Tierra Sagrada

Anyway.

This is the long-awaited truth: a healthy ecology is the foundation for a healthy economy. A healthy relationship with and a deep understanding of our habitat is the bedrock of any mutually beneficial management or stewardship of our habitat. By fostering a healthy ecology, we foster a healthy economy. Through the manifestation of ecological abundance, we manifest economic wealth.

The new paradigm converts near-worthless money back into vital natural resources, giving us a world of abundance.

Investing in the ecology is the very best way to create and maintain a sustainable, healthy, vibrant economy.

Look: An economy is the management of a household or habitat. Planet earth, say. The management of our planet's resources, then, is economics. When we are contemplating how to manage our planet's resources, we are contemplating the global economy.

oikos = household, habitat
nomos = management of, ordering of

oikos = household, habitat
logos = study of, speech or discourse regarding

*it is important to note that logos is not merely the study of or the understanding of but - more importantly - both communication about and communication with*

an ecology is a pattern of relationships within a household or habitat. Specifically, an ecology exists as a pattern of relationships within a household or habitat. Planet Earth, say. If we understand the relationships between our planet's resources, then, we understand the planet's ecology. When we have a relationship with our planet's resources, we are ecologists. Or - when we communicate with our planet's resources, we are ecologists. When we are contemplating the relationships of our planet's resources, we are contemplating the global ecology.

What are we investing in? We are investing in relationship. Relationship with all life; with one another, with the land that provides us with our food and shelter, with the plants and the animals, with the farmers and the builders, with city dwellers and country folk, with politicians and businesspeople... there is no us and them. There is only us. And around the world, humanity is belatedly learning the obvious lesson that it's all of us or none of us. We must work together, and live as one family on this very small and out of balance planet...

As we learn to communicate, both laterally (amongst one another) and vertically (up the natural resource ladder and down the food chain - what we produce and what we consume) we cultivate relationship with our habitat, and out of this relationship evolves mutual appreciation, trust, and ultimately, interdependence.

Back to the real world: what is this new economic paradigm? What does it look like? How do we market it? What is its name? How does it work?

So. Take an ecology. Design it to be self-healing, optimizing output while minimizing input. Let it manage itself, and intervene minimally. This is the new economy - there's lots of work to be done, and turns out its a labor of love. It's all about intelligent design, and we're the ones meant to be doing it. Designing how we live in relationship with wind, rain, the contours of the land, the cycles of the seasons... designing how we live in relationship with the resources we depend upon to survive leaves very little management to be done.

This is the crux of the issue. An optimally designed ecology creates a healthy economy with very little management needed. Good design creates self-managing systems. (Conversely, highly managed systems reveal bad design.) These are adaptive systems, 'intelligent', systems that make their own corrections and adjustments and thus maintain an evolving equilibrium without oversight or management. These systems are the least labor intensive, the most cost effective, and have the greatest potential for optimization within limits, otherwise known as a sustainable rate of growth. In other words, the healthiest economy is one where people do less, allowing nature to do more...

The new paradigm is ecological design. By optimizing our ecology, we optimize our economy. Astonishingly simple, really. Every alternative that leaves us with too much money and not enough clean water is unsustainable, and ultimately a bad investment.

By relating to the land, we learn to appreciate that which keeps us alive. As we learn to appreciate, we begin to honor. Honoring the land, we heal the land, and in healing the land, the land prospers. When the land prospers, an abundance of natural resources is provided for human enjoyment.  Food, shelter, community, creativity, prosperity, celebration, and an awakening sense of the sacred are a natural consequence of intelligent ecological design.

it turns out that this new paradigm isn't so new after all. Guess who the experts in ecological design are? The ones who've studied it the longest. The time has come to honor our ancestors.

The Lakota knew all about this sacred way, as did the Cherokee, the Chumash, Aboriginals, Toltecs, the Navajo, the Dogon, the Maya, the Quechua,  Tibetans... all around the world, the vast majority of our planet's population (almost 95%) has been patiently - and not so patiently - waiting for Western culture to remember the simple truth that we are a part of nature, connected directly the Earth, and all of our abundance comes from her, and as we treat her, so do we treat ourselves.

These days, environmentalists call it permaculture. Religious fundamentalists call it intelligent design. Modern farmers call it agroecology, and big business calls it an existential threat. Meanwhile traditional indigenous peoples don't even name it, but sing it and dance in and act it out as sacred ceremony. Rather than talking the talk, they (we, actually) walk the walk. The poor victimized bourgeois, who, after generations of oppression now talk the talk and yearn to walk the walk, calling it Transition, or sustainability, and everything mainstream is talking about the green economy. Academia calls it ecological rehabilitation, which is pretty cool. Of course, children would call it common sense, if they had to name it at all. Naturally, the prophets of old called it the End of Days, and those ancient calendar keepers call it the Dawn of a New Age. We're talking about designed ecological rehabilitation, on a global scale. A rose by any other name...

Investors: Welcome to Tierra Sagrada. Welcome to the Sacred Earth.

Bad Analogies

in November of 1999 the Seattle meeting of the WTO was met with large scale citizen protests. What were they protesting? They were protesting the global corporate state. This is widely understood to be fascism, according to the quote attributed to Mussolini - "the corporate state is the fascist state." At least, corporate globalism is understood to serve the corporate interests at the expense of the public. Indeed, it is argued that capitalism inevitably declines into corporatism, due to greater and greater wealth falling into the hands of fewer and fewer people.

If the global corporate state is a fascist state, then the global corporate media is fascist media.
The audience that is unwittingly indoctrinated in the global corporate media has few alternatives but to accept the informational bias as 'truth'.

how to combat fascism? at least, how to combat global corporate domination? It can be said that the recent election of President Barack Obama represents a very real turning of the tide in the contest between corporate rule and civic representation: Obama was elected by overwhelming public mandate, largely based on his willingness to listen to the citizenry and his willingness to meet their needs. This can be seen as a true victory for the nonviolent resistance movement that has been diligently operating underground as the Hegelian 'antithesis' to materialist-corporate thesis of all-consuming Empire. The rebellion has won a decisive victory, but the Empire remains, and the Death Star hasn't been blown up yet...

To use a different metaphor: The Ring of Power is close to Mount Doom, and both Elves and the All-Seeing Eye recognize an ending of an age, for better or worse.

Hegel speaks of a dialectic: a thesis, countered by an antithesis, resolving in synthesis that incorporates and transcends both polarities. The perception of unity behind duality, requiring a shift in perspective, or a shift in dimension(incidentally, this is the nature of tantra, also).  If heirarchy - the gradual accumulation of power by the few, creating a powerless many- is opposed by anarchy- the opposition of heirarchy, students insisting on teaching teachers, the poor insisting on being valued by the rich, the active abolition of the caste system- what synthesis can we expect to see? a resolution between the paradox of trusting the self or trusting the teacher resolves when all is experienced as the self, even the teacher.

creation and destruction. we destroy the death star, we burn the ring of power. what remains? preservation of what? society in what form? a tribe? a town? a barbarian horde? the law of tooth and claw? should we struggle? should we surrender? what does a post-struggle society look like?

the path of least resistance says that if you can't beat them, join them. Join the Empire; it will keep you fed, clothed, socialized, confident, comfortable, and arrogantly obtuse. Empire builds the caste system and ensures that its proponents don't sink on the ladder.

by refusing to join the global corporate leviathan, one suffers persecution. Malnourished, homeless, socially deprived, low self-esteem, miserable, full of doubts and lacking any meaningful relationship with the heirarchy of power, those who refuse to join what they can't beat end up nobodies, with nothing.

this is the nature of the American untouchable, who lives on the premise that you can't beat them if you join them. we don't want your caste system, we don't want your class war, we don't want your immoral and socially degrading society, we don't want your mockery, your manufactured poverty, your unwillingness to love and your negative reinforcement patterns.

Today's persecuted untouchable is the roots of tomorrow's culture.  And the roots is always what is preserved, through the rise and fall of vast empires and civilization itself.  Before there was civilization there was roots and at the height of civilization they all scorned the roots and at civilization's collapse the roots survived, and thrived, and led the way, and taught the formerly civilized (read: domesticated) how to remember their true nature

For the first shall be last, and the last shall be first
and the stone that the builder refuse will always be the head cornerstone.

we want out. so we wait, patiently, for Rome to fall...

Infinite Heart's Reunion

"the art of living is the art of dying gracefully"

hello, family. how's life?

Well, we're not dead, which means we're living and we're dying at the same time. It's challenging, isn't it? maybe we're living the life of our dreams, maybe we're encountering enormous obstacles, perhaps both are happening at the same time.

Rome is falling, as the saying goes. Mind is manifesting matter at a ratio getting ever closer to the speed of light, and we're running out of History. In other words, time is turning into space-time, and there's an infinite amount of it...

So. How do we love one another?

It turns out that we can't save the world, but the world can save us. And the world wants to save us, like a quiet mouse whispering gentle instructions to a proud race too busy to hear and too important to heed. We must learn how to learn; does this make sense? we must learn how the real teaching is subtle, so subtle the conscious mind does not pay attention to it. The conscious mind makes decisions, constantly making, constantly making, and in this constant making, where is the room to receive? What are we making with our decisions? The possibility of guidance comes only when we are empty enough to be guided.

making decisions requires judgment, discernment. Do we contentedly accept, or do we strive? It is an act of balance - too much judgment leaves us distraught at an imperfect world, intolerant of an imperfect partner, and tormented by an imperfect self. Too little discrimination leaves us with unfulfilled potential, a good seed without nourishing soil to grow in. And so we sing a song of hope and longing, and we move on, learning deeply about ourselves...

We want a partner, a livelyhood, a home. Do we want any partner, any career, any home? Perhaps not, but how do we know until we try? Of course learning means making mistakes; without making mistakes there is no learning. It is the fear of failing that is the source of failure, and to happily fail, over and over again, while learning the mistake made every time: this leads to the equanimity which is the source of all success.

We can avoid making decisions, we can give up our personal sovereignity to a politician, a guru, an elder, a company, or a spouse, which is convenient, because then when we aren't happy about the consequences, we have someone to blame. It is a powerful step to accept responsibility for ourselves - we make choices, many bad ones, and live only to learn the lesson and behave differently next time we have a chance. We must make decisions, or make the decision to not make decisions. What if we regret them? What if they are mistakes? What if we despise the consequences? Or - what if don't don't choose, and end up in a place not of our choosing? Do we submit to an inauthentic life, or do we grow strong, and purposeful, and find a center within ourselves?

Are we learning? Are we supported by our family, this family? Do we have the unconditional love of a tribe that will never abandon us? Will we be forgiven? It makes all the difference, it truly does. As we face the challenges of life, do we feel loved?

With love, all decisions, wise or unwise, are teachings, lessons we can, and must, live with. Without knowledge of love, the fear of making mistakes, of condemnation, haunts our behavior and impedes our innate willingness to take risks and be who we authentically are. How do we support one another on this emotionally charged learning experience called life? How can we be there for one another?

We must love one another, even as we choose ourselves and choose our future generations. how do we choose ourselves? Do we carve a path into the world, or do we surrender to the moment? Is there a middle way between action and inaction? Can we be both yielding and truthful? Where is the balance between giving and receiving, choosing our path and receiving the miracle? Can we be both humbly guided by spirit and fearlessly engaged in embodying the truth we receive?

Ahh, vaguely someplace in there duality resolves itself into a harmonious union. We must receive if we are to learn anything at all, it seems. We must make mistakes, and learn the teaching inherent within the lessons. And what we receive, what we genuinely receive we must call truth, and carry with us as though it were a lantern lighting up the darkness, and we must share it, we must share the truth as though it saves lives, for surely it does, and will, and each and every one of us must struggle with ourselves, we must learn with such fervor as to make the angels white-knuckled in fear and the demons tearfully gentle with compassion, and out of this blur of suffering we emerge with the truth of ourselves, unique, ineffable, and unnameable, for the truth of ourselves is a light unto the worlds, and as we learn the infinite truth of ourselves we tread the path of the all-victorious, the path of the peaceful warrior, the path of the infinite heart's reunion...

There will be times when we pray for guidance, and receive the truth, and do not carry it as a light but let it pass us by, and then we will descend into despair, only to climb out again, stronger and wiser. And there will be times when we pray for guidance, and the truth comes, but we are too busy praying, too busy being holy or being right or being just to notice this truth, for it is not what we wanted it to be, it is something completely different from what we wanted for ourselves, and so we ignore this truth that we prayed for so sincerely and it goes away and we find ourselves lost and abandoned, and as we try to bend the truth to our will we will break ourselves upon it, and lie broken. And yet we will rise again, more humble, more in tune, more compassionate, more receptive, with a greater capacity for sadness and a greater capacity for joy. These cycles repeat themselves again and again, as we learn to recognize them and move swiftly and confidently through them, or get caught up in them and thrown about by them repeatedly. All the while, learning how to love one another...

Perhaps life would be unbearable, if not for the fact that we are embarked on this extraordinary journey together, as a family. We are living together on a planet that is home so we can die together, leaving behind us a path of truth carved through an infinity of possibilities that our children will follow, and learn from, and ultimately leave far behind.

Don't pay too much attention to this; these paltry words. Pay attention to the signs all around you that you are alive and loved, that you are deep within the heart of infinite love wherever you go and whatever you do. Pay attention to the air you breathe, and know that it is a part of our family, the very fabric that holds our human community together in this physical dimension. Breathe in and breathe out, and realize that what you breathe in connects you with the trees and the oceans and the fish and the plants and the animals and the people, and even the stars, which breathed us into being before we remember being, and realize that we are all connected, and we are all family, and that the world, so transformed by technology, loves us, and that this love is so powerful it is now using technology to spread the message of love...

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Let's live the rest of our lives together, shall we? And let's journey into death together, shall we? And let's love one another, and depend upon one another, the way our future generations depend on us, shall we? Let us rejoice in this time, the time of the infinite heart's reunion...

and our family is one body, and the universe is one body, and as we learn to help one another and listen to one another so do we find harmony, and peace. so let us ask for help when we need it, and let us offer ourselves to the service of one another, and let us share the teaching of love.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! In being alive, life itself is victorious.. May all beings be happy
namaste

We're running out of History

Sacred Groundskeeping is both entrepreneurial and ecological. It can flourish in a competitive market economy even as it operates as a nonviolent direct action campaign to heal the environment. It seems so strange that we don't talk about it: A healthy ecology creates a healthy economy, and a healthy economy maintains a healthy ecology.  Healthy ecologies reap economic dividends,as it were.  All that is required is a sense of collaboration...

You know that story about the goose who kept laying golden eggs.  The farmer wanted to get rich quick, and didn't care about the goose at all, so he killed her to get rich.  Of course, once dead there was no wealth.

Mother Earth is the goose who lays golden eggs.  Modern Babylon wants to kill her just to get rich.  of course, once she's dead there's no wealth.

So what happens when we start loving the goose, and feeding her really good?

Aha.  Now you see.

a celebration of victory

the ideological platform (gasp!):

1. market hijack media attention - be creative!

2. promote the debtor's union - crash the stock market

3. circulate local currency - legalize hemp

4. practice sacred groundskeeping - subsidize natural building

5. provide logistical support - soup kitchens, music festivals, permaculture schools,
                                             and interfaith worship ceremonies

6. grow food, not lawns

7. celebrate the victory with a Jubilee year

8. endorse the Witch Doctor's guild

9. everybody hyphae-Haj

10. take deep breaths! its a wild ride... no, really.  take some deep breaths.  Go ahead, meditate.


The dictatorship of the Bodhisattva is the end of History...

Dictatorship of the Bodhisattva

The world's most assertive buddhists gathered in a small mythological space. They were sick of the mess the world was in, and they were going to do something about it.

The dictatorship of the proletariat wasn't enough. These buddhists weren't placated with simple communism.  They were anarchists, working for the overthrow of Empire. They were committed to realizing the dictatorship of the Bodhisattva, where compassion rules against all logic. This is the essence of the Asylum Project.

How? This was the strategic question, the crux of the campaign. How could a small group of committed dharma anarchists take over the world? In this age, a good campaign strategy needed to read like a solid business plan.

This is what they set out to do:

1.) hijack media attention. Audio clips, video clips, blogs, emails, text messages, graffiti, underground social networks. get everybody looking in the same direction at once.

2.) spread the message: Rome falls. Empire rots from the inside out, and we, the barbarians howling at the gates, are the new guides.

3.) reframe nonviolent direct action: Does anyone remember how to celebrate? transformation as a practice, not a theory

4.)build consensus: inter-generational, multi-cultural, casteless

5.) market sacred groundskeeping as a sustainable business and viable future

They smiled amongst themselves. Warriors become salesmen, who'd have thought?
Truly, they were writing the new book on the Art of War...

attention harvesting

Ultimately, it seems that a successful permaculture movement will evolve online into a successful ecotourism movement. Attention is once again  in vogue as a currency, and any successful permaculture movement will get paid a lot of attention.  While that attention may start off as virtual attention, its a virtual guarantee that sooner or later someone curious will want to drop by physically. The attention will focus on global ecologies, traveling to them, living in them, sharing with them, learning from them.   Ecotourism will support permaculture, and replace ecologically degrading tourism with ecologically healing permaculture.  Another way of looking at it is that the tourists of the future won't just visit an exotic place:  they'll live locally while there, growing their own food, helping with livestock, learning about climate and soil and wild things, finding their own natural selves.

...and it will start from a website.  Permaculture fosters sustainability, and sustainability means more than merely growing one's own food. Sustainable culture is not self-reliant but interdependent, not merely ecological but also economical, spiritual, transpersonal, conceptual, and viral. That is, sustainability is a positive feedback loop: by optimizing any aspect of an organism, more energy is freed up to benefit all other aspects of the organism.

a successful permaculture movement will have a competitive advantage over industrial capitalism, in that it will be sustainable. Thus, in the competitive marketplace, it will thrive where industrial capitalism fails. Consequently, it will attract positive attention. It will breed. It will harvest attention, in a sustainable and profitable way. The attention that it harvests will be used to breed better permaculture, in a positive feedback loop that grows exponentially.

Energy flows where attention goes. When attention goes to sustainable culture in this age of industrial capitalist collapse, we witness evolution in action. That which works, survives, and the Art of Love always gets attention...