"The opportunity that is concealed within every crisis does not manifest
until all the facts of any given situation are acknowledged and fully
accepted. As long as you deny them, as long as you try to escape from
them or wish that things were different, the window of opportunity does
not open up, and you remain trapped inside of that situation, which will
remain the same or deteriorate further."
- Eckhart Tolle, "The Power of Now", p. 131
Friends,
We CAN change the world. Make no mistake about that. People have done it
before - gotten rid of regimes that seemed to all the world unassailable,
invincible, all powerful. It becomes possible when everyone decides
they've had enough and they decide to act together to do something about
it. Workers lay down their tools, soldiers lay down their weapons or
change sides, and people rejoice in the streets - that kind of thing.
The obstacle to transformation is not the regime; it is our inaction,
our perceived inability to act as a people. The regime in fact, with all
its excesses, creates the crisis in which this opportunity lies hidden -
the regime is ultimately our benefactor, the impetus for transformation,
a transformation that is centuries overdue.
Tolle writes above about crises in relationships, and our co-dependent
habit of denying the relationship's emotional elephants in the kitchen.
But his words apply equally to our co-dependent relationship with the
regime. As long as we pretend we live in a democracy, as long as we
pretend our "leaders" are not acting out a predatory script, as long as
we pretend that things will get better after the "next election" - then
we are ignoring the elephants in the kitchen. We are in denial and we
can do nothing about our problems. We are in fact a major part of the
problem. We are like the spouse who "doesn't see" their partner's
alcoholism.
I don't write about 9/11 because I hope the "truth will come out" and
the perpetrators will be exposed and punished. I know that won't happen.
It cannot happen. I write in the hope that people will give up their
illusions - not everyone at once as a response to a media event that
will never happen - but as individuals who finally decide to take the
wool off their eyes. Only after the truth about our system is
"acknowledged and fully accepted" are we free to face the necessary task
before us - the task of social transformation. That task is ours, not
anyone else's.
If people really want to stay with the blue pill, and enjoy along with
Cypher the perceived benefits of living in a relatively well-off
situation, then I hope they do so consciously - accepting that they are
destroying the world that their children must live in. Such people are
at least proceeding honestly. They are no longer co-dependent but are
rather conscious allies of the regime, and they've washed their hands of
the world's future. After we all die off, they can hope another species
does better in its turn.
Whatever your course, I simply urge you to ACCEPT REALITY. That is the
only place from which transformation can emerge. How can you tell when
you are denying reality? The signs are not easy to notice - not by those
who are suffering from denial. Denial is enforced by defense mechanisms,
and those mechanisms hide the fact of denial from us. The way you can tell
is if you find yourself ignoring the evidence in front of you. You'll have
good reasons to ignore it - that's the nature of denial. To uncover your
eyes, you need to learn to question your reasons, to become the observer
of your mind.
best regards,
rkm
--
============================================================================
Featured articles:
"Escaping the Matrix":
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/rkm/WE/jun00Matrix.shtml
"Returning to our roots":
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/rkm/MC/mar01Roots.shtml
"A Guidebook" for transformation:
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/guide/
Jerry Fresia: "Toward an American Revolution":
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/authors/fresia/
"Consensus does not mean agreement. It means we create a
forum where all voices can be heard and we can think
creatively rather than dualistically about how to reconcile
our different needs and visions."
- Starhawk, "Lessons from Seattle and Washington D.C.",
in "Democratizing the Global Economy", Kevin Danaher, ed.,
Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2001.
"If the overall pie can grow, so be it, but when it
can't then elites start taking a bigger piece of
whatever pie there is. The capitalist imperative
is: 'Ruling elites must prosper'. Societies are
managed so as to satisfy this imperative."
- rkm
A community will evolve only when
the people control their means of communication.
-- Frantz Fanon
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•••@••.•••
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Capitalism is the relentless accumulation of capital for the
acquisition of profit. Capitalism is a carnivore. It
cannot be made over into a herbivore without gutting it,
i.e., abolishing it.
- Warren Wagar, Professor of History, State University
of New York at Binghamton
"If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with
changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be
saved by people with the old vision but new programs."
--Daniel Quinn, "The Story of B"
Permission for non-commercial republishing hereby granted - BUT
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