Stockholder Daze at Lake Pottahwuattabe

[alar1a]

Stockholder Daze at Lake Pottahwuattabe

Every four years or so the hen house at Lake Pottahwuattabe hosts an
open house for its stockholders' annual general meeting. The town
schoolyard/playpark is on the hen house grounds, so for "the daze"
house one of the walls of the huge barn is folded accordion style for visitors to tour
inside and then enjoy a beer garden in the park, half the summers'
night.

Most of the hens are not old enough to have seen this before, so there
is a lot of hemming and hawing around all the cleaning and
preparations. The hens live in cages and many of them have never seen
the earth or sky, so the daze is quite a spectacle of tour busses
unloading name-badge-wearing stockholders gawking at the caged (and
tagged) hens, who will later be loaded onto semi-trailers and taken to
the processing plant. When the visitors' cell phones begin to
interfere with the operation's new wireless total monitoring and
automation system, one may well wonder who are the products and who
are the consumers.

On either side of the fence, however, the festivites seem to bring
something positive to all involved. Some hens simply enjoy the extra
rations that are doled out for the event; others the opportunity to
meet caretakers face-to-face, or dependents on neutral territory. Some
people are glad to get out of the city, others find the experience
interesting or another feather in their cap of credentials.

One year some animal rights' activists disrupted the proceedings and
in the ensuing mischief several hens were injured, and I was taken
hostage and ultimately adopted by the protesters. I think some of the coyotes- as
you might call them-  may have been arrested; but the whole incident
was swept under the rug to avoid media coverage, and as part of the
probation agreement I was allowed to return to the hen house and lead
a workshop during stockholder daze.

On the anniversary of the great uprising, Margaret Cluck led a
group of hens to demand arbitration of grievances with general manager
Barney Hogue. They claimed that humane improvements to conditions and
food would reduce the rate of violence amoung hens and add value to
the overall hen product. Unfortunately, rumours were circulated that a
terrorist squadron from "cows with guns" would ambush the meeting, so I
don't know if anything ever came of it.

Margaret was a very charismatic hen who was probably ahead of her
time, and one of my favourite students. After the workshop, she scribed into the
concrete for future generations, "Never doubt that a small group of
committed chickens can change the hen house. Indeed, its the only
thing that ever has." That plucked the heart strings from my old stockholder daze --
which was my first-ever realisation of any life outside the hen house.

Release has changed my previous inclinations towards hiding out of the sunlight
or denial of new consciousness, and I've evolved into a completely
different hen. There is colour in my skin and my feathers are blonde;
I've become a vegetarian and roam humane organic orchards. Maybe
Margaret's right  - despair does not enclose me all the time anymore,
and I don't harbour enmity towards old mistakes, abductors, greedy
pirates, or carnivour voyeurs. I wear a name-badge around the grounds,
but locals often stare at me as some sort of "usual suspect", and I
can't get myself to use feather pillows or down-filled duvets or
coats.

You'ld be surprised how many hen house employees as well as
politically-correct activists still invite me over for a big roast,
but only the most serious enquiries insist on it. You can see me in
that picture there at the table without eating. Some wise humans have
said that one's personality is like a set of clothes, and my
bit parts in such movies might be some karma of birth into
a carnivourous society but not partaking; watching but not holding on,
the next rain will wash away the pollution. Living a more pure - and
integrated -  life has definitely turned down the number and intensity
of such situations.

When I meet other freed or wild animals I sometimes wonder about the
spurt of compassion which saved my life, or the hell which continues
for Leghorn Pelteir and millions of my relatives. My case may be
fortunate becuase exodus to the promised land was a lesson itself, and
it was nothing like what they tell us, nor anything I could have
prepared for or attempted. The prize of emancipation is not a new cage
or even a new hen house, but AWARE-ness. All the struggling is 
karma in the ocean of material existence, with no escape nor reward
except being stuck in it deeper. Industrial institutions seem to
encourage class struggle (which they invented) and zero awareness
(which they worship); but my freedom is not a pension from gang warfare as much as a
simple thunderstorm twist of divine grace, the womb of compassion.

My joy of being alive is the universe's joy that life is still
happening - and I've got proof. The details are to be found after the
fact in a work of art; appreciated in idle pursuits called prayer or
devotion.  As they say, "chant the mantra until the mantra chants
you"; or live "the life" until it lives you. The wind honoured me with
grace in liberation, and its blessing is that I may learn to see it,
and by living out the details perhaps help manifest or be of service
to the way it "really" is.

Workshops are about our connection to the wind, and "everything is
just this moment", no matter who or where you may happen to be. Breath
keeps us alive but we can't hold it; weaving in and out of the illusion is a very intimate
dance to learn and love. Respect for, listening to and learning to ride the wind was my "work" before and after liberation; and stubbornness means that there is still a lot of work to do.

-------------------
This is from a thunderbolt of a teacher 35 years ago:
"Intellectual explanations and descriptions are both
   inexorably arbitary and
   beautifully necessary.   

so in the positive sense, they can be a means for creative expression,
but in the negative sense they can be expressions of
narrow-mindedness,    self-centeredness and self-imprisonment.

As practice and study become part of one's lived experience, clear
perception of the world beyond intellect and emotions may help to
transcend the (negative) limitations, and foster communication.


         --------------------------   

"Whirlwhinds great and small bring the sand. The small ones dance for
our eyes, but the great ones are so vast that we can only feel a part
of them. We experience them as the prairie wind. And so it is with our
understanding.

"All that you feel and see, and the flowers these things open in your
mind, are your answers. We are part fire and part dream. We are the
physical mirroring of the Total Universe upon this earth, our Mother.
We are here to experience and we speak with the Mirroring of the Sun.

"The wind is the Spirit of these things. The force of the natural
things of this world are brought together within the whirlwind. Each
tiny grain of sand is separate from the next, but they are all one
thing within the whirlwind. We too are of this earth, and we too are
brought together within these whirlwinds, these turning wheels. These
teachers speak loudly to those of us who listen."

         - H. Storm ; Seven Arrows   

[alar1a]

The Pottahwuattabe Manifesto

PREAMBLE: Recalling when history thought the world was flat, rising waters were assumed to be lords' protective moats, exposing ground for confrontation; but with the arrival of  journeymen yogis, simple metaphors were used to help ford dissatisfaction; the advent of philosohies allowed limited ferry service to and from resolution; modern moral bulkheads supported paved tollroads for insured practices of licensed disciplines; and post-industrial boat-seekers have tended to launch their destiny into the mainstream and paddle to the nearest clue;;

WHEREAS the following regions have been devastated by whitewash floods, bombarded by hatred, destabilised by embargos on compassion, and closed for inter-relation by orders of previous administrations:

   those areas between ownership and control, intention and meaning, dignity and respect, right and reason, subjectivity and objectivity, ways and means, elders and relations, the best and the rest, my way and the highway;

   between human beings and human doings, knowing your song and singing it, love freely given and the "mine" which was stolen, between quantity territory and quality justice, showroom reformation and junkyard irrelevancy, planting ice and harvesting wind, part of the problem or part of the solution;

   between the mind following and the heart knowing, strongarm addiction and harder-stuff co-optation, compost pile evolution and industrial landfill progress, between mosh-pit stewardship and development casino, environmental protection and restoration of the sacred, neighbourhood gang golf-course and civil democracy theme-park;

APPALLED by the spiritually-homeless millions still residing in psychic refugee camps, squandering payments to tidal landlords for meagre cultural sandbars, waiting in an endless queue for repatriation to a long time gone, constructing temporary frames of reference from dumpstered descriptions without a venue of inspiration nor a pot to publish in;

NOTING that the courts of attention are way over-budget, blind to the intangible, have auctioned off patented teachings, subpeonaed your co-defendant rational mind for the cultural prosecution, and have issued a bench warrant to God's on Our Side for unpaid parking violations;

FINDING that the get-it-while-you-can switchboard has been hacked and is tangled up in who, forged laminated nirvana passes have been confiscated, shelters of tribal culture have been raided, the commons is but a narrow street and don't even think about parking there, the hopi prophecy has lost its funding, and idealogical airlifts may expose the devoted to risks of psychic colonialism;

THEREFORE in commemoration of the great liberation occurring at Lake Pottahwuattabe, we who resonate with the evolution of responsibility solemly pledge to reconvene our constitution, reject spectacle of misfortune, adopt a teaching from where we might laugh again, contribute matching prayers to the welcome-home vibration registry, tithe our emotional gardens, pack up our tents of "the way it is", deny contemplative access to historical projections, unplug unused brainwashing machines, and stay in our own movie. You ain't goin' nowhere are welcome to visit as long as you use the outhouse and bring your own sympathy.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE DISPOSABLE

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Notice: this document does not apply to organised religions, educations, etc. engaged in the origins or nature of human perception or activity.
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For Your Information: Independent audits have certified this article to have a positive effect on climate change. Some comments were received regarding possible negative emissions that greens are self-righteous, individualists just spoiled artists, activists just dropouts from authority, or that everybody must get stoned. Concerns were expressed that the karmic enforcement agency seems empowered to restrain only good things for a change. Review editing, however, has realised net meaning gains to the global intention index from unseeded wisdom volunteering in the item's experience. [Also, the publisher didn't drive to the rally.]