Tag Archives: OWS

Inspiration to be a Troublemaker

TROUBLEMAKER: A Memoir From the Front Lines of the Sixtiesis a great book, and Bill Zimmerman is a major hero.

Bill Zimmerman

From 1960 to 1975, as a radical political activist, he helped shape history, inspiring what has come to be the best in our world. Open to daring escapades, he always sought the most provocative games, and I bow to his courageousness.

In fact, there’s nothing like heroism or creativity or love to inspire us. We leapfrog over one another as we tumble toward enlightenment – think torus, as in THRIVE, in everyday operation.

In light of Occupy Wall Street, hearken to this, where Bill was making this prescient reflection about the 60s even before the upheavals in Europe had come about:

“Capitalism was here to stay. Revolution, I realized, was an inappropriate offensive strategy; people who thought as I did lacked the resources to do anything by play defense. Even if the resource problem were overcome, we had no credible revolutionary strategy, nor did I see a way to create one. After much soul searching, I finally understood that it would not fall to my generation to make a revolution. We could do little more that resist, or make trouble for the worst aspects of capitalism.”

And here’s how the book ends:

“It will fall to future generations to create a society fully committed to those ideals. It fell to mine to keep them alive so that someday they can. I hope the fire of our commitment, however bleak the times we lived through, will help inspire future activists to erase the injustice and poverty that need no longer have a place in our world. What I learned along the way is that performing good works, political or otherwise, with no expectation of recognition or reward, was for me the secret to leading an honorable and happy life.”

Stand on Bill Zimmerman’s shoulders by reading his book. And it’s for everyone, not just the young folk. I am the older generation, and it has inspired me.

A Major Yes to this Video Clip

I got this email from my friend, Gail Greenberg:

Wow, to all my loved ones, this video really pulled together so many random thoughts and feelings I’ve had. I wanted to share it with you. Watch to the end even if you think you’re not going to be interested. It’s really profound to contemplate.

Well, a big yes from me. Charles Eisenstein seems to be everywhere in my world these days, and what I discover about him gets better and better. I so love this clip. It is such a clear articulation of what we most need that we might think is too far out to achieve, but Charles makes it seem doable. Related to my track, if the crop circles would get us to rethink reality, what Charles is describing is what we could be moving into. Ah bliss!

This is a piece from a feature film in the works about the Occupy movement, called Occupy Wall St – The Revolution is Love. (There’s more about the film and its fundraising efforts, at http://occupylove.org.)

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An invite to The Club of One Heart

I was chomping at the bit before Occupy Wall Street to have a game to play. Now, I’m gangbusters. It’s the same objective as the occupiers – to make a world that works. I want to be riding that energy with others. What a good time it is to link up.

I’ve always loved this quote:

Seek, above all for a game worth playing. Such is the advice of the oracle to modern Man. Having found the game, play it with intensity – play as if your life and sanity depended on it. (They do depend on it.)…Though nothing means anything and all roads are marked “no exit,”  yet move as if your movements had some purpose. If life does not seem to offer a game worth playing, then invent one. For it must be clear, even to the most clouded intelligence, that any game is better than no game. – The Master Game by Robert De Ropp

When I created my non-profit I named it Mighty Companions:

Now comes a period of settling down. This is a quiet time, in which the teacher of God rests a while in reasonable peace. Now he consolidates his learning. Now he begins to see the transfer value of what he has learned. Its potential is literally staggering, and the teacher of God is now at the point in his progress at which he sees in it his whole way out. ‘Give up what you do not want, and keep what you do.’ The teacher of God needs this period of respite…when he is ready to go on, he goes with mighty companions beside him. Now he rests a while, and gathers them before going on. He will not go on from here alone. – A Course in Miracles

So, I’m after a new wave of Mighty Companions.

What are the things that can get us to the tipping point, where there is fundamental new thinking going on? What can give new thinking a boost? The crop circles are but one mindblower among others.

I’m checking out whether there’s interest in Los Angeles for face to face engagements.

If you are fans of my movie, this is for you. You need to be willing to be on a team to spread the word about What On Earth?, and to rabble-rouse for other things that could wake the world up to a bigger reality than the one in which we are so violent with one another and abusive to the planet. (See Outside the Box Ideas, column left, for things we might play with.) This time, you have to be savvy about the internet and social media.

The invite to put our heads together is for Sunday, November 6,  3-8 pm, at my house in West Hollywood. Those who’ve come before know that thanks to my housemate, you get treated to delicious food, and that the crop circle phenomenon attracts very interesting people! I’m looking for responses from old buddies, people who’ve come to previous fan events, and friends I haven’t met yet. I’ve missed the pleasure of good company on a somewhat regular basis and hope there’s enough interest to do it again.

Make a Comment on this post to tell me you’d like to come. I screen Comments and unless you have more to say than that you’d like to take part – which I welcome and will post — I’ll just collect the info and won’t post it. If you are someone who wishes you were in L.A. to take part, Comment to tell me that, too. I’ll collect a list for what could develop into an internet branch of The Club of One Heart. And tell me where you live in case there’s enough response to set up live branches.

For more about where I’m coming from, which in essence hasn’t changed for a long time, see my archival site that I put up before the switchover to this format in 2001.

I pledge allegiance to myself,
Which is also all of you
And to the grand idea
Of which we are all a part,
One consciousness,
One intelligence,
Indivisible,
With truth as reality for all.