OCCUPY Your Life...

I originally wrote and posted this tiny bit below on Facebook on October 12, 2011 in response to the various OCCUPY movements sprouting up. This was a spontaneous exploration of where and how we betray and limit ourselves (in other words, seeing what happens if, for a moment, we take the focus off blaming banks and corporations for our unhappiness).  When we do an honest assesment of this type, it could build a foundation of clarity and integrity from which a new kind of authentically powerful activism and transformation can take place. Some of the politics and approaches of this movement = something I was involved with and passionate about in the late 1990s, when it was totally in the margins, and I was totally in my twenties. My thoughts and ideas around this subject have naturally evolved as I have. They are experience-based and rooted in my lifelong passion for, constant investigation into, academic study of, and direct participation in personal-social change, justice movements, and cultural criticism.

OCCUPY Your Life:

Be present and awake in your body here and now.

Open your senses, eyes, and heart to where you personally lack integrity, betray yourself, alienate yourself, ignore your truth, misplace your anger, hemmorage your energy/resources, harm your body, pick fights, act from insecurity & pain, buy into lies you learned as a kid, and dismiss your own humanity. See what areas of your own inner and outer life need love, attention, re-thinking, re-building, creativity, and healing. What shady relationships and unconscious deals define your own life?

Investigate activism from this place, or AS this place.

What if we minded our own business first -- THEN shared our surplus of self-responsibility, sanity, energy, integrity, insight, health, and creative good vibes with our local and global community in whatever ways suit us best?

_______________ 

I originally wrote and posted this bit on Facebook on October 6, 2011.  This was also a spontaneous creative response to both the OCCUPY movements and the relentless recent political talk about the "need to create JOBS."  (I have a lot more to write on the jobs topic).

No JOBS?!

Here's everyone's collective JOB now:

1. Find your gifts and passions (even if schooling and socialization covered them up. It's possible and responsible to find them again.

2. Find your people (those who inspire and support your growth and success in applying your gifts).

3. Work together to disengage from and dissolve the old system by creating a new culture and economy that's conscious, just, healthy, fun, and fulfilling in YOUR community, with YOUR resources.