The Asylum Project

Politics is for failed musicians

2012-01-04T08:06:00.000-08:00

The asylum project is a marketing agency in the business of promoting permaculture as a solution to the challenges of the twenty-first century.

We are permaculture promoters, and as such we are in essence permaculture contractors.

Meaning, essentially we are permaculture logisticians. Or logicians.

So we are permagicians?

No, fool. We are simply economists, promoting a new economy and consequently a new economics. This requires technical terms and consequently the introduction of a new vocabulary. And as economists, if we are going to sell you permaculture, we better hook your curiosity right off the bat...

(what is permaculture, anyway?)

Buddhadharma

2011-12-22T11:13:00.000-08:00

The asylum project is drama-free anarchist dharma. Soup kitchens, music festivals, permaculture schools, and interfaith worship caravans are sprouting up in ecologies everywhere, ready to catch people as we fall off the wagon called Rome.

So let us witness and testify to the fall of Babylon, while the stock market plunges into oblivion and shitting in the desert turns out to be good for the ecology.

Ecological investment leads to economic dividends, and without a corporate state bankrolled by Armageddonists, Zion turns out to be good old Mother Earth.

Investment advice

2011-08-07T13:48:00.000-07:00

Gold is now at $1670 per ounce. The price of gold has more than doubled in the past six years; in 2004 it sold for $450 per ounce, and in 2006 it 'skyrocketed' to $630.

Gold has long been considered a good investment when the rest of the economy is going bad, which explains why it is shooting up in value right now. Point is, the economy is tanking. The U.S. Dollar is a fiat currency, and every fiat currency in world history has failed. 100% of them. It's a guarantee.

Gold will be $4000 soon. Damn I need a loan

Islamic Marxism

2011-08-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

So. government is the political wing of big business.

We are now watching Karl Marx being proved right. the dispute between labor and management covers the globe. management runs big business, which in turn runs government, which in turn exploits labor.

Who is now taking to the streets in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, Israel, Greece, Spain... nobody guessed that the proletarian revolution would be led by Muslims, right?

Look at the Tea Party, who is rightfully furious and consequently rebelling against management. The great irony is that their ignorance has been carefully cultivated by upper management so that the Tea Party places all blame on middle management. See? the Tea Party is a labor movement rebelling agaist management, without comprehending that government is simply middle management, taking orders from upper management, who is big business. So the Tea party revolts against middle management, which gets thrown out or replaced, and the Tea party celebrates, even as upper management, which is big business, continues to dictate policies dedicated to the accumulation of capital at the expense of labor. But as long as middle management takes the rap, upper management stays invisible and finances the Tea Party.

Its a good trick. The Muslims are actually way ahead of the Christians on this one. they see clearly that organized religion is a tool used by government, which in turn is a tool used by big business.

There's a word in the Bible for big business: Mammon. Don't be surpised how this one turns out...

2011-07-11T20:48:00.000-07:00

The Asylum Project is a nonprofit business. We are a traveling soup kitchen, and a permaculture school. We film and broadcast our traveling permaculture adventures online - virtual ecotourism.

The Debtor's Union

2011-03-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

The debtor's union is a nonprofit business corporation dedicated to the unconditional forgiveness of debt. This is in accordance with the mandate given us by Jesus Christ in the New Testament, who taught us to pray, "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors"(Matthew Ch.6 v.12). This occasion is not without precedent, referred to historically as a Jubilee year, a year in which all debts, great and small, are forgiven. The debtor's union sees a Jubilee year on the horizon...

Through the power of collective bargaining, the debtor's union renegotiates debt payments made by debtors to moneylenders and moneylending instutions - in this case, a Biblically mandated cancellation of all debt. This has profound implications.

The forgiveness of debt carries with it far-reaching repercussions for the world. Even without hint of a union strike, the mere prospect of a debtor's union will compell banks to radically tighten credit due to the increased fear of making bad loans. And with virtually all car payments, mortgage payments, credit card payments, and college tuition payments in the hands of debtors organizing, willing to strike, and enthusiastically refusing to take it anymore, practically all loans in America will be recognized for what they are: bad loans. Loans that will never be paid back. Banks will find themselves without a revenue stream, and the only way to dump their debt will be to... join the union. Of course, then they would stop being banks... hyperinflation will anniliate almost all global currencies, especially fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar. the global export market will shriek to a halt as freshly moneyless countries deal with the realization that capitalism is competitive and unloving while human beings are cooperative and loving. Capitalism and poverty go hand in hand, and we cannot get rid of one without getting rid of both. As Buckminster Fuller said, its all of us or none of us. Debt forgiveness is a basic prerequisite for the eradication of poverty, and this spells the end of the era of global competition, guiding us into an era of global cooperation...

The debtor's union feels it necessary to shut down the global economy as we know it, due to one self-evident truth and its two corollaries:

all economic wealth originates from natural resources (ecological wealth)

ecological investment leads to economic dividends

ecological depletion leads to economic collapse

the present corporate global economy runs on ecological depletion, converting ecological wealth into economic wealth which is then hoarded by the ruling class, leading to ecological exhaustion and consequent economic collapse. This is an existential threat to our planet and all life on it, and must be stopped. The debtor's union is uniquely poised to stop this existential threat to the survival of our species (and most others) by pulling the plug on the corporate global economy as we know it. however severe the consequences of shutting down the global economy may be, they are significantly less severe than allowing it to continue operating. The debtor's union represents the kill switch for an ecology-depleting economy, and we must use this kill switch, because if we don't, the global ecology will be destroyed, and human civilization with it.

Of course, if this was all the debtor's union did, it would be sad, because stopping a bad economy falls far short of starting a good economy. To start a healthy economy, we need ecological investment, which reaps economic dividends. Consequently, the Debtor's Union is committed to ecological investment.

a sinking ship may present a very real problem for folks on board, but they are not likely to jump into water unless a seaworthy vessel is nearby, ready to pick people up. paradigm shift takes place the same way - an old paradigm, or an old economy, may be failing badly, but won't be abandoned until a new paradigm, or a new economy, arrives to fill the void. The debtor's union sinks the unsustainable economy and sails the sustainable economy - the economy of ecological optimization, or intelligent design.

What is ecological investment, and what are the economic dividends that will make the abandonment of our contemporary corporate global economy worthwhile? If we are to reap economic dividends that allow us to abandon the corporate global economy, we will need clean water, food, shelter, safety, a sense of community, a sense of purpose and belonging, opportunities for leisure, creativity, and art directly from our natural environment - curiously enough, our natural environments were designed to provide all these things for us! humans investing in their environments lead to gardens and food, natural materials for shelter, communities for safety, a sense of belonging, purpose, and celebration... everything we need to lead happy and productive lives. Ecological investment can be understood as human investment in the ecological production of material needs.

Ecological investment can be broken down into eight basic categories:

brown: dirt, compost, and rocks

green: trees, herbs, and gardens

blue: water and irrigation

white: clothing, ropes, and fabrics

black: tools, shelter, and fire

yellow: energy, machines, and animal husbandry

red: logistics, crisis prevention and response

purple: harmony, relationships, and peace

these tasks represent our new economy, our new educational curriculum, and our new lines of work. While the categories are not exhaustive - we may hope for web developers, professional athletes, computer engineers, and the like - it is critical that these listed skillsets become the core educational curriculum out of which our economy evolves. Likewise, the categories are arbitrary and useful only for presentation, while in real life what we experience will be multidisciplinary.

We have run out of jobs, just as Marx predicted. This is a good thing - jobs are detrimental to our planet and interfere with our work, which consists primarily of creating enough food and shelter for everyone. Jobs pay money, and money is printed by the federal reserve, which is run by a ruling class dependent upon ecological depletion for its survival. In other words, our global dependence on the U.S. fiat currency props up a ruling class dependent on ecological depletion. This is not in anyone's best interest - certainly not the interests of the ruling class, whose children need clean air and water just like the rest of us. And so, through the conscientious annihilation of the U.S. fiat currency, we annihilate the ruling class, ecological depletion, and economic scarcity. This is the function of the Debtor's Union.

At the same time that jobs have gone for good, we find ourselves (at long last) aware of the enormous amount of work we have to do: investing in the health and well-being of our planet, which takes care of us. We won't get paid in money, thank God. We'll get paid in ecological dividends.

there is an old adage:

give a man a fish, feed him for a day. teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. teach a man to get a job and buy fish, make a slave out of him, and his children, and his children's children...

we have all become employees, buyers of fish who do not know how to fish for ourselves. We have becomes slaves of an economic engine that depletes our planet of the resources our great-great-grandchildren desperately need. We must learn to fish. We must abandon our earth-killing jobs and begin our earth-healing work.

We have not inherited this world from our ancestors - we are borrowing it from our descendants. If we are to live as responsible stewards, we have a lot to accomplish...

permaculture through ecotourism

2010-12-02T08:08:00.001-08:00

The Asylum Project is dedicated to teaching permaculture through ecotourism.

What is permaculture?

Permanent culture. Sustainable culture. Culture without an end date. In these times, it makes good business sense to identify consumer demand in a market without any recognized, reliable supply. Through strategic marketing we present ourselves as a reliable supplier of permaculture education, anticipating huge demand while ushering in a return to a very ancient way of living.

Educating the general public regarding permaculture requires applying permaculture principles to the technique of teaching, creating a new pedagogy that applies market principles to the demand for people's attention. In a world with many demands for people's attention, why learn about permaculture? What is the attraction; where is the incentive to learn? In order to teach permaculture we must reach out to people, sharing with them not merely what they need to know but what they truly want to know, and sharing it with them in a manner they truly enjoy.

A real permaculture education needs to be entertaining if it is to be sustainable.

Identify the attractiveness of it and market its attraction in an attractive way - teaching must be fun in order for learning to take place. Education needs to be entertaining to keep people's attention and stay relevant. A real permaculture education is required to answer the fundamental questions of both what we want to learn and how we want to learn it.

What do we want to learn? There's an old maxim:

give a man a fish, feed him for a day. teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.

teach a man to get a job and buy fish, you've made a slave out of him, and his children, and his children's children.

What we want to learn is how to fish. How to provide food, shelter, safety, a sense of community, a sense of sacred purpose, and a sense of belonging. We can no longer pretend that 'fixing' the economy and creating more 'jobs' is any solution. A society in which a man is compelled to have a job if he wants to survive is a society which fails not only to teach men how to fish but also deprives man of his freedom to learn how to fish on his own. A world in which man cannot afford to learn to fish because he must spend his days working for ecologically destructive purposes in order to buy fish is a world with a termination date. Ecologically destructive jobs - and the very nature of our resource-consuming economy means that jobs perpetuate gratuitous resource consumption - serve an unsustainable paradigm inexorably destroying our planet's life support systems. The great task which lies before us is to put down our jobs and pick up our work.

Our work is ecological work. Learning and teaching how to grow food in all conditions and environments, whether they be urban, suburban, or rural. Learning and teaching how to build shelter out of local materials, whatever these materials may be. Learning and teaching how to collect rainwater, how to compost and fertilize, how to live together and pray together and share with one another. It is a great irony that our jobs and our economy is the single greatest inhibitor of our work. And while no one expects people to leave their jobs in order to pursue their work, the sad fact is that our overconsumption of natural resources has left our economy with nowhere to go but down, taking jobs with it. Raw materials are the fuel that runs the nation's economy, and we have used them up to such a degree, converting them to landfill matter, that our economic engine has nothing left to burn. Investing in ecological health is the only way to reinvigorate our natural resources. We will continue to run out of jobs. The only way to heal the economy is to heal the ecology.

What is ecotourism? Ecological tourism. Visit ecologies; invest your attention in the source of your own survival and the survival of your species and your world. Of course, virtual ecotourism may play a vital role in the propagation of a permaculture worldview. Virtual ecotourism is nothing more than a website that documents ecological tourism for the armchair ecotourist. Virtual ecotourism may actually begin to play a larger and larger role in the greater economy, as it were.

The first step of the ecological tourist - or the virtual ecotourist - is to look around at one's environment, and appreciate it. Look at the self appreciating the environment, and appreciate the self who appreciates. As we learn to appreciate our circumstances and our circumstantial selves, our evolving gratitude towards undifferentiated experience gives us the confidence to believe in a future which holds further circumstances for which to be grateful. We become confident of where we are going, even though we do not know where we are going. We become confident of where we are going because we don't care where we are going; we are simply grateful to be going.

This confidence, this gratefulness, keeps us healthy and humorous and thick skinned. Which is what its going to take to get through the next decade... and that's permaculture.

Private sector public service

2010-11-29T18:11:00.000-08:00

the Asylum Project is a virtual manifesto which builds a strategic alliance among key nonprofits and NGOs for the purpose providing basic public services: food, shelter, safety, community, genuine education, meaningful work, a sense of abundance, and creative freedom.

In exceeding customer expectations by supplying a service for which there is undeniable demand, the asylum project competes with an inefficient, somewhat corrupt and bloated government for market share of the job nobody seems to want: public service.

The Asylum Project proudly introduces private sector public service. Organizational entities with no profit motive compete with government to provide better customer service, ensure more tangible customer loyalty, satisfy public needs, and ensure the preservation of the commons.

Meaning Earth, in this case...

Jah Ministry business

2010-11-26T12:07:00.000-08:00

a real church turns out to be a great business - the only business, in the end.

because God's business is the world's business, right? If anyone can run the world's business, its God.

i made a mistake, though. it's not the end, but the beginning.

Right?

the Asylum Project promotes permaculture through ecotourism.

unequivocally reciprocal dividends

2010-11-21T10:57:00.000-08:00

the economy is just the management of the ecology.

if we mismanage the ecology, we end up with a damaged ecology and a damaged economy.

heal the ecology, heal the economy - while healing ourselves.

healing requires investment.

an investment in the ecology reaps unequivocally reciprocal dividends, i.e. what you put into your environment is what you get out of your environment.

This is ecological investing - a new paradigm for a new economy. Investing in ecological goods and services reaps ecological dividends which benefit both investors and ecology. This is known as a positive feedback loop.

By weaving together a web of strategically placed nonprofit businesses with niche expertise, we create a not-for-profit social network of expertise and communities capable of crisis mitigation, crisis prevention, education, charity, and ultimately bridging the gap between science and religion. Competing against the government in the open marketplace for consumers desperate to find a brand that restores their faith in public service by redefining customer service, this nonprofit umbrella hub meets public needs in cost-effective fashion, running entirely on donations while providing ecological dividends in the form of food, shelter, a sense of community, a sense of purpose, and a sense of the sacred.

2010-11-17T11:23:00.000-08:00

It's not about religion, politics, or business. its about healing the earth. surely we can heal the economy by healing the ecology, and in the process heal ourselves...

a nonprofit dedicated to scientific, educational, charitable, and religious purposes is destined to perform public services better than government, in that it is market driven. Let's promote permaculture through ecotourism and see what happens

Christian Buddhist Yoga Scholarship

2010-09-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

The Christian Buddhist Yoga Scholarship is dedicated to preaching the gospel of Christ, promoting Buddhism as a science and the progenitor of modern psychology, teaching yoga as both the science of breath and posture and the timeless path of God-realization, and revealing the ultimate resonance and workable consilience of these not-so-disparate world religions.

The key element is the scientific method. We are not presuming anything. We only aim to learn truth in a demonstrable way. If we are able to posit hypothesis, experiment, and observe results, surely this is not blasphemy or heresy but valuable research?

If Buddhism is what it claims to be, it should not interfere with Christian faith in any way but rather support it. If yoga is what it claims to be, it should not interfere with Christian faith in any way but rather support it. Let us discover if Buddhism and yoga are indeed what they claim to be!

government is just a business with no competition

2010-07-11T11:16:00.001-07:00

Henry Ford said, "if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said, "a faster horse" - because they couldn't conceive of cars."

The american public wants more jobs, a vibrant economy, a healthy environment, no pollution, and meaningful work, because they can't conceive of global ecological rehabilitation.

(its going to be crazy-)

marketplace government

2010-06-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

an anarchist nonprofit organization competes with big government to provide for the basic needs of the world's population - and wins.

Instead of paying mandatory taxes for inadequate services and oppressive regimes, people voluntarily go out of their way to donate a teeny percentage of their earnings to a cause that they believe in, a cause that they have personally experienced to be life-redeeming. The new paradigm of government is a determined by the marketplace - people invest their financial and spiritual resources into the social business enterprise with the best track record of meeting the people's needs. Which isn't the state.

Such a social business enterprise is still in the process of being invented, as it were. Government actually wants to prevent its birth, unsurprisingly, although government also wants solutions to the seemingly intractable problems of government, so it finds itself in an awkward place of putting good governance before Big Government, even at the cost of its own existence.

needless to say, this could only happen in America.

So. We will soon see government competing against an NGO for marketshare, and the NGO, due to the nature of the competitive environment, will do a more effective job with fewer resources, relegating government to obsolescence. This has already been anticipated, of course. We just haven't been told-

Christian economics

2010-04-21T13:37:00.001-07:00

The Kingdom of Heaven is a Church and a State, and a world.

Talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words. The gospel cannot be merely preached - the gospel must be embodied if it is to be the true Gospel.

Only after we have fed everyone, so that there is no hunger anywhere-

Only after we have provided shelter, safety, and a sense of belonging to everyone, everywhere-

Only after we have empowered children of all ages to listen to their hearts and sing and dance and laugh and freely love-

Only after we have educated everyone everywhere with the knowledge of how to live in mutually profitable harmony with Mother Nature and one another-

Only after we have actively and successfully reached out to all ethnicities, religions, and peoples, with a dedicated willingness to include them, to honor them, to learn from them, to forgive them and ask forgiveness from them - indeed, to acknowledge them as an integral part of us-

Only after all this has been accomplished may we legitimately concern ourselves with preaching the Gospel. These are the prerequisites for any missionary work - preaching the Gospel to a dying world without committing to its healing is like putting the cart before the horse. If Christianity wants a receptive audience, we need to invest in keeping our audience alive and unresentful, one would think.

Until the vast resources of Christianity are utilized for the benefit of all life on Earth, evangelism is hypocritical. Evangelism without love is not Christian, and any evangelism that does not mandate as a prerequisite the survival and well-being of our planet and all life thereon is not loving, nor even useful.

We must transcend the cheap and easy method of talking the Christian talk and embrace the far more difficult, indeed terrifying and materialist-renouncing path of walking the Christian walk.

Give a man a fish, and feed him for a day. That's no answer.

Teach a man to get a job and buy fish, make a slave of him, and his children, and his children's children. That's no answer either, for now he's too busy, and too destitute, to go out and learn to fish on his own. Not only is he kept from his birthright, the knowledge of how to fish, but now his time, is no longer even his own. He must now work for mammon if he is to be a provider of fish. We must free ourselves from mammon's chains.

Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. This is our answer. We must learn to fish. We can no longer afford to work merely for money, because working for money keeps us ignorant of how to fish, and keeps us enslaved to mammon. We cannot afford to work for nothing, either: we must labor with the intention of investing our resources in learning how to fish. We are running out of time; we must work hard and diligently for the benefit of all beings if we are to survive. Working solely for money honors materialism without honoring spirit, and the great spiritual war of our age, the defining conflict of this era, is the conflict between the Kingdom of Heaven and mammon's empire. This war is already won, and we have roles to play as limbs of the body of Christ in order to fulfill prophecy and move harmoniously into a new era.

Talk is cheap, and internet blogs are even cheaper-

The most pragmatic and economical way to exit the dire financial, political, strategic, and environmental situation we find ourselves in is to profit from a highly successful marketing strategy that popularizes sustainable living.

The most pragmatic and economical way to popularize sustainable living is to broadcast the story of a traveling soup kitchen/music festival/permaculture school/interfaith worship caravan.

If this broadcast, and this traveling soup kitchen, is a legitimate nonprofit entity with 501(c)3 tax-deductible status, it could well become a high-revenue enterprise, earning enough to hire thousands of employees, who get job training skills to go out and promote sustainability.

So.

We've got a few Buddhist monks, some Native American medicine people, yogis, capoeristas, evangelical Christians and Rastafari all working together to run a nonprofit soup kitchen that optimizes local food and shelter resources for the benefit of all.

Then we play music. This is a crew with incredible skill-sets: folks who build forests, folks who make bows and arrows, folks who know what the weather will be like by listening to the conversations of birds... folks who guerilla garden, folks who convert diesel engines to veggie oil, mamas, babies, teachers, and children. Dedicated to establishing the Kingdom of Heaven. Here on Earth.

Honestly, if the music is good, and the characters are colorful, and the material is meaningful, educational, and necessary for our planet's survival, wouldn't you be interested?

This broadcast will compete in the open marketplace for the attention of a jaded and cynical viewing public, a public desperate for meaningful purpose, a sense of optimism, and brand-new skillsets(actually, they're ancient skillsets, and have been only briefly forgotten). This broadcast competes with bad Youtube, bad reality TV, bad mainstream media propaganda and bad internet websites, and it wins the devoted attention of...

you.

American Dream Tour

2010-04-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

-the medicine people sent out the runners to tell the warriors of all the nations,
"lay down your weapons, for in the near future a far greater tribe will arise"

A hypothetical documentary - would you watch this program on TV, or the Internet?

A traveling permaculture school, operating out of veggie oil diesel buses, connects with diverse local food resources that fuel a soup kitchen

(if you feed them they will come)

the soup kitchen keeps the musicians alive, who express their gratitude with hard work
and rock n roll

the soup kitchen is run by interfaith volunteers: practicing Buddhist meditators, yoga teachers, Christian ministers, Native American water pourers and firekeepers, Rastafari, and anyone else who feels the call

The soup kitchen hits the road (without burning fossil fuel), exploring new ecologies, learning new ways of connecting to local food resources, doing it over and over again in new bioregions to spread the message, share the vision, and plant the seeds of a new kind of 'civil'-ization

This is a permaculture school: the only thing left behind when the bus leaves is compost, herb gardens, newly planted trees, and good vibes, along with the profound understanding that all religions can and must work together if we are to survive and thrive on our priceless spaceship planet

The school promotes - as a possibility, an opportunity worthy of consideration-

an easy to memorize, five-point political vision backed by interfaith solidarity:

the return of the Horse Nation

the return of the Buffalo Nation

the return of the Hemp Nation

the return of the Sail Nation

the return of the Rail Nation

This is the American Dream

- Would you watch this program? Would you pay attention? Would you learn?

If - and its a big if, we know - if the music consistently rocked, and the characters were consistently wild characters, and the dancing girls were consistently out of this world - if the program was as entertaining as it was educational, if it was well shot and well edited and well thought out and well organized and generally well done - would you be interested in keeping it well funded? Would you invest in a nonprofit entity dedicated to a global broadcast of this program, as though the future of your children and your children's children depended upon it?

(Because it does)

mammon's empire

2010-03-01T11:09:00.000-08:00

Jesus, friends, was not a capitalist.

Jesus preached against capitalism and was killed by those capitalists who foresaw that his success would destroy their elite status at the top of the pyramid.

Point of fact is, Jesus tells us to give up our things. This is not advice that America's consumer society wants to hear, and its certainly not the message that America's Christian hypocrites popularize. Jesus specifically denounced consumer capitalism. In order to work, capitalism requires us to constantly acquire more things. And Jesus told us to stop acquiring more things - Jesus told us to give them up entirely.

When Jesus said that man cannot serve two masters, that man cannot serve both God and mammon, Jesus was pointing out that we cannot serve God which is love while at the same time serving consumer capitalism, which is greed. The two are irreconcilable.

It is the aspect of consumerism that runs in contradiction with the teachings of Jesus - think of the Amish, who don't run around handing out pamphlets on socialism or anything. They make good furniture, and sell it for profit, which sounds like good business to me, and probably Jesus, too. Point is, they're not consumer capitalists. They don't bow down to mammon. We don't have to, either, although if we stop living as consumer capitalists consumer capitalism will fall apart, and the people who own the media and the corporations and the politicians certainly don't want that to happen. So they keep us from learning the truth, even the truth of why Jesus died, and who was responsible.

We can be consumer capitalists, or we can be Christians, but we cannot be both. Jesus condemned consumer capitalism and was consequently murdered by the prominent bankers and politicians who saw that his success would lead to their demise.

Capitalism requires a return on an investment. Love requires nothing in return. If we invest ourselves in order to get something in return, we may be good capitalists but we are not ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Specifically, when asked how to pray, Jesus said, pray like this: Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who debt against us. That doesn't sound like capitalism to me, does it? In fact, if Christians mean what they say when they pray, we are praying for the demise of Capitalism every time we utter the Lord's prayer. Debt forgiveness cannot coexist with home mortgage foreclosures, people. And guess which side God is on?

Christians have a moral responsibility to forgive all debts, sign on to the debtors union, abandon the capitalist propaganda of consumerism and invest in ecological rehabilitation. Sounds like somebody has a hard sell, doesn't it? The good news is, Christians, being Christians, will eventually align themselves with the truth, and are destined to mean what they say when they pray for debt forgiveness. This is actually prophesied to take place, and Christian ecological investment is the impetus behind the birth of Heaven on Earth.

The Kingdom of Heaven isn't socialist, and its not capitalist, either. The Kingdom of Heaven is love, and love expects nothing in return. The Kingdom of Heaven loves the way the sun shines on the earth. Not once has the sun ever said to the earth, 'what have you done for me?' The sun simply shines, as love gives without needing to receive.

We have become a society of intelligent investors, proud of our rational self-interest. which is another way of saying that we have forgotten how to love. In order to love, in order to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven, we must change our ways, and we must begin by changing our minds. We must choose between capitalism and the Kingdom of Heaven. We must choose between God and mammon.

The Kingdom of Heaven requires sacrifice. We cannot get a good return on our investment and still love. We must give up all returns, and we must invest without getting a return, in order to be loving. We must sacrifice our rational self-interest. In our corrupt world, which has placed rational self-interest on an altar and now worships this false god called capitalism, we must face persecution as we denounce the greed and the selfishness and the egotism that are natural consequences of rational self-interest. We must abandon rational self-interest, and must embrace irrational, self-sacrificing love if we are to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven. And if Christians are unified in the praying of the Lord's Prayer as taught to us by Jesus Christ then we must forgive debts, give up entirely the acquisition of things, and learn how to love.

For many of us, indeed for most of us, we must learn how to love for the first time. Native english speaking Americans have been raised on capitalism, which DOES NOT FORGIVE DEBTS. we have been conditioned since birth and before to be unloving. Consequently, we live in a society filled with highly sophisticated investors and broken families and a dying, corrupt and bloated empire. And we do not understand why all of our intelligent investing has left us with unhappiness and a pain in our hearts which we cover up with stimulants, anti-depressants, technology, distractions, business, shallowness, and violence. We, the American investing public, must learn how to love from the very cultures and races that we have violently oppressed, who have never forgotten how to love and thus consequently never been that great at capitalism.

The damage that has been done is so great that there would be no forgiveness available to us if Jesus Christ had not already established the universal precedent of unconditional forgiveness through his willing sacrifice of self on the cross. When the King forgave his people, the Jews, the master race, the chosen people of God, the bankers and the investors who heartlessly enslaved an entire planet to a financial system that refuses to forgive debts, Jesus established a precedent that all citizens of the world are now able follow as we see through the illusion of capitalism to the truth of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The salvation of the world does not lay with capitalism. The salvation of the world lies in the abandonment of capitalism. Jesus Christ preached this 2000 years ago and capitalists murdered him. He knew he was before his time, he knew he would not be understood until now. He was merely establishing a precedent that would, over the next millenia, become globally appreciated and revered. Not merely though ultimate sacrifice but through ultimate unconditional forgiveness and ultimate unconditional love.

Christians cannot be consumer capitalists, and consumer capitalists cannot be Christians. If we are to follow the teachings of Jesus we must forgive all debts, and this leads inevitably to the downfall of capitalism, which opens the way for the abandonment of rational self-interest in favor of unconditional love. As a capitalist society, we have no concept of what it is like to live with open and loving hearts - we have been conditioned to be rationally self-interested. As humans made in God's image, of course we know what it's like to love, and we are sick at heart because we have built a society that thwarts our deepest need. As long as the economic premise of rational self-interest remains unchallenged, we resign ourselves to a life of suffering in mammon's empire.

We must overcome our selfish conditioning, and we must forgive ourselves, and we must allow those cultures and peoples who are not inherently conditioned capitalists to show us how to love. We must empower those we have enslaved to step forward and lead the way. This is merely the beginning of a lifetime of atonement, this renouncing of capitalism. To be fully Christian, we must empower the last to become first and the first to become last...

spear in Jesus side

2010-02-23T11:57:00.000-08:00

Christianity has become the spear in Jesus' side

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.

Teach a man to get a job in order to buy fish, and enslave him, and his children, and his children's children...

the Kingdom of Heaven does not require us to create more jobs. the Kingdom of Heaven requires us to learn how to eat food without buying food

The Kingdom of Heaven is bad for the economy - the capitalist economy. The Kingdom of Heaven is the eco-economy - maybe we can invent the word ecologics. Which sounds stupid, so maybe we can call it ecologistics. Ecologistics is sustainable economics. the intelligent distribution of natural resources intended to maximize both present output and future output. All economics is based on input from nature - natural resources. We must output to nature if we are to be economically sustainable.

Jah Ministries and the Church of Ras Tafari

2010-02-04T14:37:00.000-08:00

We begin with the teachings of Jesus and the parable of the Good Samaritan. Christianity is not based on what we say, but what we do. If we talk the talk without walking the walk, we are hypocrites. Jesus pointed that out often. if we walk the walk without talking the talk, we are neighbors, upholding Jesus' teachings.

We must act. We must act. The teachings of Jesus are interreligious, transcending denominations. What do we do?

The secret teaching of Jesus begins like this: if you feed them, they will come. Consequently, we start with a nondenominational soup kitchen that provides shelter, warmth, and a place to belong.

Jesus continues to teach: if you provide them with spiritual music, they will sing and dance and praise God. So our soup kitchen must travel with musicians. Our soup kitchen must be composed of musicians.

Step three: if you teach them how to fish, they will eat for a lifetime. The soup kitchen must teach how to run and maintain soup kitchens, from organic and local food production to sustainable harvesting to delivery and hygienic consumption to redistribution of compost, leaving no trace. This is a basic hands-on permaculture school, with skills that must be learned in order to be taught. And above all, it must be FUN. Hence, the music festival...

step four: we must fulfill the Word of the Lord's Prayer as taught by Jesus when he said, "forgive us our debts, as we also forgive those who debt against us." This is the forgiveness of debt, which will necessarily crash the stock market and reinvent economics as we know it. It is a Christian imperative to forge a debtor's union in order to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Step five: we must create what has been destroyed. In forgiving debt, the petro-economy collapses. This is ecologically imperative, and yet if we are to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven we must actively create an economy that is aligned with the principles of nature and provides for the welfare and happiness of all beings. What we must create and propagate is the Green Economy - an ecologically aligned economy that utilizes natural resources without exploiting them and produces as an end product raw material for the creation of more natural resources - compost, for example, or water. The green economy is not backed by petroleum. The green economy is backed by hemp. We must fulfill the prohecy of the last known crowned heir of the throne of David, His Imperial Majesty Heile Selassie I. This coincides with the prophecies of the Freemasons, who recognize Ras Tafari as the direct descendent of King Solomon. The debtor's union works hand in hand with the hemp union, destroying the old even while building the new. Hemp provides food, fuel, shelter, clothing, community, peace, a living currency, America's largets cash crop, and was only made illegal at the insistence of Dupont, whose proprietary nylon was in direct competition with hemp products. Momentum for the legalization of industrial hemp takes place right as peak oil reveals the endpoint of nylon and the petroleum industry. the timing is perfect, indeed the timing has been prophecied. Working together with the debtor's union we create the critical tipping point by which the Green economy replaces the petro-economy.

Step six: we promote the return of the horse nation, the return of the buffalo nation, the return of the tree nation, the return of the sail nation, the return of the rail nation, the return of the pioneer nation, the return of the indian nation, as aspects of the return of the Hemp nation. This is the real economic stimulus package. Through investment in ecological rehabilitation we reap ecological dividends, meanwhile propping up the expiring petro-economy with revenues from hemp. This is new world order as foretold by our founding fathers, generations ago. This is the birth of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is American claiming her birthright as a beacon of hope for the world.

Or, we can just do nothing and let the world burn...

stumbling blocks

2010-02-03T12:43:00.000-08:00

find the safe space

get up a kitchen

get up a logistical supply line

get up a working multimedia website

get up audio-video recording capability

gather the musicians, motivate the practice sessions

broadcast

recruit investment

easy as pie

peace

2010-02-01T12:15:00.001-08:00

the elves have returned. the confrontation between worldviews is taking place right beneath our noses. for those who have eyes to see, let them see. the age of man wanes, the age of the machines is over. Mama Gaia is awake.

This is happening today
in the wild places of the world - the pacific northwest, the
rocky mountains, the desert, the coastline, the islands...

and that's just north america. This is as global as it is intergalactic,
this confrontation of worldviews between humans and star children.
anyway.

ever closer to the soup kitchen. people everywhere are totally down.

traveling soup kitchen - music festival - permaculture school - medicine caravan

funded by a nonprofit dedicated to interfaith activism

with a documented global outreach tour broadcast online

promoting the return of the Hemp Nation

the return of the Horse nation

the return of the Buffalo nation

the return of the Sail nation

the return of the Rail nation

and its all about the music

United Methodist Debtor's Union

2010-01-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

The United Methodist Debtor's Union makes the claim that Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount specifically told us to pray like this: Forgive our debts as we forgive the debts against us.

This means that the United Methodist Debtor's Union simply follows Jesus' orders, forgiving debts wherever they may be incurred.

The Debtor's Union is the Hemp Union. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin all grew hemp, the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper, and Betsy Ross sewed the American Flag out of hemp fabric. This is a full-blown American Revolution. Jesus preached that man cannot serve both God and mammon - man cannot have two masters. The United Methodist Debtor's Union stands for God and stands against mammon. Plain and simple. We are dedicated to healing the economy through healing the ecology, using hemp as our nationally endorsed miracle crop. Growing hemp provides us with food, fuel, clothing, and barterable surpluses.

The Hemp Union supports the Church of Ras Tafari. The Church of Ras Tafari and Jah Ministries stands firm on our Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion with regard to the sacred sacrament ganja.

The Green Economy is Ecological Rehabilitation

Ecological Rehabilitation is Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design is Fulfillment of Prophecy

open-source administrative duties

2010-01-19T12:05:00.001-08:00

The artist gets stuck right at the point where administrative duties rear their ugly heads.

For example:

we need to file for articles of incorporation

we need a tax i.d. #

we need reliable and easy-to-use audio/video recording, playback, editing, and downloading

we need a real website

we need to file for 501(3)c tax-deductible status

we need licenses and insurance

we need to pay the friggin musicians, people. We need to keep them warm and dry in the rain, and we need to keep them well fed and somewhat Irie.

We need gigs.

anyway. it would be easier to just live in the woods and let Babylon burn, but Babylon is choking the whole planet, making it hard for our children to breathe. This requires action. Compassionate and strong action. The survival of our planet, all life forms on it, our species, our nation, our world, requires strong and compassionate action by which we serve our obligation to society by persuading society to STOP. This has always been the tradition role of the prophet - standing on the edge of society, condemning it, pointing out that it is collapsing and that it must because it fails to acknowledge the obvious truths of how nature works. Being ignored, until its too late.

We will never succeed in our efforts to eliminate Islamic terrorism until we cast light upon the Christian hypocrisy of conspicuous consumption in the face of scriptural doctrine that admonishes us to give up our things. We must give up our things. Most of them seem to be made of petroleum products, anyway. Which cause cancer. So by giving up our things, we prevent cancer. Not bad.

RETURN OF THE HEMP NATION
RETURN OF THE HORSE NATION
RETURN OF THE BUFFALO NATION
RETURN OF THE SAIL NATION
RETURN OF THE TRAIN NATION
RETURN OF THE PIONEER NATION
RETURN OF THE INDIAN NATION
RETURN OF THE CHRISTIAN NATION

THIS IS THE FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY

THIS IS THE NEW WORLD ORDER

THIS IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

Hemp Nation

2009-12-14T08:18:00.000-08:00

George Washington grew hemp.

Thomas Jefferson grew hemp.

The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

The United States flag sewn by Betsy Ross was sewn out of hemp fabric.

Hemp was made illegal by an attorney general who was the brother-in-law of the CEO of Dupont, a company that invented nylon and wanted to take over hemp's market share. Nylon, of course, is made from petroleum.

Hemp grows out of the ground.

The return of the Hemp Nation requires political activism, which requires political organization, which requires idealogical consensus. This consensus is Mitakoye Oyasin.

Or, if you prefer, we may call it Christ consciousness.

United Methodist Socialists

2009-12-14T07:20:00.000-08:00

Jesus said man cannot serve two masters - man cannot serve both God and mammon. Give up your things, he said, give up your attachment to personal possessions. Give up your private property, give up your sense of 'me' and 'mine'. Give up your capitalist ambition, he said, give up your deep-seated need for security. The lilies of the field neither toil nor sow, taught Jesus, yet Solomon in all his glory was no more fair than they. God provides, and God alone provides.

Jesus preached of a Kingdom of Heaven where all freely choose to serve egolessly, without thought for self or self-preservation. And he practiced what he preached, which gave him such a following that he became a threat to the ruling class, the power broker capitalists and the bankers. So they executed him. Materialist capitalism and Christianity are irreconcilable. Man cannot serve both God and mammon.

It is easier for a rope to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get to Heaven, taught Jesus, so rich men killed him. Jesus preached and practiced the virtue of giving-away, or selfless service, or self-sacrifice. The capitalist bankers preached virtue, as well, while practicing the art of investing for a return, investing for personal gain, investing for selfish interest. Over and over again Jesus called the scribes and bankers hypocrites because they wanted to get something out of it rather than offering up their actions as service to the Lord, service to mankind and the world. Jesus insisted upon the immorality of loaning money at interest, calling it usury and declaring it to be sinful. He chased moneylenders from the temple after sitting on the steps and weaving a whip with which to scourge them, knowing it would lead to his arrest and execution.

Jesus was a radical socialist, a medicine man, a healer, a prophet, a Buddhist, a yogi, a Jew, a Taoist, a Sufi, an initiated High Priest of the Egyptian Mysteries and a direct descendant of King David. In his day was celebrated every 49 years a Jubilee celebration - a year-long celebration in which all debts were forgiven. This is the Lord's Prayer, the prayer he taught us to pray: Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who debt against us. As a Christian nation we are scripturally bound to invest in creating a Kingdom of Heaven as described by Jesus: a Kingdom where all debts are forgiven. This means the dissolution of the banking system as we know it, with global debt forgiveness, and the birth of a new economics in which a healthy economy functions as the life-support system of a healthy ecology. The forgiveness of debts and the birth of a culture of selfless service is the fulfillment of Lord's Prayer. This is a political act, requiring political activism.

Supporting the debtor's union is a Christian responsibility. Through the collective bargaining power of organized debtors, we peacefully forgive all debts, actively forging the Kingdom of Heaven as described by Jesus. And we must actively invest in the new economic paradigm of ecological entrepreneurship, embracing our responsibility to live as good stewards of this sacred planet. This is the Green Economy - investing in ecological rehabilitation, reaping ecological dividends. These ecological dividends are a consequence of intelligent design: intelligently designed ecologies optimally and organically produce food, shelter, fuel, community, a sense of belonging, and reverence for life.

This is a nonprofit business entity dedicated to interfaith activism, based on three principles:

The Green economy is ecological rehabilitation

Ecological rehabilitation is intelligent design

Intelligent design is fulfillment of prophecy

this is asylum

2009-11-27T07:51:00.000-08:00

Imagine a holistic caregiving clinic that incorporates massage, acupuncture, yoga, therapeutic healing modalities, workshops, a health tonic bar, a big dance floor and recording studio, with a medically licensed dispensary. Oh, yeah, and its a soup kitchen. And meditation center.

And interfaith laboratory.

This is a nonprofit enterprise - all revenues from medical marijuana are invested back into ecological rehabilitation. Ecological rehabilitation means healing at all levels - healing the self, healing the community, healing the land, and healing the economy. Ancient prophecies from multiple world religions foretell of a time when ganja heals all nations and all relations.

The caregiving clinic exists to heal the self, and it holds space for the healing of community - yet it must do more, it must actively invest in the ecology in order for it to fulfill its mission of building a better world.

So the caregiving clinic functions as a permaculture school. Caregiving incentives are offered to volunteers who build composting toilets, guerilla gardens, rainwater catchments, and swale terraces, and even for those who choose to take edible plant walks, make bows and arrows, prepare herbal medicines, and study wilderness survival, as well as participate in classes on biodiesel preparation, engine conversion, and natural building techniques. The aim is to teach future teachers, naturally. And of course, as we grow we'll offer all the best from the wide world of hemp, from food to fuel to clothing to shelter...

This is yoga - this is the union of Heaven and Earth, the union of capitalism and socialism, radically compassionate caregiving competing in the marketplace of ideas and winning. This is casual and economically astute fulfillment of prophecy. As a holistic caregiving clinic, we are dedicated to spiritual awakening, and consequently offer access to the world's plethora of spiritual traditions, from sweat lodges to shamanic journeying to traditional Buddhist meditation to Bible study to Aghora Tantra. Arabic classes coming soon, we promise. The green economy is a code name for ecological rehabilitation, which requires intelligent design, which forges relationship between science and religion. This is ministry work.

This is a new social paradigm, integrating the functions of business, school, church, state, and family. We envision a caregiving clinic so potent and capable it brings healing to you, no matter how isolated and alone you feel yourself to be. Real caregiving can and will reach out to you even when you thought you were lost for good. Maybe especially then. We are here to satisfy your needs, whatever they may be. Food? Shelter? Community? Nature? Safety? Rest? Sex? Art? Music? Enlightenment? We provide what society asks for. This is real customer service - this is the asylum project.

A high-revenue, caregiving nonprofit dedicated to radically genuine and inspirational customer service is destined to replace political representation, don't you think? A customer service organization so good at what it does you don't even need to look for it because its the bedrock of the culture you were born into, that's what religion aspires to be, right? Seva, or karma yoga, or selfless action, or service. Caregiving. Global ecological caregiving. Financed through the sale of medical marijuana. What a concept.

The high demand for global ecological survival creates a market opportunity for ecological caregiving clinics - this is a global industry with huge demand and no worthy competition as of yet. Which means, ecologically speaking, infinite franchise opportunities. Our global survival imperative needs to be framed as a remarkable business opportunity, a chance to meet the needs of a planet full of customers. Whatever business entity succeeds in satisfying the market demand for a healthy global ecosystem positions itself to set a history-making precedent and garner global media attention. That means lots of attention tourists, which means revenue, which means marketplace sustainability, which means even more competitive and holistic ecological caregiving. This is a business plan that shows how investing in our ecology reaps economic dividends. We know what the green economy really is, don't we? Hare Hare Ganja. Whoever corners the market in ecological caregiving wins the hearts and minds of the people, fulfilling roles traditionally reserved for church and state.

This is already happening, in organic fashion. For the time being we will pretend that this is a very successful nonprofit business operation with a reliable revenue stream coming from America's largest cash crop, investing profits into community development. In truth, we are converting economic currency into ecological currency. We are investing our economic resources into a new business model that rewards us with ecological dividends, in the form of food, shelter, healing, health, community, and a vibrant and vital world.

Now is the transition from the competitive era of the Piscean age to the cooperative and creative era of the Aquarian age, and the ganga plant - herbal medicine that functions as ecological currency, weaving a sacred feedback loop in which the ecology heals the economy, which invests in the ecology, which heals the economy, and so on - this sacred and benevolent herb is the catalyst by which we fuel the transformation.

The aim of these caregiving clinics is to balance man and nature, and to do so we will need to roll up the out-of-balance world. We sponsor the return of the Horse Nation, the return of the Buffalo Nation, the return of the Sail Nation, the return of the Rail Nation, as well as the return of the Hemp Nation.

It is up to us, the people, to institutionalize the new paradigm. Natural building techniques have worked for thousands of years and must not be impeded by corrupt and profiteering building codes. Hemp growth and production needs to flourish with government assistance. Camping is sustainable and should not be persecuted. The unionization of ganja growers, distributors, providers, and users is fast evolving into a debtor's union, fulfilling the prophecy of the Lord's Prayer with the forgiveness of debts and ushering in the era of the Jubilee Year. The exploration of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and global indigenous spiritual traditions is leading us into a radically new perspective of a universal and livable truth, one that recovers a breathtakingly complete whole from shattered pieces.

We are running out of petro-jobs, and we are running out of petrodollars. There is an infinite amount of work to do, and petro-politics needs to get out of the way. No one is ready for the changes taking place and yet we cannot hide. This is a new paradigm - get ready.

Shelter from the storm, a place of refuge, a planet that nurtures - this is the Asylum Project.

Shakti Kings

2009-09-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

there is a music festival coming to you, direct from this website. Be patient.

The traveling online music festival is also a soup kitchen, of sorts. The secret teaching of Jesus goes like this: if you feed them, they will come. So we feed the band and generally at least one fan, assuming there is one. If not, we at least offer up a spirit plate for the ancestors and invisible beings. Not a bad start, really.

The soup kitchen is also a traveling permaculture school, learning how to heal the ecology by learning how to learn, which influences how we teach. The school itself is learning how to be a school, and step one is this: recruit the best teachers to be your friends. And the best teachers already burned down Babylon, long long ago. So you won't find them by searching on Google.

To find them, it helps to be a musician, generally drunk and stoned and most nights sleeping outside, uncovered and sometimes barefoot.

That's the theory, at least.

We're going on tour. Turns out we've been on tour the whole time, we just didn't know it until now. A Haj, actually. A spiritual pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the sacred spaces of our sacred spherical spaceship. We're playing music along the way, feeding the hungry, getting the bystanders to dance, digging composting toilets, building sacred fires, planting gardens, gleaning harvests, storing rainwater, investing in the local economy (which is a facet of the local ecology) on a shoestring budget with a volunteer army of rainbow warriors... and this online band, this evolutionary leap is endorsed by church, state, and those forces opposed to either and both.

This ourselves investing in the ecological environment known as Christ consciousness, a genuine Kingdom of Heaven wherein love reigns supreme and the Goddess is set free to bear the fruit of the tree of life. Sounds boring, I know. Give us your attention and we'll give you a Jubilee year in 2013, the forgiveness of debts and the chance to begin again.

Jubilee 2013. The fulfillment of the Mayan prophecy of the end times actually just gives us a starting point to work with when we talk about the new beginning. It's the end of disharmony and separation, confusion and disorder, and the beginning of harmony, resonance, consciousness and unity. We are witnessing the birth of transpersonal consciousness, the consciousness of Mitakoye Oyasin, the consciousness of the Divine Mother, as witnessed by the divine Father-witnesser.

At present, we are working on getting the music to the audience. Live recordings with online playback. Audio and video. And we'll show you the return of the Horse Nation, the return of the Buffalo Nation, the return of the Hemp Nation, the return of the Sail nation, the return of the Golden Age, the fulfillment of the Freemasonic prophecy of Kundalini Yoga and the Shakti Kings, and all the indigenous prophecies that call for the changing of the world ages and the ushering in of a harmonious planet dwelling within a harmonious galaxy, nestled gently within a harmonious Goddess, witnessed by a harmonious God.

The green economy is ecological rehabilitation.

Ecological rehabilitation is intelligent design.

Intelligent design is the fulfillment of prophecy.

Welcome to the Novus Ordus Seclorum

Haj

2009-09-25T10:09:00.000-07:00

Witness our tribe, as we witness the return of the Horse Nation!

Witness our tribe, as we witness the return of the Hemp Nation!

Witness our tribe, as we witness the return of the Sailing Nation!

Witness our tribe, as we witness the return of the Buffalo Nation!

The time of the lone wolf is over - the awakening is begun

slowly, the band gathers, preparing for a global tour of sacred spaces, gathering resources for soup kitchens and permaculture villages, compiling the tools for global ecological rehabilitation-

this is the fulfillment of prophecy

Hare Krishna

2009-09-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

look here - the reader is aware of the reader as "I Am".

And the writer is aware of the writer as "I Am".

We are all aware of ourselves as "I Am."

Say this out loud:

"The speaker knows "I Am that I Am,

The listener, dear speaker, is also I Am."

The listener is not the speaker, even within our own bodies! That which writes is not that which reads, that which speaks is not that which listens, that which is aware is not that which is self-aware, that which is you is not that which is me, and yet all of it is "I Am."

We are one, and we are mind, and we are the mind of God. This awareness and its consequences lead us into a universe of our own divinely intelligent design...

Buddhos Logos

2009-09-16T11:14:00.001-07:00

There is no single best language. Pali is a derivative of Sanskrit as Spanish is to Latin, and no one can say which is better. Rather, anyone can say which is better, but no one may believe them.

Language is ecological. Pali was the perfect language for a particular place and time, just as Spanish, or Cherokee, or Zulu. The old indigenous cultures will tell you that the place speaks the language, and the people listen, and learn it from the land. The knowledge of these ancient languages, and their revival, is the story of Elves, and Dwarves, and faeries, and dragons, and ancient ones.

One may say, then, that while there is absolute truth, it cannot be expressed in any language, for all language is only relatively true, true for a particular time and place.

Absolute truth can be approximated through language, however, and doing so in a way that is understood is the nature of the Logos. To reach the absolute using a relative language is the task of the Logos, the Way.

language is history

2009-09-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

a soup kitchen, a music festival, a sustainability school, a multimedia entertainment broadcast, a spiritual pilgrimage, a cultural transformation - this is the green economy.

if anyone is reading this, you're in on the campaign strategy of how the indigo children and rainbow warriors bring about the transformation of our reality. The successful theory of everything is really a network of everyone, working together. It's well underway.

History is fundamentally a rationalization of language. History does not tell us how things came to be this way. History actually tells us how things came to be written about this way.

History is the mythologization of language. Literally His story - the story of how things came to be communicated in the language in which the story is being communicated.

in this capacity, history is the endless pursuit of itself - the endless explanation of how things came to be explainable. The development of language brings with it the explanation of language's origins, trapping us in the cycle of history. This history binds our consciousness within the limits of language - one ring to bind them all. Language is the ring of power, giving us power while ultimately throwing us in prison.

anyway. if you understand this, you're ahead of me

irie beets and beats

2009-09-05T16:35:00.000-07:00

The Green Economy is ecological rehabilitation.

Ecological rehabilitation is intelligent design.

Intelligent design is the fulfillment of prophecy.

Therefore:

The green economy is the fulfillment of prophecy.

The ice caps are the rain battery - the green economy runs on water, and leaves behind only compost. Growing trees and hemp for sailing, revitalizing the port industry, raising livestock and growing food, utilizing rail and biodiesel and wind and water and bio-energy, the green economy goes on tour as a spiritual pilgrimage, uniting the divided by transcending opposites.

The spiritual pilgrimage is a living breathing green economy, a moving ecology, a moving and morphing intelligent design. It is a traveling music festival, a rainbow soup kitchen, an adaptive school for sustainable living, and a medicine camp. It is, above all else, quality entertainment, broadcast online as a competitive alternative to bad reality TV, bad Youtube, and mainstream media horseshit.

if you feed them, they will come. if you give them great music, they'll dance and feel good. if you teach them how to fish, they will learn to take care of themselves. If you show them love, they will know God. If you broadcast it live, everyone will find out.

And everyone is destined to find out. The theory of everything is a network of everyone. We're coming together as a family. The fulfillment of prophecy is the end of history and the beginning of the golden age, the eternal, rhythmic clock of the long now.

roadtrip dialogue

2009-09-05T16:34:00.000-07:00

"But wouldn't a debtor's union crash the stock market?" asked the hippie chick.

Bastante shrugged his shoulders. "That's kind of the whole point," he said. "with enough people in on a debtor's strike, the banking systems collapse, the Federal Reserve loses its stranglehold, debts are forgiven, and we usher in the Barter Age, before the world's natural resources are completely destroyed. "

The hippie chick looked suspicious.

"It would ruin the economy," she said, frowning with concentration.

"Not at all," Bastante replied. "an economy is just habitat management, after all. For five generations, maybe, habitat management has consisted of polluting and toxifying habitat, but in ecological terms, this was a very short-term experiment that failed gloriously. The economy changes dramatically by investing in natural resources rather than exhausting them, that's all."

"And there would be no more jobs, and no more work, and nobody would survive!" She glared at him.

"Well, many people will lose their petro-jobs, which in turn would enable them to invest in a different kind of work, for a different kind of benefit. The Green Economy is really just a common-sense investment in ecological rehabilitation, leading to an ecological dividend in the form of food, shelter, and community. It's already taking place, all around us."

"In between your economic collapse and your ecological dividend lies total chaos," she said.

"Tell me about it," laughed Bastante. "We're right in the middle of it, you know."

She let that one sink in.

"Sounds tricky," she said. "How would it work?"

"Well," said Bastante, "the debtor's union is essentially a meme, and memes can spread virally through cyberspace. What it takes is a social network. That's where we come in."

she looked at him. "what's next for you?"

He sighed. "it's gonna take a miracle, but i need to get to Burningman..."

Mythos Logos

2009-02-25T18:51:00.000-08:00

Oss, the High Knoss of Mossmoosamos, pondered deeply and thinkingly upon the linguistic geometry of his own mythological mind. The geometry of consciousness was archetypical, he knew, and learning from these mythological archetypes ultimately revealed the story of man's descent from dreaming into thinking. The history of myth reveals the myth of history, and indeed the chonology of myth reveals the myth of chronology, for is not chronology the Logos of Chronos? The Logos of Chronos tells us that Time is a number. Or, as the Pythagoreans taught, God is Geometry, and Geometry God. This is the chronic of logic: we're always running out of time.

Before Chronos, time was not numerical, or linear, or external, but eternally present. There was no time, for experience was eternally present: can we imagine what that's like? Specifically - and note the slight deviation in linguistic geometry, the nuance of definition - eternity was experienced without being understood: We did not stand under time, observing it, but we were time, we were within time and time was within us. We were change, and truth.

So. Chronos, in giving the universe a numerical value and calling it time, invented both past and future, and in so doing separated time from space. Before there was chronological time, it all happened now, and here: with the creation of a perceived then, so was created the perception of there. All experience once transcended interpretation, yet through the geometry of language - the Logos of Chronos - interpretation ultimately learned to define, and thus imprison, experience.

Look: the words you're reading only make sense if you already know the geometric patterns. If you don't already know the geometric patterns, then you don't even perceive words. Ever hear people speak in a foreign language that you don't know? Words are there, you just don't perceive them because you do not recognize the pattern. This pattern - whether spoken or written - is ultimately defined by shape. Geometry.

Through the geometry of language, the dreamtime of space-time defined itself to itself - explaining in re-cognizable language that which is language's cause. With words, numbers, digits, values, integers, geometric symbols, written language, blogsites, and linguistically patterned linear thoughts, the Breath of Life, the Living God, was replaced with the Word of God, divine law, immutable, objective truth that existed outside of the experiencer. Words separated from sound, and lost their spirit by losing the breath they once rode on.

The numerical valuation of time segmented the infinite wave of the eternal now just as calculus approximates finite values on a sine wave. Yet time isn't a number, but cyclical, seasonal, mythological, embodied, experienced, flowing, changing, and ultimately maya, or illusion.

So. Chronos, in his pursuit of the geometry of God, gave the universe a numerical value, calling it time. Do you see the chronic of logic? Without chronology - the Logos of Chronos - there would be no numerical time, and instead we would live within the eternal present. It is within the framework of numerical time that myth has become separate from history, that the Logos of the thinking mind has transcended the Logos of the feeling body. Within the framework of linear time, the meaning of words has hijacked the meaning of sound. We don't even notice it's happening: we think we get upset at what somebody says, when really we're upset with how they said it! It is not the words that matter; it is the sound of the breath they ride on that shapes history. Our forgetting of sound as meaning's cause is a relatively recent event, soon to be remedied via the galactic realignment taking place 12/21/2012, a written, linguistic, geometric pattern that refers to the resetting of the Nomos Logos, the eternal calendar, the cosmic clock of the very long now, the beginning of Chronos' Peace.

Myth itself tells the story of the mythmakers, the storytellers, the empire builders, rulers of galaxies and descendants of the architects of the archetypes, the story of the planets inhabited, planets conquered, and planets destroyed, the story of Galactic Empire's fall and the rise of Dark Age, the story of the Seraphim, the Annunaki, the story of history and chronology and language, and thought and personality and ego, the beginning of the Fourth Age and the rise of Man. Power and conflict, confusion and dissonance, these are all part of the ancient story told within the framework of the mythological mind, which cannot be revealed using the rational logos of linguistic thought and must be revealed through symbol and archetype, through storytelling, telling the strange and wonderful story of the collapse of the dreamtime and the birth of thought. The story of Chronos, father of Posidon, father of Oss, the High Knoss of Mossmoosamos, who contemplated his own ancestry and discovered it to lie within his own subconscious...

We must live the experience of life mythologically, metaphorically, and archetypically,
without taking it personally. The truth - the eternity of time and the infinity of space - is always being experienced through breath and posture; thought just keeps telling us to look somewhere else. Chronos weeps, confined to the dungeon of the subconscious by the very ego he created and named...

Chronos' grandson, Posidon's Son, the High Knoss Oss of Mossmoosamos understood that how words sound creates what words mean. What we say never conveys the truth, but how we sound always conveys the truth. Very curious. The body, after all, is a sonic temple, a dynamically vibrating cavity that both creates and receives sound, giving and receiving, within and without, 360 degrees along three axes, eternally. The body is an oscillator, and the study of the body's oscillations is the science of sound, the science of breath and posture.

Oss was a yogi, like his father before him, and his father before him. They studied the science of the oscillating body cavity, the living, embodied, eternally ever-present geometry of sound in space. They wryly observed themselves as their own living geometry of sound evolved into the living geometry of speech, which in turn evolved into biophysical geometry of writing, which in turn evolved into the abstract, disembodied, visual and imagined geometry of linguistic reading, or re-cognitive thought. They observed their own minds learning to read, and consequently losing their innate ability to see.

We can see all we want to, but when reading, we must re-cognize what we see. As we learn to read, we learn to depend upon recognition - matching what we see with what we remember. Memory is born out of literacy - if you didn't remember what all these letters meant, you wouldn't spend time reading, would you? We must memorize the geometry of written language in order to re-cognize it when reading. In order to read, we must first memorize, which creates a linear memory, which creates a need for linear time. All this took place within what is now called the subconscious, and it was from this foundation that the linear, conscious mind arose, and found itself trapped by its own linear process. Linear emory births linear time - Chronos was born, and his mother was his own memory. This is, of course, the story of the development of the Ego.

With mind manifesting matter at velocities approaching the speed of light, the Logos of geometric pattern recognition matters. Thoughts sometimes materialize, for that matter. The geometry of linguistics is the first law - In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God.

As dynamic rules of speech evolved into static rules of writing, the spirit left the Word. Literally, for spirit means breath. The geometric laws of written language- these fixed, unbendable (and thus inexorably broken) rules by which we define what we see and distinguish it from ourselves - created understanding: standing under reality, rather than participating within it. Through understanding, we stand under the truth and gaze upon it from a distance; we no longer identify with feeling the truth and living as truth but seek instead to stand under truth, remaining separate from truth and objectively observing truth. Geometry invented memory, which invented reading, which invented thinking, which invented time, which invented birth, which invented death. Chronos didn't understand, so he tried harder, poor guy. Oss felt for him.

When the Word is written down, the spirit leaves the Word, for the Word is no longer carried on the breath. Consequently, as mind perceives the written word, mind separates from breath, leaving the eternal presence of breath and posture to pursue an understanding of the eternal presence of breath and posture. This ultimately leads to frustration, of course, because in understanding the eternal presence of breath and posture, one stands under (and thus apart from) the eternal presence of breath and posture. To understand is to stand under, to be distinguished from, and subordinate to. We cannot both understand and identify with, for they are mutually exclusive. What we understand we cannot be; what we are we cannot understand.

This is the paradox of language: the closer we get in our linguistic, finite,geometric approximations of truth, the more difficult it becomes to see behind the veil of linguistic, finite, and geometric approximations. The better the map is, the more we depend upon it, yet the more we depend it, the more territory we miss, until finally the territory is alien, the map is dubious, and we all choose to be blind...

Right about this time (chronologically speaking), as we near the end of history, the science of Yoga sneakily makes its way into mainstream culture. The study of breath and posture shows up just when we need it most: co-incidence? Or con-sequence?

It's not called absent-breath, it's called absent-mindedness. That's because the breath is still present - only the mind has wandered off, into the labyrinth of Chronos' Logos. The myth of past and future, the myth of here and there. Can we perceive the geometry of written language without standing under it? Can we comprehend, perhaps? The written language takes us out of the infinite possibility of the dreamtime and places us squarely(!) within the finite platitudes of Chronos' Logos - can we comprehend that only our thoughts bar the way to eternal life?

Within the oral tradition, thought itself took place within the dreamtime, and the dreamtime itself was composed purely of thought. Only with the advent of literacy - or numerology, actually - did thinking think to understand the dream, by standing under the dream as dreamer-within-dream. This pattern ultimately descends into the chronic geometry of the personality. As dreaming evolved into thought, mind turned itself to the quest of knowing the knower. The height of this solipsistic delusion was the ultimate acknowledgment of complete futility: The knower cannot know the knower. The knower can know only that it knows. I think. Therefore, I Am.

This is complete understanding. This is a complete standing-under-being, separation-from-being, subordination-to-being. The thinker who thinks, "I think, therefore I am" does not know that he exists and can only conclude so from evidence produced by thoughts. The thinker who thinks this has not stopped thinking long enough to notice that he breathes, with or without thoughts.

Thus was the ego born, and thus did the Golden Age fade away, replaced by the Age of Man, the Age of Time, the Age of Machines.

Kali Yuga. Blood drinker. The Age of Death.

Imprisoned within the Logos, the cognitive geometry of our own making, immortals became finite, burdened with the mathematical probability of geometric impossibility, which began to look a lot like the mathematical impossibility of the geometrically improbable. Because they could not satisfactorily prove to themselves how they lived, they began to die. They dualized, perceiving good and evil where once there had only been life. They chose the measurable approximation of calculus over the immeasurable truth of the sine wave, they chose law over the truth - they chose the Word of God over the living Sound of God's Word. This was a thoroughly illogical leap, yet a thoroughly probable one all the same. Indoctrinated into the law of linguistic geometry and cognitive thought, the immortals began to accept their own finite-ness; indeed, the prison of the Logos compelled them to see that only the finite could be named and labeled: the infinite, being unknowable, must be - according to the written Logos - unlivable.

We only think because we already are, Oss of Mossmoosamos knew. The infinite is unknowable, and yet living, for it is truth. Yet within this Dark Age a whole Empire grew out of the backwards assumption that we think, therefore we are - only that which could be explained in words or thoughts could have any reality, and within this prison, that which could not be named could not be lived. When we are stuck in our head, we crave knowledge more than life - we have the bad habit of preferring to think rather than breathe. Let us breathe without needing to understand, for within the peace of easy breathing lies the true understanding...

This is the story: Life itself precedes valuation. There was a Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, yet Adam and Eve ate from the tree of Good and Evil against the wishes of YHWH, a linguistic, geometrical symbol representing the infinite divine masculine. This was the fall of man: rather than choosing the dynamic geometry of life, man chose the static geometry of law. Man chose the Word of God over the Sound of God's Word. Can you see the difference? Can you hear the difference?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God. There were two trees in the Garden of Eden: The tree of Life represents the living God, and the Tree of Good and Evil represents the Word of God. Does God come from the Word, or does the Word come from God? Does Good and Evil come from Life, or does Life come from Good and Evil? Adam and Eve chose the Word, honoring the Word of God more than they honored the living God! Just like that poor fool Descartes, Adam and Eve had this thought: "we think, therefore we are!" Of course, the opposite was true: Because they were, they thought "we think therefore we are..." No wonder they got confused; they were thinking with linguistic geometry, otherwise known as words. They chose Logos, understanding, judgment, morality, the prison of the good and evil thoughts, and as soon as they descended into the confusion about the right way to live, they could no longer focus their energy on living. Logos does not and cannot create truth - Logos reveals truth.

It was a dark time, and Oss brooded appropriately. He did it mainly for show, however, since the Dark Age was almost gone, and the world had almost run out of History. The long dissonance was over - space and time were reuniting within the breath and posture of the living truth, and the chronic of logic was finally, at long last, coming full circle to embody the Logos of Chronos - Mythos Logos. Truth is, its gonna be a good party...

Perpetually Shifting Paradigms are Fractals

2009-02-24T17:46:00.000-08:00

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn introduces the phrase 'Paradigm Shift' to popular culture, a phrase that articulates the process by which cultural transformation takes place. Not as a linear, gradual process, he says, but as a dramatic turning inside-out and upside down of the status quo, a static equilibrium that loses its center of balance and is both creatively and destructively transformed, revealing a transcendent synthesis of polar opposites which ultimately stabilizes into a new state of equilibrium. Kuhn posits that paradigm shift takes place not only because the old paradigm is dangerously inadequate but also because a new, better paradigm has evolved to replace it. Kuhn stresses that the arrival of the workable new paradigm is the prerequisite to paradigm shift - people won't leave a sinking ship until a floating one comes to the rescue.

This is relevant to the present age, the present crisis of economy, ecology, psychology, policy, spirituality, and all the other -ologies and onomies, because we are imprisoned in an outdated, dangerously inadequate paradigm. Yet within this obsolete paradigm we remain, for as yet, we do not see a meaningful alternative to shift into. This is not because the new paradigm does not exist, but rather, because the new paradigm has not been publicly revealed. It remains bottled up and hidden, hiding in the shadow of the old paradigm, which refuses to acknowledge its failures, its inadequacies, and its inability to maintain order or meaning in this post-competition era.

This is the fundamental irony. The old paradigm is competitive, while the new paradigm is cooperative. The old paradigm is war, and the new paradigm is peace. do you see? As such, the new paradigm does not push and shove its way forward, but waits patiently until it is asked to join. Meanwhile, the old paradigm does everything it can to maintain its power, preventing the new paradigm from being discussed or even known. The old paradigm represses the new paradigm, and the new paradigm allows itself to be repressed.

Until now. We are witnessing a strange loop in cosmic history where cooperation is actually more competitive than competition. To put it another way: Competition is competing against cooperation, and losing. Strange, this.

The new paradigm of cooperation is here, available. Do you know about it? Perhaps it has not yet reached the publicly recognizable tipping point. Perhaps it has been growing silently, against the grain, invisible, not yet a flood flowing downhill but a trickle whose current is following the contours of the land. Yet this new peaceful paradigm has radically evolved, from passive acceptance of suffering (naive love) into fiercely engaging and sophisticated peaceful warriorhood, stepping into the arena of combat and fearlessly cooperating, out of compassion and the desire for a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world.

This is the trial by fire: the new paradigm reveals itself by being tested, and proving itself workable. As it becomes effective, so does it garner support. The new paradigm learns to be effective by entering the marketplace of competing ideas, and capturing the old paradigm's market share of public attention. This does not mean it competes against the old paradigm - the new paradigm, being cooperative, chooses not do so. But it can cooperate, so gracefully and so smoothly as to earn the admiration of the spectators, passers-by, and skeptics: it can yield and turn and move so gracefully and so engagingly with the old paradigm that the old paradigm soons reveals itself to be - old, stiff, clumsy, awkward, dangerous, ineffective, and terminally exhausted. By cooperating with the old paradigm's rules and harvesting attention within the old paradigm's acceptable parameters, the new paradigm succeeds in winning admirers and putting the old paradigm to rest. This is the Art of War - captivating attention, capturing market share. It can learn to be effective in no other way. The new paradigm must defeat the old paradigm in the arena of competition, yet because of its very nature, it must do so without opposing. The new paradigm does not engage in conflict - the new paradigm ends conflict, for the new paradigm is the end of conflict. In other words, the new paradigm will sell cooperation in the marketplace.

In very specific terms: the new paradigm will not be revealed in newspapers, talk shows, mainstream media, academia, or politics. No. For mainstream media, academia, and politics are all in themselves creations and defenders of the old paradigm, which is inherently competitive and heirarchical, and does not consent to the relinquishment of power. Therefore, the new paradigm, as it chooses to reveal itself, must actively attract attention by working outside of mainstream. It must begin by attracting countercultural, grassroots, fringe attention.

Maybe this is you.

Ecological Infrastructure

2009-02-24T17:36:00.000-08:00

The rebellion designs the overthrow of Empire by competing in the marketplace. The rebellion designs a sustainable economy by investing in ecological infrastructure, an idea which competes in the marketplace of ideas against a fossil-fuel economy that destroys ecological infrastructure. This is paradigm shift.

By attracting the fringe elements, this new paradigm will gain market share in the form of attention, and this is psychological investment. With this investment, the new paradigm will find itself with resources to be cooperatively enhanced, and like stone soup, what evolves will be built out of the contribution of the many, the whole far greater than the mere sum of its parts. Traveling beyond the tipping point, the attention it has harvested will reveal a fully equipped sailing ship lying ready, waiting to be boarded by a population with water lapping at their ankles. By the time mainstream media, academia, and politics recognize the validity of the new paradigm, it won't matter; they will be both influencers and influenced at this point. In so many ways, the powers that be are already the last to know.

Quite specifically - the new paradigm will be entrepreneurial. The new paradigm won't be a theory but a practice, and as such, it won't show up in politics, academia, or mainstream media but in the marketplace. It will exist as a business strategy, excelling at the Art of War, transcending conflict itself through the designed application of cooperative, and thus sustainable, instincts. It will market itself as a campaign strategy, and it will compete for your attention, and it will offer asylum for your battered heart and your battered soul, and it will offer you something you want - a believable future.

What is the vision of the human race? What are we meant to become; how are we meant to live? If we have the language to articulate this vision, and we have the skill sets to implement this vision, then we successfully transform culture merely by giving ourselves what we want. Only one obstacle remains in the way of giving ourselves what we want - revealing our true needs to one another.

The new paradigm competes for your attention by telling you the truth.

The new paradigm will plant itself inside your mind, and convince you to perceive reality in a different way. The campaign strategy recruits endorsements, intent on promoting an understanding of the truth, knowing that the best way to spread good news is by word-of-mouth. The campaign strategy builds a social network. Through the social network, the truth becomes revealed, and people invest themselves in the new paradigm. This truth is not a dogmatic absolute, but rather it evolves as it communicates and is communicated, and as the social network grows, the truth itself is discovered to be alive, growing, evolving, and in a state of perpetual change...

Within the context of the recent economic crisis, the new paradigm is reframing itself as an entrepreneurial opportunity worthy of investment, quite literally a new economy standing on solid ground as the old economy crumbles to dust.

What is this new economy? What is this new economic paradigm? What is this long-awaited truth?

The green economy is the hemp economy. The Declaration of Independence, the American flag, the Buffalo soldier, the medicine man, the music, the biggest cash crop in the U.S.A, the sacred plant prophecied to bring healing to all nations, providing food, fuel, clothing, shelter, and peace of mind. The hemp industry aligns the economy with the ecology, and the ancient ones knew it all along.

Aum Shiva Shankara Hare Hare Ganga

Market Research

2009-02-24T16:36:00.001-08:00

Maybe we're only lazy because we're confused. The cynic is an idealist who's learned the hard way that trust requires discernment. We're all willing to help, we just don't want to be manipulated.

that's a pretty good start.

So. Would you:

1 - sign a petition that calls for unionization of debtors in order to address grievances using the power of collective bargaining?

2 - sign a petition that gives tax credits to those homeowners (and renters) who convert their lawns into gardens?

3 - sign a petition that provides subsidies for schools who teach children how to grow their own food?

4 - sign a petition to legalize hemp?

5 - sign a petition that bans nuclear weapons, heavy artillery, bombs, rockets, machine guns, and flagrant use of the Evil Eye?

6 - sign a petition that changes building code laws to subsidize natural building?

7 - sign a petition that changes waste-management codes in order to subsidize waste-to-fuel industries?

8 - sign a petition calling for investment in ecological rehabilitation?

9 - invest in a nonprofit dedicated to global ecological rehabilitation?

10 - receive email updates from a nonprofit dedicated to global ecological rehabilitation?

11 - receive email updates regarding long-distance overland and sea trade routes that are traveled without the use of petroleum?

12 - receive email updates regarding the creation of said trade routes, both domestic and abroad?

13 - be interested in traveling said trade routes, for kicks?

14 - be interested in documenting travel on said trade routes?

15 - be interested in visiting an ecovillage?

16 - be interested in volunteering at an ecovillage?

17 - be interested in having an ecovillage evolve around you, involving your participation?

18 - be interested in attending a school for yogis, shamans, and medicine men, that operates as an ecovillage?

19 - go to a peace rally, if it was a cool one?

19 - stay for a while and hunger dance, if necessary?

21 - call yourself an anarchist while looking in the mirror?

22 - leave behind everything you own, hit the road, and catch a lift into a brand new dimension?

Mitakoye Oyasin

2009-02-24T15:54:00.000-08:00

The new economy invests in ecological infrastructure, with the understanding that a healthy ecology is the foundation of a healthy economy.

The new paradigm converts money into natural resources. The best investment there is, the only one that actually takes care of our little spaceship planet. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it simply changes shape: The new economy is a global investment in ecological rehabilitation.

(Where is the money in ecological rehabilitation? How is this an investment? Sounds just like a spending habit. What's the profit motive? Who's going to pay for it, and what's the return? Good questions, reader, yet remember this simple truth: Of all the investment opportunities presently available, none will profit through imminent ecological collapse save ecological renewal. The solution won't cost money - that's missing the point. The solution will make money. In fact, the solution will convert money into resources; we'll end up spending all our money on nature, until eventually we run out of money and nature is all that's left.) We cannot revive the economy without reviving the ecology. If we use up our natural resources without replacing them, there won't be an economy left to invest in. Our planet simply cannot provide for us, without reciprocity. We must invest in ecological infrastructure, simply to survive.

To state this in the most obvious way: Every possible alternative to ecological investment and rehabilitation leads to a dead-end.

The time has come to give our very best to the world that is our home. This is the paradigm shift: cultivating a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship between what's inside our skin and what's outside it. Self, meet environment. Ego, meet world. Man, meet nature. Turns out we're all relations, always relating.

So. How are we doing?

Tierra Sagrada

2009-02-09T19:41:00.001-08:00

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 our 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 money back into 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, people, 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 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. Pretty 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, 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 catch on to 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 good stewardship, while 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

2009-01-26T09:20:00.000-08:00

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

Infinite Heart's Reunion

2009-01-08T14:12:00.000-08:00

"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 yielding 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, somewhere in there a duality resolved 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 perhaps it does, and each and every one of us must struggle with ourselves, we must learn in such a way 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; its just words. Pay attention to the signs all around you that you are 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

2009-01-04T15:40:00.000-08:00

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. All that is required is a sense of collaboration...

a celebration of victory

2008-12-30T13:16:00.000-08:00

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 - invest in bio-engineered wind and water transportation

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

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

Dictatorship of the Boddhisattva

2008-12-29T09:58:00.000-08:00

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 were anarchists, working for the overthrow of Empire. They were committed to realizing the dictatorship of the Bodhisattva, where compassion rules. 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 anarchists take over the world? In this world 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.

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

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

4.) 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

2008-12-02T17:09:00.000-08:00

Ultimately, it seems that a successful permaculture movement will evolve into a successful ecotourism movement. Permaculture fosters sustainability, and in an evolving way permaculture is learning that 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, 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...

The Asylum Project

2008-11-22T13:44:00.000-08:00

The Asylum Project is a social business enterprise that focuses on community, sustainability, education, and celebration. Its aim is to propagate the vision of sacred groundskeeping as a viable means of reinventing community and renewing sustainable culture.

What is sacred groundskeeping? Starting with the premise that Mother Earth is alive, conscious, generous, loving, and in need of healing, we of the Asylum choose to serve our home planet by living in a sacred way and acting as stewards of the land. Specifically, we act as groundskeepers, caretakers of this planetary living system who pride ourselves on our skill sets, our work ethic, and our commitment to the next seven generations. No job is too big or too small, no payment is too much or too little. Asylum groundskeepers mow lawns, install solar panels, build composting toilets and strawbale homes, plant trees and permaculture gardens. We teach yoga, meditation, martial arts, massage and various modalities of movement therapy. We conduct sweat lodge ceremonies, perform shamanic healings, hold fire councils, and gather for ritual song and dance. We are Earth guides, designing and leading expeditions that involve rock climbing, kayaking, sailing, horseback riding, wilderness survival, hangliding, and visionquests. Drawing on religious and spiritual traditions from around the globe, combining them with the latest in permaculture design and green building, operating with the support of local indigenous communities, working in conjunction with grassroots nonprofits, we improve the productivity of your land, the efficiency of your home, the foundations of your health, and the nature of your relations.

Asylum Sacred Groundskeeping operates as a tax-deductible 501(3)c nonprofit, working with communities to recruit at-risk youth who participate in career training and reaching out to schools, that we might share wisdom and foster innovation. We operate on a donation basis, which means that if you want our help, all you have to do is ask. Remember, asking for help is just another way of finding out how you can serve...

Asylum Sacred Groundskeeping is a globally local service project, recruiting volunteers who provide services and contacts, building a worldwide network of communities who collectively share the task of meeting the needs of our planet and its inhabitants. You can help out, and you'll enjoy helping.

From high-end, green-roof metabolic architecture projects on 500 acres to grassroots treesitter nonviolent action camps, from research bases in the Antarctic to at-risk youth camps in the urban jungle, we cover the spectrum on learning how to live in harmony with Mother Nature, with one another, and with ourselves. When you reach out to us, you're reaching out to a new way of living, and a new way of being.

Community.
Sustainability.
Education.
Celebration.

Believe in the Asylum Project. Learn to share our planet's precious and bountiful resources in a loving and reciprocal way. This is our family, this is our home, and this is our dream.

Believe in us.
Believe in us.
Believe...

The End of History

2008-11-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

History is written by the winners.
Before writing, then, did anyone win?

Perhaps preliterate history wasn't competitive. Perhaps, preliterate history was cooperative. Certainly, recorded history is the history of conflict.

Before history was written, it was ritually danced and sung. History has been written down only recently; it has been ceremonially performed for countless millenia.

Literate culture has accomplished a great deal, and regards pre-literate culture with no small amount of condescension. It needs to be acknowledged that pre-literate cultures managed to live sustainably and harmoniously with Mother Earth for many generations. It's no secret how this knowledge, so critically important to the present age, got passed down: It wasn't written, but performed. The understanding of how to live on a planet without depleting its resources was memorized and transmitted not via the thinking mind but via the feeling body. The ceremony, the song and dance of history was somatically embedded in cultures at the cellular level, far deeper than any philosophical argument or psychological theory.

It was the advent of writing that ushered in what moderns refer to as History, which from its very origins has been the history of conflict. Literacy - conceptual awareness as an alternative to spatial awareness - requires the duality of concept and conceptualizer, and this duality, this perception of separation, led to an age of conflict, an age of thought disassociated from feeling.
We will not cease from exploration, and the end of our exploring will be to return to where we started, and know the place for the first time...
(but don't worry, you'll never have to read about it)