Sacred Economics & Where Next for Occupy?
Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein - A Short Film
“In each crisis moment, we’ll have a collective choice, do we give up the game and join the people, or do we hold on even tighter? It’s really up to us to determine at what point this wake up point will happen.” Charles Eisenstein
http://www.realitysandwich.com/where_next_occupy
“Let us name, then, the underlying object of the protests' discontent. It is a society that fundamentally isn't working, a system that coerces us into ruining the planet and exploiting its people, denying us life and liberty if we refuse to comply, and sometimes withholding them even if we do comply. It is a society where life is a little bleaker, gaudier, uglier, less authentic, and less hopeful with each passing year. It is a system of winners and losers, in which even the winners are less happy than a typical Ladakhi peasant or Amazonian hunter-gatherer. It is a society of pretense, image, and illusion. It is a society where more human energy goes to war than to art. Most tellingly, it is a society where it is normal to hate Monday. The discontent behind the protests comes from the conviction, "We can do better than this!"
Despite the rhetoric of the 99% and the 1%, I find in talking to influential people in the movement a deep understanding that no one is merely a victim of the system I have described. We are also its perpetuators and its enforcers; it is woven into our habits, our psychology, our very being. That is why the movement has striven to embody a different way of relating and being through consensus-based decision-making, open space technologies, gift-based allocation of resources, non-violent communication, and so forth. We want to change the psychic and interpersonal substructure of the system we live in. That is why this movement has united the long-sundered currents of spiritual practice and political activism. And that is also why we say: The revolution is love.”
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(I love your name!) What an excellent video and post!!! I love the idea that the human race wants to grow up, and that the old paradigm is really so childish. Collecting toys, avoiding responsibility--wow so true!!!!!
The occupy movement is to me a sign that people want to survive!! It is a--life affirming--movement, saying 'We want everyone to LIVE, everyone to LOVE, reaffirming our interconnection with all life on the planet. We are finished being lied to and lying to ourselves--done.' It is a sign of health and vitality and what a beautiful thing this is!!!
We are at the beginning of this wave, the first ones who are initiating this shift, we may not know exactly how we are going to get from point A to point B, but we are gathering consensus and starting this movement. It is frustrating because of all the destruction and chaos--it is hard to see how everything will turn out.
For me a huge obstacle to overcome is TRUST--something the old paradigm of control worked so hard to take away from us, trust that the planet can sustain us (it doesn't belong to us according to them!) and in each other--the old system has so much cruelty and divisiveness built into it.
We have to, step by step, RELEARN to trust each other--by building alliances, re-weaving the tapestry of relating with each other, practicing kindness and compassion, forgiveness and love--THIS is the path I believe in.
Peace and Light to you earth mother, and to all here, it is such a joy to witness this shift happening!! 
that needs to happen is on an individual level. The effect of all the messages of divisiveness not only divide our society but then work to divide communities, families--and then work on an inner level to divide us from our centers and our authentic original selves. When people lose parts of their own souls, they become hungry, addicted, and predatory--or fall victim to predatory types. It is a lateral/horizontal exchange of energy, rather than a vertical one with the cosmos and planet.
What has to happen, IMHO, in this occupy movement is for as many people as possible to do a kind of soul retrieval, because this society has fragmented our souls, in so many ways called us away from our instincts, our wild selves, our creative selves, and joyful playful selves. We have to work toward retrieving all of the energy and consciousness that we came into this life with--it is our birthright--so that we have all that we need to heal, and to go out into the world with the ability to access our higher selves and our wisdom. And this is a continuous process, to be done as needed.
We have to Occupy Ourselves--our whole selves
Thank you MotherEarth and Felix! Profound and beautiful and uplifting!