Deeper Down Under

Posted on June 6, 2015 by malpagaia

Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park is a World Heritage Area listed for both it’s natural and cultural values, yet many living outside Australia still only know it by its European name – Ayers Rock. Here, even during a brief stay of only a few days, visitors can and do experience a profound sense of being in a sacred place. For the Anangu traditional owners of Uluru and for others who are fortunate enough to live in its presence, and who choose to dwell there in a receptive manner, it can be a place for deepening awareness of the manta – the Earth, as sacred.

Most of Uluru’s quartz-like mass is buried to a depth of almost 6 kilometres beneath the surface of the desert. It’s awesome above ground appearance presents less than one percent of its total mass, but is nevertheless unlike any other natural feature throughout the vast landscape of Central Australia. Located about 400 kilometres South West of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory it is not an easy place to get to. From any major Australian city it requires either several days travel by road or a flight, usually via Alice Springs, then onto the Yulara tourist resort situated just 30 kilometres from the great monolith.

I was fortunate enough to be one of those piranpa – non-Anangu, ‘whitefellas’ – who got to live at Mititjulu, a community that emerged in response to Uluru’s growing popularity as a tourist attraction. As an employee of the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service I lived close enough to be able to see Uluru from our kitchen window and I drove alongside it to work most mornings for about five years. I lost count of the number of times I climbed Uluru, in the course of my work. On one occasion I climbed it during the light of a full moon, looking for so-called ‘new age’ trespassers, but I soon lost any desire of meeting let alone apprehending trespassers: being on top of Uluru that night was as close as I could imagine to actually walking on the moon itself. On other occasions, as part of a rescue training program I landed on and took off from a helipad on top of Uluru, and once I accepted an invitation to fly with the camera crew that filmed a Qantas promotion, wherein one of their commercial passenger jets does a tight and dramatic turn over the top of Uluru. These were amazing and unusual interactions for anyone to have with Australia’s most popular icon.

One evening while on what we called the sunset patrol, I had a most exhilarating interaction with another species. The last tourist had long since reached the bottom of ‘the climb’ and headed off to one of the sunset viewing areas or back to Yulara and I was alone on top of Uluru watching Sun slowly disappear behind Kata Tjuta – “the Olgas” as they are named by Europeans, about 30 kilometres to the West. I first heard the flapping of its wings then a few seconds later it took my breath away and my knees began to shake, I was being circled and focused on by the greatest of Central Australia’s hunters walawuru – the wedge-tailed eagle. It had swept up from a gorge behind me and as it circled directly above me it came close enough for me to see the brown of its eyes. I dropped onto my knees as if wanting to worship such an awesome creature, but it was more a case of deep respect, as well as the awe and a tinge of fear that I felt. I also thought that being there in walawuru’s domain after sunset was not what the great eagle wanted. Some months later a similar, more awesome interaction took place between walawuru and I. On this occasion I was sitting, again alone at the top of Uluru and watching Sun setting – Earth turning: walawuru circled, without moving in for closer scrutiny, and this time I didn’t feel unwelcome – it felt like an amicable interaction.

These walawuru and other air-borne Uluru experiences were for me, doorways into gaining a far more embodied and profound consciousness of the other-than-human. There was also an opening to a particular cave at the base of Uluru wherein much awaited me: a remembering of my childhood ways of knowing and being – a remembering of the sense that everything belonged to me and anything was possible. I found there what I called my ‘Selfplace’. Nowadays I reflect on that time and space as my desert pilgrimage, the beginning of a new way of relating to other and all- that-is.

After living at Uluru for five years as Park Manager, I left that position and was able to enjoy the relative freedom of a less formal and demanding role as Senior Project Officer on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands, about 300 kilometres south of Uluru. During the following three years on these AP lands I was able to ritualise my return visits to Uluru and seriously cultivate a deeper relationship with what I now understand to be one of Gaia’s most sacred places.

These ritualised return visits to Uluru in general, and to my chosen cave in particular, were for me the beginning of a lengthy and intense process of remembering how to listen to the manta – to Earth, and it is where I found my ‘Story Stone’. Ngayulu puli tjukur(pa) – ‘My Story Stone’, appeared to me decades after my Welsh mother Dilys first introduced me to stone consciousness using fossils on Penarth beach – my favourite childhood playground. I received my Story Stone as an act of generosity made available to me by the subtle realms of a cosmic consciousness. I share this story in the belief that the first act of ngapartji-ngapartji (Pitjantjatjara for a deep reciprocity) is that of receiving.

The experiences with my Story Stone were instrumental in leading me to find both the strangest, and the most beautiful, attractors in my life: the first – my strange attractor – was my arrival at the University of Western Sydney, where I was able to make some sense of the cultural interface from which I was emerging. There I met my beloved Glenys Livingstone – my beautiful attractor: together we are greatly inspired to carefully listen to teachers such as Thomas Berry when he says –

“The dawn and sunset are moments when the numinous source of all existence is experienced with special sensitivity. …Living things come into being, flourish then fade from the scene. This ever-renewing sequence of sunrise and sunset, of seasonal succession, constitutes a pattern of life, a great liturgy, a celebration of existence” (1999:177-78).

My Story Stone and the tjukurpa – the religious philosophy of Central Australia, opened new ways of knowing and being for me. It continues to be a great source of wisdom and guidance, as I deepen with my beloved, into our ‘PaGaian Cosmology’ a new and homely Earth based Goddess religion. The Central Australian religious observances have been described as showing

“ a generous diversity in their outward patterns from group to group, and from person to person. More importantly, the very nature of the religious beliefs prevented the rise of that particular kind of religious fanaticism which could have swept a small, but well organised body of men into a position of authoritarian power over a large community.”

(Strehlow 1978:47).

Such religious practice of the people of this Land inspires me, and undergirds my observance of the seasonal celebrations of my own ancestors – re-created in this place.

Our time to celebrate Eostar – Spring Equinox approaches. It is the season for a particular kind of “deepening down under”. As my beloved Glenys would say –

“This is the time of Spring’s return… The story of Old tells us that Persephone beloved daughter, returns from Her journey to the underworld. Demeter stretches out her arms – to receive and rejoice. The beloved One, the Lost One, returns with new Wisdom from the depths”

(Livingstone 2005:210).

References:

The Great Work (Thomas Berry 1999).

Central Australian Religion (T.G.H. Strehlow 1978).

Pitjantjatjara / Yankunytjatjra to English Dictionary

(Cliff Goddard 1992).

Uluru (Ayers Rock –Mount Olga) National Park

Plan of Management 1991.

PaGaian Cosmology (Glenys Livingstone 2005).

Permaculture is Revolutionary.

Posted on September 23, 2014 by malpagaia

“A permaculture way of life empowers us to take responsibility for our own welfare, provides endless opportunities for creativity and innovation, and connects us to nature and community in ways that makes sense of the world around us.

We generally don’t articulate permaculture as a political strategy or movement but reflecting the principle of multiple functions, permaculture strategies have powerful political impacts that have several advantages over conventional political action that focuses on getting those in power to pull the right levers.”

(David Holmgren 2013)

While I have known about the concept of permaculture and have been positively influenced by some of its practitioners for several decades, it is not until now that I have come to more fully appreciate its value to our planet in general and to us humans in particular.

From my PaGaian perspective, permaculture is a very significant Spiritical – spiritual and political, activity that is already providing a growing number of people with daily improvement to the quality of their lives. I find the three ethics at the centre of permacultures twelve design principles namely ‘earth care’, ‘people care’ and ‘fair share’, to be spiritually, politically and ecologically compatible.

While the number of practitioners is still relatively small and growing, if and when the twelve principles of permaculture are practiced by a large enough critical mass of humanity, then we could eventually find ourselves enjoying an ecologically sound and socially just global economy. Permaculture really is a social revolutionary struggle worth participating in.

No matter where one is placed on the socio-economic ladder, no matter what religious or political persuasion one is currently being influenced by, we can and should seriously consider joining the permaculture community, learning its twelve design principles and applying them daily to the best of our ability.

Permaculture is clearly already one of very few viable, sensible livelihood options remaining open to us during what is shaping up to be a geopolitically dangerous, ecologically devastating and socio-economically difficult period for most if not all working families.

Take a few minutes to visit permacultureprinciples.com and see for yourself what it might do for you and your relationship with all-that-is.

As with our spiritual vision, so too with our ecological and social visions, they are planetary by nature and PaGaian by name.

(Livingstone & Seaborne – Southern Spring 2014)

Spiritical Revolution.

Posted on September 12, 2014 by malpagaia

Spiritical is my new PaGaian word for expressing a revolution that is simultaneously spiritual, political, personal, planetary and permanent. Following is why and how I conjured the word up.

(Barbara Mor 1987)

… wherein we humans no longer primarily engage in more talk and analysis, but we dare to attend sincerely and primarily to the complexity of actual relationship with, and comprehension of, our embodied engagement with our Earth-Universe-Gaian context.

(Glenys Livingstone 2005)

The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

(Karl Marx 1844)

Pondering on these quotes I am much inspired by the authors insight and poetic expression of spiritual and political revolution. From my PaGaian perspective there is only one revolution that I regard as literally permanent, namely that of planet Earth around its Sun. If for no other reason than that I can literally observe and feel the effect of this phenomenal relationship as the Sun appears to rise and set each day and as my place on planet Earth – whenever and wherever that may be, responds seasonally to their movement to and from our PaGaian Winter and Summer solstice celebrations – our Planetary holy moments. For me the Earth Sun relationship is a religious phenomenon that is fundamental to our very existence – as in a binding, connecting, definition and sense of the word religion. This fundamental Earth, Sun relationship enables me to experience a connectedness and belonging to what I occasionally refer to as my Self Place, a place where I can be anywhere and at anytime. As a PaGaian who regularly participates in ritual seasonal celebration, I include the apparent coming and going or waxing and waning, of the Moon – not just for good monthly measure.

With this fundamental Earth, Sun and Moon relationship in mind, how might I interpret Karl Marx saying that “Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself”? Again from my PaGaian perspective this quote provides me with a very convincing source of inspiration for spiritual and political revolutionary change. Karl Marx was evidently very objective and scientific about his understanding of the socio- economic circumstances of his epoch and he clearly wanted society to be under no illusion as to the true nature of these circumstances and the negative impact it was having on the livelihood of working families.

In the context of Marx’s symbolic expression it is worth remembering the illusion that the Sun rotated around the Earth was the result of long-held religious dogma not seriously questioned until Copernicus produced his heliocentric model of the universe late in the 15^thcentury. Consequently, thanks to such radical science we humans are no longer captivated by the illusion that the Sun rotates around the Earth, now knowing that it is in fact the Earth that rotates around the Sun. The same can be said about Marx’s “…illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.” It too is the consequence of a religious illusion resulting from long-term fear inducing dogma, principles, laws and teachings used by the ruling classes to maintain their power, wealth and control over the rest of us.

Unfortunately most of us continue to be deluded by an all-pervasive ruling class that uses its religious, political, economic and military dominance to induce fear, divide, conquer and thereby control almost everything we learn about and do. To resist and overcome this perverse control over our lives requires the kind of spiritual and political revolution that first and foremost is capable of Self empowering one’s own mind so that eventually we might come to help radically change our collective consciousness and the socio economic circumstances of most if not all humankind. This level of change requires nothing less than a simultaneously permanent, personal, planetary, spiritual and political revolution.

Such an ongoing revolutionary struggle is a necessary pre-requisite to doing as Mor, Livingstone and Marx suggest, that is learning how to transform ourselves in acts of evolution and revolution, attend to our relationship with other and thereby revolving around our own true Sun – our own true Self. How might we do this? Especially during adverse socio-economic circumstances…

Humans are not objects to be manipulated or enslaved by some external force or influence. We are all unique, individual subjects with a mind of our own. We need to pay careful attention to the stories going on between our ears because it is our primary story has the greatest influence on our personal values and behaviour. We need to think of our mind as the foundation of our most precious attributes, our imagination, our world-view, our faith and our passion. We should be very particular about who and or what we exercise our precious faith in and maybe even become passionate about.

Given the all-pervasive divide and conquer strategies used by the ruling classes of imperialist warfare states, a growing number of us now – more than ever, need to avail ourselves of information that will enable us to protect ourselves from these ruling class induced illusions and fear. More of us may then unite within a growing community of like-minded individuals already participating in and preparing for a broader planetary, spiritual, political and non-violent, revolution, a revolution that could eventually change our planetary habitat and its human community for the better.

Be it religious, political, economic or ecological information, the guiding principle for determining whether or not information is useful to us and our spiritual and political revolution is whether or not it advocates or at least recognizes that we are in relationship with Self, Other – including the other than human, and all-that-is? This is not difficult to determine, most information will speak for itself in this regard.

Thankfully as it happens, we are in the midst of a technological information sharing revolution, swimming in what could be described as an environment of information overload. Consequently it is very useful to know that some sources of information are considerably better than others and that we must be very careful about what information we take in, retain and allow to influence our Self place. There is one primary story and source of information that we are all entitled to learn from, rely on and be influenced by, namely the evolutionary story of the Universe. Particularly as it has been given to us by the late Thomas Berry, a truly Spiritical, revolutionary Passionist priest.

The newly energizing Earth community needs a mystique that will provide the high exaltation appropriate to the existence of such a stupendous universe and such a glorious planet as that on which we live. This can be found in celebrating not simply the seasonal sequence but also the irreversible transformational sequence, as this has taken place in the evolutionary story of the universe.

(Thomas Berry 2006)

As with our spiritual vision, so too with our ecological and social visions, they are planetary by nature and PaGaian by name.

(Livingstone & Seaborne 2014)

Southern Spring 2014.

Socialism from my PaGaian perspective.

Posted on September 4, 2014 by malpagaia

Several decades before I did any serious thinking about politics, I had already well and truly made up my mind about religion in general and my chosen spiritual practice in particular. Prior to meeting each other, my beloved GlenYs Livingstone and I were greatly influenced by the late Thomas Berry – a self-described ‘geologian’, and his ‘Twelve principles of a functional cosmology’. Principle number two is particularly relevant to how and why I now regard politics in general and socialism in particular from my PaGaian perspective.

“The universe is a unity, an interacting and genetically related community of beings bound together in an inseparable relationship in space and time. The unity of the planet Earth is especially clear; each being of the planet is profoundly implicated in the existence and functioning of every other being of the planet”.

Evening Thoughts, Thomas Berry (SF: Sierra Club Books, 2006)

Thanks to the so-called IT – information technology, revolution and our ability to know what is happening throughout the planet more or less as and when it happens, the influence of major international financial institutions and their subordinate political leaders on the quality of life for all of humanity has increased proportionately. While this rapidly developing technological advantage is benefitting a very small minority – probably less than 0.01%, of the planet’s total population, the vast majority of humanity is experiencing a rapidly diminishing quality of life. It is this increasingly oppressive socio-economic burden often being violently imposed on ordinary working families that eventually had me searching for a political story that might be compatible with Berry’s unifying second principle in general and my spiritual practice – PaGaian Cosmology, in particular.

Here I should let the author of PaGaian Cosmology, my beloved GlenYs Livingstone PhD, explain why she chose the name ‘PaGaian’ –

“The term “PaGaian”… expresses a reclaiming of the term “Pagan” as meaning a person who dwells in “country”, yet with “Gaian” spliced in, it expresses a renewed and contemporary understanding of that “country”. “Gaia” is a name for humanity’s Habitat, an ancient yet new name, which I understand to include whole Earth and Cosmos – there is no seam separating Earth from Her context. And Pagan religious tradition offers a spiritual practice of celebrating Earth-Sun Creativity manifest in this Habitat.”

Preface | PaGaian Cosmology.webloc

As indicated in the above quotes, PaGaian Cosmology could well be described as a philosophical and or ecological spiritual practice. Moreover, it is a practice based on a sense of place that is at the same time personal, cosmic and indigenous – or native, to planet Earth. PaGaian Cosmology is by design and intention an organic – as distinct from theocratic, spiritual practice. Given the rapidly deteriorating economic and social circumstances being experienced by most of my fellow human beings this was a very important distinction for me to keep in mind when considering what if any political story might be compatible with my world view and spiritual practice.

Within the last decade the GFC – Global Financial Crash, of 2008, the subsequent austerity measures imposed on working families, the numerous occupy movements, imperialist invasions and a plethora of insurrections, I came to regard politics in general and our Australian Westminster system of governance in particular as being totally incapable of improving the economic and social circumstances of most and therefore probably any of humanity. My lack of confidence in politics in general and in Australian political parties in particular did bother me from time to time. I could probably have lived indefinitely with my political indifference but I chose not to. I eventually decided to look deeper into the story of politics after one of many whinges to my partner and subsequently being encouraged by her to read some of Barbara Mor’s work on the subject – Mor is a modern-day feminist scholar who’s political story I found to be very thought-provoking and inspiring, particularly this paragraph –

“In this world, at this point, no political revolution is sustainable if it is not also a spiritual revolution – a complete ontological birth of new beings out of old. Equally, no spiritual activity deserves respect if it is not at the same time a politically responsible, i.e; responsive, activity… The only meaningful political direction left now is synonymous with the only meaningful spiritual direction left now: towards the conscious re-fusion of the spirit and the flesh… This time it will be a global consciousness of our global oneness, and it will realize itself on a very sophisticated technological stage; with perhaps a total merger of psychic and electronic activity.”

‘The Great Cosmic Mother’ – Barbara Mor 1987).

So my search for a political story began by taking the hint from Mor that the merging of a political and spiritual revolution could take place on ‘a very sophisticated technological stage’… It wasn’t long before the World Wide Web and the likes of Google and Wikipedia led me to what I regarded as a plausible political story, a story that was also compatible with my world view and spiritual practice. It was at WSWS.org – the ‘World Socialist Web Site’ where I came across two key words ie; ‘internationalism’ and ‘equality’. If a political story was going to be both compatible with my spiritual practice and plausible in the context of changing the economic and social circumstances for most if not all of humanity, it had to at least meet these two essential criteria.

WSWS.org led me deeper into the political thinking and leadership of those who I now regard as our foremost political thinkers and leaders namely, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg. It is their individual political rigour that impresses me most, but underpinning their scholarly approach to politics is a very evident sense of caring for their fellow beings. What I found within the WSWS.org political story as it relates to Leon Trotsky in particular is well expressed by David North, chairperson of the International Editorial Board of WSWS.org –

“A study of Trotsky’s writings is essential not only for an understanding of the politics of the twentieth century, but also for the purpose of orienting oneself politically in the very complex world of the twenty-first century… Trotsky provided a timeless demonstration of the power of ideas and ideals that correspond to and articulate the progressive strivings of humanity.”

(‘In Defence of Leon Trotsky’ – David North, Mehring Books 2013 p7)

The political rigour and discipline of Marx and Trotsky et al; appears to be an ongoing tradition among the journalists working for WSWS.org. For me, their political story telling is among the bravest, most honest and caring that I have ever read. Take the story of Yuri Primakov for example, he is the 87-year-old son of Markovitch Primakov a hero of the 1917 October Revolution, Yuri among other grandchildren of the revolution was recently interviewed by a WSWS.org journalist –

“They didn’t care about money and they truly believed in communism. They were convinced that they had to fight for the betterment of humankind, not just for the improvement of their own material position. If you compare that to the elites today, who don’t give a damn about the people and are interested only in the market rates of their companies on the stock exchange, then you can see what degradation has taken place.”

Were it not for this underlying sense of caring for the well-being of humanity and their strong commitment toward replacing the current profit driven systems of governance with an international socialism to meet the needs of most if not all humanity, I would find the often brutal honesty of WSWS.org political reporting to be depressing. Thankfully I don’t, on the contrary, nowadays the ICFI/SEP/WSWS.org is my chosen source of political information.

As indicated above, my world view and spiritual practice draws on a contemporary philosophical understanding of our place in the cosmos, as well as our newly emerging scientific understanding of how ‘each being of the planet is profoundly implicated in the existence and functioning of every other being of the planet’. As such I am now also confident that PaGaian Cosmology is a spiritual practice that does what Trotsky recommended we do in that it takes ‘the best possible tools of the latest technology’ –

“Spiritual culture is just as contradictory as material culture. And just as from the arsenals and warehouses of material culture we put into circulation not the bow and arrow, not stone tools or bronze age tools, but we take the best possible tools of the latest technology, – we must approach spiritual culture in just the same way”.

(‘Socialism & Culture’ – LeonTrotsky 1927)

Trotsky’s conception of Marxism as the ‘science of perspective’ also gives me confidence in arguing that my world view and spiritual practice is compatible with a classical Marxist international revolutionary Socialism –

As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy… It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

(Karl Marx 1844)

This is how Marx perceives and reveals to us a careful and most valuable understanding of spirituality, philosophy, history and politics. This is the kind of scientific rigour that has enabled me to build on and make progress from Thomas Berry’s Unifying principle, then to GlenYs Livingstone’s PaGaian Cosmology and eventually to Leon Trotsky’s concept of an international revolutionary socialism.

As with our spiritual vision, so too with our ecological and social visions, they are planetary by nature and PaGaian by name.

(Livingstone & Seaborne 2014)

Southern Spring 2014.

Godless Communism or Goddess Communalism?

Posted on January 26, 2014 by malpagaia

I strongly suspect that a spiritual mass movement away from a ‘Divine Capitalism’ might be a necessary prerequisite if a revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class by the working class is to succeed. For most of our productive civilisation – let’s say the Holocene period about 10,000 years, a ruling class has held the working class in a kind of spiritual headlock. I use the word ‘headlock’ deliberately because ultimately it is the story going on between our ears that has the biggest influence on our personal and social circumstances; a fact Rosa Luxemburg knew all too well –

“Parallel to this the clergy, helping the capitalists and serving their own needs enchain the mind of the people, hold it down in crass ignorance, for they well understand that education would put an end to their power. Well, the clergy falsifying the early teaching of Christianity, which had as its object the earthly happiness of the lowly, tries today to persuade the toilers that the suffering and the degradation which they endure come not from a defective social structure, but from heaven, from the will of “Providence”. Thus the Church kills in the workers the strength, the hope, and the will for a better future, kills their faith in themselves and their self-respect. The priests of today, with their false and poisonous teachings, continually maintain the ignorance and degradation of the people.”

(‘Socialism & The Churches’ – Rosa Luxemburg 1905).

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1905/misc/socialism-churches.htm

Evidently prior to and during earlier periods of the Holocene there was little or no class distinction, it was a time in our human story when communal ways of knowing, being and production of people’s daily needs amounted to an early form of communism or better still communalism. It was a time when our material culture and spiritual culture were kept in better balance, when people maintained a closer relationship with their environment, a time when the most significant human inventions took place, a time when our lineage was determined via our biological mothers, a time when the deity was still female, a time when as children we all sat in the lap of the Goddess.

“Ancient women oriented groupings were the original communism. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx recognized this. Engels especially refers to the Mother-right concepts of J.J. Bachofen and both men based their analyses of social development on the primary existence of ancient matriarchies – ie; communal matrifocal systems.”

( ‘The Great Cosmic Mother – Marx and the Matriarchy’ – Barbara Mor 1987).

Throughout the Holocene there has been no shortage of great thinkers and story-tellers coming from both the material and spiritual perspective who have inspired, taught, advised and led the majority of us. Unfortunately it is also true that for most of this period such relatively gifted individuals came together to form groups that have been allowed, even encouraged by the majority of us to morph into roles of leadership whereby they then almost inevitably want to increase their power, privilege and control over the rest of us. Allowing a small minority of our fellow human beings to have power and control over the majority of us has proven to be a fundamental and for many, painful mistake.

As indicated in the above reference to early matriarchal societies, evidence that such centralised community control is not necessary for human survival, let alone our material and spiritual well-being, can be found among most traditional indigenous cultures. I personally know this to be so from my own experience of living among the Anangu of Central Australia (1990-98), who had cultivated Lore (the Tjukurpa) that among other things deliberately avoided the emergence of a relatively small centralised group for the purpose of having power and control over the majority of their kin.

Thanks to the science of Anthropology we now have plenty of evidence that the majority of us humans have been more than capable of producing our daily needs and looking after ourselves for most of the past ten thousand years. During the Holocene period our material and spiritual well-being has benefited from communal cooperation over land, resources and the means of production, most of which was held in common. So, what if any were the benefits of allowing a small minority of our kin to have power and take control over the majority of us? The only reason that comes to my mind is that it enabled a better defence of the community and its resources against attack or threats from outside the group, village, town or city. No doubt there are many valid ways of storying why and how such threats and subsequent centralised control came into being, for example – growing population, settlement, diminishing territory and resources etc: Nowadays similar stories and reasoning continue and are being fully exploited by a post industrial age ruling class through their nation-state and capitalist systems of governance.

This is where the cunning of the ruling class comes into being, be it originating from among the shaman, warrior, spiritual leader/healer, elder, war-lord, emperor, king, queen, prime minister, president or simply from clever more attractive story-tellers. Unfortunately, as they increasingly enjoy having power, privilege and control over their fellow kin they simultaneously decrease their cooperation and reciprocity toward them. Once they find themselves in such centralised positions of power and control, it is only a matter of time before these so-called leaders start making up stories that instil fear and insecurity into the hearts and minds of the majority, the most effective of which are those that exploit our spiritual vulnerability.

It is our spiritual culture, our sense that there is more to this world than what meets our five main senses that makes us human. We are unique among the animal world because this greater sense of things enabled us to become creatively productive, invent tools, verbal and written language, numeracy, agriculture, weaving, pottery, metallurgy, the technology to further our understanding and celebration of a creative cosmos and not least, our ability to care for each other – including the other than human. However, becoming planet Earth’s one and only spiritual story telling species obviously comes at a cost, such story telling is so powerful an invention that it has made the majority of us vulnerable to a minority ruling class that has long since learned how to use this spiritual mind altering tool to their own advantage, at the expense of a working class majority.

“Instead of comforting the people, who are full of cares and wearied by their hard lives, who go to church with faith in Christianity, the priests fulminate against the workers who are on strike, and against the opponents of the government; further, they exhort them to bear poverty and oppression with humility and patience. They turn the church and the pulpit into a place of political propaganda…

The clergy and the parasitic capitalists hate the organised working-class, conscious of its rights, which fights for the conquest of its liberties. For the abolition of capitalist mix-rule and the establishment of equality between men would strike a mortal blow especially at the clergy which exists only thanks to exploitation and poverty. But above all, Socialism aims at assuring to humanity an honest and solid happiness here below, to give to the people the greatest possible education and the first place in Society. It is precisely this happiness here on earth which the servants of the Church fear like the plague.

(ibid – Rosa Luxemburg 1905)

So where can we now find both contemporary spiritual and secular stories that not only re-story a balance between our material and spiritual culture, but even more urgently, inspire a working class revolutionary overthrow of a domineering, repressive ruling class? From my PaGaian perspective such empowering stories must place our spiritual, ecological and social needs squarely into a global context, for example –

(ibid – Barbara Mor 1987).

Nowadays my primary day-to-day source of political information is the World Socialist Website – WSWS.org and the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), where I find honest journalism and a political story that emphasises socialist internationalism and human equality, which for me is a prerequisite for the proper governance of all society. For this particular story/blog I have also been inspired by a recently published article in the independent socialist magazine Monthly Review entitled ‘Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature’ by John Bellamy Foster, Vol. 65 Dec 2013. And from two books entitled ‘PaGaian Cosmology’ written by my partner Glenys Livingstone PhD, and ‘The Great Cosmic Mother’ written by Barbara Mor, both of whom express profound story and poetry of how all of Leon Trotsky’s “toilers and exploited” might yet achieve their “full material and spiritual liberation”.

(‘Socialism & Culture’ – Leon Trotsky 1927)

Given the all-pervasive Judeo Christian religions of Europe during the epochs of our greatest political thinkers ie Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, it is not surprising that they and those of us who have since been influenced by them have found it difficult, nigh impossible to “take the best possible tools of the latest technology” with respect to the production of spiritual culture and why so many of us have felt the need for “thoroughly sweeping aside religion and all its surrogates” (ibid – Leon Trotsky 1927).

During the decades since the deaths of our leading socialist thinkers, science has continued to reveal an abundance of new information about the Universe, the planet’s biosphere and human biology in particular. So much so, that the oppressive Judeo Christian religious influence on the spiritual culture of their respective epochs – so rightly condemned by them, has now been even more thoroughly exposed as the inert and increasingly dangerous illusion that it always was and still is. Throughout their human story – lets say since the Neolithic about 5000 years, theocratic patriarchal religions combined with divisive nation-state systems, racism, chauvinism and their belief in a so-called after life, have served only to maintain the power, privilege and control of the ruling class over the working class – mostly over peasants and slaves. Nothing serves the need of the ruling class to constantly divide and conquer the working class better than theocratic religions. We can now see evidence of this live every day on our TV and computer screens.

If indeed the earlier matriarchal period of human culture can be described as a period of ‘Goddess Communalism’, why do we then arrive at a so-called period of ‘Godless Communism’? Unfortunately, there was and probably still is a perceived repudiation of spirituality by Marx, Engels et al; which I believe is incorrect but nevertheless has albeit inadvertently, contributed to the ruling class being able to maintain – even tighten, its spiritual headlock on the working class. Be this as it may, how and why could it happen? Here is a plausible answer –

“They rightly wanted to save humanity from religious exploitation; but in their narrowing of focus, their economic and class reductiveness, they split the human being into two conflicting parts: material existence versus spiritual existence… this split reinforced the same “alienation” of the human condition that Marx had wanted to resolve… It has given fuel to the propaganda engines of the reactionary systems in all countries, so that the world is ripped apart in a false dichotomy between “Godless communism” and “divine capitalism.” For if communism is atheistic, its opponents can claim to be mandated by God. However phony this clam might be… Finally, it has turned away untold millions of oppressed human beings who need the economic and social analysis of Marxism to clarify and change their situations, but who fear they are being asked to buy this analysis at the price of their living souls… This perception of Marxism has helped to fuel the equally fanatic revivals of fundamentalist religions throughout the world today.”

(ibid – Barbara Mor 1987)

If Barbara Mor is only partially correct, those of us working class who want to contribute to a successful revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class need to carefully analyse what she is saying. Marx was obviously not repudiating spirituality as such, at worst and given his European epoch, it can and is being suggested that he was confusing the main stream Judeo Christian religion of his epoch with spirituality. Be that as it may, I agree with B. Mor that Marx was a compassionate man and that he is here revealing the difference between his own spirituality and main stream religion, with these often misquoted words –

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people… Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

(Hegel’s Philosophy of Right – Karl Marx 1843)

With the benefit of decades of scientific storying and the gift of a poetic ritual practice, my partner Glenys Livingstone is able to echo the environment and words of Karl Marx –

“Yet it seems to me that most of what has passed for theology has ended up actually a description of a dead butterfly pinned in a glass case, not one that is alive and flitting about the garden…”.

(‘PaGaian Cosmology’ – Glenys Livingstone 2005)

http://pagaiancosmology.com/

Toward the end of the 15^th century Feudalism had passed its use by date and people replaced it with Capitalism, six centuries later, Capitalism has past its use by date and a growing number of us believe there is now an urgent need to replace this out of date economic system with its emphasis on private profit – only ever being enjoyed by a small minority, with a Socialism that can provide a decent and sustainable standard of living for most if not all of the planet’s population.

Thanks to science we know that they existed long before there were human fingers to pick or eyes to observe them, so how might we juxtapose Marx’s living flower and Livingstone’s flitting butterfly with their opposites ie; the inert imagined flowers on the chain and the dead butterfly pinned in a glass case? Being able to physically pick the ‘living flower’ and observe the ‘flitting butterfly’ is to be able to deliberately participate in a pre-existing planetary relationship identified by Marx as the ‘universal metabolism of nature’, a relationship that was eventually entered into by a productive, material and spiritual culture making human. Marx was evidently concerned about the change in the nature of the metabolism between the human and the rest of the ecosystem (including other species) that is at the heart of the life threatening problems we now face. It is a relationship that is being rifted apart by “Capitalist production” and about which he wrote in Capital Volume 1. 637-38 –

“Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the technique and the degree of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker”.

Not only was Karl Marx a great scholar of socio economics he also had an environmental awareness that was well ahead of his time. Some of our most eminent contemporary scientists now argue that Marx’s ‘metabolic rift’ between the human and the rest of nature well represents a major threat to our survival.

“It is not an exaggeration to suggest, based on the best available scientific evidence, that burning all fossil fuels could result in the planet being not only ice-free but human-free”.

(‘An Old Story But Useful Lessons’ – James Hansen 2013)

The only memory I have of getting out of a tight headlock was during one of my boyhood school yard scraps when I grabbed my assailant’s ankles and upended him. Now that has me thinking, rather than trying to overthrow the ruling class, maybe we can somehow just upend them? Either way I agree with Barbara Mor that –

We need a new, global spirituality – an organic spirituality that belongs innately to all of us, as the children of the earth… We are living in a world that practices the politics of death… The political art of living. The spiritual art of being alive. For, from now on out (from now on in), genuine, global spiritual awareness will be the vanguard of all successful human revolution.”

(ibid – Barbara Mor 1987)

Malpataffy

Southern Summer 2014.

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At last, a plausible political story.

Posted on December 25, 2013 by malpagaia

why and how I found WSWS.org and the SEP

For most of my adult working life I have been interested in politics and since emigrating to Australia in 1967 I voted Labor for about three decades then since the turn of the century I voted for Green party candidates. My most active political period was between 1975 and 1990 when as a member of the Victorian Public Service Association I was regularly elected to represent my fellow forestry workers. From my political perspective, since the sacking of Gough Whitlam in 1975 Australian Labor was moving further to the political ‘right’ and hence my eventual decision to start voting for the Greens whom I considered to be the best of a very ordinary bunch of political parties.

Apart from their obvious move to the ‘right’ another significant reason for my declining interest in politics was my new partnership and spiritual practice both of which commenced around the turn of the century. My partner Glenys Livingstone PhD is the author of our spiritual practice – ‘PaGaian Cosmology’ and hence the best person to describe such a practice –

“The term “PaGaian” requires some explanation: it expresses a reclaiming of the term “Pagan” as meaning a person who dwells in “country”, yet with “Gaian” spliced in, it expresses a renewed and contemporary understanding of that “country”. “Gaia” is a name for humanity’s Habitat, an ancient yet new name, which I understand to include whole Earth and Cosmos – there is no seam separating Earth from Her context. And Pagan religious tradition offers a spiritual practice of celebrating Earth-Sun Creativity manifest in this Habitat.”

http://web.archive.org/web/20121027094059/http://pagaian.org/book/preface

There is nothing ‘illusory’ about our celebration of planet Earth’s solstice and equinox moments, it is not just an observance of the natural ‘laws of motion’ but a celebration of them, it is not just a matter of ‘common ownership’, it is more a natter of common relationship. PaGaian Cosmology as a spiritual practice is as its author Glenys Livingstone has always intended it to be, ‘a catalyst for personal and cultural change’ and as such it became the primary story and life influence going on between my ears. Because of my evolving world-view and personal values, over a corresponding period of time, politics became less relevant to me. From about the year 2005, whenever it came time to vote at a local, state or federal election it bothered me that I struggled to choose a candidate just because voting in Australia is compulsory. Around election time Glenys and I often spoke about our choices of political candidates and it was during one such conversation and me having introduced some sentiment for politically ‘left’ Marxism that Glenys alerted me to one of her many feminist books entitled ‘The Great Cosmic Mother – Rediscovering The Religion of the Earth’ (written and illustrated by Barbara Mor and Monica Sjoo 1987).

The extent to which certain chapters of Mor’s book re-ignited my interest in politics and has since led me to finding what I now regard as the only remaining plausible political party and story left (excuse the pun) on the planet, is important enough for me to want to quote extensively from her work –

“Ancient woman-oriented groupings were the original communism. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx recognized this. Engels especially refers to the Mother–right concepts of J.J. Bachofen, and both men based their analyses of social development on the primary existence of ancient matriarchies – ie., communal matrifocal systems. In this they were influenced by the writings of Lewis Morgan, an American anthropologist… But, pioneers that they were, neither Morgan, Engels, nor Marx were fully aware of women’s real functions and achievements in past cultures. Nor were they tuned in to the total gestalt of early peoples. With Marx and Engels – and in particular with their dogmatic interpreters and followers – a narrowing of focus to strictly economic and class analysis has totally obscured the original human state of being, which was more profoundly spiritual than economic. This Marxist narrowing of focus, and its consequent denial of human spiritual experience, has had tragic repercussions throughout the world…

How did this happen? Karl Marx (Engels as well) was a deeply compassionate man; his “opium of the people” statement, which is never fairly quoted, is evidence of this:… (p:13)

“No one has said it better, or more clearly recognized the human being’s absolute right to cling to “spirit” in “a spiritless situation,” and to “heart” in “a heartless world.” Because spirit and heart are real; and they alone have helped millions of human beings survive in otherwise unsurvivable situations… Seeing these things, Marxists rightly condemned the collusion of established religions in the historic oppression of human beings. Tragically they also denied the reality of the human spirit and its genuine longings. They rightly wanted to save humanity from religious exploitation; but in their narrowing of focus, their economic and class reductiveness, they split the human into two conflicting parts: material existence versus spiritual existence…” (p:14)

“Finally, it has turned away untold millions of oppressed human beings who need the economic and social analysis of Marxism to clarify and change their situations, but who fear they are being asked to buy this analysis at the price of their living souls… Marxism stands – unfortunately, in the perception of too many people – as a total, fanatical repudiation of spiritual reality… Marx and Engels confused spirit with established religion – as their doctrinaire followers continue to do – because, as Western white males, they could not see the total paradigm of ancient women’s original communism.” (p:15)

“A truly human politics must study the entire history of the world’s religions and spiritual beliefs. It must try to return to or move toward spiritual systems that are harmonious with all our visions of creative communal life… Because this is what is missing under both of the competing “world powers”: a creative communal life. Both systems – Western capitalism and Soviet communism – are based on the denial of communal celebration.” (p:16)

“The Christian churches and the Western Capitalist ruling elites have always worked together as a machine, in Foucault’s sense, that perpetuates and rationalises the advantage of the few, while maintaining the many in a condition of productive repression, via ideological control and channelling of their sexual-spiritual energies.” (p:337)

“How can one find a truly revolutionary solution without radically changing the terms and cosmological assumptions of the problem?” (p:343)

“On a global scale, therefore, it is no longer possible to speak of a labor force separate from women workers; and by the same token, it is no longer possible to analyse the management of labor production separately from the management of female reproduction.” (p:362)

“Historic “revolutions” in the West have effectively done little more than add new economic groups to the collusion, eg; the eighteenth and nineteenth century addition of the European bourgeoisie to the ruling elites of Europe, or the more complex twentieth century addition of the Soviet political military elite to the fascistic power organisation of the West generally.” (p:398)

“A truly radical cooperative communalism that was at the root of human consciousness and culture… To know it existed in the past is to give its future existence not only credibility, but empowerment; we need this confidence of precedence not only as a core of spiritual vision, but as the core of our political vision.” (P:407)

And so, we can make no separation between “spirituality” and “politics.” We are this world, we cannot leave it. We can only work to transform it as we transform ourselves, in acts of evolution and revolution. The genius of Michel Foucault, surely was that he showed us so clearly and so precisely how politics is everything that happens to the body. On earth, mind and spirit are definitively embodied. The notion that “mind” and “spirit” can be abstracted from the body is a patriarchal lie; and a continuance of this lie is the notion that we can indulge in a “spirituality” that is “above politics” – that somehow floats above the agony of this present earth like a little blissed-out cloud… Those who embrace “spirituality” as an escape from politics, as a “transcendence” of political exigencies, simply do not understand what feminist spirituality means at its root:” (p:417)

“Liberal programs failed because of their built-in deadness; like many Marxists and Socialists, American liberals fell into the trap of confusing “spirituality” with “religion”. (p:419)

“Such religions do not speak for God, they merely reiterate patriarchal rationalizations for the status quo; such rationalizations are all self-serving for the people in power, and therefore lies told to the rest of us. Biology makes mistakes; it does not lie.

We need a new, global spirituality – an organic spirituality that belongs innately to all of us, as the children of the earth… We are living in a world that practices the politics of death…

(p: 421-422)

While I found all of the above expression inspiring, it is the part I underline from page 418 of Mor’s book – “This time it will be a global consciousness of our global oneness, and it will realize itself on a very sophisticated technological stage; with perhaps a total merger of psychic and electronic activity.” that was of particular interest to me. These words more than any other inspired me to search the World Wide Web where I eventually found the World Socialist Web Site WSWS.org and the political story of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP). From my PaGaian Cosmology perspective two key words within the SEP story were ‘internationalism’ – which I liken to my understanding of the name Gaia and the word ‘equality’ – which I liken to my understanding of our human relatedness, captured my attention. In summary, finding a political story that was not restricted to the borders of a particular nation state, that did not not express as chauvinism, that did not rely on religious, political nor economic ‘illusion’, was for me a political revelation. I was also much encouraged after reading the words of Leon Trotsky who in 1938 when celebrating the founding of the Fourth International said – “We are not a party like other parties… our aim is the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and exploited…”.

After reading day to day updates on the WSWS for about a year I decided it expressed plausible enough political story for me to relate to and be inspired by. Each day I learn a bit more about the history of the SEP, about the ongoing class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, either via WSWS.org, its podcasts and or my growing SEP library. I am looking forward to learning more and I am particularly interested in a further examination of Barbara Mor’s critique of Marxism and my own notion of PaGaian Cosmology as a nature based spiritual practice that is compatible with Marx’s ‘dialectical materialism’.

Earlier this year I was encouraged by a member of the Sydney branch of the SEP to attend a public meeting as part of the 15 year review and celebration of the WSWS. During this meeting I was further inspired by the main speaker David North, so much so that I have decided to join the SEP and to support the party to the best of my ability.

why and how I found WSWS.org and the SEP

As with our spiritual vision, so too with our ecological and social visions,

they are planetary by nature and PaGaian by name.

Taffy Seaborne

Southern Summer 2013.