Self Organisation

I reckon my childhood was specially designed to create a strong urge and desire towards self organisation. And my first great experience in how the dark has lessons, those who hurt you teach you far more than the hurt, and how relinquishing control can be so liberating when coming from total control.  

 

In the debutante ball on emerging from my childhood I wore rags.  My confidence had been completely stripped from me, the rug of my entire existence ripped out from underneath me a few times already, fears of everything and loathing for myself had been instilled deeply.  I knew I knew nothing.  And I'd had every minute of my day controlled and scheduled for so long, that just the absence of a routine or schedule felt like a holiday.  

 

Working for other people hurt me.  I couldn't understand the easy way they took out their shit on me, and felt like they could just because they were paying me.  All the facts I'd been taught had bored me into blanking out or going misty eyed when faced with science, maths, or any form of standardised learning.  

 

All the religion I'd had thrust on me had taught me to run a mile at the sniff of it.  All the pain in my family ensured that I kept my secrets at arms length to everyone.  And my family had sternly informed me that the best I could ever hope for was to be a good wife and mother, cause I didn't have much chance at 'making it' any other way.  So of course I steered as far away from that as I could as well.  

So wearing my rags to the debutante ball, I emerged into my real life, and the life of my own directing, with only one realisation to guide me.  The realisation I came to standing at the gate of my life stretched before me, when I left everything that had gone on before behind.  The gate where I realised that nearly everything that had been taught me was a lie or a sadness. And I got that the only ultimate truth was that there was no ultimate truth.  And set sail with abandon into self organisation, even though that wasn't what I would have called it at the time.  

 

Knowing that I knew nothing, and was ugly and a bit stupid to boot, I felt from the start that I had no right to infringe myself or ideas on anyone.  No right to even demur when a fella decided he would fuck me.  I'd had no control or power my whole life to that point, so why try to start getting it now?  

 

I felt I had no life experience to make any kind of educated decisions, and obviously no imagination, or I wouldn't have been aimlessly bumbling from one situation, person, or idea to another as flakily as I was.  No internal fortitude, or I would have finished something, like I was always being told to.  And absolutely no ability to change myself, be better, be disciplined, enforce routine, or create the ability to refuse to give in to my indulgent desires. 

 

Afraid of everything cause I didn't understand it.  Inferior to everyone cause they kept telling me I was.  

In other words, I was primed for gratitude.  It wasn't hard to feel deeply greatfull for any kind word or deed that came my way after the desert of my childhood.  It was also easy to contact great enthusiasm for just about anything positive or enlightening.  And because I was so….well…..nothing, it was easy for me to learn from and appreciate and accept just about anybody.  

 

Some of my favourite people I learnt from, were the people that I'd been warned the most about in my childhood.  Drunks, sex addicts, homeless folk, bikers, drug users and abusers, witches, occultists, goths, punks, the queer community, people of other cultures, new agers, conspiracy theorists, anarchists, activists, environmentalists……..just about everyone seemed liberated, and interesting, and intriguing, after a childhood of such banality.  

I was also primed for self organisation.  Almost as soon as I got a bit of control over my own time, on leaving home and school and all those other trials, I just let time ooze all around me, tried my earnest best to not think, and not do, and not feel a need to fill it with stuff, but let time be what it wanted to be. 

 

And learnt very quickly that the things that happened spontaneously, the times that I ended up at the pub dressed in my shabbies having an awesome improvised time, or when a friend let me drift in their wake, while they went on adventures through places and people, or when I just let life and events pick me up like a piece of flotsam on the ocean of possibility……..were some of the most magic moments in my life.

At 18 I backpacked around Europe for a year, with no fixed destinations, no plans, no travel mate, and no fixed goal beyond meeting the rich man of my dreams and spending the rest of my life swanning around on the Riviera.  

 

From the moment I landed in London with my money having experienced a hitch, and deciding to not turn up till a week after I got there, with no friends or family, a hotel room booked for two nights only, and a rising sense of panic…….I started to learn in depth about the miraculous ordered potential of chaos.  

 

Or the beauty of self organisation.  

 

I may not have done it as stylishly as this couple, but I did it on my own.  With only a backpack for a travel buddy, and barely anything in it beyond my sleeping bag and a warm coat, I set off into the seas of self organisation, and began the scientific experiment of my adult life.  

 

My first night in London after getting of the plane, I spent the night in Soho, got my moles read by an Asian restauranteur, had a large black man offer to rid me of my virginity, and picked up a fellow Australian dude who I took back to my shared room with another Aussie chick and her man that she was reuniting with.  

 

And on the second day I got a job.  I soon realised that I may not have travelled with a partner, but they were there nonetheless, even though their face and name changed often.  I always had company when I needed it, always got rescued when I needed it, met the most insane amount of people, including 6 aunts, 5 uncles, and 25 cousins that I didn't even know I had, always had somewhere to sleep, even if it was the church pew on the verandah of a stone cathedral in the snow, cuddled up in my mega sleeping bag.  

 

A travel guide couldn't have led me better, and an agent couldn't have even imagined booking the journey that I had.  A night with gypsies, and a tour by a retired Scottish schoolteacher, and a week on the floor of a French Canadian student flat in Strassbourg, being part of an exhibition in a disused factory that I still tell stories about.  Landing in Berlin to stay with a schoolteacher (and taking her english class of fellow 18 year olds for a day), just a few days before the Berlin Wall came down.....was an incredible experience.  

 

Being there and around at the time, I learnt so much from all the news coming out, and the secrets that were released the minute the wall came down, and was around many conversations about how it would impact West Germans.  

 

Meeting up with an American girl, we got sidetracked by one of her friends into going to Belfast, (which I certainly hadn't planned), and had the most outrageously good time imaginable.  Locals were so stoked that tourists would visit despite the negative media, that we got shouted drinks and meals everywhere we went, visited just about every pub in town and got involved in healthy celebrations in all of them, and got chauffeured up to the Giant's Causeway,  with a stop for a gorgeous cooked lunch by the parents of one of the dudes we were staying with. 

 

When I ran out of money again in Belgium, a kind Chinese professor took me back to his home in Cambridge, where I cleaned and cooked for him and his flatmates till I got another job.  

 

Self organising travelling kicks arse.  

I learnt that if I just jumped, even not knowing what I was jumping into, I always got caught. It was like crowd surfing reality.  I learnt to trust that I'd always land somewhere safe.  Even if it may not have looked safe to an onlooker.  

 

I also learnt that there were worlds and worlds beyond what I'd been taught was real and safe.  

 

Worlds and worlds with cracks of gold to be explored.  

 

Worlds and worlds to be hacked into and journeyed with.  

I started to establish some theories or philosophies to live by.  Some goals that I wanted to work towards.  I wanted to be myself.  Whatever that was.  And I wanted to be honest.  To not lie and be hypocritical like those who'd surrounded my childhood.  

 

I noticed that people projected their shit onto other people, and then yelled at themselves through someone else.  I observed that people only objected to the things in other people that they didn't like in themselves.  

 

And I wanted to learn how to think.  To learn full stop.  I'd also learnt that life had a far better way of teaching, than me trying to chase down courses or gurus.   

Since then I've journeyed through parenthood, and hacked out my own worlds and realisations.  Through birth in particular, I've learnt more than anything the art of surrender.  

 

Our family is in the process of hack schooling our way into self organised harmony and thinking, and I notice more and more as I learn about the fractal nature of self organisation, that this process is actually living and evolving consciousness. 

I'm so greatfull that I was primed by so much control, suppression, isolation and denial, to be especially enamoured with the wonders of playing within self organising ecosystems of people, groups, ideas, and life itself.  I couldn't have been prepared better if I'd tried.  

Self organisation is what happens when a German town takes away all the road rules, except for give way to the left, and drive slowly.  And they drive far safer and have no accidents in a spot where there was controlled chaos resulting in many accidents for years.

Self organisation is what's been happening in Iceland for the last 5 years, and how they're working out fairer ways of governance using the internet as a medium.  

Self organisation is what happens when you move interstate to a place where you know no-one when you're 7 months pregnant, and it all works out perfectly and just in time to birth with the perfect midwife and support people, in the perfect place.

Self organisation is what happened at our market in Macclesfield, and what's happening right now at our market in Nimbin.  

Self organisation is what's happening in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl.  This woman didn't actually ride her bike around the exclusion zone, she took a tour like everyone else, but the pictures and stories in this blog are nonetheless true…..and quite incredible.  There's also a documentary about all the wild and endangered species that are thriving in the exclusion zone that's become a wildlife sanctuary. 

 

Not to mention the fact that self organisation, or the miraculous creation of harmony from chaos, is the fractal and evolutionary force of balance that created the radiation eating mushrooms that have grown inside the derelict reactor.  

 

And there's many more examples of self organised rescuers to the disasters we've visited on the planet in this article too.

Self organisation is what happened and was realised by a journalist trying to interview the Occupy movement, who found that there was no-one to really interview.  It wasn't a hierarchy like so many of our organised structures are, but a collection of self formed circular based cells of equals, who just happened to have a lot in common with each other - enough to form a massive group of similar cells that between them all were much greater than the sum of their parts.  

And this very self organisation of activists, is the only path for survival that these scientists can scry through their magical observation of mathematical probabilities.

Self organisation is what's going to happen to our oceans now that we've made them dangerous to us with radiation, and thereby finally safe from our ocean eating never ending hunger for fish. 

Self organisation ripples through our realities like the veins in leaves, the tributaries of rivers, the branches of trees, the veins in a placenta, and will endlessly create order, balance, and harmony from all the raw chaotic substance and mucky blood of existence.  

 

It's what happens on a day when you make no plans, and get whirled up in an adventure that you wouldn't have been able to imagine before it happened.  It's what happens when you practice Idle Parenting, and let events unfold how they will.

It's what happened in this Ethiopian village, where the kids taught themselves english and programming in 4 months.  It's what happens with the computers in holes in the walls in slums in India, where Sugata Mitra showed the learning potentials inherent in every human.  With this teacher in Mexico who uncovered genius.  With the choreographer of Cats in this talk by Sir Ken Robinson.  

Self organisation is what happens when a family with 7 children get chased out of their house in the middle of winter, and through different people and places unexpected, find themselves being held and loved and looked after.  

It's what created all these amazing cultures, rituals, costumes, and lifestyles, so perfectly reflecting their needs and environments.  It's what can happen when we reclaim death into our spheres.  It's what indigenous people all over the world were practicing, and it's the reason why 80% of our worlds diversity exists in the 24% of indigenous lands.  It's how this Ojibway community fixed their town hall roof.  

It's already a part of everything.  It's a major part of our evolution, adaptation, and growth.  It's all the micro balances that keep our biosphere together.  All the intricate relationships between animals and environment.  

 

It's letting natural relationships form around your children, rather than the enforced friendships of playgroups and schools.  

 

It's what happens when you approach a craft with an open mind, finding your own way, and hacking out a new reality, rather than being taught how to do it the same as everyone else.

In Nimbin I feel as if I'm as close to a self organised community as I can get in this society. There's a free pool owned and maintained by the community, the best skate park in the country naturally organised by those that love and sail in her, and every single building in town is owned by a local or committee, galvanised by keeping Nimbin local.  

 

The community services are the most comprehensive, compassionate and resourceful I've ever known, funded and staffed largely by community donations and voluntary self generated time.  

The communities that satellite around Nimbin seem to have largely realised through time that there is always the 'negative' or shadow wherever we go, and rather than try and eradicate them, they need to be dealt with in the micro of the macro and largely left alone and accepted for their difference…..unless violence or cruelty is performed, and then the required parts of the community step in to enforce self organised boundaries.  

 

All the cells of communities form a larger and more extended community that thrives in Nimbin town itself, where respect and sovereignty are experienced more than in any other place I've known.  The town self organises compassionate and loving responses to mental health issues and folk, and looks after the individuals in trauma with love and acceptance.  

 

There are people who volunteer on their own volition to pick up rubbish, and recycle, and paint around potholes so folk can make a decision about them.  All of this cohesion has formed naturally, as the external view of Nimbin being full of rat bag hippies and ferals and drug addicts has nicely turned the backs of beaureacrats and council services - leaving the local community to take responsibility for itself, and heal it's own wounds.  

 

All sorts of micro-balances exist, in the cohesion formed between a whole mob of people who refuse to be told how to be and what to do.  And insist on doing things their own way.

When we self organise as humans, we get to experience what the other animals experience with their self organised consciousness, when they fly in formation, and swim in shoals. Fitting into numerous other shoals and groups and needs and destinies.

In my experience, coming from such strong leanings towards self organisation, and then creating a family with an anarchist already primed for hacking out alternative realities, full of alive and abundantly self created little people, has highlighted the very few requirements needed for chaotically harmonious self organisation to flourish.  

 

Which is an absence of rules and hierarchy, and a supported surge towards people simply being who they truly are, both inside and out.  In order for self organisation to flourish, as the equal and opposite to the absence of rules and hierarchy, we can practice acceptance and appreciation of people for who they actually are, like the grannies in the SOLE Granny Cloud Project.  

 

This is the random soup of potentials that is all that is needed for the conscious and naturally self organising urge of the entire universe to perform it's complicated and simple magic.

And every single individual or institution that tells you that you have to or shouldn't, and need to and mustn't do anything, be it meditation, or abstinence, or discipline, or a healthy lifestyle, or particular mental habits…..is letting you know quite clearly, that they have the path for themselves worked out, but they're misled about their path being the only one.  

 

Because it takes all of us, with our particular selves, and our equal and opposite reactions, and interplay between shadow and light, simply being ourselves…….to let the mighty and miraculous surge behind evolution and self organising systems all over the universe work it's miracles.   

 

We've all got to find our own ways.

All we have to do, to take part in the miraculous harmony created out of chaos………is to truly be ourselves, and to surrender to our personal flow into self organised and organising systems and ecosystems.

Looking forward to seeing you there…... 

My Truth

I’ve been banging on for a while now about everything being perfect, a microcosm of the macrocosm and the like.  About how even the imperfect bits are perfect, cause they’re who I am.  And form part of the body of my experience.  How everything is conscious, and in balance, except for us humans.  How we’ve got to make peace with and own our shadow selves. And if you’ve read my blog for a while, you’ll also know that I think we should all tell each other our authentic truths, so we can get over the fear of rejection and judgement, and get onto working out how we can all let each other be, and help each other out.  Talk about birth, sex and death, and all the other wows of life. 

But I should really take my own advice.  And step out from behind my fears and judgments, or rather my judgements about other people’s judgements, and stop omitting the bits I know that others might have a problem with.  Stop letting people get about with the idea that I’m some kind of earth mother, hippy, attachment parenting, unschooling, homebirthing, peaceful parenting, organic eating, wise thing.  Cause I’m the culmination of all of those labels that I’ve taken for a test drive…….yet none of them completely.  In fact the only label that I can be counted on to own, is that of Hellena Post. 

Cause I know that I’ve tried to let people only see the nice parts of me, just like you try to only let people see the nice sides of you.  And I know that I say “ I’m fine!” when there’s a morass going on in my head, and problems too deep to talk about, and I know that if I’m part of a stereotyped group, I’ll try my best to show only it’s good aspects to the world too.  And I know that I’ve been nice to someone, and then had a secret bitch with Currawong about them in the privacy of our home, and I know that when I feel judged, I will often judge back, and I know when I judge others I’m also judging myself, and I also know that the energy needed to manage such games, could be used in far more creative ways.  I’m using judgement as a conscious tool rather than a sword more these days…..

And I’m guessing that there’s people watching me from afar in my nice little blog, thinking I’m some kind of wonder woman, to have all these kids and still be creative.  Thinking I’m one of those people who have got their shit sorted.  Just like I thought that just about everyone else had themselves more together than me.  And I kept up the game, and I kept trying to please, even though I thought that deep down I was pretty messed up, and if anyone ever really knew what was really inside me……..they’d curl their lip and walk away. 

I suspect, from life experience, that we’re actually all children.  Some in small bodies, and some in big, but essentially we’re all like children inside.  Children running round in adults bodies and buying the myth that when you’re an adult you’ve ‘got it worked out’, even though most of us feel confused, and wonder who in the hell we really are.  Children in big people’s bodies who think that the world revolves around us.  And unfortunately, children in big bodies who sometimes do to other children what was done to us.  Unless an effort is made to go against imprinting, and create behaviours more healthy.  So we put on our socially acceptable masks, and our polite routines, and don our uniforms, and play our adult versions of the games that children play.  The bullying games and the name calling games, and the fear games and the two faced games.  The judging games.  Except as adults we think they’re justified, and important adult business.  And many of the games revolve around hiding who we really are. I like instead to acknowledge my bad tempered, tanty throwing child within, and let my kids have the same freedom.  Within reason that is. Us big kids have worked hard at repressing ourselves, and we try to insist on the same from our children.

So enough.  I’m outing myself.  As a human.  And maybe even a bit like you.  I don’t feel a need to play the game anymore.  I’m ready to own my whole self.  The shadow and the actress.  The mirror and the everything.   I’m finally getting to the point where I believe in my head and my heart that I’m perfect……just the way I am.  Even the dark bits are good.  Cause they’ve kept drawing my attention to areas that needed work.  Some healing.  Some light shone.  Or they’re just damn gorgeous how they are, cause sometimes depression can hurt so good, and pain can make love even stronger, and hate can bring issues to a head, and embarrassment can create a humble apology. 

I get grumpy.  And I yell.  I’m like an attack terrier when there’s an issue.  And I can be really good at freezing someone out.  Sometimes I get irrationally angry, and will snap at the drop of a hat. But I’m also good at unraveling the seeds where my bad moods come from, and then talking them out and explaining them to others.  I’m especially good at apologizing for them.  Sometimes being in a bad mood is a good excuse to just have some time out.  Some of my angriest moments, have also been the cause of some of my greatest insights.  Usually pushing me against some kind of boundary or fear, where I’ve learnt a tremendous amount about who I really am.  And as I come to accept myself and others more, the bad moods are easing, and lightening up, and quickly dealt with. But I’m actually glad that they’re there, and don’t think they will ever fully go, cause they’re the down to the up that can get so very high!

And I can also whirl everyone up in a story or giggle, and turn tantrums into games,  have the patience of a long term mother, and smooth over and help heal emotional and physical wounds.  One of my particular magics is turning any space into a cosy home.  Even an unlined shed can be glittered into liveable with crochet nets and swathes of material. 

I swear a lot, (and so do the kids, but they know not to do it round people who will be offended), drink cider and mead and other fine draughts, and smoke hand rolled cigarettes and the odd spliff.  I know all the reasons that all these things are ‘bad’, cause I’ve had them told me often, and I’ve told other people them myself when I’m going through my regular cycles of not doing any of them. (except swearing….that’s a bit of a constant since the encouragement of my beautiful ex-punk swear bear).  But at this point in my life, I’m actually on good terms with all of them.  They’re my friends, and my homeopathic stress relief, and my little time out.  I would even call them sacred.  Hey, remember this is my reality that I’m creating, you can create your own :)

I’ve been known to get addicted to really naff computer games.  And obsess about them.  Haven’t had the time for it lately, since 4 little boys under 4 take much energy, but my ability for compulsion is vast.  When I’m in a crochet creating or spinning cycle, my ability to focus on it and it’s birth only is supreme.  And often in retrospect, I’ve noticed that these little times out were like a pregnant pause.  A seemingly inactive phase, while I’m obsessing about a game or a creation, where stuff seems to be boiling round, just beyond my conscious reach, and when the obsession is over, I jump to a new idea, or concept, or time frame. 

Whilst eating mostly local and organic foods, cooked by my lush man, and keeping processed foods to as low as we can, we also love our hot chips, and the odd splurge into fast food, junk and sweets.  Instead of apologizing and shaming myself about this, I believe that we’re experiencing balance.  Everything in moderation.  And I know that what I feel about my food is almost as important as what it is.  We also eat meat.  Free range wherever possible, but the other as well.  Even though factory farming is horrifying, and I believe in the consciousness of everything, I also can see the sense in the Paleolithic, or Nurturing Traditions diet, and meat has been needed for my pregnant, birthing and breastfeeding body.  I’m aware that this is paradoxical and hypocritical, but I’m good with it, within my own consciousness and reasoning.  And have many ideas about where I’d like my food to come from in my future.   It’s a journey only harmed by judgement. 

I’ve had more sex than you could poke a stick at, from friend sex, to getting to know the secret you sex, to party sex, to being abused sex, to deep and meaningful sex.  And learnt a shitload in the process.  I’ve had affairs with married men, and been ‘on’ with more than one person at a time, been molested by family and raped by women, and had two abortions….even though I swore I’d never have one, and had huge judgements about people who did.  I’ve fucked people through their sexual blocks, and studied the art of being a great lover, while hiding the fact that I couldn’t physically feel anything.  And faked all my orgasms.  A lot of the early sex I had was disempowered, and through my choice of keeping on throwing myself into the fray, I managed to transform it into empowering.

Sex is a journey.  Not a destination. 

And through all of that, and because of it, I find myself now in a 13 year old monogamous relationship, with my heart and soul mate, and the father of 7 of my 8 children.  It took us years and nasty fights to show each other our flawed bits, and accept and love them in each other.  And we’re in the process of a journey into sex and love that rockets beyond all my previous expectations.  I’ve not only healed my sexual hurts and helped him heal his and vice versa, but we’ve travelled together into a world of lust for each other that leaves me breathless.  We have the kind of sex that I thought only happened in movies. Or  erotica.  And our love and acceptance for ourselves and each other keeps growing.  In fact it’s never stopped.  Every time I think it can’t get any better than this it does.  But it didn’t start perfect, and we’ve had to work hard to stay present, and it’s not hearts and roses all the time.  We still have humdinger fights, though as we learn about ourselves and each other more, the intensity and hurt decreases.  I like to think of our fights as shining a light on an issue that needs some attention.  Our relationship is an effortless magic that we work hard at.

I’ve got an STD.  Herpes in fact.  And ironically, I didn’t get it from my years of predominantly unsafe sex with numerous people, but from my monogamous 13 year relationship.  This was a hard one to come to love and accept, because when I realized I had herpes I felt very mortal and old.  I’d always believed that I’d never get an STD cause I’d dissolved my sexual guilt. So getting it was a bit of a kick up the bum of my arrogance and judgement.  But I see it now as a reminder of sexual pain, and an indicator as to how my health and immune system is.  When it comes, it comes with lessons.  Just like everything else about our shadows, to do with birth, sex, life and death. 

I love my body, and the baby making and pleasure it can do, and am so greatful that it’s taken me through life so effortlessly.  But have spent large amounts of my life thinking it ugly and fat, and wanting to hide it away.  Through my time with feminism and other women I worked hard to break the beauty myth, and learnt how to wear my big boobs proudly without a bra.  And through my baby making years my weight has vacillated, and I've strived to keep loving myself and seeing my ample bosoms and belly and body as life giving and nurturing.  I had a real moment at the market we started in Adelaide.  There was a group of 7 women or so who were in the regular crew who were absolutely STUNNING!  As in drop dead gorgeous, and women that you'd see in magazines.  And one night after market I asked them how they felt about their looks.  And ever single one of them thought that they weren't very beautiful, and were flawed.  At that point I realised that I'd never feel good about myself in this society, and to be down on myself was just too much of a cop out, and giving my power to silly standards.  It's taken a while to really believe it, after employing the old 'fake it till you make it' method, but I'm proud to report that I'm actually there!

I’m not often into other people’s kids, unless they’re really lovely.   And I’ve been known to growl at them when they touch my spinning wheel or precious things.   I’ve witnessed lots of kids do what we do as adults, and be sweet and innocent to the people that matter, while being little arseholes to everyone else.  I love my own kids to distraction, and have fierce loyalty and protectiveness towards them, but sometimes they can just be evil.  We have a pattern in our home of the older kids picking on the younger kids, that usually starts when a new kid is born and displaces them, and it’s been quite distressing.   Poor little Zarra, unless constantly watched, has three little boys who will stomp on his hands or whack him or try and pick him up by his neck.  Shit seems to roll downhill.  But I see this behaviour in many other kids, and if you wanted to compare us to other mammals and the tumbling games their babies play……. Griff can whack and kick and hit, and sets the theme for the other kids.  But he can also do stuff like come home with a mate after a weekend of X-box and Nerf guns, and the first thing he’ll do is pick up Zarra, and kiss and hug him and hold him for a while, while his mate has to look after himself for a bit. And there was a moment when a boy started picking on Lilly cause she was a girl, and she started hitting back, and then they had a glorious time wrestling and fighting, and he was totally won over by her and sad when she left.  She wouldn’t have been able to do that if she hadn’t been prepared by Griffyn.  She likes being able to hold her own.  I’m coming to realize that it’s something we all do in our own ways.  Love and unlove in equal measures, circuiting their way through the whole cycle.   Or maybe love and unlove are actually parts of the same thing…….

I’m aware that we’ve taught our kids a lot of bad habits and behaviours by modeling them, but also a lot of good ones as well.  I also know that there is a lot of a person who just is who they are, from the moment they are conceived

When I really like someone….I take on some of their characteristics.  So do my kids.  We all acknowledge this, and talk about who we borrowed them off, and whether they work for us or not.  Actually, we talk with our kids about all of it.  Our patterns.  Our triggers.  Our bad moods.  Our reactions.  And the big kids give us awesome and fair-minded feedback.  They tell us when we’re acting like children, or like each other, or like idiots.  I love my kids.  They tell me about what they really do.  The naughty things they get up to.  The secret kid conversations about sex.  They’re like my kid spies, who tell me what it’s like in the children’s underground.  And they’ve told us often, that we’re not like other adults.  They love that we can relate so well to that feeling you get as a kid when you know nobody is going to take you seriously…..cause you’re a kid.   And they love that we take them seriously.  And ask their real opinions. 

Even though I’ve lotus birthed (two) and homebirthed, and co-slept, and demand breastfed, and continuum parented, and carried my babies……they’ve still cried inconsolably, and been grumpy and irrational, and had tantrums and been angelic demonspawn.  And frustrated me, and pushed me to my limits, and made me feel like I was going crazy, and very occasionally made me want to throw them out a window……but I never have.   And just cause you trust their instincts, doesn’t mean that they’re not going to fall into the Yarra River just after you’ve been talking about the ideas in the Continuum Concept.  Or tip Tea-Tree oil in their eyes.  From my experience, I need to trust their instincts, but keep a parents eye on them nonetheless.

I’m very aware of all the people and institutions and belief systems that tell a person, and especially a child person, that they are flawed and wrong.  That they have to do more of this, and less of that, and change this, and grow that, and behave themselves in this way or not at all.  I also know that all the grooviest things and people and places that I’ve been to and discovered in my adult life……..were never mentioned to me as a possibility when I was a child.  And all the things I was taught, had to be unlearnt sometimes, or transformed, in order for me to learn the things that I really needed to navigate my life.  Our memories are associative.  And all of my best knowings and tools come from experiences where I’ve learnt things for myself in my own way.  It’s taken me so many years to feel like I’m unburdening myself of other peoples expectations and becoming who I really am…..that I’m loathe to try and tell my children that they have to be anything but themselves. 

So we keep our children with us instead of giving them over to others to instruct.  Being unable to find an institution or community that would teach our children that they are born completely perfect, with consciousness and awareness within their DNA and every cell in their bodies, that will lead them to everything they need and desire in life…….we’ve opted to keep them at home.  And expose them to as much varied life as we possibly can. We tell them how much we love them, and regardless of how annoying certain behaviours may be, how they are all perfect, exactly as they are.  And we see all of life as a learning experience.  Everywhere we go, and everything we do, we’re talking.  Noticing the intricate details that surround us all the time in the natural and human made worlds.  And everything is questioned.  Why is that happening?  What could be the reasons for it?  Who would be benefitting from that being that way?  Where in your experience can you find a parallel for that one?  How does that work?  What do you think? 

It hasn’t taken long to realize that my children can teach me and themselves far more than I could ever teach them, and to be truly amazed and enthralled with the genius thoughts and lateral and logical thinking and perception that they exhibit.  And I’ve also learnt that the very best thing I can do for them is to tell them my truth.  About how I tried on other peoples traits, and lied, and hurt others, and stole, and was naughty. Our biggest aims for our family, is that they like themselves and each other by the time our main parenting is done.  And have the confidence to be who they are in the world, and chase their dreams.

Which doesn’t mean that I don’t also yell, and threaten, and control, and bully, and bribe.  I’m into boundaries, and consequences, and being accountable for your actions.  I like my kids to have manners that come from the inside, and model it for them by being respectful to everyone we meet, and seeing everyone as equals.  And I’ll also prompt them to be polite, not mandatorily, but when I know that someone has just been very generous or kind, I think it’s reciprocal to say thanks. From the very start, I’ve thought it important to teach my kids enough about societies expectations, that they can be loved and welcomed wherever they go.  I never wanted them to be the kinda brats that come round to your house and you think “Oh no, that horrible kid’s back, quick, hide the valuables!”  I never wanted them to feel that from other people.  And the most predominant feedback we get about our kids, is how well mannered, behaved, beautiful and helpful they are.  They’ve spun many a place and person out, when they stay behind to help clean up. I wont let my kids beat each other up beyond reason, or other people’s kids.  And if they bite me, I bite them back.  I also count to 10, and in very extreme situations will give them a flick. And through all of it we talk, and we apologise if it’s needed, and we dissect it, and we try and work out other ways of doing it.   We learn from it, and see it in other people, and relate with others on the sliding scale of behaviours, and sometimes if we’re really really lucky, we get to see the miraculous event of a habit, pattern, or antisocial behaviour being transformed, understood, and reintegrated as a valuable tool. 

While I think that ‘the system’ as it exists is a bit sick, I never mistake ‘the system’ for a human.  I’m not anti mainstream, I just think we could all do a lot better by ourselves and our planet. I think that we’ve collectively had to get as distanced from ourselves, each other, and the planet as we are, to push the boundaries, and learn the lessons that can only be learnt at the edge.  We always treat officials and beaureaucrats and police folk and the rest with openness and respect.  And end up having amazing conversations and even hugs, cause they’re wrapped that they’re not being grumped at or stereotyped.   And we’re very greatful for the government monies that help to support us.

I’m glad for the ‘bad’ things that have happened to me.  Because there can be a place, where the great hardships of life, and the suffering, and the death, and the murder, and the rape, and the evil intention, and the cruelty, and the senselessness, and the pain, and the illness take me to that 'other place' where women in birthing often go, where very sick people go, and where mourners of death go, and it HURTS and I GRIEVE and it feels kinda timeless, and the ordinary world around me drops away, and time seems to slow or stop, and I search and seek for other people who can understand this parallel world with me and talk about it, and in the midst of the deepest aches I start to feel the equal and opposite reaction. The fierce love for my people, and the vow to protect them and love them and tell them how much, and to nurture them and do my very best to be the best person I can and change my part of the world or inspire so that the pain will decrease for some.......yet at the same time, that pain and suffering has become my muse and great lesson, and I learn some more qualifications about how to navigate the seas of our society and discern people and situations that work for me or not. The gifts and lessons of the shadow can't really be replaced by sage unicorns and rainbows speaking wisdom in forest glades. It's the battles and senselessness and pain that teach me the deep lessons of balance. And flexibility. And change. And chaos. And harmony. And adaptation. And then sometimes the pain feels less piercing, and the evil has taught me, and it all seems kinda perfect...….

I'm perfect in my imperfections.  I've got a crass sense of humour, but only when it's safe to come out, and most of my mistakes have led to great lessons.  I learnt so much from raising my first daughter, because even though I thought I was doing it so differently to my parents……I repeated a lot of the patterns that they taught me in different ways.  And I fucked up in lots of ways.  In others I was awesome.  But I learnt from it all.  And through all my mistakes, and my flaws, and my habits, I've been pushed into areas and concepts and realisations that I never would have, being a nice girl doing nice things.

I reckon that’s about it.  I reckon I’m done.  I’m out of the closet as a human.  This is my offering to the alter of honesty.  And I can tell you now, that this has been the longest transition to birth, of any post I’ve written.  There’s about 10 drafts that lay languidly uninvolved.  I’ve found this the hardest post ever to write.  Cause I don’t want to offend.  But I don’t want to omit my truth.  As scared of outright rejection and nasty criticism as anybody else.  I tried writing it poetically and cryptically and mystically and metaphorically and none of it really worked.  I ended up with huge preambles and justifications that sounded like I wasn’t proud of who I am.  Nevertheless, I finally got here in the end!  So now you  know that I can really tell the truth about who I am, and be in love with myself even so.

This is me. 

And I’m owning it.

Animal Consciousness

I read an article about how a whole bunch of scientists have got together to sign a Cambridge Declaration on the Consciousness of Animals.  How after all this time of living with them, eating them, torturing them, testing on them, and using them as laboratory experiments, they’ve finally noticed from their often cruel focus, that the other animals seem to be more conscious than we’ve collectively allowed for them to be.  They have strong family bonds, and friendship bonds, and they use tools to perform tasks, and they’re aware of the world around them (how the hell could they not notice us?), and have communities, and co-operate with each other, and are aware of themselves in relation to the world around them.  Apparently, we’ve been so caught up in trying to find similarities between animal brains and ours, that we’ve neglected to notice that the brain type doesn’t really matter or make a difference to the behaviours that are displayed, and that are surprisingly similar to human behaviour in many ways. 

A bit like how they only discovered in the year 2000 what a clitoris actually was, and how big it was, even though surgeons had been cutting through it for years.  Do you know how big a clitoris is?  Did you know that the organ inside is attached to our little nubs of desire just like a giant iceberg is under the tip?  And that it’s actual size inside us is about as big as a cow’s liver?  With nerve endings  that reach from our belly buttons to our anus, and down our thighs almost to our knees??  And do you know why they only found out in the year 2000?  Because in the dawn of medicine, when they were practicing on cadavers, women were hard to find and work on, due to the general distaste for women at the time.  And they were only interested in womens genitalia to see if it was true that women had an inny, while men had an outy.  When they discovered this wasn’t the case, they didn’t really bother to explore much more. 

What’s that got to do with animals having consciousness??  It’s just another example of how modern science can often not see the wood for the trees.  Can get so caught up in experimenting on ‘the rest of the world’, that it misses some really big points.  Like the clitoris.  And the fact that animals are conscious and always have been, along with the entire plant kingdom (have you ever seen ‘The Secret Life of Plants’ with the soundtrack by Stevie Wonder full of all those amazing experiments that showed the consciousness of plants??), and I’d argue for the mineral kingdom too.  In fact…….I’d very strongly argue that EVERYTHING in our entire universe has consciousness………

EXCEPT US!!

The sheer human-centric arrogance of us declaring who has consciousness or not just blows me away.  But let me explain myself a bit more.  I don’t think us humans have always been unconscious – I believe the indigenous folk of every land are and have been as conscious as the rest of the cosmos, and a lot of Eastern philosophies draw close to consciousness too, but us white people, with our monotheistic religions of Gods sending us to domesticate and use the planet as we like……..are about as far from consciousness as you could possibly get. 

When I think of consciousness, I think of all the miraculous interdependent relationships that are manifest in the natural world.  The plants that make flowers that look like female insects, to encourage pollination.  The deals made between trees and ants to provide protection and food for each other.  The cicadas that spend 17 years underground, and come up to provide a feast for all the animals that eat insects, procreate, and then die, to give the forest itself a huge growth boon.  The tribe of elephants that are consciously evolving into being tuskless after poachers decimated 95% of their population.  The fungus that has developed in the Amazon that eats plastic.  The planets that cycle in exactly the right places to give pull to our earth and the sun to keep it all revolving and make it possible to have such incredibly diverse life on our planet.  The awareness of all the other conscious beings (apart from us) of their place within the ecosystems, of what they eat, how they eat, and all the ways that plant and animal waste and bodies get cleaned up and transformed into life.  And most fundamentally, their awareness of their place in the wheel of creation, to ensure the survival of themselves and everything else.   Their unquestioned acceptance of who and what they are as being completely perfect in the great scheme of things.  You just have to watch a David Attenborough documentary to witness the great interdependence and consciousness of every living thing.  Apart from us. 

Whereas we with our opposable thumbs and off planet gods, the greatest despoilers and destroyers the planet has ever known, building structures all over the earth that create extinctions, who have poised even our own species on the brink of destruction, consider ourselves conscious???  We grow and eat toxic food and flush it down toilets with drinking water, to be cleaned by chemicals and benefit nothing.  We take from our bountiful earth mother without a thought of exchange.  We treat our fellow animals with total disregard for their inherent natures.  And when we die we lock our bodies away in trees that we’ve killed, selfishly hoarding our decaying bodies so even in death we don’t give anything back.  Yet we have set ourselves up as judge and ruler of the planet, and consider ourselves qualified to prescribe who and what has consciousness??

We’ve removed ourselves so far from the natural matrix that we send our young off from early ages, and encourage them to attach to other emotionally underdeveloped young, rather than attach to their families and communities, which was the strategy employed by conscious evolution, to ensure our survival and pleasure in life.  From the moment they are conceived, our babies are taught everything……..but how to love and accept themselves, exactly as they are.  In fact, if you were to attribute a sense of being exactly what you were as being perfect in the scheme of things to consciousness, it would be easy to argue that just about everything we do as a ‘civilised’ and supposedly conscious society, is actually leading us as far from consciousness as you could get.  We constantly get the message that we have to pass tests and achieve benchmarks and do less of this and more of that from our schools, religions, spiritualities, therapies, and everything else in our worlds.  In fact.  I would say that we’re collectively as unconscious as the human race has ever been.

Which interestingly reflects our position in our galaxy, and here’s where the good news begins.  If you’re going through similar experiences to those that I and the people I talk to have walked, you may have felt very disconnected and alone in recent months.  On a roller coaster of complete highs and lows.  Like all the solid elements in your life, the things you KNOW to be true, are all of a sudden not so solid.  Very mortal and ageing, while also experiencing moments of pure clarity and connection.  Like the rug has been pulled out from under your feet, and even though the unimaginable has happened……..you’re still breathing and alive.  Stingingly aware of the great atrocities being perpetuated on the planet, yet full of a floating sense of optimism.  Like every structure in your life has been completely broken down to all its constituent parts, and then reformed.  Being forced to look death in the eye, whether it’s happened in your family, or to a loved friend, or your car, or your beloved pet, or a group or belief system you held close.   Maybe feeling for the first time in your life that you actually know nothing.  Feeling all the experiences and hurts that you’ve hidden deep down come surging to the surface against your will.  Forcing you to look at them, deal with them, and make some kind of peace.  A re-examination of patterns and mind sets to work out if they still represent you and serve you. 

And if you subscribe like me, to the belief that everything is connected and interdependent and ultimately all one, it might warm you to know that we’re reflecting a great cosmic dance and procession of ages, and are literally reflecting our place in our galaxy and our distance from the centre and ourselves.  There’s an amazing article written by a dear friend who explains this whole concept in great and interesting depth, but suffice to say, according to her and the numerous sources she cites and my own personal research for years……….our human civilization has been progressing through the ages in alignment with the progression of our planet through our galaxy, and has gone through great ages or equinoxes, that also add up to a great cycle like a year.  And we’re coming to the end and beginning of a 26,000 year reflection of a year, which through it’s journey has taken us to the very farthest point from the centre of the galaxy, and also ourselves.  We’re as unconscious, and separate, and alone, and disconnected as we’ve ever been. 

This is as bad as it’s going to get.

And we’re turning the corner, at the far reaches of our galaxy, and starting the journey back in. 

We as a species have removed ourselves from our lifeblood and source to the point that we have to unlearn the guff that’s made us feel separate, and teach ourselves how to relearn what every other element of creation knows instinctively from birth.  How to be conscious, and part of the great wheels and cycles from which we are born.  Simply by being exactly who and what we are.   

The journey back to our centres, and our connection and our interdependence has begun.

And interestingly, I read an article that I’ve never been able to find again, about how they found another tablet mentioning 2012 from the Mayan times.  There was only one mention of the year before, and it was all fairly nebulous, which left a lot of room for doomsayers and apocalists to speculate about what the date might mean.  And the tablet they found this year was written by a king at the time of the last end and beginning of an age, which lasts approximately 5,125 years, and the king was basically saying “I was the king when this great age ended and a new one began, and all the political and personal turmoil wasn’t because I was a crap leader, but because of the turning over of ages, and the next one will be on December 21, 2012, so whoever is king WATCH OUT!”

Now the writing of this has all taken far longer than I anticipated at the beginning, which also correlated with the beginning of our trip back to SA to register Flo the Coaster, and seems to be ending just as we’ve got back and resettled into our home.  And over this whole journey I’ve been contemplating consciousness, and talking with dear and loved friends back at our old home about it, and adding bits to it, and trying out aspects and theories on some well used heads. 

And I do believe that everything that is happening, is perfect, and a perfect reflection shining out of countless mirrors of potentials, and we’re all evolving nicely towards where we’re all meant to be going.  And that evolution has led our human race a merry dance through total interconnection to total seperation, and is now leading us right back to where we began…….but with more wisdom.  And the way to true consciousness is nowhere near as complex and complicated as many would like you to believe, so they can make money from you as they sell you their dvds and workshops and books and all the other products that are created through our search for connection, fulfillment, love, peace and freedom. 

It’s simply and most complicatedly just being yourself.  You.  Who you were born to be.  Pursuing the thing that makes you burn with passion.  Following your whims and desires and inner fashion guru.  Making all those mistakes that you really can’t avoid making if you’re to really do what you want to do.  Blowing big kisses to all the cautionary tales and skeptical relatives as you leap off the bluff of all the shit you’ve been told you have to do all your life, into a free forming and spontaneous future where anything is possible in love.

Along with a host of others, I did watch ‘The Secret’ all those years ago, and I did really dive into it and live it and breathe it for as long as I could, yet there were some things that never really worked for me.  Like.  “How does that bad shit still happen when I’m being so positive?”  And over the years I’ve come to notice that it’s not only the good things that I can take credit for, but the bad things too.  Or rather what I do with those things, and how I deal with them.  They actually then become really good things too.  And I wouldn’t choose for a lot of them to happen, but I’m glad to learn from them when they do.  And those bad things aren’t a sign that my positive shield was too weak, or I was being afraid of success or all the other bolshy things we tell ourselves when life doesn’t go the way we want.  They happened for many reasons, not all of which are to do with me (surprise, surprise), and bring as many gifts as they bring tears.  And are usually taking me on paths that I might never suspect I’d take.  And you know what?  I’ve found when I get really caught up with trying to ‘craft’ and manifest my future, for a start I can be limiting myself because I don’t have any experience of how great and wonderful some things I haven’t met yet may be, and I can also take the whole journey far too seriously.  Like taking things personally when they go ‘wrong’.  And it’s not all to do with me.  Sometimes it’s about how I can be in the right place to help someone else, cause that’s the story of the moment.  And sometimes it’s about recognizing the Law of Repulsion – the shadow of the Law of Attraction, and getting the hell out.  And sometimes it’s just destiny.  And takes you completely by surprise. 

On our drive across the country, to get our Coaster Flo registered, and meet again with family, and old friends, and old patterns, and the energetic guff we left behind us and were met with when we got back again……..I kinda just gave up all hope for or need to try and craft what was going to happen, and what we were going to do, and put into practice a skill learnt from birthing and young babies that helps a lot…..

Surrender. 

And I reckon that’s about as close to consciousness as I can get.  Being who I am.  Wearing the clothes that I feel comfortable in.  Eating the foods I feel comfortable eating.  Talking about the themes that inspire me.  Trying at all times to be me no matter where I am or who I’m with.  Trusting that I’m here to weave a particular thread into the great tapestry of life, and that I’ll know exactly what to do if I just follow that thread. 

And I’ve had experiences, big deep experiences, for prolonged periods of my life, where I’ve been a part of consciousness, or complete chaos or anarchy that forms into beautiful harmony, through the simple art of letting everyone and everything be what they are, and loving all while loving unique selves.  Being part of a hierarchy free market for 5 years, and all my babies and birthing experiences, and being part of the conscious community of Nimbin and it’s surrounds……I KNOW that if we just all dropped all the extraneous bullshit and followed and pursued what we all collectively loved, that we’d all instantly reach enlightenment or consciousness, and we’d all sink back into the miraculous order that the natural world displays for us ceaselessly. 

There ARE people who will want to clean up the rubbish (I’ve met them!), and there ARE people who want to do all the onerous tasks that you don’t want to, and there ARE people who will fill all the holes and gaps in the things we need and feed on, and we can all just get about being conscious with the rest of creation.

And I felt like this trip was one of my first fully conscious trips ever.  Cause I just relaxed, and knew that it was gonna work out, regardless of whether I worried or not, and surrendered to the whole thing.  And it was like we’d had a travel consultant who booked every minute of our days and nights, and where we could stay to get our needs met, and who could help us to do what.  On the way down, we punctured a wheel, and the breaker bar was back at our home after being played with by the boys, and Currawong had a bit of a tant, and while he was over the road ringing road services, Lilly was saying “I don’t know what he’s worried about, things ALWAYS work out for us, and we’ll look back on it and say how if it didn’t happen we wouldn’t have met someone or something…..” just as a truck parked behind us and Dimitri stepped into our lives.  And changed our wheel.  Whilst being utterly charming.  And the whole trip was kinda like that.  Didn’t take any pictures, cause we were too busy living it.  Every time we felt stymied, someone would visit, or someone would ring, and the most elaborate ways were found around every obstacle, and it all happened easy in the end. 

All we need to do towards consciousness is be who we really are.

I look forward to witnessing and being part of the return by the human species into the consciousness that we’ve removed ourselves from, and a return to ourselves and each other.  I eagerly anticipate the beauty, art, alive foods, creativity, and smart and sustainable technology that will flourish. 

And all the other animals, and plants, and minerals and conscious energies will be surprised to realize that us humans have the capacity for consciousness afterall.  I bet they’ll get a real kick out of that……

A note to the humans........

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?

And here's some chapters of Balthazar and Nimue to continue on the serialisation of the book.  To start from the beginning and the first two chapters, go here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/love-story.html then for chapters 3 + 4 go here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/chapters-three-and-four.html for chapters 5 - 8 here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/last-installment.html for chapters 9 + 10 here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/law-of-repulsion-and-more-book.html for chapters 11 + 12 http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/yes-you-read-right.html and now you can read on........

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.