Occupy a pleasant surprise

This evening I was pleasantly surprised after deciding to give the Occupy Vancouver Rally another try during their general assembly. What I saw there was beautiful. A large group of facilitators were entertaining a discussion with the supporters. They were laying the foundations for how the movement would proceed, and laying out their process for voicing the issues at hand. It was a passionate dance of steps forward and back, but those steps were all taken together and by the end of the meeting progress had been made.

            The inclusive nature of the decision making process stood in as stark a contrast to the corporate world as that of the Art Gallery amid the banks, hotels, and shopping malls surrounding it. The facilitators were patient, encouraging; open to all voices, and most importantly, true to their own process. They acknowledged all voices and worked towards solutions. They effectively created an air of positive change.

            I was told that before I had arrived, they had discussed the issue of smoking. While they had found it a difficult subject to find consensus on, they were open to further suggestion and making future attempts to remedy the situation and find a workable solution.

            My hope is that the actions of all involved continue down the path so lovingly laid out this evening. I cannot express how beautiful it was to see such a large crowd of people standing up and asserting their choice in such a positive way. I would encourage any and all to join us in the coming days and weeks. Let us stand together and find solutions that better us all.

Occupy

There has been a lot of social media coverage about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. It is striking a chord with people of all races and creeds in North America. It’s not hard to see why, our society is rife with social, ecological, financial and pretty much any other type of injustice one could imagine.

            While the main focus of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, is (as I understand it); to bring the financial speculation sector to an end and to hold those responsible for the recent financial collapse and subsequent pilfering of the American people’s treasury accountable for their actions, many other causes are rallying under their banner.

            This afternoon I went down to the “Occupy Vancouver” event, which aims to support our neighbours to the south, and to voice the growing sentiment that there also need to be changes made here in Canada. It was wonderful to see so many people gathered together to voice and demonstrate their frustrations peacefully. It was also wonderful to see the number of people steadily increasing. There were a wide range of signs and causes being touted. From signs calling for a complete over-haul of our society to signs about such ecologically and politically charged issues as the tar sands. There were banners from 9/11 conspiracy theorists to vegan activists. There was a meditation circle and a small tent city that is sure to grow over the coming weeks.

There were some beautiful signs and sentiments at the rally. For example, a few of my yogi friends’ signs were all lovingly asking us to consider that we are all one and to abandon our society`s desire to separate us from each other. A beautiful idea indeed.

            I was not able to stay for very long, not because I didn’t want to or because I had somewhere else to be, but because I have Cystic Fibrosis. Unfortunately for me, large portions of the crowd (or at least large enough that it would be detrimental to my lungs) were smoking. I left, wishing that I could have stayed longer. However, in the short time that I was there, I was struck by several things.

            The first obviously had to do with the smoking. I found it interesting that; at rally to tell one group that they need to stop and think of how their actions affect the rest of us, there were so many people so unaware of how their actions might affect others around them, even within their own group. My hope in sharing this experience is not to judge or condemn, but only to ask and illustrate the question; how often do we stop to consider how our actions affect those around us?

            The next thing that struck me was the amount of signs that were pointing out problems versus the amount that were offering solutions. Our society seems to be avoiding the progression from acknowledging a problem, to offering a solution. In terms of creating a better world, the phrase “where attention goes, energy flows”, has never been of greater concern. We seem to be reaching a critical mass in our world, where our outrage at the problems is only adding our energy to them and helping them to grow. What would it do for us as a society if we started having a more balanced reaction to the problems? If instead of ignoring them until they ballooned to epic proportions and then adding the energy of our outrage to them to further inflate them, we started paying attention and being vigilant? What if we also started acknowledging the problem, offering a, or several solutions and putting our energy and focus towards those solutions? What would our world look like then?

            The world around us is made up of the consequences of our choices. When we are lazy or unwilling to make an informed choice for our self, we ARE making a choice and contributing to the “problem”. We have all made the choices that have brought us to this state of affairs. It is disconcerting, to say the least, to have to acknowledge that we are ALL responsible. It is also however, freeing, knowing that we can make a new choice at any given moment and move the entirety of our world in a new, healing, loving, conscientious direction.

            Let’s all get together and acknowledge where our choices have brought us, and start making new positive choices; from what we eat and where our food comes from, to how much waste we produce, to who we choose to support as consumers, and everything in between. Let’s not just “Occupy Wall Street”, let’s Occupy Our Lives.