Wake the Earth

I hung out with Andrei and Sandra recently and wanted to photograph them in their element, showcasing a day in the life of creating a thriving organic garden.

 

 

Between delicious home-made falafel rolls and spooky talks about superhuman aliens visiting from the future was the underlying importance of working towards greater food security, self-sufficiency, and an all-round greener lifestyle. The gardening process seemed to enable a meditative state of flow, which is a means of being completely immersed and engaged in an activity within the present moment. 

After watching this Eckhart Tolle video they recommended, I found myself recalling some of the rare, ecstatic moments where I've felt most alive and connected to the here and now –– dancing at a music festival, intense conversations about life, the universe and everything, hugs and affection from my favourite people.. anxiously wondering if maybe, I was only capable of feeling "whole and complete" during a peak experience. For the longest time, my idea of "true happiness" seemed heavily dependent on plans going my way –– overdosing on a powerful dopamine rush, or a sweet tingling of anticipation. 

Mindfulness, in contrast, isn't about seeking the most pleasurable, exciting thrills to escape mundane reality, but deepening our attunement to "the source" of all being. It involves recognising that over-identification with our thoughts and mental constructs of reality, rather than direct experience and non-judgmental awareness, is one of the most potent means by which we become addicted to the very suffering we're constantly seeking to avoid. 

"one reason that people have artist’s block is that they do not respect the law of dormancy in nature. trees don’t produce fruit all year long, constantly. they have a point where they go dormant. and when you are in a dormant period creatively, if you can arrange your life to do the technical tasks that don’t take creativity, you are essentially preparing for the spring when it will all blossom again."

—Marshall Vandruff

The mind's capacity to bullshit us into a self-limiting downward spiral can seem infinite unless we intentionally practice choosing where we place our attention, and which kind of thoughts are worth paying attention to. Through the process of mindfulness meditation, conscious focus can eventually be channelled into almost any activity we find engrossing, as growing attunement to one's surroundings merges with a deeper unity of rootedness within our bodies like a blossoming plant is rooted in the soil.  

Using Sandra's paintings to make my blog prettier. WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE SO DAMN TALENTED? The only good art I make is living by the Nietzsche quote, "No artist tolerates reality." 

These DIY orange candles are super cute and really simple to make: just fill the orange peels with oil beneath the inner wick, and the flame is ready to be lit. :3

This is too cute not to share: My sister planted a miniature fairy garden for her kids with little road signs and plastic dinosaurs; the moral of the story being that without environmental protections, the planet's very extinction is being systemically orchestrated as we speak. if trees gave off free wifi signals, we'd probably all be planting some. Too bad they only produce the oxygen we breathe.  

Election Blues

As the federal election looms closer, I find myself wishing there was more political diversity at the forefront of politics than what is narrowly marketed in the mainstream media and aggressively sold as "a free democracy" under our rigged corporate lobbyist, two-party preferential voting system. I have always been an independent voter, which makes it difficult to feel as though my views make a significant difference in the big picture when up against an ideologically conventional majority. There is also a real sense of expendable anonymity I feel about living in the context of a populous nation state, especially when you consider how humans evolved to only feel influentially connected in the "monkeysphere" of much smaller tribes. 

The major parties have failed to appeal to half a million young Australians who aren't enrolled to vote in this year's election, despite hyped social media campaign attempts to boost participation. Perhaps if there was a party that advocated specifically for the interests of young people, it would spark more passionate concern. Issues like cost of living/youth homelessness, climate change, education reform, equal pay for women, mental health, civil liberties and marriage equality are all generationally relevant, but any prominent representative body would need to accommodate the fact that as a diverse group, young people won't share a singular vision for future leadership. We just somehow need to feel more influential and less alienated from the decision making process. 

Ideally, my values would align most closely with the philosophy of pananarchism, which is the view that everyone should have the opportunity to freely migrate and live under any system they want to, as long as their ideology isn’t being imposed on other communities with differing beliefs. This obviously means I’m opposed to all forms of imperialism, which restricts the choices of less powerful societies that might aspire to be self-sufficient and less dependent on the global dominance of neoliberal market economies. I genuinely wish there existed as many major thriving sustainable communes as there are industrialised cities, which people could dependably take refuge in during times of harsh austerity.

The fact that we live on a finite planet however, means I can’t be as “accepting” about certain political choices as I would like, knowing that true choice is currently not possible in a world still grappling with violent inequalities of war, economic slavery, cultural indoctrination, and “progress”-driven environmental crises. My biggest concern is under the current system, we are told that the planet can “afford” to continue supporting both a rising population AND a constantly growing economy, when there have been recent reports suggesting that if everyone on the planet consumed as much as Australians, we would need 3.7 times the planet's natural resources to support the global population. All this election talk about creating jobs and aiding parental leave while "stopping the boats" doesn't confront the issue at all. So instead of exploring possibilities for a steady state economy, or alternatively tackling the overpopulation issue, we continue to assume, "business as usual", that we can have our cake and eat it too. 

I'm not claiming to have all the answers, but to try and convey a glimpse into how I'm formulating my worldview, which will hopefully help people understand why I yearn for changes that often seem "too radical." I might be disillusioned with the political system, but I haven't lost all faith in humanity yet unless Tony Abbott becomes PM.

Update: The Coalition is in power now, unsurprisingly as Australia is still a very young soul country, and proof of why I find little value in becoming emotionally invested in our puppet-orchestrated political circus. Tonight is a hard lesson in remembering that profound revolutionary changes will only happen at the grassroots level. No one stays at the top forever. We will reap the ignorance we sow until there is nothing left, and we are forced to re-awaken.