What Happened to the Occupation?

 "All netted together." ~Charles Darwin

We did not occupy ourselves. And therefor, we were not whole. We were 99 against 1 percent. But to succeed, we must be 100 percent.

Our culture of conflict loves its old apocalyptic story about the armies of light vs. the armies of darkness. It isn't a religious story any more, except among fundamentalists. We've made it a secular story, but it's still the same story of division, taking sides, and being on the right side against "them."

The religious tell the story in terms of saved vs. unsaved, chosen people vs. infidels, pure vs. impure. The secular atheist tells exactly the same story, but using different characters: Worker vs. Capitalist, rich vs. poor, black vs. white, military vs. anti-war movement, "off-the-grid Freegan" vs. the corporation. In either case, we invest our energy in conflict, needing someone to "other" and blame.

Any movement that defines itself through conflict with an "other" will fail. But if we can act from our wholeness, from our heart, as one world family, we can succeed. The only true political movement is humanity. No one is "off the grid." The grid is the Earth. The grid is the stars. The grid is consciousness. 

This is why the practice of meditation is fundamental to politics. Spirituality and politics are not in conflict: they must be linked for success. Politics begins with practices that make us whole again, practices that center us in the heart's silence.

In the heart's silence, we are all netted together. We are one earth family. We don't need an "other" to blame, we need each other to belong to. We are particles in one vibrant field of energy, each connected to all. This is the field where political action must arise of it is to be successful. The most radical act is to be present. The revolution is to breathe...

Then we might occupy the wild rose and nestle in the meadow, settle like salamanders in cool silt
at the bottom of the stream. We might occupy the kingdom of the ladybug under a dandelion, occupy the cocoon and the dream of wings, the rings of the oak, the curve of the raven's beak, the roundness 
of a mushroom. We might occupy unnamed weeds for tea and the pebbled womb of a mountain spring. We might ripple over rocks with snow-melt into the secret fury of trout spawn. We might save the earth.
 
We might hold utopias in handfuls of loam. We might democratize our DNA, each one of us, finally, an aristocrat, just like the dolphin, the bee, the golden headed sunflower: with no right, no left, only the government of awareness. 

Awake on behalf of the earth, awae on behalf of creatures that are not yet fully aware, practicing mindfulness for the sake of the poppy and moth, the larva beneath the stone, and the stone itself.

Surely, this is the purpose of the occupation: to inhabit all that is local with boundless love, to homestead the mass of every proton with pure consciousness.
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You can hear this talk on video at LINK