I of III: WAKING SPRING - FIRST THOUGHTS

A wind is stirring from the East – the place of new beginnings, infinite possibility and choice.
Nothing anchors me in this time but my body.

I buy blackberries from Chile and onions from Peru. I can get everything from anywhere.What does it mean that I eat food grown from a totally different land and air than where I live? Am I a Peruvian, a Chilean, a North American or a Russian? I eat food I do not grow, harvest, prepare, or create.

The stock market falls…I knew it would.
The global market blankets investors like me who have no connection with growing food, with a false sense of physical security. I believe money will always feed me. I blind myself to the facts: Money is not food. Money is not life.

It is time to go inside….

The sun’s warmth feels good.
Breathing slowly and deeply feels good.
Outside, the picture I see -- of trees and green and sun --appears so calm and pretty.
My every action is rendered like fat -- to quantify its value, to identify what and how much can I consume? For what purpose? Of course! To entice me to consume more.
Pegged to data files, nailed into marketing slots that morph into images taking the shape of every hiddenfear and desire living in my reptilian brain.

I stand on the green grass in the center of a circle of palm trees in a public park where I do not have to pay a fee to choose to be. I breathe in deeply, feel my feet on the ground.

A price tag bar coded into everything. What is still free silently absorbs the oozing toxins and poisons created in production of mass quantitiesof stuff.
Billboards seduce me with sexual innuendo to mindlessly open my gullet wide to incorporateeverything. Must keep the stock market climbing.
Impossible not to grow Fat.

I ache for what is still free to cleanse itself of the taint of Human greed.
Ride a bike and you do not have to pay for parking or to work out at the gym.

Watch a flower bloom in the morning sun. Plunge the Body into the powerful pulse of ocean waves. Breathe Clean Air. Sit and walk upon Sweet Earth. Climb a mountain with the effort of my own buttocks.

Exchange a smile with a Stranger for no reason except to acknowledge our humanity.
Listen to the beating of my heart.

II of III: THE PLASTIC SEDUCTION OF CREDIT

I am afraid to look at what I really think. 

It is not very “New Age Positive” 

Fish are free if you catch them-- but they will kill you

if you eat them.

I hate how much I, as an American, have.  Boxes and

boxes of food, furniture and clothes made in some other

place, fill warehouses from floor to ceiling. I pull

out my plastic card from my pocketbook and it is

swiped on an electronic machine.  The machine

registers my credit, how much money I have spent and

whether my card represents a secure exchange. 

I do not like that in a nanosecond, all my personal information is

made available by this electronic transaction. 

It is not that I have anything to worry about. 

I have enough, but I feel the coldness of the exchange. 

I could still use paper money, but it is worth it to the credit card

company to pay me to use their card to track my spending. 

They know how to get me. It is simple.  

Offer me a few percentage of money back if I use the card.  

I, of course, am a lamb to the slaughter to obtain these few extra points. 

It is my own fault for using the card.

Then, there is the seduction of a plastic card as

money.  I cannot feel the money I spend in the virtual

world of non-form.  It is very easy to override my

physical limits. The temptation to spend even on

things I do not need or even worse, do not have the

funds to buy, becomes very great.  Marketing Gurus know

exactly how to get me to open my purse strings.  It is

called “Sale.” I must take advantage of the sale right

now, or the product will be gone.  The sale provokes

the economics of scarcity. Even though I am drowning

in the ocean of physical objects, sales entice me to

swipe my card in exchange for taking this object home.

Most of the stuff I buy at discount or on sale I do

not need or hardly ever use.  I wind up giving it

to the local thrift shop, which actually  turned

me away the last time because they were too full of stuff 

to receive any more.

Everything seems backwards and I am caught.  It would

take a great effort to change my life to no longer

participate in this madness.

I am afraid the housing market will keep falling and that I

will no longer be able to sell my house. I am afraid

the stock market is once again being manipulated to

cream profits off the top.  (Actually, the creaming has

already happened and the bloat in the stock market,

the result of a strategy that allowed so much money 

to go into the hands of so few, has already happened. 

I am watching the downward spiral.) I knew it

would happen.  I know the system was sick and could no

longer support itself. And I did not follow my

instincts.  We all swim in the same ocean.

I am jumping all around, because the illness I see is all so interconnected.

Everything comes from a belief in the primacy

of money as the reason for Being. 

My personal diatribe continues. There are so many blaring inconsistencies:

I no longer grow my own food or build my own house. 

There is absolutely nothing that I have to do.

All Time is created for me to watch my TV, consume product and

grow fat. Thank God our human bodies rebelled by growing fat. 

We realize something must change.

The solution is to exercise.

Palaces of exercise machines are everywhere.  Mirrors

reflect our images back to us as we sweat and peddle

and row and lift weights. But does any one notice

that the center is taken out of the exercise?

What was once intrinsic in the action of being human

in a community of others-- to hunt, grow food and build

together, no longer motivates the movement of our

bodies. Now, it is the fear of growing fat because of

the temptation of all that we can consume. We sweat to

keep our bodies from growing sick and fat, to ward off

the basic intention of our culture, which is to consume. 

Even exercise becomes an act of consumption.

If there were not so many homeless people and so many

slums needing attention, I would not be ranting so. 

This is my dilemma. I vision human communities

generating structures of work, effort and power that

help each of us make our city glow with beauty. To

align the effort of the muscle on our backs to create

a world together, instead of working individually just to avoid 

a collision with the world of fat -- or feeding the narcissism to 

generate an external image as our identity. 

"Creating for no reason but the sheer joy of doing" 

becomes a forgotten radical idea. 

III of III: THE RACE: WILL WE LET OURSELVES WIN?

We blame the immigrants doing all the work that gives us the leisure to get fat, for all that is wrong in our world. Good may arise out of our misguided effort to not allow immigrants into our country: Immigrants generate the wealth in our economy. Maybe when people do their own gardening and their own child rearing and cleaning their own house, a new balance will come.

Immigrants are the scapegoat for the greed of a few people who are silently sucking the wealth of ourcountry off the public table into their private off-shore fortunes. The wealthy elite think they can isolate themselves from the destruction of the fabric of the society inwhich they live.

They believe they can beat death. Their definition of who they are is as deep as their skin. Clone a few stem cells. Reproduce their clone lineage. Maintain control of the world. Trapped in a thought loop, they think the loop is who they are. Even if you patent DNA, DNA belongs to the Cosmos.

The superficial identity of power over others cannot see with its heart. Heart is the deep intelligence forming the sacred text of DNA that informs the cellular generation of proteins generating the particular form we are.

I yell to the men who think they control the world, who assume the right to step upon the backs of millions of other humans to arrive at the top of the mountain. Now on top, they think God anointed them and gave them the right to destroy the planet that supports all of us.

I shout to all of you. You think you can cloister yourselves from the toxic poisoning spewn upon the four corners of this earth through that very same mis-begotten technology that has birthed your monsters. So blind with power you have forgotten the biological miracle you already are is deeper than your twisted thinking. Even you at the top are a part of the whole universe that insists we all awaken. The whole universe wants everything to awaken. Awaken to Oneness -- to a true democracy that recognizes the equality of every thing to everything. The tower comes tumbling down in your mind through the messages of your own DNA talking to your cells: Vibrate with the frequencies of the evolution of Cosmos.

The race is on. Who will win?

Life always wins. But will my Human race Align with life or death? It remains to be told. The challenge is our Mind. Will we learn to master our fear? Will we learn to open our heart? Will we recognize the Truth?

The challenge is to master our own mind. The challenge is to recognize the power everything represents. The challenge is to take responsibility for what we create with our power. The challenge is to choose Love and create a world in celebration of our recognition of the divine sacred intelligent origin of everything.