Saturday's global rally in over 600 towns and cities worldwide was a momentous event. A month ago, the Occupy Wall Street movement managed to pierce the veil of the matrix. The puncture has now become an unsealable rip in the fabric of Empire. Gas is escaping rapidly from the balloon.
We are seeing the inception of a global insurrection that will not end until the dominant system is overthrown and replaced through a planetary metamorphosis. The mainstream media continues to play down the Occupy phenomenon, critiquing its lack of specific demands. Specific demands are pointless, because the entire political, social, and economic system in which we exist has rotted out from the inside. Demands would suggest that there is a way to reform the present system, but no reformist initiative is possible.
As someone who wrote about the prophecies of indigenous cultures such as the Maya and the Hopi, I believe the time we are in is one of constantly accelerating transformation. The process we are undergoing as a collective organism leads to an evolutionary leap of consciousness on a species level. This mutation happens within the next few years -- it is already happening now.
As part of this process, we will develop an integral worldview, a holistic perspective that realizes the value of indigenous and traditional knowledge systems without rejecting the scientific and technical developments of modern times. The Occupy movement has erupted as a planetary outcry against economic and social injustice. The consciousness movement has to discover its voice as a part of this movement. The revolution will be spiritual in essence -- or it is doomed to repeat the horrific mistakes of the past, and fail.
As of yet, we lack the language to express the new world that supersedes the old one, even though we feel it in our hearts. The new paradigm that is opening before us demands that we take care of the human family as a whole, redistributing wealth and resources equitably. At the same time, we must cease our destructive assault on the planetary ecology, and engage in a deep practice of environmental restoration. Since the current economic system makes this impossible, we must develop, design, and distribute a new system for exchanging value. The technical genius of humanity needs to be redirected from creating state-of-the-art video games and stock trading programs to strengthening natural resilience, building self-sufficient local communities that grow their own food, and launching social technologies that support collaborative decision-making and nonviolent communication.
The path before us requires voluntary renunciation and voluntary simplicity to reduce our burden on the earth. Therefore, the old paradigm that sees accumulation of wealth and immediate material satisfaction as the goal needs to be rejected collectively. We are going to step into a new realization of our purpose -- of the meaning of human life, in itself. We are going to remember, and relearn, what every ancient civilization and traditional culture tells us: that our lives have a spiritual meaning, above all. Existence in this world is an initiatory process to prepare us for the transition to other conditions of being, other worlds or bardo realms beyond this one.
The duality of spirit and matter also needs to be overcome. Indigenouspeople do not recognize this dualism -- they do not imagine spirit to be above or outside of this realm, but within it. Instead of a sky religion, their spiritual practices are rooted in sensuous connectivity with the earth. In a sense, indigenous cultures are much more truly materialist than our society, as they see the essential value of the natural world as an expression of the Creator, and do not try to impose abstract systems on to it.
Our civilization has been ruled by a mindset that sees life as a means rather than an end. In the past, guilt and postponement were inscribed in a religious creed that put off redemption to some distant future. Recently, science replaced religion with a fundamentalist vision of technological progress, leading to a time when humans merge with silicon or create artificial intelligences that succeed us. This is also a delusion that keeps us alienated from the living present.
We don't know what it will be like to live in a society where life is realized as the ends in itself -- where we seek to benefit the collective by nurturing and supporting each individual. We can only anticipate that it will be wonderful to find out.
The consciousness movement has the sacred task of integrating our understanding of spirit and Psyche into the rapidly unfolding movement for planetary justice and social regeneration. This global movement is part of an initiatory process for humanity as a whole that will bring about a transformation of both the individual and collective ego-structure. The goal is not the destruction of the ego but the attainment of an ego-free state -- liberation from the tyrannical demands of the ego, which can never be satiated. Similarly, we don't want to see the smashing of current institutions, but their alchemical transmutation, so they support our human community and safeguard the resources of the natural world. Humanity, as a whole, is rapidly losing our appetite for violence and destruction. We are increasingly sick of the negative patterns of the past, and ready to overcome the inertia.
As part of this process, it would be great to refine messages that express the integrative state of consciousness in social and political terms, and use the viral power of social media to disseminate them. Among the literature being distributed at rallies and occupation zones, a set of documents could explain the value of non-ordinary states of consciousness, initiatory experience, and shamanic practices. It would also be great if holistic healers, yoga instructors, practitioners of a vast array of alternative spiritual technologies, visit the Occupy encampments and offer their services, free of charge, along with other forms of advice and instruction. I am sure this is already happening to some degree - it is increasingly a quality of this time that events proceed faster than my ability to articulate or respond to them. While that is humbling for a writer, it is beautifully satisfying for anyone who has awaited and anticipated, so impatiently and for so long, the metamorphosis that is now underway.
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