Laying down the script (remembering egalitarianism)

I haven’t written for awhile as we have been very busy tending the milpa and tree sanctuary. With deep joy and gratitude, I have been weeding, carrying logs, and walking around with loppers giving all our plant siblings haircuts, my hands encrusted with soil most days.

Our summer retreat was so sweet, weaving together many remembrances of our birthrights, that came more clearly as we walked and rested with the land, and felt the healing and whispers of the sacred creek waters. As our bodies relaxed, we could hear more and see and imagine life beyond current constructs.

We also intentionally expand beyond our limited programmed mind into dream states to the beat of the drum and by intentionally reflecting on our night and day dreams while most open and clear.  Working collectively always has special medicine and this year I feel this group experience facilitated seeing my own limitations more clearly.

I was having wild dreams each night that were showing me in the extreme, fear based narratives or trauma remembering that I have carried for years, such as fears of death, betrayal, everything falling apart. At this age it is easier to look back and see that I have carried these so long and they are old.  I began playing with them, asking: what would life be like if I intentionally laid down that script?

Which has led me to reflecting on and living into the egalitarianism of all our ancestors. Most pre-conquest peoples who lived in small bands  with shared resources, connected to Mother Earth (without constructs of separation, private property, ownership) were/are naturally egalitarian.

In her book, Pristine Affluence, Livia Kohn examines how Daoist monasteries are essentially in seeking spiritual liberation and clarity, returning to the way of our hunter gatherer ancestors who were egalitarian.

There is a clarity that comes when we remember our birthright is equality.

When we remember that the hierarchy and resulting inequity, violence and trauma, are based on nation state constructs that are not intrinsic to us.

Who are we when we are just listening inside and to All life around us? When we are honoring our heart wisdom and longing, the pulse of life that wants to move through us?

There is a way that having ridden the wave of life on the edge of society as a foster youth, allows me to crack these things open, to find my way back to possibility. I know nothing needs to be the way it is, we can shake things up. We may have to move through the grief and pain over the oppression that is very real, but we can reclaim a path to liberation.

A potent example is when after the fires, the latin community was feeling that they could not ask for help because they were used to being oppressed as migrants. Then a group of mamas took back their power and said, ‘we are essential to this community, we do all of the essential work, we are not hiding anymore.’  They laid down the script.

When I kept facing barriers to land access which replicated the marginalization I experienced as an orphan and immigrant daughter, I held fast to my belonging on Mama Tierra and planted seeds in every little bit of land I could find.

It may sound  ‘revolutionary’ but it is really just returning.

With all of the nation state oppressive constructs ramping up into global capitalism, we have become so conditioned to living a tamped down life, to ‘fighting’ for human rights, to begging for scraps from the wealth held in the hands of the few.

We can’t control so much of what is happening in society, but we can take our inner child in our arms, and say

“there is a wholeness, an intrinsic worth and vitality that has been lost, that I am going to reclaim for you.”

This is what working in the milpa shows me.

We amend the soil with rich compost, plant seeds, give water and she sprouts forth Life, Life, Life!

Corn mother stands tall, squash sister spreads out, bean sister climbs, amaranth, verdolaga, chiles, tomatoes and diverse resilient weeds all proliferate. Latent seeds hidden deep in the earth pop up, every day a new friend to reconnect with. The abundance and regeneration bursts forth.

 

When I lay down the scripts of fear, trauma and social conditioning,

I stop and

rest to let my nervous system down regulate and expand,

use my imagination/dream play to remember

an egalitarian life way,

unhindered

guided only by the abundance and vitality of Mother Earth.

 

I give the fear back to the systems of control and oppression,

and I ask Mother Earth and Creator/All life to help me remember

who I would be if all I knew was feet in the dirt, ears to the water, wind and tree elders,

eyes on the glorious budding leaves and brilliant flowers, animal

friends all around, and community who honored the brilliance and gifts of each other.

“If I knew myself to be a child of Mother Earth, that her growth and regeneration is within me, within my child/family, and emerging all around me always.. what would this be like, how would I move differently?”

Every time we lay down an oppressive script and reach toward our wholeness, interdependence and equality,

we are reclaiming ourselves in the main way that is available to us in the moment.

We are coming back to Life, Life, Life!!

—

 

(Beautiful pics of the land by Carrie Browne)