PSYCHOSCAPES: Occupy the present moment!

Occupy Samta Fe: from Maia Duerr blog 10/15/11

Breaking from my normal format, today I celebrate Maia Duerr's blog, The Liberated Life Project, which brings a Buddhist presence to the Occupy movement. Occupy the Present Moment is the perfect expression of that sentiment. It also highlights the spiritual and contemplative dimension of this movement, actually the ground upon which the movement is built.

When I was in New York, I participated in a large meditation group that has been a intregal part of OccupyWallStreet since the beginning. But the media has almost universally ignored this vital spiritual underpinning.

Maia wrote in her 10/15/11 blog that it has become abundantly clear to her that the Occupy Movement is "based in a real honor and respect for kindness, for making sure every voice is heard." She goes on to say:

A quote from Arundhati Roy has been very much on my mind the past week:

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

The other quote that kept coming to me today was one from Mother Teresa: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

This collective of people — all around the globe — is remembering that truth. We’re waking up to it, to use a Buddhist phrase. We are changing the story… we are no longer believing that we are beholden to corporations, but rather to each other. We are creating rather than merely consuming.

Thank you, Maia, for your inspiring blog, and, hopefully, you do not mind that I have copied the long excerpt above, into my blog. Keep up the good work!