The world I dream of, and the world I want to live in, is one in which we can all do with our time what we find most meaningful and not be in want for food, shelter or goods essential to living. A society that lives in balance with the rest of the planet – not taking more than the Earth can give. A humanity that is kind to non-human lifeforms and that accommodates various diverse ways of life.

Sometimes I feel like we’re almost there.

It’s been a hell of a journey that I’ve been on these last few years. All I’ve been seeking is a way of life that would allow me the freedom that I want (and that I believe is every human being’s birthright) to live creatively and to be sustained fairly for my efforts to bring beauty, thought and meaning into this world. So many myths that I grew up believing in have now been dispelled. I want to say that these things I’ve learned apply to ‘the world’, but I really do not think they do – they really only apply to our world, that is, human society. For, the world includes all the unrealized possibilities of human interaction, many of which are so much more beautiful and equitable than what we currently have to live with.

All I’ve sought is a way to be able to sustain myself while living my heart’s calling (my art and life) but what I’ve found goes far beyond that. I’ve discovered that I’ve been lied to and misinformed for most of my life, and that most of humanity (from the third world to the first) is bound in what is essentially economic slavery. How most people can willingly accept these bonds is something I may never understand, but as somebody for whom this system has never really worked, I continue to reject this way of life. It is demeaning and inhumane. It is a waste of my potential for love, creativity and connection.

Something almost primal in me rages against a world that expects me to devote my life to chasing the things that all our ancestors never had to pay for: food, shelter, the care of a greater community. Something in my gut tells me that this is completely insane and unacceptable, in a world where there is more than enough to go around for everybody. Furthermore, to spend my days exhausting myself doing work that earns this abstraction called money, that doesn’t satisfy my heart nor make full use of my individual talents nor connect me in any meaningful way with my fellow human beings, makes absolutely no sense.

I think the best way to communicate how I feel is not just to relate my own personal experience, but to encourage you to question the so-called fundamental tenets of modern civilization:

Why do so few people control so much of the world’s wealth? What gives them that right to? Why is wealth really distributed so disproportionately when this does not have to be the case at all?

Is capitalism fair? Does it breed humane ways of relating to each other? Does it help you create a meaningful and beautiful life that you’re happy with? Does it give you true freedom or merely sell you symbols of it?

Do you feel satisfied spending so much of your life making money? Is your job deeply satisfying? If you weren’t limited by your background, your location and your life experience – if you could do anything you imagined – what would you do with your life?

Have you ever been close to (or seriously contemplated) death? What did you promise yourself you’d do more of?

Do you remember the freedom and beauty of childhood, when you weren’t a slave to the clock, when you last had time for real play?

What does it feel like to not have to impress anyone, to be yourself utterly, truly?

Are certain human beings inherently superior to others, or is hierarchy merely a myth imposed so that a certain few have power over others? What happens when we stop believing that others have power over us?

My point is this: it isn’t always easy to see this (though it becomes very clear when you’re marginalized), but we live in societies that encourage and privilege certain ways of life over others. The common myth is that these ways of life that are encouraged are inherently superior to the others that are trod upon. As long as we believe that our natural way of being in this world ‘doesn’t measure up’ or is somehow ‘not good enough’ we more easily accept the yoke that those who seek power over others want to force upon us.

I hope that today marks some sort of beginning. The beginning of the world that I dream about, that I have been actively holding in my heart for the last few years, that I have desperately been fighting for in my life. Today let’s choose to connect with others and begin building this world – a world that nurtures free thinking and free spirits. A world that recognizes every single one of us as a free agent: as beautiful individuals whose potential for love, creativity and connection will be encouraged and not squandered in the name of the market or mindless, unnecessary competition.

I want to leave you with this vision of what the world can be, in the words of Howard Zinn. Perhaps, with hearts afire, we can find it in ourselves to create the world we want to live in.

“Let us be Utopian for a moment so that when we get realistic again it is not that “realism” so useful to the Establishment in its discouragement of action, that “realism” anchored to a certain kind of history empty of surprise. Let us imagine what radical change would require of us all.

The society’s levers of powers would have to be taken away from those whose drives have led to the present state-the giant corporations, the military, and their politician collaborators. We would need – by a coordinated effort of local groups all over the country – to reconstruct the economy for both efficiency and justice, producing in a cooperative way what people need most. We would start on our neighborhoods, our cities, our workplaces. Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the work force-children, old people, “handicapped” people. Society could use the enormous energy now idle, the skills and talents now unused. Everyone could share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the time free for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods. Certain basic things would be abundant enough to be taken out of the money system and be available – free – to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, transportation.

The great problem would be to work out a way of accomplishing this without a centralized bureaucracy, using not the incentives of prison and punishment, but those incentives of cooperation which spring from natural human desires, which in the past have been used by the state in times of war, but also by social movements that gave hints of how people might behave in different conditions. Decisions would be made by small groups of people in their workplaces, their neighborhoods-a network of cooperatives, in communication with one another, a neighborly socialism avoiding the class hierarchies of capitalism and the harsh dictatorships that have taken the name “socialist.”

People in time, in friendly communities, might create a new, diversified, nonviolent culture, in which all forms of personal and group expression would be possible. Men and women, black and white, old and young, could then cherish their differences as positive attributes, not as reasons for domination. New values of cooperation and freedom might then show up in the relations of people, the upbringing of children…

The prospect is for times of turmoil, struggle, but also inspiration. There is a chance that such a movement could succeed in doing what the system itself has never done – bring about great change with little violence. This is possible because the more of the 99 percent that begin to see themselves as sharing needs, the more the guards and the prisoners see their common interest, the more the Establishment becomes isolated, ineffectual. The elite’s weapons, money, control of information would be useless in the face of a determined population. The servants of the system would refuse to work to continue the old, deadly order, and would begin using their time, their space-the very things given them by the system to keep them quiet-to dismantle that system while creating a new one.”

- an excerpt from Chapter 24: The Coming Revolt of the Guards in Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States‘

Further reading and other resources:
May Day 2012
A People’s History of American Empire
Work
Days of War, Nights of Love
Sacred Economics (The Film)

“There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed — master builders, artists, labourers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres…

Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; ‘eternal values,’ ‘immortality’ and ‘masterpiece’ were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility…

Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon’s head, an angel, a devil — or perhaps a saint — out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts. Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.”

Discovering creativity is the most exciting thing. I create. I don’t create for anything or anyone (including myself). I create to create. It is a purpose in itself. Or it has no purpose whatsoever. Conventional ways of thinking about why I do things break down when I try to talk about creativity and why I create. I create like I must breathe and (perhaps less romantically, but no less importantly) like I must follow through with any of my other involuntary bodily functions.

Creativity is the most important discovery I have made in my entire life. It is a new discovery every other day I get to be with it. I also believe it is an optimal way of being. I wish that our way of life was based on being in dynamic and creative (rather than mechanical and repetitive) states. Our lives and cultures would be far richer in a society that truly valued these potentials. For the experience of creativity in a single moment clears out decades of conditioning. Clears out the perceived (mostly egotistical) need to compete, clears out insecurity, clears out worry. Leaving only being, I realize that – exactly as I arrived here decades ago – I am naked in this world and I need nothing more.

To create is to know the life principle. To be. To live. To create is to decondition oneself and to individuate, yet to also recognize your interconnectedness and interdependence within a living cosmos. To create snaps you back into the only reality you know for sure: the first-person experience. Direct experience. Lived experience. The illusions of advertising and tradition fall away. The gods that men create to control other men cease to exist.

Status, power, money and conquests all have no meaning in these realms. All that remains is anonymous presence. Irreplaceable but faceless. Full but also completely empty. Struggle becomes dance and there is no happiness, in the sense that happiness is opposed by sadness. Happiness is superseded by some form of pure aliveness that has no opposite, yet contains all binaries. Pain is welcome here, not feared.

To create is, in my view, the only sane way to be.

The disappearing world
Is eternal to my eyes

Sometimes I wonder
What it will take for you to care

Our lives too precious to destroy.

I’ve learned what it means to sell your soul: to pay no attention to it. To let the voices of society, of received ideas, dictate how you live your life. To behave as if you don’t have a soul – a unique purpose and direction that only you can intuit, a part of yourself beyond logic.

We plan ourselves into stasis. We plan and we plan and we plan. And things never work out the way we plan – and if they do, we learn to brush away the nameless, nagging unease that is the natural result of a rigid, artificially-structured life. The feeling that the living, breathing essence of life itself is bled away in excessive planning, in routinizing what’s meant to be spontaneous.

The greatest obligation I have is to my soul. Perhaps even to use the word ‘obligation’ is wrong, for when I am in alignment with it, I feel the greatest joy. For now, I suffer. But this suffering is a result of my attachments to societal ideals that were programmed into me when I was young, impressionable. I had no say, then. Perhaps I even needed these ideas to survive in society when I was a child and had so little freedom of choice.

But not any more. I am (and you are) free to reject the soulless world of debt, ridiculously expensive educations, car loans, seemingly impressive resumes and positions that merely appear altruistic … The ego likes collecting these little badges for social approval. The ego digs its claws deep in its desperate search for stability in a world that is all flow. This clinging causes suffering. It resists reality.

I suffer now and it hollows me out. It creates room for an airy but deeply-fulfilling ecstasy. Now I have a choice – now I evolve. I have learned that you can never expect the ego to guide the soul and that often you can never expect society (at least at this point in time) to support the soul. But the cosmos naturally supports the soul, the life principle. And living out of one’s soul is a whole different way of being. A seemingly magic – but utterly real - path: synchronicity, community, creativity. Real life.

I make difficult decisions that are not in line with social norms. That those aligned with the mainstream have difficulty understanding. So they find it easier to project what they’re uncomfortable with on me and on people like me. But I’ve realized not to internalize any of this bullshit anymore. I’ve learned to listen not to those driven by the fear of unknown pain, but to those inspired to action by the clarity of love.

When I let go of social programming, I suffer less and I start to know what it means to flow, absolutely, without resistance. Then duality becomes something I can simply observe and language is no longer necessary.

Then there is only life.

I find myself incredibly inspired by the natural world lately. Every flower, every leaf, every twig is perfect – nothing needs any improvement. Nature is textured, alive and infinitely complex with all elements in balance.

We don’t improve upon it, because there’s nothing to improve. However, in collaboration with nature’s intelligence, we bring something new into the universe.

You are free.

You are absolutely free of convention. You no longer have to lead a life in the mainstream, no matter what anybody else tells you.

Listen to the voice of your soul above all. Be supported by your kindred spirits. And by love and the universe.

You’re heard. Your pain is understood. You’re listened to and understood by the vastness and light that comprise the wider universe. Billions and billions of suns cluster together; uncountable unknown worlds, the light of which only reaches us a hundred million years later.

This is a vastness you can only relax into. The rhythm of the greater universe.

Consider what feels more illusory – the idea that we’re separate from the stardust that constitutes our physical bodies, or the idea that we’re automatically tapped into this web: that interconnectedness is our birthright.

“A rocky vineyard does not need a prayer but a pickax“
– Navajo saying (thanks, stargardener!)

—

It always surprises me when people defend the system. I can’t figure out if we do this because many of us are beneficiaries of this system in some way or because we’ve been so conditioned to believe that the system is constructed by experts who know better than us. Or perhaps we’re just creatures of habit.

What complicates this is that our survival is directly reliant upon the mechanisms of this system. It’s all we’re familiar with – we know of very little outside of it. Well, in that case maybe we have to figure out how we can take back the ability to survive on our own, in nature.

Because I can no longer close my heart to the millions who do not benefit from this system. Who are only exploited by it. I understand how tempting it is to believe that everything is fine or that everything will be fine at some distant point in the future that we just have to keep working towards, because we’re not yet perfect. I bought these lies wholesale in the last few years and for most of my life these were parroted by everybody around me as truth. When you’re taken care of, paid well, treated relatively (and relatively being the key word here) well, you tend to think “It could always be worse. Who am I to ask for more?”

Now, I think it is imperative that we change our current culture because:

I want to live in a world in which every human being is celebrated as they are, for their gifts. Where we’re no longer forced to do things we don’t truly enjoy that don’t satisfy our growth as intelligent, conscious and loving life-forms. Where we’re no longer forced to be people we’re not, having our beautiful uniqueness sacrificed for the smooth running of the status quo.

I want to live in a world where no-one – not a single person – has to worry about food, housing, education or health.

I want to live in a world where we all care deeply about the planet we’re now very rapidly destroying. Where we are working in harmony with nature instead of exploiting it. Where we have deep respect and appreciation for the natural world that sustains us freely, asking only that we care for it.

I want to live in a world where we care more about culture, collaboration and human potential rather than just taking money from and competing with each other.

I want to live in a world completely free of the lie that certain types of people are inherently superior to everyone else.

I want to live in a world where freedom of expression is protected, like it is in the United States. Where people don’t have to live in fear of those willing to commit violent acts simply to ensure their own power over others.

Humanity isn’t going to flourish until everybody’s needs are taken care of and it is not right (or smart, really) to save flourishing and self-actualization for the very few. I can no longer subscribe to the kind of spirituality that places too much importance upon our mental and spiritual health while failing completely to account for privilege or one’s economic situation. Similarly, I cannot merely subscribe to the kind of materialism that believes that all we are is the sum of our racial/cultural identity and our economic class.

Rationalizing the suffering brought on by a lack of privilege by saying that others either simply have bad karma or are attracting negativity to them by thinking negative thoughts is as untrue as saying that the poor are poor because they don’t work hard enough. This sort of thinking is symptomatic of a heart closed to the suffering of others. It also constitutes a wilful blindness towards a system that is responsible for enforcing such inequality in the world. Many of us don’t realize it, but we are conditioned to think this way. When we think this way of others, when we close our hearts to them – we do the same violence to ourselves. We then find it alright (or even necessary) to hold ourselves to unreasonable standards. We overwork and overconsume to fill an unknown void within. We lose the ability to be happy just being. We cannot be part of an unjust system without also causing ourselves suffering.

However, when we recognize this twisted thinking for what it is, then we can begin the beautiful work of creating a better society for all. We are human and so we are spirit and matter, both. We are intellectual and emotional, spiritual and physical. We must change our ideas about scarcity and inequality just as certainly as we must physically change systems that create scarcity and inequality.

I realize now that my own suffering is also the suffering of so many others trapped in a system that continuously denies our need to nurture our own human potential, that takes our focus away from the things that make life truly meaningful, that continues to artificially maintain economic inequality and that continues to delude us into believing that certain kinds of human beings are inherently superior to others. I realize now that my own liberation is bound up with the liberation of my fellow beings around me.

I can no longer rationalize my profit at the expense of others. I am also no longer willing to rationalize the violence of the current system. We all deserve a better society than this one. In the long-term, I want to use the privileges that I have (some which I have fought incredibly hard for, and some which I have been born with) to ensure that they become rights that are freely available to all. And right now, I do everything I can to create the new world, here and now.

It’s good to be here. My heart hurts, but it is finally open.

Listen.

Sound of sea.
Rain.

In these shells, you and I
have lived entire lives.

What is this air we’ve been breathing?
No longer from the Mother

We return.

Dear kindred spirit,

You are gifted and you are a gift.

You have, within you, the ability to create new and beautiful worlds unknown and unseen. You have the power to originate. Your work is an act of great love and proof of the power of love over violence. You delve deep into the formless and bring back new ways of being. You revolutionize humanity.

Your duty is to yourself, beauty and those who love you. You create safe spaces where others experience the beauty and peace of finding themselves – where they come into contact with their own vital cores. You regenerate humanity.

You’re not obliged to follow common paths – you can find your own way and look for those who have gone before. Live in love – find kinship and acceptance with others on a similar path. Marvel at the beauty of this universe.

Nurture your gift. Treasure your direct connection to the cosmos. Love yourself – especially when you begin to feel disconnected. See through to the illusory nature of your feelings of disconnection.

Remember: you are loved. Infinitely and always.