I was in the audience for this one—filmed out at a ranch in Utah, with UFO’s flying overhead.Video of Daniel Pinchbeck & Russell Brand Talking (R)evolution -
I was in the audience for this one—filmed out at a ranch in Utah, with UFO’s flying overhead.
The Yes Men’s campaign to “Become BFF’s with a Banker” is protest art activism on a one-to-one scale. The revolutionaries advocate creatively pranking the executive 1 percenters, and while I agree that a good joke and a stubborn presence will get their attention (especially if that presence is camped outside their front door) I advocate that it’s immediately followed up with something with a bit more kick—perhaps like unconditional love. Let’s make them gifts and leave them in front of the gates around their houses or with the concierge at the base of their pyramid penthouses. Let’s send them loving, encouraging emails (the Yes Lab page includes a handy contact list of bankers and CEO’s for you to contact) asking them to tell us about their dreams and desires, in addition to letting them know what our lives are like, and the reasons why we wish better things for life on this planet.
We can let them know there will be someone there for them when they come over to the other side.
We can promise to hold them close while they shed the layers they no longer need.
Inspired in part by The Love Artist
I believe in nonviolent disruption as one of the most effective ways of waking people up. Waking up is the equivalent of disconnecting from the Matrix. It usually happens in fits and starts, in a process that can be drawn out over years, or even lifetimes. But eventually you take the plunge and become born again into a world of pure potentiality. Everything becomes very flat and clear—like you’re standing in a desert.
Abundance, Beauty, Peace. It feels so good to believe a new story about yourself.
I believe that Love is the strongest psychedelic and star squashing power in the universe. As my friend Jim tweeted:
“Love is 100%. Not 99%, nor 1%. Choose the path of the fearless heart & capture the change we are all in search of.”
On this historic night of protest, I find myself thinking about Egypt and how beautifully poetic it is that humanity’s collective shift to the next level of civilization was initiated over there, on the land that contains the pyramids, which were built around the same time that the Long Count of the Mayan calendar began—a 5125 year cycle that is scheduled to end in 2012. What happened in Egypt reminds us that every ending is a beginning—all that exists is the mega-ritual, the world-wide event, the synchronicity of creation which is at the same time a discovery of that which was already there.
Android Jones’ painting, “Power to the Pyramid” depicts the magical confluence of past and present taking place in Egypt. It reveals revolution in the age of the internet—the clashing of forces beneath a surface hyperlit by the glow of millions of tuned in screens. At the retreat in Utah, where he was in attendance, I was gratified to hear Android explain that the figure in the center of the painting with fist defiantly raised was an homage to Michael Jackson.
I could feel it even as we approached on the dirt road, music lowered to match the dark stillness: the sensation of being watched. Strangely, this was not unpleasant, nor was it due to any paranoia, as I’d been either laughing or at peace during the entire drive. The feeling was like coming home, and falling under the gaze of an old relative, who you knew was watching you from behind an upstairs window even though you couldn’t see them. It didn’t take long before I realized the ranch was a portal. The excitement amongst the guests was palpable, and the host was transformed into a shaman, as the knots of the everyday were loosened. It was not mere coincidence that Graham Hancock was there to give his lecture about the special numerical relationships between ancient structures such as the pyramids of Egypt and Teotihuacan—numbers that are mentioned in myths from around the world. The layering of synchronicities and sacred geometry seems to point to an underlying intention built into these places pointing to certain dates and times. This was the same thing that was happening to me on the ranch—upon gathering as a circle on the first night an information overflow started spiraling between myself and others…transpersonal connections allowed for telepathic exchanges as we held space that contained entries and exits, beginnings and ends.
By the end of the week it was clear:
It’s coming…in fact it’s already here…me, you, we…THEM.
Together we form a body without organs, the one the philosophers prophesied about in the 60s, the era of initiation.
We’re becoming what we are.
A Super “Us”.
(Source: ater-atra-atrum, via chinacat-sunflower)
Jerry Uelsmann
Apocalypse II
1967
Gelatin silver print
Open up and let GO.
A lot of fiction is born in train stations and airports—places where we tell stories to pass the time while we wait. Highway rest-stops, a shady tree, a side street half hidden by the rush of the avenue —we think it’s about going somewhere but our journeys instead lead us in-between.
Here deep in Utah, on a ranch on a mountain with no humans for miles, I have a profound sense of being watched—of being zoomed in and out upon, especially at night. On the evening I arrived, I watched the star Sirius move slowly over the top of a ridge blackened into silhouette against the brilliantly twinkling switchboard of space…it morphed into a triangle shape, glowing, and shooting occasional green laser beams—as wide as the whole horizon. They lit up the sky like prolonged photo flashes.
The man who is one half of the couple who owns and runs the ranch, came by and put his arm around my shoulders and pointed up in the direction of my gaze.
“Look at Sirius out there,” he said, his voice gravelly from thousands of cigarettes. He was wearing a handmade, three-quarter length coat made of patchwork pieces of red and white suede with intricate threaded patterns forming secret code all across the arms and back.
“For weeks it’s been messin with me, showin up and just hanging out like that. Look…” he said, “See it changing shape?”
I nodded, speechless, and glanced at his profile—his left eye sparkling with starlight like a diamond in a pit. I looked back up at Sirius and noticed it had stopped moving.
“It’s watchin us,” he said, laughing good naturedly. Then, after a few minutes of silence in which the object seemed to pulse and spin he added,
“We’re being downloaded. Right now…can you feel it?”
(Source: pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org)
“We are the 99%—and so are you!”
I’ve been imagining that the “occupation” of the re-named and reclaimed Liberty Plaza never ends. That it remains a gathering spot for poets, revolutionaries, & starchildren…
Thought i was a donut u tried 2 glaze me.
I’m writing a short guide on how to better fuck yr books.