
basic characters that all our choices refer to, and our sexuality and our
birthing capacity, and our fear of death, and all our little labels and belief
systems and uniforms and badges and find the right groups that represent who we
are, and then we insure everything we have to prevent mishap or grief, and if
we just follow all the rules and party lines, then everything will be all
right, everyone will be easily identified and catalogued, and grief, death and
great illness will all happen to someone else, but if they do happen to us,
it’s all right cause there’s someone else to blame and someone else to pay for
it, and thanks to those greater and wiser than us, all will be looked
after. And we all send in postal votes
when it comes to the big decisions in our worlds and environments, because we
need our energy for the little human worlds we’re creating, and trust the
biggies to those that we agree are responsible for it.
We’ve been convinced that if we
just keep on heading towards the sky, and father gods, and off world aliens,
and science, and our relentless march towards total separation from each other
and our universe………..that we’ll come up with answers, or saviours, or other
planets, or solutions, or final solutions that will prove us all right, that we
were never one of the dusty earthy animals afterall, but a superior being sent
here to safeguard, mine, farm, domesticate, tame, order, organise, shepherd,
control, shape, and dominate.
And now the far reaching tendrils
of science have squeezed themselves into impossible spaces, and witnessed
events on unimaginable scales that are leading us on a great cosmic fool’s
journey right back to our roots, to where we all came from, and the symbiosis
that’s been spinning along quite nicely out of our reach. And as I stand all drop jawed and awestruck
at the magnificence of the universe……….I realise that all roads really don’t
lead to Rome, they lead to the understanding that everything is truly
connected. The sun has a heart beat and
sings it’s sweet song to the universe, and our land is in a state of constant
convection from the lava deep roots of our world to the dry and crusty surface. Which reflects the convection of subterranean
sea to the beaches and shores, and the convection of our air and
biosphere. The earth has about as much
water on it as there is water in our individual bodies. And when I started learning about all the
fine tuned balances on which all the multitudinous forms of life on our planet
rely on to survive, like the Biosphere, and distance from the sun, and formation
of weather patterns, and all the pests and weeds without whom we’d perish…………it’s
impossible not to realise that there’s an inherent balance and connection
between everything we know how to observe.
Reflections upon reflections upon reflections show us time and again
that what we do to the world around us, we do to ourselves. Quantum Physics has measured and danced with
mind numbingly minute particles and energies that show time and again that
thought creates reality, everything is intrinsically connected, and reshuffles
itself through infinity and back with every thought we think and movement we
propel.
And all that stability and those
routines and our static belief systems haven’t been serving us afterall, in the
chance filled magic of the universe that favours flexibility and
adaptation. We collectively decided to
pull away parts of the whole on which to experiment, destroy, probe and
explore, hoping that in understanding all the different parts of the creature
that is everything we are connected to, we’d ultimately come to understand
ourselves. In endlessly dissecting the
alien life form of the natural world all around us, we’ve understood the
lifeless parts, but not the connecting web between it all that animates
it. Till now. And it was what the indigenous folk and
spiritual belief systems were trying to say all along – that it’s all
connected, like the massive mallee scrubs that are at their roots the same
tree. Like the ocean that is vast and
made up of billions upon billions of tiny drops. Like snowflakes that are infinitely unique at
the same time as being indistinguishable.
What we’ve done to the world ‘out there’ we’ve done to ourselves.
And now we’re the most
domesticated animals on the planet.
We’ve learnt to suppress our natural urges, and be as polite as every
other caricature in the cartoons we create, where animals trot around gaily in
clothes having cups of tea….. Following
our road rules and our council rules and our government rules and our church
rules and our school rules and our fire season rules and and our self imposed rules, and any other rules we can
find. We neatly tuck away our grottier
more animalesque rituals of birth, sex and death, and we don’t like to talk
about great love, grief or illness in polite company. We cover over our signature animal scent with
designer perfumes and keep our naked born bodies nicely clad and covered. We build pretty houses in neat rows in a
standardised way that would do any factory farmer proud. We’ve replaced our
reverence for life with the love of money.
We’ve used our collective creative energy that used to grow food and make
and learn, and build homes, to create media that focuses on our dysfunction
instead, while we perform our seemingly innocuous button pushing jobs that destroy
our world from afar. We’ve built
machines and weapons that could annhialate us over and over, in desperate
search of the enemy without, when it’s within us all along. We’ve separated ourselves so far from each
other that we treat other cultures and belief systems as different species,
which justifies our numerous genocides. Yet the earth and all it’s inhabitants are
literally our bodies…….what would you like on your skin? In your air?
In your veins? Under your skin?
Going into your body? As your
thoughts and relationships?
We seem to be caught in a loop,
where we’ve largely forgotten with our short memories that we’ve created it all
ourselves. Literally. A few weeks before 9/11, I watched a movie
where some Muslim terrorists flew a plane into the twin towers. We’ve become so entranced, enthralled, and
horrified by what we’ve created that we’ve become stuck in a repeating cycle of
showing ourselves to ourselves, showing our horrors and our fears and our
hatreds to each other in television programs and movies and books and music and
computer games and ideas. Created a self
perpetuating war with ourselves that we project out to the screen of the
world. Most of it based on our long ago
creation of our gods, and our morals, and our life purposes. Somewhere along the line we forgot that we
created them, and instead have allowed them to morph into the great one god of
greed, power, hierarchies and control, using money and dogma as it’s figurehead, and like
the Great Wizard in the Wizard of Oz, a huge and smoke belching machine has
been ordering us about, with a few sleepy old men behind the curtain at the
back, who have probably forgotten why they’re doing it anymore anyway. And we’ve let them preach to us and lead us
into a future that no-one is consciously caretaking anymore………
We’re the only species ever on
the planet, that has thought that it has to be something other than it is. Something other than living, breathing,
birthing, dying, creating, destroying, procreating, surviving, suffering,
laughing. When we talk to each other
about ‘who we are’ we mention jobs and possessions and groups and ideals and
belief systems……barely ever the tick tick tick that keeps us alive and our
spirits enriched. Barely ever the deep
cycles within our lives that link us to every other living thing.
Which brings me back to my
original point. We’ve separated ourselves
so far from our natures, our planet, our creative potency, and ultimately
ourselves, that it comes as a earth shattering shock to us, that we did it to
ourselves all along, and that our scout that we sent out to make sense of it all in the form of Physics, has
returned with the answer and solution of Quantum weirdness, where everything is
connected, is created by our thoughts, and a reflection of the ageless spinning
cycles of the universe. We got so far
away from our source, that our method of separation – our sciences –have found
that they were eating their own tails all along. And now have to teach us how we can
reintegrate. We can take our star stuff
to the ball now, no-one needs to miss out, and re-create ourselves and our
world in a vision of community, love, respect, peace, and freedom. This is the point in our collective
evolutions where we step up to the plate, pick up our minds, use those frontal
lobes that we traded easy births for, and start spinning an encompassing web of
beauty and growth, lessons learned deeply, and a respectful and creative
enhancement of all life.
Now Currawong and I have talked
much about this subject over the years, and we both agree that there needs to
be a Human Animal Liberation Foundation or the HALF movement….cause you’re only
half alive unless you acknowledge you’re an animal. Or a soul in a human’s body. However you choose to look at it. ( Incidentally, if we are spirit in body
form, truly massive and omnipotent sparks of the universe, chosen to trip a
lifetime or two in a human body, wouldn’t the point of our journey be to truly
experience the human capacity? Wouldn’t
it be anti-sense to try and spend that human life attempting to transcend and
overcome the very body of our lessons? )
And we decided we needed to set up Human Animal Wildlife
Santuaries. Or HAWS. Where humans could release themselves into
the wild. If Osho could get rolls
royces gifted to him, we could get land donated to everyone. And along the
lines of understanding that the earth is our skin, we’d disassemble the
buildings, put on some composting toilets, fruit and nut trees, a big tin roof
with no floor and walls to collect water and be shelter in the open, and gardens. Maybe a few gypsy vans with computers and
scientific equipment so the human animals drawn to technical creation can keep
playing with alchemy to create environmentally friendly technology. Maybe some beautiful temples built on rock
and caves to combine a new spirituality to include everything, and help us to
keep adventuring into the unknown depth of our world and the far off reaches of
space. People could come and stay in whatever they wanted, as long as it was
moveable so the earth could get sunlight.
Respectful trespassers would always be welcome. Few rules, no dogma, no organisation, no
evictions, no money involved – just folk wanting to honestly release themselves
into the wild, or as wild as we could create on our domesticated planet, as we
tried to discover our true human natures.
What would David Attenborough’s documentary about the Human Animal look
like? What are our rituals, habits,
environments, survival techniques? How would
we survive if all the tools and materials of our separation were taken away? How would we survive as another respectful species
on the planet? How much are we really
capable of if we decide to use our monumental powers for good? What amazing things could we tickle out of
our combined creative powers?
There’s a fella called L. Robert
Keck who wrote a book called ‘sacred eyes’, in which he compares the evolution
of our modern culture to that of an individual.
In our infancy we were held close in the arms of a mother goddess and
close to the cycles of the earth. And
then we hit our teenage hood and our era of bachelor father gods. In which we threw our focus on a heavenly
future and an off world solution to our worldly woes. And now we’ve all collectively reached Saturn
Return, where we study our past to remember our forgiving and destructive mama
earth, and our present where we’re tumbling towards unimaginable destruction
that we’ve wrought while focused on our father god, and bring the two together. Which
you could read as bringing the genders together, bringing the polarities
together, bringing us and our universe together, bringing science and religion
together…… Bringing our evolution and
our spiritual natures together.
He also wrote a paper about how
he didn’t buy that humans had always been violent, and that it was a
fundamental part of our natures. He
stretched back to a time when we did indeed reflect the cycles and symbiosis of
the planet, and lived in harmony with it.
And there’s plenty of examples of indigenous tribes that lived and live
in equality, peace, harmony, and freedom.
And I know this is possible too from personal experience. Currawong and I have 5 years co-creating a
market back in SA that was a home to fringe dwellers, and helped create
manifestly unique possibilities of being, in a totally sovereign and
anarchistically harmonious way, under our belt. As well as our experience of life together, of
introspection, dealing and healing.
And I believe now with every
fibre of my being, that the very best, most revolutionary and world changing
thing I can do with my life, the most fundamentally healing mission I can begin
to restore our planet to it’s majestic perfection……..is to be who I am, to love
my family and my man with all my heart, to treat every person and creature I
come across with respect and as an equal, and to use my vast creative energy to
envision, write, sound out about and manifest a future for us all. To tell my stories. To be as honest as I know how. To contemplate every action I make and assess
whether it will move me and the planet towards love or not. To explore and tease out the great learnings
from my true life experiences.
And I call on every single one of
you reading this………to be true to your inner nature. If you’re slaving away in a job that’s soul
destroying, while a hidden dream keeps whispering in you ear, dream it. Find a way to pave a path for your passion
and purpose inside. If you’re an artist,
create with all your heart the things that you want to create. If you’re a poet, craft words that will
inspire, and create a path forward into a future you want to inhabit. If you’re a musician, compose the soundtrack
for the triumphant return to ourselves.
If you’re a craftsperson, bend your will to crafting your dreams, no
matter how impractical they may be.
Never leash your passion to money.
Never create something because it will make you money. If you’re a gardener, tend your gardens like
you’d tend your hair and body. If you’re
a wordsmith, flesh out the possibilities of returning to sense and harmony with
the worlds around us. If you’re a
builder, search for ways to build homes that reflect the synergy of our
embracing world surrounded by a protective atmosphere…..and spare a thought for
what you’d like on your skin. If you’re
a hunter, strive to remember how to work within safe parameters to ensure
survival and thriving of species. If
you’re a networker, create networks where people can use their only power in a
money based society – their money – to support local artisans, food growers,
builders, animal caretakers. If you’re a
recycler, invest your energy in creating from rubbish, and turning everything
we make and then throw away into usefull reincarnations. If you’re a mother or father, think about
what skills are going to best help your children survive in the world as it is
NOW, and do your best to show them, learn with them, and honour their unique
ways of walking through the world. If
you work with other animals as a shepherd, work out how you can honour both
your own and their natures, and pay due homage for the gifts they bring. If you’re a scientist, explore the amazing
places on our planet and in the universe that we don’t understand yet, and help
the rest of us understand the intricate interconnections between us all.
Let’s all use our magnificent
energy to craft a future that will be inhabitable for our children. Let’s step to the side of the madness we’ve
created whilst taking no personal responsibility, and take the ultimate
responsibility of creating societies based on who we really are, rather than
our fantasies. Let’s simply outcompete the rabid beast of our modern and
senseless civilisations by making more sense, stepping back into the flow of
natural cycles, and adding the weight of the universal attraction to life and
creation to our cause. Let’s tell each
other our stories, our lives, our experiences, and talk much and earnestly
about our taboos of birth, sex and death, and how we can respect them and learn
from them better. Let’s learn to respect
and heal our ecosystems, our food, our water, our shelter, our deaths, our
births, our sexuality, our sovereignty.
Let’s craft ourselves a new world,
where being true to our deep natures is our only imperative, where diversity is
celebrated, and where the humans can roam with equal freedom, love, peace and
respect as all the other beings.
Are you in?
Chapter 13 - She Spreads Wings
She took to eating ripe watermelon and kiwi fruit, peeled apples and
carrots, steamed potatoes and snow peas, and wooded herbs. As she walked she felt tall and light, nobly
stepping like a horse. People started to
watch her as she walked. Noticed her
energy enfold them like a warm caress and drift on by. Men, the brasher of the breed, began to talk
to her in public places, inviting her for drinks and fine chats. Then other people started commenting on how
she looked and the figure she cut, tried hard to word the glow that shone round
her. She dealt calmly with life tasks, and
rode the gentle swell of whole.
She started being asked advice and knowledge, to bring her calmness
and rational thought. People looked to
her for strength and her leading role, as they danced down the path of self
knowledge. When away from their gaze,
she sculpted figures and crafted talismans, wrote her soul out and wove
webs. Her time with Balthazar was a
daily respite from the strength and the clarity she kept at her side. They kept talking their future, and early one
morning as the sun crept the hillside, they planted a thought. The thought of a new one, a small one, a wise
one, to come to their circle and marry their clan. She felt that a new soul would give them some
lessons to share from their world.
Chance meetings and serendipity breezed through her story, dripping
bright jewels of lore. She began writing
snippets of the life she was living, loosely based on her new found love. The webs started weaving, and she slowly
realised she was writing herself in a new born light. Then somehow, someway, a tale that she’d
thought of years gone came to mind. It
dreamed and it twined it’s way through her head, and she knew it was time to
begin.
And the ancestors grinned their approval.
Chapter 14 - He Starts To Fly.....
He started waking in dimlit hours of the morning, to play music with
his instruments. Played and relayed
lilting melodies, that transposed and transformed and opened. Tunes that travelled on feelings and dust
motes, coffee and sex, played through his earholes and pulsed through his
hands. He was caught up in the trance of
his dance to the world, to his woman, his lifeblood, his magic, his worth. He moved down the path of this fragile
reality, and started to open to a soft new world.
One asked him to play at the local pub, mixed with beer smells,
smoke, and drunken despair. One asked
him to play in a cool wooden studio, with techies and gadgets to cut a cd. One asked him to sign with his international
company, and make his music exclusive for them.
The monies rolled in like the patter of jaffa’s hurled down the carpet
of passion and life. He could dredge up
his soul from his demon to demigod, and pulsate it out in a weaving cord. He spent his time with her trancing and
talking, wishing and dreaming, and planning their babe. And his new child, her girl child, her
heart’s soft caress, went on gleaming and loving and spinning in light.
He thought that his life couldn’t get any better, but still it
did. Thought he surely wouldn’t know
deeper, yet it still became. He worked
with the men round him, and opened their eyes to the wound within. He talked with Nimue, and discussed all the
aspects of who they were now, and where to from here.
And the ancestors took notes.
