Satish Kumar and Vandana Shivi at Uplift
The Uplift Festival
By Nyck Jeanes
The Uplift Festival just finished in Byron Bay, actually has been really amazing. The energy generated IS valuable and IS a ripple that will roll on out.
On the beach yesterday morning perhaps 500 people saw in the ‘new world’ too with our indigenous elders from many cultures, including the Gyuto monks. It was beautiful, strong… real enough!
Uplift created something that perhaps will reinvigorate and refocus ‘we the people’ to passionate engagement with issues. Uplift was NOT apolitical and in fact at the open Q&A session which I had the honour of facilitating yesterday many of the real issues, environmental and educational were raised.
This is not just a a new age festival, I think we’ve gone past that!
It occurred to me this whole critique of the ‘end of the world, new dawn’ idea…. (aside from the mad few who awaited saviours from Niburu or destruction from dark forces, or 3 days of darkness), that the idea, the meme, of a new dawn is really quite a good one after all, like a reset button.
In fact nature wakes up every morning (every moment) anew.
She does not consider her survival or demise, she IS. So perhaps we too need to find a place inside ourselves individually and collectively to wake up anew each day to the wonder of life, and yes to fight the good fight when necessary, because it is only US who have the power now to determine the fate of nature, or more precisely the fate of ourselves, as nature is likely quite capable of regenerating herself one way or the other over time or eons, (even when species are lost).
The beauty of the Uplift festival is in reconfirming the power we all have to make change, to pursue our passion and to contribute to a more conscious evolution.
Science and spirit may have been strange bedfellows for a long time, but perhaps they can now lie down together and make tantric love (hee hee!) and co-create the child who embodies both.
Despite the brilliance and innovation of science, It is after all science at its worst that is arguably leading our children astray.
Reconnect with nature as spirit, reconnect with self as love, reconnect and revive the natural wonder of being, all things great and small.
By Nyck Jeanes, 23/12 2012, Byron Bay Australia
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