Spring Cleaning

Spring Cleaning

"Old loaves, old insults, old wrongs, old hates,
old prides,old contempts, old horrows, old taboos, old totems...... [C]an I shed these
worm-skins of remembrance?"
    ____John Cowper Powys, "Obstinate Cymric"


   At this season, we are often driven into a bout of spring cleaning, throwing out the unwanted and bringing new order to our household. But what of the deeper hurts, the old anguish, the festering wrongs, and the immovable obstinacies of our very being?
    Select one such m,malingering obstruction to be removed from your mental attic by asking and answering the following questions:
* What past wrong or hurt embitters you the most?
* What past relationship still lingers painfully?
* What childhood horror shadows you?
* What traditional prejudice still clouds your horizon?
* To what or whom are you still shackled by hate?
* What long-dead voice of authority still have you leaping?
* What old story against yourself still rankles?

Now take a walk in nature, meditating upon the issue at hand. Let your eye fall upon that seem to speak to you about your own case: these might be fallen leaves, pieces of rubbish blowing about, feathers, berries, bark, mushrooms, flowers, and so on. Without damaging the landscape and its inhabitants, collect some of these things and assemble them into an emblem of your issue. These collected items can be tied together with string or woven together with grasses. Create something really beautiful. When it is complete make a small fire outside. Relinquish your issue to the cleansing flames and burn the emblem you have made, visualizing its influence passing away from you. Stay and watch the emblem turn to ash and be borne away.

"Make an emblem and burn it, as suggested above."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]

Meme Warfare:

Memes are ideas that travel. Memes spread and infect us - trends, logos, slogans, tunes, cultural norms, ideas about race and sex, domination and entitlement. In this culture, 3000 marketing messages are rammed into your neocortex every day. It's one-way nonconsensualo and violet. Potent memes can change minds, alter behaviors, and transform cultures. In an authentic culture, memes ooze down from the top, and the most repeated ideas win. We live inside this culture-manufacturing machine.

Global capitalism is in its cancer stage, and metastaizing to kill its host, our only planet. We're the first generation to get ournsense of the world mostly through one screen or another. Our 'truths' come from our machines, not from contact with the world, or each other. Abstractions seem more real than reality; logos, movie stars, the Dow Jones are more real than trees, starving children or climate change. We are fighting not just the destruction of nature, but the destruction of meaning. How can we win?

Not by technology, and not by force. Only by imagination: the ability to tell ourselves different stories. There's more to life than being rich, fast, young, thin, beautiful and technologically advanced. We need new ideas, new meaning, new memes. Social change agents spreading our ideas throughout the culture will create maps for getting to there from here. This is the literal battle for the hearts, minds, and attention spans of an ever more anestheized society. We can consciously, deliberately, and fundamentally redirect the trajectory of history.

What are the memes that clearly communicate Life - inter-connectedness, democracy, biocentrism, renewable energy, freedom? Think about it. Pass it on.
[From "We'Moon 2011" page 63]