Be natural, be yourself..

..follow your dreams.

Such a simple recipe. I've talked a lot lately about being good, in a pretty 'goody-two-shoes' kinda way. And while that's good, it's not the whole story.

I was at two talks with Dr. Daniel Pauley over the weekend, he's an internationally renowned fisheries scientist. And an awesome, brilliant guy. The talk was about global fisheries and climate change. As the climate warms - the ocean acidifies. We are over-fishing. We are not doing anything about climate change. = DOOM! But he also said we have the knowledge to fix everything, we have the reasons why, but we're still locked in debate over "whether or not.."

The lively discussion with the crowd eventually came to the point that we don't need more science, what we need is social and political action. People need to get active, to "raise hell," as he said.

I wonder if - if we just act natural - what we'll do. What we would do. A scientific approach would say we'd act as any self-interested animals in a social milieu would. That some people would act this way and some that. Hm.

At the first talk he also said, "we don't make change as consumers, we make change as citizens." At the second it was a panel and people hammered on 'making choices with your wallet.' I just don't buy it, no pun intended. We make the rules. Right now - we're letting the wrong people set the agenda, and then we're arguing about the points. Why let others make it so everything is shaped by the 'market'? There are so many other ways..

It's the Bhagwan's edict; to just be yourself, that meditation will bring you to that. And it will. But anything will.  We can just choose to be ourselves. I think what keeps most people from political and social activism is fear. Fear eats the soul, after all. Action in the world - is inherently spiritual. Can you think of anyone more spiritual in our age than Ghandi or Martin Luther King?

Take away fear, and any talk about a pipeline through northern BC is moot. Fear wants it, fear of lack, and fear is all that could possibly keep us from stopping it. But still, that's letting them set the agenda. Once we subtract fear, aren't we going to start setting the agenda? It's only natural...

I think the common perception is that people are active out of some 'good' urge - whether to be good or to be seen that way. Instead I think people do it because it's a natural expression of the life force. Being inactive in unnatural, a product of fear. I mean politically and socially. It's part of being alive.

Where could you be more alive? Where could I?

A friend said it to me years ago - "be yourself, just be natural, follow your dreams." I saw the other night, looking at the audience full of people who were angry, passionate, bright, alive - full of the flame of life, and yet they go out in the world and don't do it - because they're afraid, afraid of what their Mom will say, or their wife, or their boss, afraid of what people will think, afraid of being labelled, a troublemaker, a gadfly, "a radical."

It is the simplest and best recipe for life, because it favours life itself → be yourself.