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Abundance... The word invites contemplation of polarities and perhaps even paradoxes. We contrast and/or connect it with greed and scarcity, as well as contentment and sustainability.  

Where do we choose to source abundance?  What forms and levels of abundance are possible and healthy for us individually, in our communities and for the planet as a whole?  Occupy Cafe steward Pia Lizana will be our special guest conversation starter as we explore this theme together on Monday's Cafe Call.

As always, we also invite you to begin the conversation right now on this forum, and to continue it here once our call is complete.  We are starting with the following question on the forum:

What is your relationship with the concept of abundance?

On the call, we will be asking these questions:

What are your challenges around abundance?

Where do you see opportunities to expand and share the experience of abundance?

 

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Pia 

Facing the inner transformation you point to in regards to abundance is beautiful.  Especially the notion of integrated wholeness, peacefulness and maturity in living realization.  It appears to me that we parachuted into a world surrounding us like in the womb as a fetus you pointed to.  This quote may be useful in what you are pointing to. The task is owning our own body, power, and wholeness in the dualistic swept along drift in power.  Thanks

Deena Metzger's notion of “Personal Disarmament”

“In a small country, those in power have, long ago, forced all those not belonging to their group to reservations far from the cities and power centers.  The government is a dictatorship, an apartheid.  The dictator, and the power base he is supported by, knows little of the culture, values, or spirituality of their perceived enemies.  Fear and control are behind every decision.  It is believed that if those without power ever came to prominence, the entire way of being of the country would be threatened.  One day there is a serious power outage.  The power lines have been cut.  Power, which has been the major export and resource of this country, has stopped flowing entirely.  The government is paralyzed.  The marginalized groups do not deny they cut the lines, but assert that the power has always belonged to them….”

Scribing the final harvest:

  • We have native american tribes here for 1000s of years without writing, prisons, codified laws, etc. Yet they lived in dignity and "adorning one another's beauty," and some still do this today.  A desire for continuing the dialogue around how we are projecting scarcity and fear.
  • People will get together and bring about real change by gathering in small ways to share abundance of comraderie and scare the bejeezus out of those who control the world
  • Feeling dizzy from the conversation and where our ideas about abundance and "the economy" come from.  Arc of the universe bending towards justice..." and yet there is this undertow/turbulence of Empire Building, war and concentration of power in material terms that has been going on for thousands of years.  It's always been this way, just different costumes.
  • My head spinning too... can't help but be impacted by prevailing sense of scarcity.  Challenge=a different level of consciousness in feeling comfortable where I'm at.  A huge leap.  How can people move from this sense of lack and trauma? Our soldiers are committing suicide. How do feel connected to something that cares about us?
  • suicide/genocide=a cutting off.  Experience of separateness versus seeing the value/dignity/beauty in one another that can release the generosity of our spirit.

Scribing "overtime harvest:"

  • Are the Native Americans willing to speak and share what they know? my sense is that they are not willing at this time.  
    • appreciative inquiry and dialogue requires relationships and the time to really tell the story and have it be heard.
    • fear of being in an argument and not being listened to.
  • Energy in earlier conversations related to patriarchy connects to native america issues as well.  maybe a monthly call on these topics might be useful?
    • re safety... different values and ways of communicating in native traditions.   more silence and waiting.  can we create that kind of space on the phone?
    • note re "interrupting compassionately" on these calls--also ask people to be sure to really listen first.
  • tending our gardens to create small bits of abundance.
  • breathing, and allowing silence and stillness to work its magic, feeling connectedness.  space is opened up.  experience of natural law, coming into presence.  first experience of this was like hitting a brick wall at first.  breaking through that into something that is more of a song and less of an argument is the gift native peoples have to offer us.
  • personal experience of the challenges of connecting with native americans.  be clear about the offering and the exchange, and work through people who already have connections in place.
  • hard to know on these calls if silence is being enjoyed or is a sign of politeness or a technical glitch.  what if we hummed during moments of silence to hold the space?

This sounds like it was a beautiful call. I'm sorry I missed it.

The sense of "head-spinning" we heard at the end of today's Cafe Call, and in particular the notion that we've been at this war-mongering, scarcity-creating game for millennia and nothing has really changed (and by implication, nothing ever will), has reinforced for me the importance of telling New Stories.  I posted a blog here last week that mentioned a few of my favorites among the many sources out there.

It's a theme that has come up repeatedly for me in a variety of contexts, and that explains why so many thinkers I admire have made the telling of New Stories such a priority.  What is the New Story we might want to craft collectively, and then manifest, here at Occupy Cafe?

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