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by Winter Oak
July 10,
2023
from
WinterOak Website
"The Dominant
Culture encourages spiritual/philosophical and
emotional/psychological unconsciousness - distancing us from our
own direct experience.
"It promotes,
-
industrialized agriculture
-
plastic and
poisonous foods
-
competitive
economics
-
artificial
lifestyles
-
absurd
fashions
-
junk medicine
-
information-acquisition rather than education
-
laws rather
than justice
-
endless
tragic needless wars,
...all of which
alienate us from the Sacred Mystery we inhabit together with the
Earth's other animals, the fish, the insects, the trees and the
birds.
"And as if this wasn't enough, we are now being pushed into even
further alienation by the worldwide glorification of technology,
Technocracy and
Transhumanism!"
So writes Mark the
Mystic Activist, whose work will be familiar to long-term
Winter Oak readers, in his new book, 'Love
& Revolution - Creating Conscious Tribes'.
Mark
the Mystic Activist
Mark's voice is one that sings in complete harmony with regular
contributors to the Winter Oak site such as,
Paul Cudenec, Walking
With Goats, Crow Qu'appelle, Jordan Henderson and Rahul Goswami,
with the likes of Derrick Broze, Tessa Lena, The Stirrer and
Nowick Gray,
...as well as with the
dozens of thinkers featured on the
organic radicals website.
He has no illusions about the degraded nature of the modern world
and the size of the task involved in shaking off the many layers of
its corruption and control.
He writes:
"There's no quick
fix.
We have been (in my
opinion) brutally conditioned by a superficial, unconscious and
violent culture - and to de-condition, or re-condition
ourselves, in sacred, conscious, respectful, intimate relating
won't happen overnight".
And he stresses:
"Dominant, modern,
global culture has detached itself from reality - from the
sacred, indefinable Mystery of which we are all part. It is
therefore definably insane.
"And it detaches us from ourselves, from our innate self-worth,
from our knowing of ourselves as Unique Expressions of the Great
Mystery - creating a spiraling, desperate atmosphere of neuroses
and obsessions, fear and conflict...
"It is not enough that we re-organize ecologically, or
politically.
We need to
re-organize our psyches!"
In order to re-shape our
thinking on a fundamental level, Mark proposes that we create what
he calls Conscious Tribes.
These are extended families not limited to biological bonds, which
not only share the vision of a,
"decentralized,
conscious, community culture embedded in nature", but set out to
make it real.
It is a source of
permanent frustration for many of us that spirituality and political
engagement are so often seen as incompatible:
many spiritual folk
promote disengagement with ideologies and the material world,
while many political activists pour scorn on "airy-fairy" talk
of spirituality.
And yet, as was known by
everyone from Leo Tolstoy to Emma Goldman, from
Ivan Aguéli to Sri Aurobindo,
a true embrace of
spirituality is inseparable from the acceptance of the
duty to fight evil and to put oneself at the service of
the Whole...
Mark says that
Conscious Tribes need to be active on four levels:
-
the universal or
spiritual or existential level of our interconnectedness and
belonging
-
the
psycho-emotional level of our individual and collective
conditionings
-
the mental or
intellectual level of our understandings and beliefs
-
the material or
physical level of our action in the world...
He adds:
"Conscious Tribes
share a united, revolutionary purpose: to contribute to the
co-creation of conscious communities - to participate in the
co-creation of a new, conscious, close, connected culture - for
themselves, for their children, and for the generations to
come"...
The new revolutionaries,
he says, must abandon dogmatism and hierarchy in favor of a
Shared Vision of a free future very different from the
criminocracy's twisted dream of a "digital
global gulag".
Mark comments:
"Sometimes this
Shared Vision is only implicit, sometimes it's only understood
sentimentally, or intellectually.
"But it's there, bubbling away, under the surface of our
resistance... the intuition that,
-
there is only
one human heart
-
there is only
one heart in all of creation
-
the earth is
erotic and abundant
-
to exist is
to be blessed…
"Local community.
Deep relationships. Responsibility for our locality.
Contact with nature -
with the trees, the animals, the insects and birds… with the
weather, with the waxing and waning moons, with the equinoxes
and solstices.
"Time out, down time, holy-days. Celebration, appreciation,
gratitude. Local, poison-free food. Poison-free water.
Creativity and contribution (as against wage slavery).
"All of these things favor the evolution and transformation of
consciousness... and asphalt, street lights, traffic noise,
plastic food, work-work-work, and junk, escapist entertainment
don't"...
As well as setting out
the theory behind Conscious Tribes, Love & Revolution has
some practical suggestions about how we might go about forming and
developing such groups, which are well worth considering.
Although Mark does not advocate any political "-ism", the
alternative world he offers us is a recognizable one for those of us
who are inspired by the ideals of real
anarchism, or the
New Anarchism if you prefer.
He writes:
"You are your Own
Authority. This is crucial. Nobody is above you, nor below.
"And in a Conscious Tribe everyone remains their Own
Authority. Why is this an absolute necessity? Because
otherwise... how can there be authenticity?
"And without authenticity, how can there be real relationship,
and intimacy, and Tribe?"
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