Category: Nature

Avatar II

Imagine Avatar II: a real-time live action roleplay, with real sacred trees at stake. The people of the trees are painted not only in blue but all colors of the rainbow. They keep watch fires at the barricades, logs repurposed to guard those still living. In the upper camps, the iron dinosaurs of destruction groan with rage as they tear at the entrails of the chained sleeping dragons—spells of protection conjured as if by some sly magic by the guardians of the forest.

The ongoing blockades at Fairy Creek, in service to the ancient sacred groves of remaining Old Growth, face mounting pressure from squads of RCMP assigned to enforce the edict of corporate rule, even over indigenous territory. It doesn’t help that the local band council has been paid off to profit from the logging; the determined youth know better and follow their hereditary leaders in standing firm. They hold the real front line in this battle and they suffer the most for it, with night raids from paramilitary commandos who rough up the young men and women, destroy their camp, and return a few hours later to repeat for good measure. By day, the heavy equipment roars awake to root them out of their defenses, tons of vibrating steel chewing beside their heads and limbs. When they are extracted and taken into custody, the logging crew moves in fast to carve out a chunk of “Eden Grove.”

Still, the other camps hold. Hundreds march peacefully on the road, subject to illegal searches by police. A forest of red dresses appears, searing into memory the murder of indigenous women all across Canada. Buses of seniors come from the city, bearing cookies to show they care. Hikers transport supplies to the camps. Vehicles arrive with donations of food, tools, camping gear. A village has sprouted up to care for the needs of the people: information, communication, meals, healing, legalities, art. Every day, more are needed.

Everyone here has something to contribute, something to learn. There is a greater purpose. It is sacred; everyone knows it, everyone feels it. Because it’s in the trees. Just as we honor our own elders, we recognize the trees as our elders. And the more ancient, the more wise, the more sacred.

This the destroyers will never understand… until they face their own mortality.

Seven Branches

1. Nature: Respect the elders

At the root of our lives, of all life, is Nature. You think it goes without saying. No, it needs to be said. Otherwise we forget. Just as we forget, neglect our elders. Our human elders, the ancient trees, they go hand in hand. And not in isolation, but in community. Not as a tiny grove, “a tree museum” as Joni Mitchell put it, but as a community of old and young. Home to countless species with the same intrinsic value as our own, some rare and threatened like the western screech owl. The thriving, enduring forest connects us with time immemorial. It is the tenuous bridge between a living past and a viable future.

2. Personal: What can you bring

Medicine woman, folksinger, backpack boy, youth on the loose, tool-slinger, captain of the guard, soothsayer, fire spinner, child of a chief, cook hankering for outdoor kitchen, doctor, navigator, vibes watcher, time keeper, chauffeur, understanding mom, smiling face, painted face, in your face, just me… Come as you are.

3. Political: Horgan vs. Sierra

BC Premier Horgan was so “proud” of his shiny “deferments” announced on the big screen. Not knowing better, I thought, “Wow, that sure sounds good.” Knowing better, I thought, “Sounds too good to be true.”

The Sierra Club was quick to confirm the latter intuition by spelling out the reality on the ground.

In May, after a year of almost no action to protect at-risk forests, a group of independent experts shared a map with the province that used criteria from the old-growth panel report to identify the most endangered forests that need immediate deferrals from logging. Their maps show 1.3 million hectares of forests that need interim protection, 2.6 percent of all forests in B.C.

[Horgan’s] deferral announcement for Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek and Central Walbran adds up to 2,000 hectares or 0.15 percent of the forests that need interim protection. Almost all at-risk forests across the province remain open for logging, including thousands of hectares on Southern Vancouver Island.  —Sierra Club of BC

While the announced deferral of selected areas deflects and confuses public opinion, roadbuilding continues nearby, to expand access to the vulnerable timber. Deferral means calculated delay, until opposition might be expected to dwindle.

4. Community: Nonviolence then and now

Observing the spirit of cooperation and community at the Fairy Creek main camp is a revelation. Friendships are formed in sharing a shift by a barricade, standing in when someone fails to show. Volunteers of the moment run errands while others hold the fort. Personal stories are shared, arriving from the city for the day, or from across the continent to join this cause.

On the organization side, people and materials are recruited efficiently to serve ongoing and spontaneous needs. The mood is at once cheerful and serious. In the large meetings of a hundred or more in a circle at HQ, I am struck by the maturity of the facilitators and participants alike. Not like the protest movements of decades past, of fractious ideological bickering, ego trips and defensive posturing.

Here, those taking roles as spokespeople are able to state clearly what is needed; and when someone in the circle airs a new concern, it is quickly addressed as others offer to step into whatever shoes need filling.

It’s a group effort: local democracy in action; active nonviolence whose time has come; civil disobedience in its most constructive and creative performance.

5. Cultural: The State of Freedom

We are in a culture war for freedom.

The corporate police state cracks down to do what it does—extract resources—and the people do what we must to fight back.

Though the Fairy Creek organizers aim to appease the Covid mythmakers, their focus is pure: save the trees. The big-picture analysis ends in the same vein: the rape of the planet. In this autonomous alchemy, the division between Covid cultists and deniers is blurred, sidelined. A healthy sign, as we catch a glimpse of freedom in human terms. On this circular stage surrounded by the curtain of big trees, “us against them” means caring people against the enemies of nature, of spirit, of freedom to live.

That’s all we hope to grant these ancient cedars: their freedom to live.

Against this freedom, the war is waged relentlessly. By whom, is not exactly clear… but isn’t there a limit to how far to stretch the word “human”?

I think a curse should rest on me, because I love this war. I know it’s smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment – and yet I can’t help it – I enjoy every second of it. —Winston Churchill

6. Vision: The New Human

It’s a shock to the system to return to “normal”—mainstream traffic, shopping, houses, asphalt, “civilization”—after a taste of the elixir of creative and collective freedom, held in the grace of the ancient sacred forest. Our modern way of life is already many steps of new-normal removed from these old-normal ways of cooperation, communication, mutual respect and care.

Or maybe, I dreamt it all happened like that once, but really we are the first to bring the potential to realization, and the next ones will make it still better.

We go from being an insecure codependent cog in the clockwork to becoming a confident independent force in an interdependent cosmos. In short: we become an interdependent force of nature. —Gary Z McGee, No Rulers, No Masters, No Gods

Or maybe, we are finally starting to listen to our elders again, to teach us what we have forgotten, but they remember. How to be human, how to live, and how to honor the oldest ones of all, our allies in this struggle: the circle of trees.

7. Spiritual: The Circle of Trees

We face each other in the circle, across the sacred fire. Wind stirs the flames to dance inscrutably before us while we consider personal and interpersonal choices, consequences, timetables, emotional stresses, material needs, political climate, police strategy. Someone reminds us to stand and stretch, to turn and look outward.

Now the fire has our back. Everyone in the circle has our back. Before us, stretched all around, is the circle of trees, watching, waiting.

We nod to them in humble respect. We say a silent prayer: we have their back. We stand, to help them stand. “We’re all in this together.”

Yes, and they came first. This, truly, is their territory.

We ask permission. We give thanks. We fall silent. We listen.

Our prayer is acknowledged, in the fragrant breeze. The trees give thanks.

We nod. “We will do what we can.”

Call to Action

Fairy Creek Call to Action

Last Stand for Forests – Rainforest Flying Squad:

• Show up on site and volunteer
  • transportation
  • logistics
  • online portals
• Learn and share
  • your story, your passion, your research
  • online and offline
  • media and social media
• Tell the politicians to stop selling off our heritage
  • phone
  • email
  • petition
  • rally

Facebook: Fairy Creek Blockade

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image credits:

(feature): chains: @mikegraeme
fairy creek: Rainforest Flying Squad
owl, horgan, heart: Nowick Gray
crowd: @mikegraeme
elders: Autumn Skye
cedar: Will O’Connell

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This article first appeared in The New Agora.

“Not even I know all the rules,” says the old officer under his breath. “There are things that cannot and should not be explained. But there is no cause for concern. The Town is fair in its own way. The things you need, the things you need to know, one by one the Town will set these before you. Hear me now: this Town is perfect. It has everything. If you cannot see that, then it has nothing. A perfect nothing. Remember this well. That is as much as anyone can tell you; the rest you must learn for yourself. Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.” —Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Behavioral Psychology and the War on Humanity

“You will perform your duty voluntarily, or else you must be compelled.” —Paula Volsky, Illusion

The story of planet Earth in our time has come to its pivotal chapter: the war on humanity. In truth it has been foreshadowed from the book’s beginning. But now the cards are on the table, and the winnings, global in scope and irreversible in the annals of time, are being raked away.

It’s a time when the herd mentality of blind obedience has overridden nature’s protocol, herd immunity. We witness the futility of mere facts, so easily disputed with cooked statistics and preloaded interpretations. Logic is locked down, bound to the rails of absolute power.

So those who dare to question the rules of the game must look deeper, to its design.

The field of behavioral psychology has been weaponized to enslave the human species from the inside out. Bizarre as that may sound, think tanks tasked with that very goal have been busy sanitizing the language to make total control seem downright philanthropic: saving ourselves from… whatever turns your fear crank.

And now, their window of opportunity has been blasted wide open with the enemy of dreams: an invisible virus, with magical powers to survive every effort to eradicate it. It’s a perfect storm… for calculated madness, learned helplessness, humiliation and impotence: a recipe for infinite control.

calculated madness

“The Mindspace document [2010] was boasting that this was the first time the [UK] Government would be able to use applied techniques where people would have their behaviour changed—that means their thoughts changed!—and they wouldn’t even be aware that it had occurred. if you want to execute power, then you’re going to try and use normal, democratic politics, or you’re going to try and use force, or you’re going to try and use other means.… They were going to use this covert applied psychology to pressurise citizens to act against one another.

“The uncertainty and the change in the rules: that is part of the psychological attack.

“Because the uncertainty immediately is putting people in a position of stress and anxiety and confusion. And if we go back into the professional world of applied psychology, people who are in a distressed, confused state are very susceptible to further messages and instructions. If there’s a fire in a building and people are starting to panic, the first person that starts to give clear commands to the people, those commands will be followed. And that is due to the psychological state.

“… There’s a very important paper which is called Biderman’s Chart of Coercion. It’s a World Health Organisation-recognised paper about non-physical techniques of torture. Virtually every Covid pandemic measure can be ticked off against one of the entries in Biderman’s chart.… We can say that people are under a spell, and the best description, we believe, is that they’ve been mesmerised.”

—Brian Gerrish’s testimony to Reiner Füllmich: Our oppressors are very frightened people

learned helplessness

“Learned helplessness is well documented. It takes place when an individual believes he continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to improve his circumstances, even when he has the ability to do so. Discovering the loss of control elicits a passive reaction to a harmful situation. Psychologists call this a maladaptive response, characterized by avoidance of challenges and the collapse of problem-solving when obstacles arise. You give up trying to fight back.

“…The way out is to allow people to make decisions and choices on their own. This therapy is used with victims of learned helplessness such as hostages. During their confinement all the important decisions of their life, and most of the minor ones, were made by their captors. Upon release, many hostages fear things as simple as a meal choice and need to be coaxed out of helplessness one micro-choice at a time.”

—COVID, Learned Helplessness, and Control

humiliation and impotence

Within an established totalitarian regime the purpose of propaganda is not to persuade, much less to inform, but rather to humiliate. From this point of view, propaganda should not approximate to the truth as closely as possible. On the contrary, it should do as much violence to it as possible. For by endlessly asserting what is blatantly untrue, by making such untruth ubiquitous and unavoidable, and finally by insisting that everyone publicly acquiesce in it, the regime displays its power and reduces individuals to nullities.
…
Apart from the massacres, deaths and famines for which communism was responsible, the worst thing about the system was the official lying: that is to say the lying in which everyone was forced to take part by repetition, assent or failure to contradict… The less true it was, the less it corresponded in any way to reality, the better; the more it contradicted the experience of the persons to whom it was directed, the more docile, self-despising for their failure to protest, and impotent they became.

—Theodore Dalrymple, in Breaking the Covid Trance: How the Irish People were Psychologically Manipulated

countering cognitive dissonance

The above rollout of psychological warfare on the entire planet demands extraordinary resilience of positive human qualities: insight, patience, analysis, courage, compassion, forgiveness, whistleblowing, self-sacrifice, truth-telling. The hypnotherapist Theodore Dalrymple (above) points to the awakening of intuition to break the spell of the Covid trance.

We all know, deep down, we’re being lied to, manipulated, and abused. The signs of our programming are everywhere. But even when our senses, our media feeds, our trusted sources, our friends and family and peer groups are all succumbing to the relentless tide of doctored reality, our bodies know better. Beneath even the falsely triggered fear, our truer gut instincts, our heartstrings, our soul callings, will guide us back to alignment with our humanity.

our mythic evolution

Our evolutionary calling in this time has a mythic dimension, with roots in the ancient past, and branches in the birthing of an era of transformation. Seers such as Tielhard de Chardin, Jung, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have pointed the way, along with Rudolph Steiner, who foresaw also the darker agenda urging our leap in consciousness as a necessity of survival.

Steiner said that the super-sensible being known as Ahriman would incarnate in the 21st Century, as humanity makes a transition into a new planetary incarnation. Ahriman represents the power of materialism, material technologies, and sterile rationality. Ahriman’s incarnation might be fulfilled through the birth of a generalized Artificial Intelligence able to embody itself through technology—as latticed network or robot, or via transhumanist biotechnologies that meld human beings with machines, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

For Steiner, the incarnation of Ahriman was inevitable. But an evolutionary leap of human consciousness was also inevitable, leading to a new “incarnation” of the Earth…. What mattered for Steiner was to accelerate the evolution of those who could awaken, which meant, for him, learning to develop “organs” of “supersensible” perception and cognition… a new “body,” which he called the “spirit self.” … Those who are able to stay conscious within the increasingly turbulent dream-world of reality will attain the fruits of this evolutionary journey. It may take us into a dimension that is no longer purely physical. —Daniel Pinchbeck, Dystopian Follies

Pinchbeck suggests a uniquely human tool to wield against the robotic power of materialism and its heartless deity, AI. Spiritual imagination—call it prayer—gives us the living language of myth.

… Our world is made up of the stories we tell about it, to a great extent. As Nietzsche noted, humans always live mythologically. What we are undergoing now, collectively, involves a transformation not just in our physical and psychic lives but also in our mythological paradigm. As Patrick Harpur put it: “The world we see is the myth we are in.” When we change our myths, the world changes around us.

Prayers from Dystopia

With heavy heart I watch my loved ones surrender their sovereignty to the vax gods. And I almost feel all is lost. With science and logic co-opted, commandeered, inverted and perverted for material and malevolent purposes, it may be that all we have left is prayer: our access to the mythic realm.

What is prayer?

Here’s one: “Hope for the best, expect the worst, and take what comes with grace.”

That covers a lot, but strikes a rather fatalistic tone; perhaps a fallback option at best, to maintain peace of mind in the midst of a dystopia on earth. Is this the last summer of joy, and peace, and love, as the vortex of evil sucks us all into its posthuman maw?

Daily the screws tighten on the great reset; everything the Schwabians have pronounced is unfolding according to their in-our-face plan for total control. The information war is already lost, for all those who have bowed to the pressure instead of trusting the common sense they were born with, or the integrity of the minority view. When groupthink is complete, in-your-face becomes the new deity: it’s Big Brother time, without apology from above or below.

Even for so many we have known as intelligent, rational, skeptical, we must now concede that peer pressure is more powerful than independent thought. The rationalist view—to examine evidence, objectively—is not sacrosanct, after all, but simply bought and sold in the commerce of public opinion, readily shaped by the controlling agenda, advanced nonstop by the formidable alliance of government, media, and institutional bias.

• FDA – Fully Denatured & Artificial
• CDC – Controlled Disinformation Company
• CBC – Canadian Brainwashing Corporation
• NDP – No Damn Promises
• Liberal – see: Faucism
• Conservative – conserving one’s own socio-economic status
• Green – with power envy (see: Controlled Opposition)

There are those in charge of this war on humanity, those who volunteer to be its officers, those conscripted as footsoldiers, and those herded into the arena to watch the blood flow. Bread and circuses have lost none of their appeal over the past two or three millennia.

Here’s another prayer: “Everything is happening in perfect time.”

This one gives a more positive spin. We might surmise that the karmic wheel, ever turning, will bring justice in the end, when “God wins.” In this time of testing, will the victims of deception fall away, purged from the healthy system, allowing survivors to thrive better than before?

Lacking human-clothed gods and goddesses, a more inclusive definition of prayer might be something like “frequency alignment.” That could take the potent magical form of music, a time-honored means of connecting with more subtle dimensions of our vibratory existence in the cosmos.

One way or another, human culture to survive must maintain the bridges between Nature and Spirit. As we do so, we honor and continue to mourn the old bridgekeepers who were branded and hung, burned alive, bulldozed nearly out of memory.

In today’s unprecedented crisis for humanity, I therefore strive to attune with the presence of source energy, opening to spirit:

• for connection with nature and all-that-is
• for health protection
• for peaceful outcome
• for the heartbeat of creation
• for inspiration and solace
• for clarity and truth
• for the light of wisdom

Outside the gates of the empire, we barbarians tend our council fires. Simple tribes, nomads, refugees, renegades.

Are we hoping for the walls to fall from their own unsteady weight, built on shifting sand? Are we waiting our chance to enter the gates when the death wagons roll out?

We pass the time with wholesome food, self-made music, care of the children, prayers to the fire.

What We Forget: The Fire of Life and Death

Sitting by a fire brings back ancient memories, timeless truth. We see the slow burn of things that were once alive: trees to logs, branches and roots, piled on the pyre. Once sprouting green, sucking water, now spitting flames.

Isn’t it sad? In a way, yes. But that’s okay. Like it or not, it’s okay. Death, and fire, are part of life.

Fire in our modern lives, like death itself, has been outlawed, criminalized, weaponized. Out of fear of death by covid, our life has been pruned to bare branches, wrapped in plastic, caged and sprayed. To save our elders, they were herded into killing pens. To save our children from a threat that was never theirs, they are masked and separated, bullied and brainwashed, offered ice cream with a needle that could sterilize, maim and kill.

Will the framed-up danger ever pass? That depends on your perspective. Some in charge pledge “we will never get back to normal until covid is eradicated.” Which  is a recipe both for perpetual vaccination, and permanent control and surveillance.

Not that the supposed goal is ever achievable. For every seasonal sniffle, will we always now be tracked and traced, muzzled and jabbed for probable cause? Call it a scam, and will we always be silenced, deplatformed, banished, erased?

Those who thrive on control know that fear is its fuel. So death… from a never-ending supply of dread diseases and their mutating variants, bat drool or lab leaks; from a scary world of infinite terrorists, foreign or domestic, bent on “destroying our way of life”…  there’s no end of trouble in store.

With the evil twins, fear and control, dancing in our face like TikTok nurses, we shrink and die a slow, constricted death. Just where they want us—so they, the chosen few, can live the life of the promised land, of freedom and abundance? I pray not.

They, too, shall die. And we will live again.

In the meantime, grow your garden, tend your fire, sing your prayer.

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image credits:
(feature) cedars: Nowick Gray
reset: Jim Quinn
mask safety: BC Ministry of Health
masks: Facebook
orwell: George Orwell
humans: lysianne93.centerblog.net
bought science: David Rich
firedragon, fire: Nowick Gray

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This post first appeared in The New Agora.

See Nowick’s YouTube interview with Lorenzo of the New Now Agora.