The Evolutionary Activist

www.patriciapearce.com/podcast

In this podcast I talk with George Lakey, author, educator, and expert in nonviolent direct action. We speak about how polarization opens up possibilities for great social change, the power of nonviolence, and the many ways we can participate in making a difference.

Find out about George’s books, including his latest Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got It Right and We Can Too, and How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning on Indiebound, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.

Read more of George’s opinion pieces on the website Waging Nonviolence.

Patricia

George has trained activists around the world in the principles and practice of nonviolent direct action and has taught at several institutions of higher learning, including the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University and Swarthmore College.

George is also the author of several books, his most recent being Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got It Right and How We Can Too and How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning.

So, George, I have been looking forward to speaking with you for quite a long time, you’ve been on my mind, understandably, given the state of the world and our country at the present time. And so I just first of all want to thank you for taking the time out of what I’m sure is a busy schedule to talk with us today. So thank you.

George 1:42 

Thank you for asking me.

Patricia  1:44 

And I’d like to just start off with asking you when you look at the times that we find ourselves in, what do you see both the the parallels and the possibilities?

George 1:57 

Oh, you want both! [Laughter]

Patricia  1:59 

[Laughter] Well, whichever one you want to emphasize. We probably have an understanding of the perils, and I have a sense that you see very clearly the possibilities.

George  2:12 

And, you know, I have to admit that the look at today, this political moment, has been a real journey for me, because a dozen years ago, I was also paying attention to what’s going on. And since my training is in sociology, I’ve been particularly interested in the degree of cohesion of any system. That’s what sociologists look at, we look at cohesion, and we look at division, and we wonder how things are going. And a dozen years ago, things did not look great for the United States, because the polarization was also showing up then. But of course, now it’s much, much more intense.

And the judgment that I made at the time a dozen years ago was that polarization is bad news. And as I thought that if people are thinking screaming at each other and nobody’s listening, then that’s not good news for making progressive change. And I was convinced of that. And on the other hand, I was also doing research at that very time for my book Viking Economics. And finding that Norway, Sweden, Denmark, went through an enormous change process, that is that they were not in great shape 100 years ago, in fact, they were in bad shape, so much bad shape that the Danes were leaving, and especially Swedes and Norwegians were leaving their countries, just giving up on their countries, very, very sad, heartbreaking kinds of situations for many families who didn’t expect to see their family members ever again, when they left those shores.

And that was the kind of thing going on century ago. And then those countries turned themselves around and now they’re at the top of the charts for all kinds of measures, you know, of well being, of equality. Democracy, individual freedom, they have more individual freedom than we do. They've just got so much shared prosperity, they gave up poverty. So they turn themselves around.

So my big question, as I was researching them was, well, when was it that they did this? And how did they do it? And I found out that they did their big move in the 1920s and 30s, which was exactly the time when they were experiencing their greatest polarization in modern history. How could that be? That was a direct contradiction to my belief. I don’t know about you Patricia, but I don’t particularly like to have my beliefs contradicted. [Laughter]

Patricia  4:43 

[Laughter] You and a lot of people, yeah!

George  4:45 

This was a terrible situation, right? And especially, I mean, like, maybe if I were working on the White House staff, I wouldn’t have to pay attention to data. I could just continue with my judgments, right?

Patricia [Laughter]

Your fantasies?

George

[Laughter] . . .my beliefs, but since I My training is social science, I have to pay attention to data. And so what was I to do with this? And so I looked at the US, you know, near, very near and asked myself, well, what’s going on in polarization in our 20th century? And I found that in the 1930s, we were the most polarized that we had been in the first half of the 20th century, actually, we were in terrible shape in the 30s. And with regard to polarization, Nazis were able to fill Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1938. And the Ku Klux Klan was riding high.

And on the other hand, it was the glory period of the American Communist Party. Well, how could all this be? All that polarization. And at the same time, the 1930s was the greatest period of progress that we made in the in the first half of the 20th century.

Okay, so my belief is, you can see it’s getting really torn up, but I have to fast forward to the 60s and 70s, which brings us to a time when probably some of your listeners remember, the 60s and 70s, the rebirth of the American Nazi Party. I saw Nazis on the streets at demonstrations where I was and confronted them.

So the Nazis were were back, the Ku Klux Klan riding high, bombing black churches in Alabama, Mississippi, killing people. And at the same time, there was really strange stuff going on the extreme left, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Weather Underground, that kind of thing. So we had tremendous polarization. People had the Thanksgiving dinner problem, I can’t invite my relatives because they’ll fight about Vietnam,

[Laughter]

. . . a hugely contentious issue, and the civil rights movement was very contentious. And at the very time of our greatest polarization in the second half of the 20th century, we also made the great progress that we made in that time, the biggest progress that we made in that half century.

So I My belief is just shattered, right? And I don’t know quite how to remold my way of looking at things until I happen to be on a book tour in Scotland for my book, Viking Economics by that time it was published and I was staying with a metal sculptor in Glasgow, a Quaker metal sculptor who was giving me hospitality, and all around his house were these beautiful, beautiful metal sculptures.

And I said, Man, how do you do this? Metal is stubborn! Like how do you make it? Make it be what you’ve done with it? And he said, Oh, I’m happy to show you my secret.

So he takes me out back, out in the yard. There’s the studio. He opens the door and proudly shows me his blacksmith's forge. He smiled and said, Yeah, yeah, I had to apprentice to a blacksmith to learn how to work with metal. Because you’re right metal is very stubborn. It has a mind of its own. It doesn’t want to do what you want it to do. So you have to melt it. You have to make it malleable. You have to make it so that if you’re a blacksmith, you can turn it into horseshoes. If you’re a sculptor like me, you can turn it into art.

George  8:23 

I said, Thank you. This guy was named John Creed . I said, Thank you, John. This is the metaphor that I needed in order to really, you know, recalibrate my consciousness so that I can look at polarization in a fundamentally different way. It, yes, it includes bad news. Yes, it does include more violence, more screaming at each other, more non-listening, all that stuff that we hate about it.

And at the same time, it is the malleability of society that happens as a result of polarization things get loose, norms get broken, and not only by the White House. Norms get broken all over the place. There're breakdowns of the ancient prejudices, like against transexual people, for example, just all kinds of things become in play that previously were crystallized and rigid, institutions melt.

And that’s why it was possible for the Nordics, to make huge changes that actually turned their countries around. We didn’t get that far with the 30s and 60s, we weren't able to turn our country around, but we were able to make major changes at the time of polarization.

And so I, at 82 years old, I’m excited to be alive right now. Because oh my gosh, here we are again! And in my estimation, we’re moving into a period of deeper polarization than we experienced in the 30s in the 60s, which means bigger opportunity for change. And so I’m on fire. That’s why I wrote this new book How We Win. If we've got the biggest opportunity, well then we better use it.

Patricia  10:06 

Right and I love that metaphor in your book How We Win, of the heating up the metal and the heat, the increase in the heat and we know that you know, things are getting really hot! The heat is rising. And so it’s this beautiful moment, possibility, opportunity for us to make changes.

So when you talk about how Scandinavia turned itself around at the same period of time that Germany was also descending into fascism and the polarization, I know you’ve talked about this, written about it, how Scandinavia also had plenty of Nazism happening.

George

Oh, yeah.

Patricia

They didn’t go that route, and yet Germany did. And can you talk to us about what you see as the differences, and how non violence played a role in that, in that difference between the outcomes.

George  11:15 

Well in Germany one outcome of World War One was that political groups kept weapons that had been plenty available during the war, had been floating around, and even armed units. And so the political parties entered their period of polarization in the 20s already ready for violence.

And it was so tempting for them to pick on each other, to bully each other when, you know when one was in the majority compared with the other. If you knew the tavern, for example, where fascists, where Nazis love to drink and you were on the left, you could go and and have a rumble, right, and if you brought more people than they had at the tavern, maybe you could beat up a whole bunch of them and so on. And and vice versa. If you were a Nazi, and you knew where the Social Democrats were, or where the where the communists were, you can go and have yourself bash, and that kind of thing was going on.

That was a huge mistake on the part of political political left in Germany, because what it did was it stimulated a breakdown of order. Now, a breakdown of order, that kind of chaos with its violence in the streets is out of control, and police and so on, really, really scares the center. Because, yes, polarization is the two poles, but there’s also always a big center, right? And that center may be shrinking, but it’s still very, very significant politically.

Well, that center was getting really scared for its own security, because it looked like societal breakdown to them. And so when the economic elite of Germany decided to hand over, and it of course was very scared because it had these tremendous stakes of money and property and privilege that were at risk for them. And so in this, you know, in this back and forth thing that was going on, and so they decided to go for Hitler, they handed the state over to Hitler, and then figuring, well, Hitler, is for law and order, you know, he’ll take care of that security problem. And, and as we know, he did with a vengeance.

Now, there’s, it’s actually much more complicated than that. But I think in terms of movement choices, which is one of the things we can most importantly learn from, we need to learn from that bad movement choice on the part of the German left to use violence and to participate in the back and forth of violence in the streets and so on, which some of my friends are interested in doing, frankly, and it’s a big, big mistake to do.

Patricia  13:54 

Yeah, and and I think there’s a perception in this country, that that the problem in Germany was that people just acquiesced and there was no you know, there was no response. There was no resistance or anything. And yet, what was actually happening was there was resistance, but it was a violent nature with which played into the hands of, of the authoritarian mindset.

George  14:17 

Exactly. It played into the hands, the left was, you could even say was like, manipulated by the Right, right? Which is also what happens here.

The Proud Boys announced they were going to show up in, I’m from Philadelphia, the Proud Boys announced they were gonna show up in Center City, you know, with their, with their fascist inclined message, and then tons and tons of activists show up to, to, you know, to counter counter them, right?, at the counter demonstration.

Well, it turns out in most recent case, it was only a couple of dozen, very pathetic, who know, people, who could not have gotten an ounce of media attention if it hadn’t been for the thousands of activists who showed up in response.

And I say to my activist friends, you got played! You got manipulated! You are so easy!

[Laughter]

You're an easy mark. I could get on mass media any day. All I have to do is dress in a certain way and you and mouth some ridiculous stuff. And you’ll show up. Well, thank you very much. How about some discernment here? So this whole business about the right learning how to manipulate the left is something we have to be aware of, and we can do way, way better.

Patricia 15:34 

So getting back to. . .

George  15:36 

the Nordics. The Nordics did not fall for it. Because the Nordics remembered who is actually controlling society, they knew, they saw through the the, they saw through the appearance of democracy that they had, because they did have Parliament’s you know, and free elections, but they knew that that was only the appearance of democracy because actually, it was the economic elite, the people on top, the billionaires and so on, they were actually running society.

So the Nordics by and large said, Look, we have to keep our eye on the prize, the prize. I mean, it’s not these, you know, poor, often out of work working class, you know, youngsters led astray by the fascist by the Nazis. They are not running society. I mean they are, they're cast aside by society many times, and who really has the power is who we need to deal with.

And so they focused their attention on the economic elite and they shoved them aside, they shoved them out of domination, and that enabled them then to establish democracy and put themselves on the road that they’ve been traveling ever since.

That is the solution is to, what the what our civil rights movement used to have as one of my favorite songs. It was Keep your eye on the prize and hold on. Keep your eyes on the prize. Don’t get distracted by the folks who want to manipulate you. Keep your eyes on the prize, go after the economic elite because they have the reins of power. They’re the ones who are creating this incredible economic inequality, that is the driver of a polarization. And if you don’t like polarization, and I don’t like it, you know, if you don’t like it, then the way to deal with it is to do what the Norwegians did, which was threw the economic elite out as the dominator, and then they could create equality in their society and they generated so much equality, their politics got boring.

[Laughter]

George  17:37 

By the time I got there, see, I married a Norwegian in 1959. That’s a lot of years after the 20s and 30s. Right. By that time, they had reached such consensus in Norwegian society. I thought their politics were very boring.

[Laughter]

Now some of my friends would say, let’s have boring politics for change!

George  18:01 

The only route to getting there established in history anyway, is to deal with the people who are so intent on economic inequality. And the economic elite love economic inequality. Right. That’s why they were that’s why they support Trump even though Trump offends them in many ways. They nevertheless supported because he delivered that that big tax bill of a year and a half ago, that increases the economic inequality in the United States.

Patricia  18:31 

Yeah. So when you say the Scandinavian countries pushed the economic elite out of the way, how they do that?

George  18:39 

They did it through a nonviolent revolution, that is to say they made their societies ungovernable through nonviolent disruption. And if the governors can’t govern, they’re toast. Right? So so they did that in somewhat different ways in different countries at different times. So I’m generalizing here, please understand. But in my book, Viking Economics, I sorted out what the different countries did.

But basically it was finding ways of nonviolent disrupting, like a favorite one in Norway was the industrial workers left to go on strike. And increasingly, you see more and more strikes year by year 1926, 27, 28, 29. I even put some of the statistics in the book the number of strikes continue to increase, increase increase.

Well, that goes after the economic elites' pocketbook, right because the pocketbook of the economic elite depends on worker productivity. And if the workers won't produce then they don’t get their money. If they won’t build the ships that Norway’s famous for, then the shipbuilders, the ship owners are not going to get their ships and so on.

So that was one of the major features. In Sweden some similar action happened as well as farmers creating co ops widely so they were withdrawing their participation in the privately owned dairy system, let’s use dairies for an example. And instead creating cooperative dairies so farmers would own their own dairy. And then they wouldn’t need to sell their milk and butter and cheese and so on to the, to the dairies. So that kind of work that was really very strategically targeted, was asking themselves, what does the economic elite need from us? And how can we deprive them of that in such a way that makes them fall? And that’s what they did.

Patricia  20:32 

So, so talk to us about I, think when people think about non violent action, they typically think of protests. So talk to us about the difference between protests and campaigns and why protests are typically fairly ineffective in the long run.

George  20:50 

Well, again, if you think about the other side, which is what I always ask people to do, you know, just like the left needs to think about what’s the right wing trying to provoke us to do, so also progressive movements need to ask ourselves, okay, so what is the economic elite counting on us to do, and it’s basically counting on us to, to go along, to go along.

So of course, we don’t want to go long. So we do these one day protests. But what is the economic elite noticing? They’re noticing, the next day we’re going on to do our work, whatever it is. In other words, a protest means at the end of the day, you go home. Well, the economic elite and the government that it hires is not going home. They’re continuing the same policies right, day after day after day after day, okay.

So instead of the, these spasmodic protests, whether they’re once a year or once a week or whatever, but only just do the thing and go home, we need to do campaigns, and that was the brilliance of the civil rights movement because the civil rights movement in the sixties understood this campaign idea very, very well. They were the artists of campaigns. In 1955. Wow. In a period when almost nobody was doing anything significant. 50,000 black people in Montgomery, Alabama, stopped riding the bus. . .

Patricia  22:20 

Right, for a very long time

George  22:23 

For a year!

Patricia

Not a one day boycott.

George

Exactly! I mean, they could've make their protest statement. And it wouldn’t have mattered at all. But but the bus line was crippled for a year, it had very few riders because, you know, a lot of white people were driving cars, other white people were riding the bus, but that wasn't enough to keep the bus line going. So the bus line was, was really pretty much destroyed by the black people’s consistency. And that’s what campaigns do. Campaigns do consistency. Sustainability is what people show through campaigns.

Patricia  22:59 

So You have have helped organize and have participated in a lot of campaigns. And can you just maybe share with us an example of one that you’ve been involved in? And how it unfolded?

George  23:17 

Well a recent one, we'll bring it way up from the 60s. Now we’ll talk about 2010 starting a campaign, which I helped to start with a bunch of people to force the bank in the United States that was the number one financer of mountaintop removal coal mining, to force them out of the business.

Mountaintop removal coal mining is a coal mining technique in which you actually blow up a mountain in phases you blow off the top, and you blow off the next layer, and the next layer, and next layer. It costs a fair amount of money to do that, but you save on labor because you don’t have to use many miners. It doesn't require many workers. A dozen workers can blow up a mountain, believe it or not.

So the advantage of the coal companies, of course, is that they save on labor. But to get the upfront investment, they need to go to banks. So they go to banks and say, Hey, we want to blow up this mountain and give us the money. And banks have been saying, okay.

And we happen to have in the Pennsylvania area and mostly East Coast, but also out to the Midwest, a bank that was the seventh largest bank in the country, and it was the number one financer of mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, We thought, whoa! Are we ever lucky, we’re sitting right here, in the midst of this of this bank, let’s force them out of the business!

So now, this was a group that could fit in my living room, right? I mean, we started in a living room. This is not a mass movement.

So my friends started calling me, who’d heard about this that George, now you have really lost your mind. A living room of Quakers are going to stop the seventh largest bank from an income stream that they value. You're nuts.

So I said, Well, we’ll see. Because what I had the chance to do, and these were mostly newbies, to campaign, these were not veterans, these were mostly newbies. But what they had was a deep commitment, the ability to sustain themselves and the ability to grow.

So I figured, let’s work together and figure out how to grow, grow, grow and to show the bank a)  we were not going to quit and b) that we were going to keep growing and messing with the things that they don’t want us to mess with.

That was another part of the process. We talked with Rainforest Action Network, which is a wonderful environmental organization that was happy to be our big sister, you know, because they had a lot of experience with banks. We didn’t know what we were doing. So we kept being on the phone with them. Well, what. . . do banks do this? Do banks do that? Do banks to this? And we figured out also through our own research, that this bank, for example, loved to recruit lots of customers from college campuses, figuring get them now as a youngster, you know, as a customer, you're going to keep them for maybe for their life, that would be really good for us.

So they recruited like crazy in orientation, you know, when the first years come to campus and had their booths out. So we went to where their booths were, and stood alongside their booth. And when a kid would come up and say, Hey, I’m interested in being, you know, in having a bank, there’s Oh, so glad you’ve come to us, the greenest bank in America. And then we say, and now let us tell you what they really will do with your money.

[Laughter]

George  26:40 

So that’s certainly one example of many ways that we found out they were vulnerable, you know, they were they were, it was possible to, to find the places where they had weaknesses, and widen those weaknesses such that over a period of years, we started at such a small level, it took us five years to grow to 13 states. But when we did that, and as far as they could see, five years of growing, growing, growing, we were never going to stop. And it just became crazy from their point of view to keep on putting up with that level, increasing levels of disruption, non violent, of course, Quakers you know wouldn't hurt a fly. So Quakers are in there being totally non violent and totally disruptive. And the bank says enough enough, we stop, and they even acknowledged that one reason they stopped was because of our pressure.

Patricia  27:37 

Yeah, yeah. I, I interviewed Eileen Flanagan, oh, maybe, I don’t know, a year or so ago, who was also part of that campaign. And it’s, it’s quite inspiring to know that a small just a handful of people can make such a tremendous difference. And you’ve mentioned, you know, Quakers wouldn't, this group of Quakers wouldn’t hurt a fly. So, so So talk to us about how the basic principles of nonviolent action resonate with or express your Quaker beliefs.

George  28:12 

Well, it is important to me to stand up for what I believe, right, but I don’t want to just stand up, I want to actually change things. And that is, has sometimes not been Quaker practice. Sometimes, Quakers have contended themselves with just, you know, being on the right side of history, or that kind of thing. But I always want a lot more than that. And so I can point fortunately, to a number of examples in Quaker history, where we, we were, we won, we kept at it until we won.

For example, there was a Quaker invasion of Puritan Massachusetts, back in the day when period when Massachusetts was the theocracy, it was the Taliban of their day, and, you know, totally intolerant of other views, that kind of thing.

And so Quakers in England said, This is wrong. This is just not God’s will that some people should rule over other people’s consciences. That’s just wrong. We have to stop that. So they did an invasion by land across from Rhode Island, and they did an invasion by sea by taking shipped wages to Massachusetts.

And the poor Puritans. They were besieged by these Quakers. They started calling Quakers, ravening wolves. You can imagine. This is not the oatmeal box, no. Ravening wolves attacking our Puritans. And we won but it took, again, it took years. It took tremendous persistence, and it took deaths actually. In that case the Puritans hung people on Boston Common, hung Quakers in order to try to make their point, which was stay away, stay away.

And Quakers continued to come to the colony. And finally by the time they hung the fourth one, which was a woman, which in those days, you know, that was one of the sides of sexism, you don’t mess with women in the same way that you can take on a male dissenter, you can’t do that to a female dissenter, but they did.

And that broke the back of the Puritan resistance. And we won.

So it’s it’s cases like that, that I as a Quaker look to, for examples of how powerfully we can act and still be strictly non violent in the approach that we use. Non violence according to Gandhi being a situation where if there’s going to be violence, it’s going to be directed at us, that is we are willing to take the violence on in order to create a mirror that the opponent who’s doing violence to us can look at and say, Oh my gosh, maybe I better rethink this. This is a problem.

Patricia  31:00 

Yes, and one of the things that I really value about the Quaker outlook is that there is the divine spark within each of us. And Gandhi’s stance that the liberation of India wasn’t just for the Indian people, but also for the British. . .

George

That's right.

Patricia

Who, oppression oppresses the oppressor. They they lose their humanity in the process of oppressing

George

So true.

Patricia

So one can see it as a movement that is for the liberation of all people.

George  31:35 

Of all people. Of all people. Think of those slaveholders who were enslaved by slavery, dependent, made dependent on others when they could have been independent people. They could have been independent people and instead they were making themselves dependent on the labor and the labor of others. Even for the rearing of their children. Outrageous. Think about those moms and dads who had every right, from a humanist point of view, to experience the full joy of being parents. I’m a parent, I’m a great grandparent actually. So many children have been in my ife. And I, how awful would it be for me to hand that off to slaves and not experience the ups and downs and all the growth that’s available to us as parents, but that’s the extremity to which slavery took white people. It's an awful system.

Patricia  32:37 

Yes. For me, it’s really helpful to keep that in mind to understand that, that keeps me from thinking in terms of us/them and them as the enemy but to actually see that by intervening, by doing what I can, what we can, to make a difference, it is for the well being of all, even though you know the people that are that are being opposed don’t see it that way.

George

Right.

Patricia

Yeah. So when you have trained people and been involved with people who are doing nonviolent direct action, maybe for the first time, first of all, how do you equip people to manage fear, their own fear and the fear of others? I mean, not the fear of others, but the fear that others might have that they encounter.

George  33:35 

You may have noticed a youngster getting scared at some point. And they’re really, the little ones especially, are likely to put their hand out looking for another hand to hold. Deeply human, deeply human. If there’s something scary, which might be lightning striking nearby or whatever. It’s wonderful to reach out hoping that your hand will be held.

So that’s number one. Number one is look for others. And these are scary times. And this is a really important time for us not to continue to act out the American script of individualism.

Bill McKibben told me that when people come up to him after he’s spoken about the climate emergency, and, and a typical question would be, well, what would you say to me? What can I do as an individual to to deal with this climate crisis? And Bill likes to say, Well, first of all, you could stop being an individual.

[Laughter]

Patricia  34:40 

Yeah, absolutely. And in isolation, fear escalates. When we're alone we do feel more afraid.

George  34:48 

Exactly. So part of the trainings are really from even from the get-go, like a favorite workshop tool that I use at the get-go is to put people in buddies. Okay, this is gonna be your learning buddy for this workshop. So you’ll be you’ll have each other you know, on breaks, and you have each other to consult with, constantly raise the questions with, and get the support from. And maybe some of what we do in the training will be hard on you. Good. You’ve got your buddy, turn to your buddy. [Laughter] Yeah, so that’s a really, really important part.

Another part is to role play the situations that are most likely to be scary in the anticipated action. So it’s always good to do actions design actions ahead of time, I think. Spontaneity has its role, but it’s also very useful to design as much as you can, so that you can spot the moments or the particular actions or the aspects of the scenario that you expect might be most scary for people. And then those are the ones that you role play in training ahead of time.

So for example, this group that took successfully on the bank We absolutely every time we did an action, we first did a training. So the newbies, for example, who had you know, who heard about a group, wanted to join it, but didn’t have experience yet. They were right, right there in the training, you know, along with more experienced people. And we would go through the spots in the action that would be most likely to be scary. And they had a chance to experience that ahead of time.

And role playing is a wonderful, wonderful device that the civil rights movement used very, very strongly, even in situations of course for them when they were facing the Ku Klux Klan, and no help was around from local law enforcement. They were on their own with the Ku Klux Klan, right? And they role played, role played, role played.

Yeah, I was a trainer for the Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964. And it was very much a part of that process of creating the role plays and then debriefing them in which people get to acknowledge their fear because another thing that keeps us so scared is when we don’t acknowledge the degree of fear that we have. If we acknowledge the fear we do have, then it’s not as likely to increase because we're acknowledging is as we're experiencing it.

Patricia  37:12 

Right, right, right. Yes. So you and you mentioned the civil rights movement, which of course, it’s such a powerful example of, of what non violence can bring about. And in that there’s also this element of when people of color do actions, they’re much more at risk than white people are. And so to me, it almost amplifies the the responsibility you know, for people who are not at as much risk to step up.

George  37:52 

Yeah, that’s what got me arrested the first time was that there was a mass insurrection going on near my city, in a town called Chester, where there were, Chester was probably half black by then or 40% black anyway. And it was a highly, it was a city that was a small industrial city that was full of segregation.

And so they were doing, you know, one of these classic campaigns and I was watching it on TV and realized that almost everybody that I saw in the in that struggle in that campaign was black. And I thought this is ridiculous. It’s not like black people invented racism. I mean, something I as a white person, it’s my ancestors who invented racism. I’m still infected by it still today. And why am I letting? I mean, anybody looking at this TV would think that it’s black people who invented racism, and that’s why they’re taking responsibility to take care of it. But no, no, we did. We white people should take responsibility.

So I got so I jumped in my car and went out and got arrested with them because I wanted more white people to be experiencing that, that repression. And so I was, for the first time beaten by police and so on. And it was a really, but I got by very light and, you know, lightweight kind of repression. And I think you’re right that my white skin also gave me so privileged in that situation.

I do have to say that there been some picket lines, when, especially in the deep south, where often segregationists would regard white people who sided with blacks as race traitors. That concept was around, you know, you’re betraying your white race if you join with blacks in a demonstration. So in places where that culture existed, then sometimes it would be the whites say in the sit in at the lunch counter or whatever, who would be singled out for extra special beating up because it was even more infuriating and even way segregationist could say, well, you can understand why blacks would do this because you know, they want coffee, or whatever. But what is not understandable is why white person would do that. And let’s really beat that person up.

Patricia  40:17 

Yeah, yes. So when you have worked with people and trained them and been involved with them in nonviolent direct action, what changes do you see in people who participate in movements like this?

George  40:32 

Oh, they get stronger. Yeah.

With exceptions. There have been some in the civil rights movement, I think, especially who did not take care of themselves and weren't supported by the movement to take care of themselves and burned out and were left with trauma. So there have been some sad, there have been some heartbreaks in which people experienced repeated beatings for example, repeated jailings, and were suffering in ways that that were not remediated. There were some therapists who made themselves available at Harvard, outstanding nationally known Harvard psychologists went, went down there and did therapy like crazy for a while. And there were some people who tried their best, but it wasn’t anything like enough to meet the need. And so some people were hurt, and became alcoholics afterward or whatever, you know, various trauma.

But those were the, those are the exceptions. And by and large people experience themselves with a new sense of power.

For example, I was on a trolley with my son who was at that time about 11 going downtown, and it was just after the the public transportation system said no smoking. So the signs had gone up, but people weren’t used to it yet right? sitting behind my seat was a guy who lit up. So ordinarily, because I don’t usually pick fights, unless they’re political, or you know, they’re really important to, you know, some interpersonal thing really needs to be dealt with. But that was a casual kind of thing. I would have let it go if I were by myself, but I noticed my son looking at me, Hey, here’s my Dad, what’s my dad gonna do?

You can’t back down if your son is looking at you, right? So I turned around and asked him please to put his cigarette, stub his cigarette out. And he looks at me says You’re kidding, right? This guy did. And I said, No, I’m not kidding it. There’s even a sign up front now that it’s a new rule. And so we’re not allowed to smoke now. And he said, Huh, and stubs it out, and he’s curious, and he sees my son eyeing us and he sees me.

And he says, So I gotta say, this is reminding me of something, especially with your boy here. I said. What’s that? He said When I was the age of your boy, I was in the Birmingham children’s march with Dr. King. That's what I was doing? And my boy, my boy knew about this you know, this struggle, and his eyes got big as saucers. And I think mine were a close second. And this guy totally lit up. He was an African American guy, and he totally lit up, telling the story.

Fortunately, it was a long trolley ride. So we got a lot of the story. And it was obvious, and he even said it, he said it. It was the big experience of my life, experience of my life, and he was totally turned on man. And, and that’s, I will never forget him because it was such an example of somebody who may have had a kind of a lackadaisical life right now, you know, it didn't turn out maybe the way he wanted it, but he had had that day of shining glory, but those days of shining glory And that’s that’s the bigger, more dramatic story way, what I think happens in smaller degrees for many, many people and many people told me that I feel at my most powerful when I’m taking on the tough problems rather than ducking them.

Patricia  44:18 

And knowing that I’m making a difference. It’s beautiful.

You You mentioned earlier about following the script or not following the script of being an individual. And I do see that we follow so many scripts that we are just handed and we sort of follow them unquestioningly. So as you work with non violent action, what do you see as the role of creativity and play and breaking out of those scripts? How, what role does all of that play for you?

George  44:49 

Oh, it’s huge. It’s huge. I often advise groups, you know, that are campaigning groups. And I’ll say creativity is not something we all need to expect of ourselves. You know, there are people who are particularly gifted with creativity. So if it doesn’t turn out that your group has in its membership, a bunch of creative people, it’s okay. Y’all know somebody, y’all know. Y’all know that y’all remember that friend of yours in college who was a drama queen, or whatever. Whatever, you can find creative people I know that you can. Get get their advice. Maybe they won’t join the group, but maybe they will be consultants for you and get them in on the creativity, because creativity is the spark that lights the whole group, and also comes up with the tactics that are sometimes the most creative and most effective with regard to your opponent, and you know, more likely to get you to win.

And so I’m a very, very big believer that getting unscripted, becoming creative is very important. We also routinely in this group, I keep referring to that took on the bank, play games in our meetings. So we’ll have you know, once again, month, you know, general sort of church basement kind of meeting general membership meeting. But we don’t have a drab agenda that lets people go to sleep No, we sing. And we do and we play games.

Patricia

That’s great. Y

George

Interspersed, you know, with the agenda items in order to keep ourselves kind of loose. And from from that springs, at our current campaign, there were doors, corporate doors, so we decided it would be fun to block. And so we blocked them by doing the Electric Slide. Do you know that dance? group dance? [Laughter] Oh my god. We had a couple of hundred people in front of their doors. People couldn’t get out because we were blocking the doors. But we were blocking doors while we’re dancing, doing this line dancing. And there were you know, there were six year olds and there was old me I didn’t know how to do that. My feet were all over the place, and I was chuckling at myself. You know, and then they were all the groovy people, and they were totally knocking it. We were partying, partying. That was that was our blockade. [Laughter]

Patricia  47:06 

[Laughter] Yeah, I really I do see play play as one of our superpowers.

George  47:12 

It's one of our superpower.

Patricia 47:15 

Yeah. So you know that what we read in the media is not really very playful or creative. So when we engage with media and are consuming news, what what advice do you give people about that, our exposure to the media?

George  47:32 

Oh, be very. . . Be your own mental health advocate. Be careful, be careful. There are various distractions that will that will not do well for you. One is the kind of political junkie distraction which of course is really hyped these days by mass media because they want to get as much out of the electoral campaigns as they can and that’s why they start so early.

In Denmark, the typical national election campaigning period is five to six weeks. And no advertisements allowed on TV. [Laughter] And they get way higher citizen participation in their voting that we do. Yeah. So we we drag it out, get as many billions of dollars out of it as possible. And it’s possible, though to get hooked, it can be addictive. So that’s one of the things watch out for.

But also people can get addicted to bad news. So I raised the question about, for example, one of the shows that I would love to give our leadership, it’s a show called Democracy Now, and it’s a lot of alternative radio stations and TV. And I would love for them to give leadership, but so much gloom and doom that we see on that the week after week after week, and I just kind of wonder why do we want to fill ourselves up with bad news? If we want to be at all creative. Creative people, and positive goal setters and goal achievers do not weigh themselves down with bad news about all the reasons why they can’t possibly do it.

Patricia  49:26 

Yeah. Right. Exactly It’s just demoralizing. Yeah.

George  49:31 

Yeah, as the enemy is working at that, so we don’t even have to do that ourselves.

Patricia  49:37 

So I know a lot of people listening probably have never participated in any sort of non violent action and maybe even have a hard time imagining themselves doing something like that. And there are different roles. I know in your book you mentioned there are different roles for making change, like direct service and advocacy, and can you just speak to some of those?

George  50:03 

Yeah, it was a Quaker sociologist and activist named Bill Moyer, who was on Dr. King’s national staff years ago, he was a very astute observer of social movements. And he said that successful social movements, which is what he preferred to write about, he didn’t enjoy so much analyzing unsuccessful ones. But he said successful social movements tend to get four roles played in the course of their work. One role is the role of the helper, that is the person who likes to do direct service. So for example, that climate concern if you’re concerned about the environment, these are the people who will, you know, go around getting people to put solar on their rooftops, that kind of thing, or go around, doing cleanups organizing neighborhood cleanups on the stream that runs by that kind of

Patricia  50:56 

Tree planting, that sort of thing.

George  50:58 

They love being direct, right? Getting something specific that the end of the day they can say, look at this specific things that I did, right? So that’s the helper, and that shows up in every every social movement. Think in the civil rights movement, all those people cooking chicken dinners in the church. Because an army, an army trumps on its on its stomach, right? Whether it’s a non army, Army, you’ve got to have the kitchen going, right. So you’ve got all these people in the kitchen. Thank you. Thank you. So that those are the helpers. And then another role, very important is the advocate role. The advocate role is who especially like to go to people in authority and speak truth to them. So they like to go to city council meetings or go to, you know, do lobbying with the mayor, or lobbying with city with National Congress, people, whatever. Those are the folks, lawyers are very often advocates because they’re in court. We’re trying to advocate for point of view, you know, with a judge. So advocates, advocates like being in that vertical relationship with somebody with greater authority or greater power and try to convince them that change is possible. Advocates can be very helpful to even in direct action when they’re people getting arrested, because it’s very useful to have a lawyer on your side when you’re, you know, when you’re being tried for some some nonviolent act.

So there’s that to the first of all, I said, help her and then I said advocate, then the third one is organizers, organizers love to get lots of people out. And for them, the wonderful day is when they got more people this time than last time. So they can be very helpful both to the helpers and to the advocates and getting a mass lobby instead of just a couple of people lobbying. So they love to they also are builders of coalitions, getting the different groups that are on different issues to see their common interest and then get them together so that they form coalitions. Organizers are amazing.

Patricia  53:09 

You could consider those folks also the connectors, right?

George  53:14 

Absolutely. Connecting, they know how to put the tissue together to make a body. And then finally there’s the rebel. And the rebel is classically you know, the Dr. King, the Gandhi, the Alice Paul, who this is 100 years since we got women’s suffrage in this country. She was the one who really pulled it over the top over that suffrage issue. She was a rebel rebel rebel. There's a new book out I just I read about her in which she took every opportunity she got to confront the president and polarize the situation a little bit more. She did it and she drove Woodrow Wilson just that crazy, and forced him to go from, oh, yes, sufferage. So that’ll be something we can deal with after the First World War is done to: This part of the war effort, we’ve got to free our women. Like that amazing, amazing story of Alice Paul, I hope, I hope your listeners will look into her. But anyway, she’s another classic example of the rebel. And all four of those roles are likely to get farthest, and the campaign and the movement will get farthest when those roles are in sync, or at least not wasting valuable time criticizing each other.

Patricia  54:32 

Yeah. Thank you, because I imagine people can imagine being in one of those roles, even if they’re not a rebel at heart, but they can certainly make a contribution.

So as we finish up here, George, what one thing might you want people to really come away with from this conversation about being in these times right now, to really take to heart in this moment.

George  55:00 

Stop being an individual. Find people, even if it’s a small group as a living room group and find, find and talk to them ahead of time, in order to help yourself discern whether they want to play the role that you want to play. Maybe you’re helper, maybe you want to help other helpers get in the living room, or maybe you are organizer, you know. So study those roles and consider what what most floats your boat because we can stress ourselves and actually, you know, burn ourselves out. If we’re consistently doing something that’s not really us.

There are of course, plenty of people can play two or more of those roles. So I don’t want to discourage that. But on the other hand, just to say, it’s a little easier, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience, to operate from the place that you’re most comfortable.

And then get other people together and then figure out how can we, what might be missing in our area that isn’t being carried forth, you know, well .So maybe, maybe people are are not working on solar as a tremendous opportunity for employment for low people without jobs. So maybe your helper group could find out who are the people who don’t have jobs, but could learn some of the relatively low skilled, because maybe they’re without skills, job skills, maybe low skilled work that could fit into a solar operation. And you can build a whole solar offensive out of that kind of work. Yeah, so getting together with other people and figuring out what you can do in your area that’s not being done as well or maybe not being done at all. And that suits you and going forth proudly.

Patricia  56:48 

Great.

Well, George, I really want to just again, express my appreciation to you for for not only taking the time to do this, but for all of the work that you’ve done and all the lives that you’ve inspired across the world, and the difference that you’ve made. So I just, I’m very appreciative of you. And on this podcast page, I will include some links to some of your work so that people can find out more about you and be inspired by your writing and your contribution. So, again, thank you very, very much for being with us today.

George  57:21 

You’re so welcome, and thanks for your great questions and your, I love your humor, your sense of humor. [Laughter]

Patricia  57:28 

Well it goes both ways. [Laughter]

All right George, thank you so much. Take good care.

George

Thanks. You too.

Patricia

Bye bye

The post Evolutionary Activist Episode 102: Nonviolence and Possibilities in Times of Polarization with George Lakey appeared first on Patricia Pearce.

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In this episode I share my reflections from a recent online gathering I hosted in which I looked at the present coronavirus pandemic through the lens of dream work and placing it within the context of the emerging consciousness of oneness and interdependence.

0:04

Again, I want to thank you all for being here and I wanted to just share with you my take on this current situation with the coronavirus and what it looks like from where I sit.

I know that we’re each experiencing this in our own ways. And the way I see this moment is it’s a moment that’s fraught with all kinds of challenges, obviously, and all kinds of potentialities and opportunities.

So I wanted to share with you first of all what this to me looks like within our global context and, if you’ve followed my work at all, or if you’ve read my writings or followed my podcast, you know that I’m looking at what’s happening globally within a context of the dying away of one paradigm or consciousness and the emergence of a new consciousness, a new paradigm.

And the consciousness or paradigm that’s dying away is that mindset of separateness, that paradigm that believes that separateness exists. And that paradigm of separateness is the foundation of the world that we’ve created.

We’ve been dwelling in that consciousness for millennia. And we’ve built up a whole world around it. We built up political systems and economic systems, and we’ve related to one another as though we’re separate from each other and separate from the Earth and separate from the source of our being.

And of course, that has led to a lot of suffering, a lot of exploitation. And we see now with the Earth, that we’ve reached a point now where the Earth can no longer sustain that paradigm. It’s a false paradigm. It’s an illusion in our minds, that separateness exists.

So we’ve built up a world that’s based on an illusion separateness and we built up a world then that is unsustainable, a world that is out of sync, out of alignment with reality. Reality is inherently interconnected.

And so we’ve reached a point now where that old paradigm simply cannot continue, the Earth can no longer support it. And so we now are in this moment where that understanding, that paradigm, that consciousness, which I often refer to as the egoic consciousness, or ego mind, that is the thing that is that is dying away.

And we’re watching now the world that that paradigm created beginning to fracture, and the institutions that were built upon that understanding of separateness now are beginning to fracture. And so we’re seeing that in the political system, in the economic system, and certainly in our relationship with the Earth.

So we’re in this moment where this old paradigm is dying away, this idea of separateness is dying away, but it’s not going gently into the night. It’s sort of like. . . I sometimes liken it to a star that goes supernova.

You know, a star, once it has expended all of its energy, if it’s big enough star, it doesn’t just disappear. It it goes supernova. It takes whatever is remaining left of its fuel, and it just flares out. And that’s the way I see what’s happening right now, we see this flaring out of that egoic consciousness. And we see it in the political realm. We see it in the present administration. And I look at this through the lens of dream work, and I’m going to get into that in just a moment.

4:54

So we happen to be living at this moment which is quite incredible. We are on this planet at a very incredible moment where this transition is happening. And it’s an astonishing time. And it can be a very frightening time if we are unable to see it from a broader context.

So what I want to offer and what I hope to offer this evening is to give you a context within which to view what’s happening that will enable you then to respond to this moment in a creative way and in a way that enhances this arising consciousness of interconnectedness, which is really love. That really is the reality of love: the reality that all are interconnected, the reality of interdependence or interbeingness.

So that is the consciousness that’s arising, and because we are at this juncture right now we each can help that transition happen by our own thoughts and by our own actions. We can, in essence, embody this new consciousness that is wanting to come forth. And we can further it and give it energy and amplify it.

So, I, for a long time, for decades actually, have done dream work. And that’s been a very central part of my own spiritual practice. Doing dream work, working with my dreams, has been core, actually, to my spiritual life and my journey, and I have been blessed with getting just really extraordinary information from my dreams.

And there was a point in my life, in my own spiritual journey, where I had a very profound and tumultuous sort of Kundalini kind of awakening experience in which I could see very clearly that this world that we are in is a form of dream, and that we are acting out the contents of our unconscious mind in a global way. We are in a sense in a dream trance, if you will. We are not fully awake, we are not awake to who we are, we’re not awake to reality.

So we’re sort of in this dream state or this trance state. And so I look at this world sometimes, especially when things like this are happening, I put on my my dream work hat and I asked myself, why this, why now?

And I’m asking that in regard to the coronavirus. Why this? Why now? And that’s the same kind of inquiry I want to make with a nighttime dream. Why am I having this dream now? Because dreams, of course, come to us with content, with information that it is time for us to become conscious of and to assimilate and to integrate into our awareness.

And so I see this virus and I see everything actually that’s happening on the political landscape right now as an opportunity for unconscious material to become conscious so that it can be integrated, so that we can really move into a different way of being, a different understanding.

So when I’m doing dream work, I always draw on the model of the person that I studied dream work with who is Jeremy Taylor and he wrote many, many books on dream work and worked with dreams for most of his life. And he would always say that all dreams come in the interest of health and wholeness. All dreams come in the interest of health and wholeness. And that includes nightmares. And actually, he would say that nightmares are bringing such important information for us that they do it in an extreme fashion. So that in a sense, they’re startling us awake to the thing that we need to know.

9:30

So I’m looking at the coronavirus as a component of this sort of nightmare scenario that we are finding ourselves in. And when I’m doing dream work, of course, dreams. . . when you’re doing dream work. . . there’s there’s the literal level of the dream. And when you’re in a dream, you’re in the dream, and you’re interacting with the literal understanding of the dream. But when you’re doing dream work, you are stepping out of the literal understanding of the characters and the events and you’re looking at them through a symbolic lens.

So when we are now in this coronavirus dream, if you will, we are engaging with it at the literal level. We are doing literal things like social distancing and washing our hands. We’re engaging with it at that literal level which is very, very appropriate and important.

And we can also then look at it on another dimension, on the symbolic, with a symbolic dreamwork lens and ask Okay, so what is the information? What is the information that wants to be integrated by us now? Why is this happening now? Why this dream and why now?

So the thing that has interested me from the beginning when I first heard about this disease, this virus breaking out in China, was I was intrigued by the name of it: coronavirus. And so when I’m doing dream work, I unpack information like that. Coronavirus. And I think about it symbolically. And I think, corona. That’s very interesting.

What’s corona? Well, corona, of course is the Latin word for crown. And we know that this virus is called coronavirus because it looks like a crown when you look at it under a microscope.

So the crown. Okay, so what’s a crown? What does a crown symbolize?

Well, if this were my dream, and it is, it’s all of our dream, but as my dream I would say, well, Okay, in my understanding a crown is a symbol of a monarch. It’s a symbol of a king or a queen. It’s a symbol of the person who is set apart and special and has dominion over all others. It’s the symbol of a hierarchical order.

The crown is the quintessential symbol really, of the egoic mind, the egoic paradigm that sets people apart. The ego mind wants to be special, it wants to have dominion, it wants to have control. So all of these things are depicted in my dream with a crown. That’s a perfect symbol of the egoic mind. So we’ve got this crown virus now in my dream.

I was also interested that the coronavirus, this virus of quintessential egoness, ego thinking, that the outbreak happened simultaneously with another dream element, which was the impeachment process of a character in my dream whose name is Donald Trump.

And Donald Trump also in my dream depicts sort of a quintessential embodiment of ego mind. So it’s interesting as I do dream work on this that this coronavirus is breaking out at the same time that there is this question about: is one person endowed with absolute power or not?

So there’s this conversation happening, and I see that as emblematic of these two paradigms that are in conversation right now and in tension right now.

So we’ve got the coronavirus which is depicting this egoic mind that is now spreading out across the world.

Now what’s interesting though, is the egoic mind, of course, is based on the fallacy of separateness. And what is this virus actually revealing to us? It’s really revealing to us the undeniable fact of our interconnectedness. It now has become absolutely evident, that we are interrelated. And more than that, we are interdependent. So you could look at it as this virus that is affecting our bodies is at the same time healing our minds.

Because we have this other kind of coronavirus, the coronavirus of the mind, this idea of separateness that is far more devastating and far more deadly than the coronavirus that affects the body. It’s the coronavirus or the pathogen in the mind, this idea of separateness that has resulted in and is resulting in vast suffering of people and planet. It is resulting in vast inequality of wealth, of vast exploitation of the environment. And all of that is the expression of this idea of separateness.

So it’s really, the way I see it, the coronavirus of the mind is the thing that is ironically, being healed as a result of the coronavirus that is sweeping the globe in this literal and physical way.

So, it is now officially a pandemic and and the word. . . Okay, going back to dream work. . . pandemic. That word comes from the Greek and it means all people. All people. And so this crown, this regal state, this capacity to be considered royal is now sweeping across the planet. It is a pandemic. It includes all people. No one is set apart and special. It is a pan demic. All people.

So, I’m really fascinated by how this literal, physical virus is healing our minds and we’re seeing it now in such an amazing way. There’s such an outpouring now of concern for one another, for concern for people who are marginalized, who don’t have the resources, people who are being financially compromised because of this epidemic.

And you can just see it and you can see it in our social connections. And in my dream again, I find it very interesting that this pandemic is hitting right at the time when we have this other capacity to connect globally, so that we can be in isolation literally, and yet at the same time be very cognizant of our interconnectedness, just as we are experiencing right now. In this moment of connection, even though we’re practicing physical isolation, physical distancing.

So in my version of the dream, I’m also really interested that the first public figure, the first big name in the US, the big US name who got this virus was Tom Hanks. So when I’m doing dream work on this, I’m thinking, Wow, that’s really interesting. Tom Hanks is the first one who’s a confirmed case of this virus.

And in my dream, in my version of this dream, my perspective on this dream, my immediate association with Tom Hanks right now is I just saw him recently in his most recent role, which was, of course, playing Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers, the most beloved man in America. And what is the theme song for Mr. Rogers? Please, won’t you be my neighbor? I mean, how perfect is this? Please, won’t you be my neighbor? And so we’re having this outbreak of neighborliness in the midst of this pandemic that is also on a literal level a nightmare.

So I’m also interested in this other name which is. . . so this is where I go when I’m doing dream work, I really like to explore these things, get very very curious. . . this other name of COVID-19. You know, I just play when I’m doing dream work, I just play with these things. Is there anything there ? And sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t.

But I’m like COVID. That’s a really interesting name. Co of course is together, co-worker, together. And VID. Vid is the is the Latin word for to see. So Isn’t that interesting? And we’re on a video, right? So that’s seeing.

So COVID. Seeing together. Like we are seeing together now our interconnectedness, and this pandemic is making it possible for us to see something that has always been there, which is our interrelatedness, it’s always been there, but not in such a visible and obvious way.

And so this pandemic, this virus, this COVID-19 is making something visible for us so that we can see it together. We can see our interrelatedness, our interdependence all together.

So, it’s actually an extraordinary, extraordinary time that we’re in the middle of. And, as I think about that we’re not just talking about the literal virus, the physical virus, but we’re also more importantly talking about the virus in the mind, the coronavirus in the mind, this idea of separateness.

And when I understand that in a sense we’re all infected with that coronavirus of the mind. . . we for the most part, all of us have been been operating out of and living out of this idea of being separate entities, separate beings, separate from one another, from the Earth, separate from the source of our being. We’ve all been infected, if you will, with that virus.

And so now I’m taking this as an opportunity to really be as mindful of my thoughts and what I’m harboring in my mind as I am of what I touch, and as diligent about washing my mind of that erroneous idea of separateness as I am practicing diligence in my hand washing.

And being attentive to the symptoms of the coronavirus of the mind, this idea of separateness. The symptoms of that are things like judgment and making enemies of others, attacking and belittling and all of those are the symptoms of this idea in the mind.

So I’m really working with this right now in my own practice, as a call to become more and more diligent of the thoughts, the thought structure, that I’m noticing, the thoughts that I’m noticing in my mind, and really practicing.

And actually, I’m doing this quite, I would say literally, but sort of imagistically in my mind. When I notice a judgement thought coming up, I’m noticing it and then I’m visualizing washing my hands and we’re all getting plenty of practice seeing that, right? seeing ourselves washing our hands I see myself washing my hands in my mind as an expression of my willingness to let go of that way of thinking because I know that that way of thinking is actually the more deadly virus. And if I can help eliminate that from my own thinking, and if I can help stop the spread of that and the contagion of that, then I’m making a significant contribution.

23:21

But to recognize that we can each play a very significant part. And that whatever contribution we can make, we are helping the whole, because we are all interrelated. That’s just a fact.

So as I recognize that we are all infected with this coronavirus of the mind, when I see that playing out in other people’s behavior, when I see them, for instance, attacking or sort of blowing off the need to be cautious to protect other people’s health, when I see that active in other people’s behavior, it helps me be able to step aside from judgment because I can recognize that that person, their thinking, has been infected with a virus, the virus of the ego mind, the virus of separateness. It’s not who they inherently are. But we all really are carriers of this virus of the mind.

25:07

And so, crisis and we’ve all probably heard the understanding of it in Chinese characters as dangerous opportunity. It’s sort of become a cliche. But I’m also interested in the actual word crisis in English.

The word crisis comes from the Greek and it means decision. A crisis is a moment of decision. And I was interested to learn that the first time that the word crisis was used in English, it was used as a medical term. And it referred to the moment in a disease, where the disease will either progress along a path of recovery or towards death. It is a moment, a decisive moment, in the progression of a disease where the status quo can no longer hold, it’s going to change for better or for worse. That’s what the crisis is. It’s a moment where this situation is going to change for the better or for the worse, for recovery or for death.

So I see us right now as in that kind of a crisis moment. It is a moment of decision. And one of the wonderful things is that we have the capacity to make the decision. We are not helpless. This is a crisis in which we make a decision about which way this virus, this disease of the egoic mind, is going to take.

So, that’s a decision that we make, and also, I know that might sound scary that we’re in a crisis. But actually, when I’m when I’m really tuning in at a spiritual level, I can sense so much love energy that is available to us right now. And that also is part of the healing of the mind, the healing of our sense of separateness from Source, our sense of separateness from non-physical or non-visible reality. And there are energies and entities that are here to help us. And so we are not in this alone.

And so I know on the ground and at the literal level, it can seem very frightening. And yet, I sense that this is an amazing moment. And it is an opportunity for an extraordinary outbreaking of love. And we are actually beginning to see it. We’re beginning to see that love expression coming to the fore. And actually we see it on a daily basis. It’s like this snowballing effect that’s happening now. So I see it as an extraordinary moment, and a moment in which each of us can play an extraordinary role.

So those are some of my reflections on this particular moment that we find ourselves in.

29:23

So I’m actively asking myself, how would I like to help that energy be amplified and magnified? And what can I do in my own unique context, given my own background, given my own relationships, given my own skill set? What can I bring to bear in this moment to help amplify this wave of energy that now is sweeping the globe? So actually convening this group felt like something that I could do. And so this is an example of a way that I wanted to participate and help this energy really magnify.

So those are some of my reflections, and I know that we each will have our own take on this experience. And I want to also recognize the fact that we all probably in our own lives are facing our own unique anxieties, or challenges, and our own situations.

I understand that just like dreamwork, nighttime dreams, all dreams are multivalent. They have many layers of meaning. So I’m just sharing with you my perspective from where I sit. And I recognize that that’s one perspective among billions, literally. But I wanted to share that with you all. And I wanted to also give you the opportunity to reflect on that question for yourself in this moment, this global moment that is extraordinary, that has come upon us quite suddenly, that none of us anticipated: What would you like to do given your particular context? How would you like to support and amplify the outbreaking of love?

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We are constantly encouraged to see the world, others, and ourselves through the distorting lenses of the ego mind. Perfect vision, though, sees through the eyes of Love. What would it mean for us in the year 2020 to reclaim that perfect vision for ourselves?

Hello, Evolutionaries and welcome to this week's podcast episode.

First of all, I just want to say Happy New Year Happy 2020 and when I hear 2020 the thing that immediately springs to my mind is vision. We use 2020 as our measure of what we consider to be perfect vision. And so I wanted to talk about our 2020 vision, and especially in terms of where we are culturally right now, and what it might mean for us as evolutionary activists to improve our vision.

I wear eyeglasses, I don't know if you do, but whenever I go to the eye doctor if you wear glasses, you've also had this experience she sits me down in her chair and she lights up the chart on the far wall, and she puts this contraption in front of my face. Then she flips through these different lenses (she has me cover one eye) and flips through these different lenses and asks me which one is clearer, and she'll go back and forth. She'll say, Number five? And then she flips it. Or number six? And then she'll go back. Number five? . . . Or number six? And she keeps doing that with both eyes until she's gotten to a point where I can read the smallest line on the chart.

Well, that's what we need when when we need corrective vision.

What I want to talk about today, as we think about this year of 2020, is what it means for us as evolutionary activists in this time to have perfect vision. And the reason that I say this is that we are being offered all sorts of distorting lenses through which to see the world and through which to see one another.

We are constantly being offered lenses that would have us see the world through this filter of division, and judgment and enemies and us and them. We're actually being bombarded with these glasses through which to see the world that completely distort Reality. And as I've said before in this podcast, Reality is Love. Love is Ultimate Reality.

So whenever we are seeing the world in any way that is not a way of Love, whenever we're seeing the world in a way that Love would not see the world, then we are wearing lenses of distortion, lenses that, as you know if you've listened to this podcast, are lenses of the ego mind which sees the world through this idea, this notion of separateness. And then from that springs all of the rest that comes: the enemies, the judgment, the comparison, all of that.

So, I wanted to to highlight this for us this week as we enter this new year, especially given the fact that in 2020, in this year of 2020, as the presidential campaign in the US really ramps up, we are going to be encouraged more and more intensely to put on those eyeglasses of division. To see everything through this idea of us and them. We will be bombarded with this temptation to put on those glasses of the ego mind, that fake news, those fake lenses, and to see the world through those lenses to see the world through fear, to see the world through division.

Those are the glasses that we are going to be offered through the media. And I believe that it is our task as evolutionary activists to decline to wear those glasses, to decline to see the world through those lenses or to see others through those lenses.

So these lenses of distortion come to us from the external world, from the media and so forth. But I also think that it's important for us to recognize that those lenses of distortion also exist in our own mind that in our own mind we have these ideas of separateness, we have these ideas that we have to compare ourselves to others. We have these ideas of unworthiness. All of these things also are the lenses of distortion in our own mind.

Now, over the course of the years, as I've gone back to my eye doctor, there are times, there years, when she needs to increase my prescription. It's a gradual process. I didn't show up one day going from 2020 vision to terrible vision, and my vision is not terrible, but it does need correction, especially for distance.

So what I want to highlight is that it's a gradual process of losing one's perfect eyesight. And in the same way, it's a gradual process for us to divest from those lenses of distortion.

I don't think it's realistic for us to expect that one day we're going to wake up and we're just going to take those glasses off, and we'll be done with it. That's not my experience. In my experience there are moments when we might have perfect vision. We have these moments when we see through the eyes of Love. When we see through the eyes of Joy and Gladness, that radiant, perfect vision. We have these moments of perfect vision.

But in my experience, those glasses come back on and it's more like a gradual process of reducing that distortion incrementally, of choosing over and over and over again not to subscribe to these ideas of fear, not to subscribe to these ideas of separateness and enemies and all of that.

So it's a gradual process. And you can imagine, it's like sitting in that chair at the eye doctor's, except that this time the lenses are getting less and less strong. They're getting more and more simply transparent. So that over time, we now see perfectly.

And what it means to see perfectly is to see through the eyes of Love, to see all things and all people through the eyes of love. And that includes ourselves to see ourselves solely through the eyes of Love.

And so I offer this up to all of us as a collective intention that we can hold as we enter this year of 2020. That we set as an intention to less and less buy into that distortion of the ego mind and to more and more choose to see the world, to see others, to see ourselves through the eyes of Love that is Ultimate Reality, and it is the truth of who we are.

And until next week, I bid you peace.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
lenses, distortion, gradual process, vision, eyes, evolutionary, glasses, separateness, eyeglasses, ideas, activists, mind, podcast, offered, flips, year, world, distort, bombarded, division

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This week we conclude our Advent series that has focused on the global awakening of Christ consciousness and the dream I shared in Advent and the Awakened Dream.

In this week's episode we look at releasing the one thing that, more than any other, keeps us asleep to our true nature.

Hello Evolutionaries, and welcome to this week's podcast episode. Today is the last of our four part podcast series during the season of Advent in which I've been talking about a dream that I had back in March of 2018 in which I was shown what it is like when we are no longer beholden to this idea of the separate self, and how it is that we then enter into a new way of creating and co-creating.

If you haven't listened to those previous episodes, I encourage you to do so, to go back to the one that is entitled Advent and the Awakened Dream, so that you understand the context for what I'm going to be talking about today, which is the one thing that more than any other keeps us beholden to that illusion of the separate self.

If you remember in that first podcast episode of the series, I talked about that dream experience, that dream that I had that came in answer to a question that I had, about what is it like when we are no longer beholden to this idea of the separate self. And you remember how I had that experience in that dream of being able to create simply by waving my hand through the air and creating with light. And so there was this act of pure creation that transcends even the world of physical form.

I also shared with you that detail that I was standing outside of a church where they were singing O Little Town of Bethlehem. And over the course of these last couple of weeks, we've unpacked that the message in that song, because that was an essential detail of the dream, and an essential part of the message had to do with the lyrics of that song.

And so we've been exploring that. And if you remember, when we looked at the first stanza, we looked at Earth as Bethlehem, Earth as this place where this Christ consciousness is being born, this consciousness that unites the non-visible with the visible and that that is what is happening right now, even though the headlines tell a very different story. But this awakening is happening right now. And so for me, the essential question is: okay, how do we participate in that awakening? How do we support it in our own lives?

Last week we looked at that line in the song O Little Town of Bethlehem that says, For Christ is born of Mary, and we looked at how that consciousness is born of the feminine principle, that which is able to conceive and receive and allow to come forth that intention, that great intention for the planet.

Well, this week, as I just mentioned, I would like to look at the thing that keeps us in that dream of the separate self, in that egoic mind, the thing that more than any other prevents us from knowing who we truly are, prevents us from embodying the Christ consciousness, the non dual consciousness, the Buddha consciousness that is at the core of who we are this is the one thing that keeps us in that trance state of separateness. And that thing is. . . maybe you've guessed it by now. Judgment.

The egoic mind operates out of judgment and is maintained by judgment. And if you are someone who's familiar with the Judeo-Christian story of Eden, if you remember the thing that casts Adam and Eve out of the garden is this idea of judgment, this idea of sin. In reality, we've never left the realm of Love. We've never left the Reality of Love. It wouldn't be possible. But in our minds, we've been taking this sojourn into this experience of suffering that arises from this idea of judgment and this idea of sinfulness. And we cling to that idea of judgment as though it were necessary and essential.

Judgment is sometimes the last thing that we are willing to relinquish, because we believe that it serves a purpose. Well, the purpose that it serves is to keep us asleep to who we truly are. It keeps us asleep to our divine and eternal nature as expressions of this Reality of Love.

Now, as someone myself who has been steeped in the Christian tradition, it's ironic that Jesus himself exemplified non-judgment and was all about forgiving our idea of being of being sinners, this idea of us being sinful. So he exemplified non-judgment, and his life exemplified that and even the way that he encountered death exemplified non-judgment.

And yet the egoic mind, when it got ahold of the Christian tradition and really distorted it to its own purposes, it became all about judgment, it became all about sinfulness and reinforcing this idea that we are at our core, unworthy and sinful.

So that's the idea that keeps us asleep and keeps us beholden to this world of suffering that we experience when we are living out of this idea of the separate self. But when we understand that that is the thing more than any other that prevents us from awakening to this essential truth of who we are, then we can begin to cast some doubt on its usefulness, cast some doubt on our assumptions that judgment is necessary and is an essential piece of what it means to be alive.

Over the past few weeks, we've been looking at Christmas not as confined to time or place or person, but as a story and a message that is all of us and is meant for all of us. A story that speaks to us of who we truly are. And we've also been looking at the verses of the song that came in the dream as though they were a message to us, those of us on planet Earth in this time of tumult and awakening.

So I would like then to read this last stanza of the song. I've changed a couple of the words, so that it communicates more clearly the essence of the message that I was feeling as I was doing this dream work and understanding how this was a communication to us about awakening to our inherent Christness.

So listen to these words hearing again that Earth is Bethlehem, and that each of us is on this Bethlehem planet to come to know who we are and embody who we are as expressions of the Reality of Love.

O Holy Child of Bethlehem

And so, oh holy child of Bethlehem, I leave you with that message, and with this invitation to listen in to this dream that I felt was to be shared with all of you, and to listen into what it says about these times in which even in the dark streets of our dream the eternal Light shines, and that we are each invited, you are invited, to participate in this extraordinary moment of the awakening of this Christ Consciousness upon this beautiful Bethlehem planet.

And until next week, I bid you peace

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

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We continue to explore the dream I shared in Advent and the Awakened Dream, this week looking at the role the feminine principle plays in bringing forth unitive, or Christ, consciousness.

Hello evolutionaries, and welcome to this week’s podcast episode. This week, I want to continue what we’ve been exploring the last two weeks looking at the season of the birthing and the emergence of Christ consciousness. If you haven’t listened to the last two podcast episodes, I really encourage you to pause this recording, and to go back and listen to those two so that you’ll understand the context of what we’re exploring this week.

If you remember, two weeks ago I shared with you that dream that I had that showed me what the awakened dream looks like. And it showed me the kind of co-creative capacity that we have when we move outside of that ego-mind of separateness. And I also shared that little dream detail that I had this experience in the dream of this capacity to create in that way, while standing outside of a church while they were singing O Little Town of Bethlehem.

And so in my dream work around this dream, I really looked into that song more closely and the lyrics, and I really heard these lyrics then as a message to us, those of us who are on the Earth right now in this in this time of tumult, this time in which this egoic story is spinning out of control, having come to the end of its of its capacity to be our guiding force, and simultaneous with that, we have this emergence of this universal consciousness or non-dual consciousness or Christ consciousness.

So that’s what we’re exploring in this season of Advent. And last week, if you remember, we looked at the first stanza of that song, and looked at Earth as being Bethlehem, of Earth’s purpose as being the place where this consciousness is brought forth, this consciousness comes into embodied existence, into the world form. So Earth as Bethlehem.

Well, this week, I’d like to look at the second stanza of that song, and in particular, the first line, which says, For Christ is born of Mary, and I want to just allow that to sink in for a moment: For Christ, or Christ Consciousness, is born of Mary. And what is Mary? Mary is the feminine principle, Mary is the power of yin. The feminine principle is that which brings into form this Christ consciousness.

And of course, we’ve been on the planet for several millennia now in a patriarchal mindset in which the feminine principle has been marginalized. And right now, that feminine principle is coming back. It’s coming back into our awareness. And so we have this rebalancing now of the masculine and the feminine and this thing that’s been out of balance for so long, and that this Christ consciousness, this universal consciousness is not born of that patriarchal mindset, or the masculine energy that is out of balance such that it tries to force things to happen.

So these energies, these principles, the masculine and the feminine, are coming into alignment. And this universal consciousness, this Christ Consciousness, is born of Mary.

This feminine principle is the capacity to intuitively receive and conceive of what wants to come forth. And of course, in the Christian story, Mary is the one who receives this message that this Christ is coming into the world and is going to come into the world through her. And so, Mary is this figure in that in that narrative, in that story, who is able to comprehend what wants to come forth on the planet.

So there is this intuitive capacity to see and understand and comprehend this thing that wants to be born in us, that wants to be born on this planet. So, there is this ability to intuitively conceive of it, and then to say yes to it to receive it to allow it, Mary makes herself available to this divine purpose to this great intention for the planet.

So the feminine principle is that which is able to receive and allow and take into itself this intention, and then to allow that intention to gestate, to give it a safe place, a place of darkness the womb. And in this season, we are in the season, in the northern hemisphere, this season of darkness, this womb energy, in which this thing that has been conceived, can gestate, can take on form. This idea this energy moves into physical existence during this time of darkness. During this time of gestation, in this womb time.

We may often think of our own awakening as something that we have to strive for, something that we have to try to attain. And yet, this is saying, it’s not that at all. What it is, is, it’s about receiving, what we are receiving what we are capable of receiving the truth of this Christ consciousness that is our inherent identity.

And so this Christ conscious, this universal consciousness, is not born through the masculine energy. It’s not born through the energy of striving or making something happen. It is born through this energy of receiving and allowing, and gestating. It is about non-doing, and about saying yes to who we are, to what we are, and to what wants to come forth on this planet through us.

So, I would like to just read to you that second verse of this hymn of the song, so that you can hear it again as this message to us from the non-visible realm. These words of assurance of reassurance and in a sense guidance for us during this Advent season on the planet

And in the second stanza, I’ve changed some of the lyrics to remove the patriarchal flavor of them so that we can hear it in a new way and with fresh ears. So listen to these words as a message to us.

For Christ is born of Mary

And until next week, I bid you peace.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

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[This week’s episode continues to explore the dream I shared last week in Advent and the Awakened Dream.]

We are living at a moment of upheaval in which the egoic consciousness and its institutions are in collapse, while simultaneously unitive consciousness, or Christ consciousness, is emerging.

In this episode we look at planet Earth itself as Bethlehem, the place where the consciousness of Love is being birthed in material form.

[Here is a link to the book if refer to in this episode:  What in the World Is Going On? Wisdom Teachings for Our Time, by Penny Gill]

Hello Evolutionaries, and welcome to this week's podcast episode. Last week, I shared a dream that pertains to this season of Advent, this season of celebration, especially for those in the Christian tradition, which tells of the coming of Christ. And I really see us globally in this moment, and humanity in this moment, of birthing Christ Consciousness . . . birthing Buddha consciousness. And if you haven't listened to that podcast from last week, I really encourage you to pause this recording and go back and listen to it, because that will give you the context for what I'm going to be talking about today, which is about this global awakening, this global birthing of Christ consciousness.

We can look back over millennia and be assured that every generation and every time probably felt that their time was the most important time in all of history. And we sort of tend to think the same thing. However, I believe that there is something to that right now. And it is because of the crises that we're facing in particular the climate crisis. This time is unlike any other time that this planet has known. Never before have we been looking at conditions that could very well cause the extinction of the human race, as well as many other species. So we are living in an extraordinary and unprecedented time.

The story we are living out is the ego story. It is a story of the separate self, the story of separateness, and it has taken us as far as it can. It is a story that does not have any future it is a dead end story, More and more we are recognizing that this whole notion of separateness is an illusion. We are also becoming aware that the way out of these crises is not to face the crises with more of the same ego attack, manipulation and seeking for domination but it will be through a birthing of the Christ consciousness . . . the Buddha consciousness . . . which is the realization, the knowing, of our inherent oneness.

There is a wonderful book that was written by a friend of mine. It's called What In The World Is Going On?: Wisdom Teachings For Our Time. It is actually a work channeled and published by Penny Gill, bringing in the teachings of an entity named Manjushri who is a Tibetan teacher. I highly recommend it, because it is a book that gives us a global look at the lay of the land and what is happening right now on the planet. It contextualizes what's happening. Plus, one of the special and wonderful things about that book is that it looks at this global situation from sort of the 50,000 foot view and talks about things that are very different from what we see from the ground. In particular it talks about the Shower of Spirit new energies that are coming into the world energies that are bathing the earth, enabling a quickening of our consciousness, a quickening of the awareness of our inherent interdependence. (I'll put a link to that book and where you can get it on the podcast page of my website.)

I believe that as we see culturally in this season of preparation for Christmas, we also see globally that we are in that season, the season of Advent, where this birthing of this consciousness is happening and it is happening right now. So we are in this moment of this birthing of the Christ consciousness and the collapse of the egoic consciousness and the world that it has fostered. And of course, in this moment where these two consciousness's, if you will, are meeting, there is a lot of conflict and a lot of fear.

Last week I shared a dream in which I was shown, what the awakened dream is like as well as the essence of our creative capacity when we awaken from that dream of separateness. I was shown how it is that we participate and co-create with creation itself in a way that is very different from the ways that we make things happen when we're coming from the egoic standpoint.

If you remember that dream, there was a little dream detail that I want to talk about today and in the coming weeks. In this dream detail I am standing outside of a church where they're singing O Little Town of Bethlehem. As I started doing my dreamwork and I really looked at why the dream selected that particular song to pair up with the awakened dream's experience of this creative capacity. What is it about that song? I focused on the song because dreams are very intentional. They don't just throw in details willy-nilly, rather they offer very rich symbolism that we can unpack.

And so I unpacked that song with the question of why. Why this song in correlation with this awakened dream experience? As one begins to listen to the lyrics of that song from this dream's vantage point of understanding that the Christ story is not limited to a time or a place or a person, it becomes clear that the Christ Consciousness is our inherent identity. An so, as such, it is not confined to, it is not quarantined to one person, or one place, or one time, but rather, as I see it, Earth's purpose, the purpose of planet Earth, is to awaken Christ Consciousness, is to awaken Buddha consciousness.

Earth's purpose is to unite the non-visible and the visible, so that the reality of love becomes visible in form. That is the purpose of planet Earth and I believe that is what is transpiring right now even in the midst of all of this egoic upheaval and collapse. If we think of it that way we can think of planet Earth as Bethlehem and we can think of Earth itself as Mary giving birth to this Christ awareness, this Christ energy, this Christ Consciousness.

With that in mind, I'm going to share with you the lyrics for the first stanza of that song. I would like you to listen to it from this vantage point of hearing it more like a message to Earth from that non-visible realm, that spirit realm, the realm of love that is witnessing and holding what is transpiring on this planet right now. Please listen to these words as though Earth itself is Bethlehem. As though you and I are Bethlehem, and as though this is a message that is coming to us from the non-visible realm.

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above a deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
Yet in the dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

I leave those words with you and I leave that message with you this week to ponder in order that we may find ourselves in this Bethlehem moment on the planet, each of us being invited to allow that consciousness of oneness, that consciousness of our interdependence, to take root and to be birthed in ourselves.

And until next week, I bid you peace.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
birthing, christ consciousness, consciousness, Bethlehem, separateness, dream, awaken, ego, crises, inherent, coming, moment, listen, planet, podcast, song, transpiring, book, earth, visible

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In this week’s podcast episode I share a dream I had in 2018. In this dream I was shown how, with the awakening of Christ consciousness, we become able to create in a way that transcends the manipulation of material form.

Hello Evolutionaries, and welcome to this week’s podcast episode. Now that we are in the season approaching Christmas, a season that’s known in the Christian tradition as Advent, I wanted to share with you a dream that I had in March of 2018. As you can see, it’s not a dream that came to me during the Christmas season, but it is dream that certainly speaks to what I believe this season is actually pointing to, which is about much, much more than the birth of Jesus. But first I want to share some backstory:

There was a point in my life some years back, many, many years ago when, when I had an awakening experience, and I saw how it is that we are living in a dream and how the world that we are in is a dream. And how we are playing out this idea unconsciously playing out this idea of the separate self.

So we are in a sort of dream state in a sort of a trance state, and I could see that, so very, very, very clearly when I had that experience. Since that time, that awareness in my own mind has come and gone. There are times when I’m quite lucid in the dream, and other times when I’m just as asleep as anyone else. So, that has been part of my journey and my exploration really getting to the bottom of that dream, the dream that we are playing out of the separate self and how it is that we can begin to awaken from that dream and actually come to know ourselves as one with Reality. That is a

I was getting ready for bed and I was deeply contemplating really seeing this separate self as simply a set of ideas . . . the separate self is simply a set of ideas in the mind. As I was contemplating this, in that quiet moment, an image came to me. The image was of our ideas of the mind and they were like Tinker toys, like an assemblage of Tinker toys, these interlocking ideas that together form a concept, or our experience of the separate self. And it is from that concept, that construct of ideas of a separate self, that we live our lives and out of which we experience the world.

I was just receiving that and holding that image, seeing how the separate self is just this compilation of ideas that we both live from and that we believe to be who we are. And so before I went to bed, I just simply posed the question, as I sometimes do when I want clarity on something and I would like a dream to come and instruct me. I asked, what would it be like for us to live, not beholden to that dream that dream of the separate self, that dream of a world that’s based in separateness?

That night I had a dream.

In the beginning of the dream, it was as though there were no clear details offered. But I sensed that things were coming into coherence, synchronicities were increasing and there was this knowing of things beginning to align.

I was then given an image of two sets of pajamas, each sort of the inverse of one another, and I understood that there are layers of dream there are levels of dream and that different versions of myself inhabit different levels of the dream.

For instance, we have the dreaming state when we’re asleep, and we have a dream personality in that level of dream, and then we have our waking dream where we have another version of ourselves that is largely built upon that idea of the separate self, that Tinker toy set of ideas.

So I saw that things were coming into coherence, synchronicities were on the increase, and that there are levels of dream. Then, in the dream, I’m standing outside of the church, and I’m not sure if it’s in Bethlehem, it might be, I’m not sure. But I can hear the music from inside the church. They are singing O Little Town of Bethlehem.

As I’m standing there, I discover that I can paint with light with my hands. I can wave my hand through the air, and create colors, and shapes of colors that are comprised entirely of light they’re like little pixels of color, little pixels of light color.

So there is this creative act that I’m engaged in as I am able to create purely from my hands. There is no material form or material substance involved in this act of creation. And what I am given to understand is that this is The Awakened Dream, this experience is The Awakened Dream.

And then I woke up. I wrote down my notes so that I could remember the dream, and I wanted to share it with you in this season. And over the course of the next several weeks, up until Christmas, I want to unpack that dream and the way that I have come to hear it, especially based on the information that the dream gave me, this little detail: The music coming out of the church was O Little Town of Bethlehem.

So I’m going to share with you some of my insights around that detail of the dream. But the reason that I wanted to share this with you in this particular season, is that I understood that this dream was showing me that when we awaken from that separate self . . . when we awaken from the idea that we are separate from the reality of all being . . . separate from the reality of Love . . . we step into a different way of creating. It is like a divine way of creating, that let there be type of creation that doesn’t depend on manipulating material form. It is a pure act of creation it is light, and it is unlimited.

I actually see us right now, on the planet . . . this consciousness you can call it Christ Consciousness, you can call it non-dual consciousness, you can call it Buddha consciousness, or you can call it unitive of consciousness but this consciousness is being born on the planet right now despite what the newspapers and the media are focusing on. There is this awakening that is happening.

This dream was showing me what is it like when we are in an awakened state in the dream, when we become lucid in the dream. When we are lucid, when we are in an awakened state within the dream, then the dream itself, the world itself, becomes a canvas for creation, not in the egoic way of of trying to manipulate form and manipulate reality, but in a way in which we join with that reality of Love, such that we become co-creators we become creators upon the canvas of the dream of the world.

From that awakened dream a new world dream can come forth, but it can’t happen when we are asleep in the dream, It can’t happen when we continue to hold a state of believing in the separate self. It can’t happen when we live from that set of Tinker toy ideas as though it is who we are. Because that is not who we are.

Who we are is the very thing that Jesus knew himself to be, which is the Christ consciousness this Oneness with the reality of Love. That is our true nature and that is what we are awakening to.

The turmoil and the challenges that are happening on the planet today are a catalyst for the awakening of our own Christ consciousness, our own non-dual consciousness. So this is I want to explore with you during this season of Advent. To search out what it looks like for us to understand that we are Bethlehem, that you are Bethlehem, that I am Bethlehem, that this planet is Bethlehem the place where the Christ Consciousness is being born. And what I want to explore with you is what it means for us each to live into that and to accept that and to say yes to that.

And until next week, I bid you peace.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

The post Evolutionary Activist Episode 97: Advent and the Awakened Dream appeared first on Patricia Pearce.

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Gratitude is much more than giving thanks for that which already exists in physical form. It is a powerful practice in helping a healed world become manifest.

Hello Evolutionaries and welcome to this week’s podcast episode. This week we in the US are celebrating Thanksgiving and I wanted to talk today about what it means to be a gratitude activist.

Thanksgiving can be a wonderful season in which we really do take stock of the blessings that we enjoy that we often may take for granted, and to really do an inventory. And one of the things that I do is I have a journal that is specifically for Thanksgiving, and I write in it every Thanksgiving, giving my gratitude, expressing my gratitude, giving my thanks for the things that are happening in my life, and the things that have happened over the course of the previous year.

And it has been a treasure, to have that book, to have that journal, and to go back and revisit what I’ve written over the course of the years. To see, you know, what was happening in that moment for me, what shifts were happening in my life, what things were standing out to me as things that I was grateful for. Blessings. And sometimes even the act of being deliberately grateful can open our eyes up to the things that we so often take for granted.

I see Thanksgiving as really a wonderful holiday and this season I would invite you to step up your gratitude even more as an evolutionary activist and explore the power of gratitude as it relates to manifestation.

I know we often think about Thanksgiving as a time when of course we give thanks for the relationships in our lives, possibly good health, if we enjoy that. We tend to think give thanks for externals in our lives and things that are presently with us.

Well, today, I would like us and encourage us and invite us all to take it up a step in terms of our gratitude and our thanksgiving. Because gratitude actually is a very, very powerful practice in terms of being an evolutionary activist and I want to talk about that.

When we align ourselves with the feeling of gratitude, we are joining ourselves with that thing that ,whatever it is, that we are grateful for. We're joining with it at an energetic level. And of course, they say, you’ve probably heard the expression, what you appreciate, appreciates. So, the things that we are grateful for are the things that will be magnified in our lives.

Well, there’s also an attribute of gratitude where we can be grateful for something that doesn’t yet exist in material form. And by being grateful for that thing, we are actually inviting it into material manifestation. We’re aligning ourselves; we are joining our consciousness, we’re joining the energy of who we are, the energy of our own being, with that thing that exists in the realm of possibility; but by joining with it in an energy of gratitude we’re inviting it into manifestation.

This is a practice that is actually well known in many cultures. Native American cultures understand that, for instance, to do the rain dance, it’s not a question of asking or imploring for rain, it’s entering into a state where rain already exists.

And so, when we enter into that state where we know something to be a present reality, even if it hasn’t yet materialized in physical form, we are inviting it and helping it arise and manifest in physical form.

There’s also a well-known story that you may be familiar with of Jesus feeding the multitudes. And in that story the first thing he does is give thanks for the fish and the bread that were available which, given the size of the crowd, was clearly inadequate. And yet he understood that the feeding of the multitude was a present reality. And for that he gave thanks.

And so, when we align with possibilities as present realities, even though they may not be yet in physical form, we are playing an essential role. We are being evolutionary activists by inviting into physical form something that doesn’t yet exist in physical form. And we’re doing it through this energy of gratitude.

And if you’ve ever been in a state of just ecstatic gratitude, you know how powerful that energy is. And so I invite you, I ask you, I encourage you right now, particularly given the turmoil and the division and the difficulties that our country is in right now (those of us who live in the US) I would ask that you on this Thanksgiving week that you enter into a state of gratitude for our country, in a healed state, in a united state, that you enter in your mind and in your consciousness into that possibility of this country living out the reality and the truth of love, and that you enter into that as a present reality. And that you charge it up with this feeling of deep, deep gratitude for that present reality. And by doing this, I believe we are playing a very, very, very important role. In this moment of conflict, we’re holding on to and bringing forth and inviting into form a different story, a story that transcends these divisions and this polarization.

So, I leave you with that. And I wish you a very, very happy, joyful, blessed Thanksgiving. And until next week, I bid you peace.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

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In this episode I talk about a study done by Dr. Coren Apicella on human cooperation and I talk about its implications for our present cultural context.

These are challenging times.

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The post Evolutionary Activist Episode 95: Refusing the Wall appeared first on Patricia Pearce.

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As evolutionary activists we live from the inside out, discovering and embodying the inner treasure of the true Self.

These are challenging times.

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The post Evolutionary Activist Episode 94: The Inner Treasure appeared first on Patricia Pearce.