Alliance=Rebellion

and 10 ways to get on board with the only choice we have left

Blergh

The scene of Cory Booker speaking alone on the Senate floor for 25+ hours without eating or taking a bathroom break was. . . at this point in our planet’s history. . . boring. Boring as in bore-ING. In like I’m over and done with the whole lone (male) heroic thing.

Bore-ING as a (queer) condensation of frustration, longing, and grief.

The media treated it as a spectator sport mostly focused on Booker’s stamina.

Liberals cried and deified.

The left pointed out Booker’s AIPAC apron strings and full-throated support for arming Israel. And his silence on illegal ICE abductions.

Immediately after Booker’s marathon, the Senate, including Booker and all but a handful of Democrats, went on to approve two more horrific Trump appointees and an 8.8 billion dollar sale of heavy bombs to the Israeli genocide machine.

My point is: we don’t need heroes or saviors. In fact, they are in our way. We need each other.

And now, his watch is done

The long climb of the (male-coded) individual to the top of this mess is over.

The alpha is done.

The master is done.

The savior is done.

The superhero is done.

The dictator is done.

The oligarch is done.

Inexorably, with each step, more people, animals, and the bounty of this earth have been ground under the heel of this incessantly solo climber until all he rules over is suffering, death, cruelty, and ruins.

The U.S. administration and corporate class have become nothing more than late-stage wavers of the tattered banner of a murderous thugocracy.

And we too participate in the banner waving whenever we embody cultures of supremacist individualism in our micro-relations and life-coached paths to whatever laughable greatness we aspire to.

Specks

Let’s take an inventory.

We are specks. Less than specks.

We are microbe-sized in a vast universe. Maybe vast multi-verses.

This is fact.

Any measure we take of ourselves is so self-serving and micro-local, it’s laughable.

Imagine a speck of oatmeal in a bowl of porridge claiming to be the best bit of oatmeal. That’s us and our heirarchies, competitions, and accomplishments.

Meanwhile, outside of the oatmeal bubble, actually intelligent creatures are living their real lives.

Basically, we have no measures of ourselves that make any sense at all.

Alliance is the ground

Inventory continuing. . .

We don’t accomplish anything alone. Not one breath. Not one step.

Whatever you take pride in as yours belongs to the entire planet.

And everything else that happens here.

It also takes a whole world to fail and fall ill.

The fact that you feel pride in the false narrative of “I did it myself” or personal shame at your so-called failures is the result of one of the biggest gaslighting projects in human history.

We are in this together, not just with each other, but with all of the creatures here and the plants and waters and air and space itself.

We are in it with our ancestors and gods, whoever they may be.

The solution to every.single.problem is alliance.

Alliance is rebellion

Right here, right now, we are being schooled on every level from the most macro to the most micro by the utterly MASSIVE failure of individualism.

We are really being held down to it, although some of you don’t realize that yet. But you will.

Because no one here gets a hall pass anymore.

There is really only one way to go at this point. We recognize our continuity and ally with everyone and every thing or we die.

This is not a shift in view or perspective or framework or philosophy.

It’s a recognition of our real, literal, actual, fundamental circumstance.

Installing new heroes (or heroines) is not even remotely viable.

Is it divine hijinks that recognizing our real circumstance and aligning with that is the only form of rebellion left open to us?

Alliance is counterforce

We have to answer the extreme individualism of our cultures with a more powerful counterforce of alliance.

On the micro level:

• Take opportunities to be generous, kind, and helpful to a wider circle of people. People you know. People you dislike. Strangers. People at great distances. People from other cultures. You will discover that giving is more nourishing than acquiring or accumulating.

• Stop relying on closed, individualistic explanations for how you and others are, e.g. psychology. Move your gaze outward. Find the biggest networks of connection contributing to how you are showing up, not the smallest.

• Redefine success (and failure) as collaborative, not individual. Collaborate with others as much as possible. Resist urges to go it alone.

• Do your research. Learn about what’s really happening. Share feelings and knowledge with those around you.

• Stop trying to be great or important. These are empiric fantasies.

• Be satisfied with doing your best.

On the macro level:

• Stop looking for heroes and saviors. No one is coming to save us but us.

• Don’t focus the majority of your energy on building careers and audiences. Don’t hole up in closed families and closed communities.

• Build and participate in open, large, fluid networks of mutual aid and support; alternative economies, healthcare, and communications; and food sovereignty, and worship.

• As much as you can, withdraw resources from whatever serves supremacy in any form. Redirect toward alliance-building and nurturing.

• Resist anything of empire within and without.

Arrangements, impermanence, and alliance

It’s time we make friends with impermanence.

The eternal ground of being is conceptless. But the contracted, mean-spirited eternalism deployed by empire encapsulates empire’s deadly and maniacal drive to survive and hold onto a seat at the top of whatever heap it creates.

Impermanence is the friend of alliance. It guarantees the end of all tyranny and consists of flows, adaptability, and surprise. Impermanence embodies the three great movements: creation, maintenance, and destruction.

Arrangements are creative and open. They are made of living beings, structures, and protocols. Arrangements are populated gardens, encampments, and hotels, not single-family homes or walled compounds.

Arrangements demonstrate the beauty of impermanence, of the transitory, the malleable, the loose and indefinable. In Sanskrit, arrangements are called andas or eggs. They are zones of creative production where things arise, temporarily work and play together, and then, eventually and inevitably, disband.

Alliance is mutual support and aid fueled by the desire for the well-being of all that can coalesce arrangements if we move our perceptions and energy in that direction.

Alliance is essentially anti-empire because it embraces with awareness and playfulness impermanence and its arrangements.

These words are not standing alone

These words are not standing alone, and they take no credit for what is happening or about to happen. But they are in alliance with the reality of our existence.

We have reached the destructive limit case of our own self-definitions and self-narratives.

What you had hoped was not true, or at least not to see, has been revealed. The future you were hiding from has arrived.

There is no bunker. There is no hermitage other than the hermitage of all of life.

Are you with us?

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

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