Photo: Stacy Lanyon
From the time I was a child, I had visions of a different
world, a different mode of organization, a different set of values than those in which
I had been raised and which I had been conditioned. I knew even then, though I
could see the outcome and now I walk towards that kind of communal
self-sufficiency, of deep equality and equanimity between members of a tribe,
of integration with the earth’s ecology, and lives of meaning and purpose and fun for everyone, an outcome which is so possible in the traditions in which we are immersed and the technology
that we’ve obtained in recent decades, and increasingly in recent years and
months. Even though I could see that goal on the horizon, I knew that there was a block, that there remains a block and that we had to confront it collectively. When I
first heard of Occupy, I was like, “Well, this has been a long time coming.”
I had
just turned twenty at the time. I lived blessedly and still do on scholarship just a few blocks away from Tompkins
Square Park. I love to cook. I had done some work in the past with Food not
Bombs, and I was mildly aware of the anarchist scene over in Alphabet City and in Brooklyn.
It was on the fringes of my awareness and the fringes of my consciousness. I
went to one of these meetings in Tomkins Square in either late July or early
August of 2011, and they were talking about this 'hashtag occupywallstreet.' We didn’t
know what it was going to be. I guess an encampment and mostly a media
campaign. So I got some spray paint, made a stencil, and it said
#occupywallstreet. I went around with that in August of 2011.
At the end of the month, there was that hurricane, Irene. It devastated Vermont and upstate New York. It passed through here locking the city down. I was stuck on Roosevelt Island with my girlfriend and her family. That lockdown, that encroaching awareness of just how deep the environmental changes were going to be, which are ongoing, which of course came to a head a year later with Hurricane Sandy. Everyone went down and stockpiled their basements and their apartments. We emerged and there was the city and there was the engine that was responsible for the policies, that utter disregard for the balance of life on Earth. Suddenly, we had something to fear, some awareness of what the consequences could be beyond economics and mass politics. That really catalyzed things for me. I brought my little brother down, who was 16 at the time, and we marched on September 17th. It’s an important story for me. It started a new chapter of my life, maybe even a new book. Right now, I’m closing the fourth or fifth chapter of that book that started on September 17th, and I’m about to start writing the next chapter. Maybe it will be a whole new book of my life.
We went down there. We marched. Zuccotti was a backup. The intention was to get in front of JP Morgan and occupy the street itself, but the cops knew, as they always do, and they put up barriers. But they didn’t have any barriers at Zuccotti Park, so we went there. People had their tents, and Food not Bombs were there with some crates of food. We had some apples and sandwiches. On my first day, everyone was exited and hollering. There were hundreds if not a thousand people. I hopped across the line where the Food not Bombs had set up and started dishing out food. I went back the next day and did the same thing. Then, on the third day, we were still there. Everyone was shocked. People started bringing food, and things were picking up. More people were coming. We had to feed them. People started ordering pizzas, and they were coming to the park, and we started the kitchen. It was day 3. From that time forward, I was there for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, while at the same time managing to be a better student than I’ve ever been before. It was a catalyst for so many things in my life, that time at the park, including my practice that brings me here to the yoga studio today.
At the end of the month, there was that hurricane, Irene. It devastated Vermont and upstate New York. It passed through here locking the city down. I was stuck on Roosevelt Island with my girlfriend and her family. That lockdown, that encroaching awareness of just how deep the environmental changes were going to be, which are ongoing, which of course came to a head a year later with Hurricane Sandy. Everyone went down and stockpiled their basements and their apartments. We emerged and there was the city and there was the engine that was responsible for the policies, that utter disregard for the balance of life on Earth. Suddenly, we had something to fear, some awareness of what the consequences could be beyond economics and mass politics. That really catalyzed things for me. I brought my little brother down, who was 16 at the time, and we marched on September 17th. It’s an important story for me. It started a new chapter of my life, maybe even a new book. Right now, I’m closing the fourth or fifth chapter of that book that started on September 17th, and I’m about to start writing the next chapter. Maybe it will be a whole new book of my life.
We went down there. We marched. Zuccotti was a backup. The intention was to get in front of JP Morgan and occupy the street itself, but the cops knew, as they always do, and they put up barriers. But they didn’t have any barriers at Zuccotti Park, so we went there. People had their tents, and Food not Bombs were there with some crates of food. We had some apples and sandwiches. On my first day, everyone was exited and hollering. There were hundreds if not a thousand people. I hopped across the line where the Food not Bombs had set up and started dishing out food. I went back the next day and did the same thing. Then, on the third day, we were still there. Everyone was shocked. People started bringing food, and things were picking up. More people were coming. We had to feed them. People started ordering pizzas, and they were coming to the park, and we started the kitchen. It was day 3. From that time forward, I was there for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, while at the same time managing to be a better student than I’ve ever been before. It was a catalyst for so many things in my life, that time at the park, including my practice that brings me here to the yoga studio today.
I
convinced some of my classmates to come down. It
was a seminar on American civil disobedience, and I was like, “If we are going
to taking this class, you are just playing around if you don’t go and see the
real thing.” One of them told me that this was the internet brought to life. It
was this incredible diversity of opinion, endless variety of backgrounds and aspirations mashed together. It represented what I see the city to be in its
finest moments, which is a consciousness reactor. I walk around, and I see the trucks rolling in and the subway screeching by and the
steel workers up six hundred feet, and it looks like they are doing it just
for the sake of it, like, “Oh this is just an economic engine running its own
fumes." But behind all of that, it’s for us, and it’s for this. Zuccotti was a highly
entropic version of that, which has happened through all times and not just
among humans. It’s the engine of evolution, and Zuccotti was that brought to
the perimeter. It’s like you staked out these four corner and you just had a
few thousand square feet to collide and let new sparks fly, new mutations erupt
out of these strange biologies of thought and aspiration.
I’m involved in a few projects right now. I
lived in India in the fall from September to January. I rode around on the
rails. I had a job learning how to do natural building, which is building out
of the earth. It was just miraculous. I got a grant to cover the whole thing. I
know how to do that construction now. One of the projects I’m involved with is the Arc 38
project. It’s a commune that we started building right in the aftermath of
Zuccotti. The land had been tended for some years. It’s owned by an old
activist couple. It’s one of the Occupy farms. This Arc 38 project is
expanding. It’s named after the 38th verse of the Tao Te Ching,
which is a bit oblique. It’s an incredibly potent poem, an incredibly potent
statement, but only if you’re in the loop do you know what it signifies.
Otherwise it sounds very strange.
This arch series is going to expand, and now I’m one paper away from completing my college degree. I wrote my thesis, and got through the last semester with many useful and difficult lessons. This will be one of my physical projects, all Arcs. There’s another one in development in Pennsylvania called Arc 44. The potential for them to multiply is very real. We’re trying to forge a grounds for experimentation in sustainable living and in community building and in human potential. The next element that’s going to be merged with this experiment is dedicated professional videography and media, so that every experiment that we undertake is documented, whether it be hydroponics, whether it be a new way to hold a meeting, whether it be cutting trails responsibly or learning to identify native plants or something. It’s sort of like a TED action. We have a thesis. We have a game that we play, and anyone at home who wants to implement that now has the tools, some diagrams and a video.
In the immediate future, I’m going to be driving a motorcycle out west. I’m going to go first to New Mexico, Montana, Portland and then perhaps San Francisco, where I’ve made up some applications for start-up funding for this project, for the arch. This is something to get involved with if people are interested in living in community, taking their shoes off and touching their feet into the ground, integrating into a bioregion. This doesn't mean abandoning the city. It means having a foot in both worlds, where we know the land and we love the land, and we tend the land. Then, we come here to do our business, come here to do our learning, come here to do what we need to do, what brought us here in the first place, which is going to be different for everybody.
This arch series is going to expand, and now I’m one paper away from completing my college degree. I wrote my thesis, and got through the last semester with many useful and difficult lessons. This will be one of my physical projects, all Arcs. There’s another one in development in Pennsylvania called Arc 44. The potential for them to multiply is very real. We’re trying to forge a grounds for experimentation in sustainable living and in community building and in human potential. The next element that’s going to be merged with this experiment is dedicated professional videography and media, so that every experiment that we undertake is documented, whether it be hydroponics, whether it be a new way to hold a meeting, whether it be cutting trails responsibly or learning to identify native plants or something. It’s sort of like a TED action. We have a thesis. We have a game that we play, and anyone at home who wants to implement that now has the tools, some diagrams and a video.
In the immediate future, I’m going to be driving a motorcycle out west. I’m going to go first to New Mexico, Montana, Portland and then perhaps San Francisco, where I’ve made up some applications for start-up funding for this project, for the arch. This is something to get involved with if people are interested in living in community, taking their shoes off and touching their feet into the ground, integrating into a bioregion. This doesn't mean abandoning the city. It means having a foot in both worlds, where we know the land and we love the land, and we tend the land. Then, we come here to do our business, come here to do our learning, come here to do what we need to do, what brought us here in the first place, which is going to be different for everybody.
While at Zuccotti, I became involved in Occupy Yoga, started by these Sikh
Kundalini yogis who my eyes just gummed onto as soon as I saw them. I was like,
“They’re glowing. How does that happen?” I started talking to them and
meditated with them. We had this practice, and we were bringing
all of these people in. Eventually, one of the teachers had to quit. He was
going away to Europe for six months, and he said, “Sam, now you’re the teacher.”
I had had no formal training at that point and suddenly had this opportunity,
this platform. For about three days a week for the next six
months, from December to June, we held classes, first at 60 Wall Street and
later at Union Square. We also went to the Occupy Town Squares that happened all
over Brooklyn and Queens.
Through that regular encounter with the movement after Zuccotti was broken up, I forged and continued some connections with the part of the movement that had always resonated the most with me, which are those who are not about the resistance, who are not about the rubber band pulling back. You can think of the dualistic modality, the dialectic of power and oppression versus rebellion and resistance as sort of a loose rubber band, and it take a lot of effort. There are those who are willing to commit violence, are willing to get pushed and get shoved, are willing to pull that rubber band back. The black block is expecting that when the rubber band snaps, it’s all going to explode and everything will be changed, and now there’s nothing, and that’s why we can’t see what comes next, “Oh, I don’t know. I’m just involved in the fight.”
I’m interested in both sides, but the place where I wish to occupy is not one side of the rubber band pulling back and is certainly not the monolithic slingshot that is attached to the powers that be. I want to see that space in between, that empty space, that new creation that had never been there before because without the tensile strength of an energized resistance, there’s just flack. It’s not about the resistance. It’s not about the oppression. It’s about what lies in between and is created from that friction. I have connected with those who wish to occupy that space inside, that new area that was created from repression and rebellion, those who are trying to transcend the dialectic, not destroy things but build things, the creative side. I think yoga is a unifying force in that movement. I think that the arts as ever are a magnet for those types of individuals and groups and those who want to experiment with their lives, those who are willing to play with new environments, new methodologies.
These people were congregating at the Occupy Yoga classes, and I was looking to get out of the city. I heard a rumor about the land that is now Arc 38, and I got the GPS coordinates. There was no address. I did a little Google search. I didn’t have a smart phone at the time, and I wandered up there. I got on the train, and I got off at 10:30PM at night on December 26th. I basically wandered through the woods until I found the place. I must say that the memory of that night is very vivid. It was freezing, and the stars have never been as bright in this part of the world as that night, that I have seen. I came to the barn and found my friend, and we started planning and talking. He showed me the trails up on the mountain, and he showed me the river down below, and we prayed for the land and meditated together. I stayed there for days.
On December 31st, I went down for New Year’s Eve and encountered the Unitribe party. I was like, “Okay, so here’s the land. Here’s the movement, and here’s the celebration. It’s all coming together.” Since then, I’ve been involved with organizing these events and made really dear friends and deep connections and great teachers through this group of Kirtanis and Yogis and artists and rappers and all different kinds of people, all who know what they want for this community. We’re throwing parties where no alcohol is served, where there are workshops and events, but it’s not a formalized thing. It’s so loose. Anyone can be a teacher. Anyone can be a student. That sort of vibe has come up to Arc 38 too. It’s evolving. There’s a green house. There’s a garden. There are new trails. There are army tents that were supposed to go to Zuccotti, which ended up down the hill at Arc 38. We’ll see what it can become. It’s amazing that we have the land.
Through that regular encounter with the movement after Zuccotti was broken up, I forged and continued some connections with the part of the movement that had always resonated the most with me, which are those who are not about the resistance, who are not about the rubber band pulling back. You can think of the dualistic modality, the dialectic of power and oppression versus rebellion and resistance as sort of a loose rubber band, and it take a lot of effort. There are those who are willing to commit violence, are willing to get pushed and get shoved, are willing to pull that rubber band back. The black block is expecting that when the rubber band snaps, it’s all going to explode and everything will be changed, and now there’s nothing, and that’s why we can’t see what comes next, “Oh, I don’t know. I’m just involved in the fight.”
I’m interested in both sides, but the place where I wish to occupy is not one side of the rubber band pulling back and is certainly not the monolithic slingshot that is attached to the powers that be. I want to see that space in between, that empty space, that new creation that had never been there before because without the tensile strength of an energized resistance, there’s just flack. It’s not about the resistance. It’s not about the oppression. It’s about what lies in between and is created from that friction. I have connected with those who wish to occupy that space inside, that new area that was created from repression and rebellion, those who are trying to transcend the dialectic, not destroy things but build things, the creative side. I think yoga is a unifying force in that movement. I think that the arts as ever are a magnet for those types of individuals and groups and those who want to experiment with their lives, those who are willing to play with new environments, new methodologies.
These people were congregating at the Occupy Yoga classes, and I was looking to get out of the city. I heard a rumor about the land that is now Arc 38, and I got the GPS coordinates. There was no address. I did a little Google search. I didn’t have a smart phone at the time, and I wandered up there. I got on the train, and I got off at 10:30PM at night on December 26th. I basically wandered through the woods until I found the place. I must say that the memory of that night is very vivid. It was freezing, and the stars have never been as bright in this part of the world as that night, that I have seen. I came to the barn and found my friend, and we started planning and talking. He showed me the trails up on the mountain, and he showed me the river down below, and we prayed for the land and meditated together. I stayed there for days.
On December 31st, I went down for New Year’s Eve and encountered the Unitribe party. I was like, “Okay, so here’s the land. Here’s the movement, and here’s the celebration. It’s all coming together.” Since then, I’ve been involved with organizing these events and made really dear friends and deep connections and great teachers through this group of Kirtanis and Yogis and artists and rappers and all different kinds of people, all who know what they want for this community. We’re throwing parties where no alcohol is served, where there are workshops and events, but it’s not a formalized thing. It’s so loose. Anyone can be a teacher. Anyone can be a student. That sort of vibe has come up to Arc 38 too. It’s evolving. There’s a green house. There’s a garden. There are new trails. There are army tents that were supposed to go to Zuccotti, which ended up down the hill at Arc 38. We’ll see what it can become. It’s amazing that we have the land.
I
was raised to value things that have no value. When times have called for me to
cash my chips in, I’ve discovered again and again that what I thought I had was worth nothing, was of limited power, was of limited potential and was coming from
a very particular cultural scope. So I started looking for what matters and what "wealth" is. Although I know that I’m just at the beginning of this inquiry,
I feel rich. I feel powerful. I feel full of potential, and it comes
not from me, but it comes from recognizing it in everyone I meet, everyone I
see. We have a responsibility to each other to revel in that and to expand upon
that, to amplify that. I’ve realized that everyone and every encounter is
absolute genius. Some are harder than others. Some people don’t even know what it could be
or would never be allowed to become it until the antiquated and
repressive and restrictive systems in which we live our day to day lives falls away.
More and more of us see that this is just a circus veil, and even when you peel that one back, there are more veils to remove until we are in harmony with ourselves and each other. This will not happen until that system is mitigated or perhaps replaced, not destroyed. The fantasy of it all coming crashing around our ears is not one that I’d ever want to see. There’s too much value here. There’s too much beauty. There’s too much life and risk for revolt to be a fantasy. It’s a nightmare. Until that happens, until we can design a better way of relating to each other, we’re going to be limited in the way that we can express our brilliance, and I want to see it in everyone. For me, the walls of this familial house, of this cultural house that I thought were so solid, they were just smashed in as circumstances in life dictated. I realized, “Okay, this isn’t going to protect me. This isn’t real. Let me find what is.” The greatest teachers I’ve ever had is the struggles and the sufferings and the trauma because they gave me the space to explore, and the need to explore. It stripped away the illusions. It pulled back that veil. So instead of striving for comfort, I welcome pain, and I welcome pleasure.
More and more of us see that this is just a circus veil, and even when you peel that one back, there are more veils to remove until we are in harmony with ourselves and each other. This will not happen until that system is mitigated or perhaps replaced, not destroyed. The fantasy of it all coming crashing around our ears is not one that I’d ever want to see. There’s too much value here. There’s too much beauty. There’s too much life and risk for revolt to be a fantasy. It’s a nightmare. Until that happens, until we can design a better way of relating to each other, we’re going to be limited in the way that we can express our brilliance, and I want to see it in everyone. For me, the walls of this familial house, of this cultural house that I thought were so solid, they were just smashed in as circumstances in life dictated. I realized, “Okay, this isn’t going to protect me. This isn’t real. Let me find what is.” The greatest teachers I’ve ever had is the struggles and the sufferings and the trauma because they gave me the space to explore, and the need to explore. It stripped away the illusions. It pulled back that veil. So instead of striving for comfort, I welcome pain, and I welcome pleasure.
There’s
nothing wrong with the world. There’s
simply the potential for each of us to live out our dreams. When I say there is nothing wrong with the world, I don’t mean that on the surface there aren’t things which cannot be improved. There are endless things that must be improved and transformed, but this is our privilege. It factors into what I’ve experienced in my life, which is that those things which scare me, which cause me pain and make me question my identity, those are my greatest teachers because those allow me to discover who I really am and what strength I have to overcome. We all have the strength to overcome. We all overcome every day. Getting out on the street is a success. Not rolling up in bed is a victory. It’s all this incredible drama, this incredible triumph that we can cast in mundane terms or we could cast in cosmic terms, and both are available all the time. We came here for a reason, each one of us. There are epochs of history where this sort of transformation was not a possibility. It's amazing to have such a stark reality and ever-more-accessible means of accessing it - the internet, social media and forums in which we discuss our problems as a society or as individuals, as communities and families. We have the opportunity to rearrange life as we know it and to initiate a new planetary epoch, one that is in harmony with the vast potential of the human mind and the spirit and the even vaster bounty and beauty and prowess of the earth and of the cosmos.
My dream is to facilitate that process for many people, to open the space for exploration and inventing the language through which we’ll do that dialogue when the time comes, a language stripped of abusive power relations where the masculine is dominant, or a language stripped of quid pro quo, where it’s always a give and take. The real gift that we can give to each other is the one with no expectation, the non-attached gift where the value amplifies just by giving. I give you these words. They turn into some thought in your head, perhaps spark a third person's, fourth person's, fifth person’s eye. These relations are possible. This is what we can build an economic system on. This is what we can design communities around, where you give not because you get something in return, but because you are enriched by giving. A great example of this is Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics. This is what I'd like to build.
I’m reminded of something that I came upon years ago during my ecology and architecture training. Le Corbusier, the French garden city architect said “Architecture or Revolution? Architecture can be designed.” If you build the games and build the spaces, if you hold the spaces for people to experience their full potential and experiment and play with each other, then you can design it. That it’s wonderful for those involved, and it’s safe for those involved. Revolution on the other hand can be bloody. Revolution can be horrible. Revolution can be starvation. Revolution can be children being pried from their mother’s arms. It can be internment camps, shut downs of the free web. It can be all sorts of things that will destroy lives. I’m interested in creating better lives, not destroying but building lives that represent our full human potential.
My dream is to facilitate that process for many people, to open the space for exploration and inventing the language through which we’ll do that dialogue when the time comes, a language stripped of abusive power relations where the masculine is dominant, or a language stripped of quid pro quo, where it’s always a give and take. The real gift that we can give to each other is the one with no expectation, the non-attached gift where the value amplifies just by giving. I give you these words. They turn into some thought in your head, perhaps spark a third person's, fourth person's, fifth person’s eye. These relations are possible. This is what we can build an economic system on. This is what we can design communities around, where you give not because you get something in return, but because you are enriched by giving. A great example of this is Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics. This is what I'd like to build.
I’m reminded of something that I came upon years ago during my ecology and architecture training. Le Corbusier, the French garden city architect said “Architecture or Revolution? Architecture can be designed.” If you build the games and build the spaces, if you hold the spaces for people to experience their full potential and experiment and play with each other, then you can design it. That it’s wonderful for those involved, and it’s safe for those involved. Revolution on the other hand can be bloody. Revolution can be horrible. Revolution can be starvation. Revolution can be children being pried from their mother’s arms. It can be internment camps, shut downs of the free web. It can be all sorts of things that will destroy lives. I’m interested in creating better lives, not destroying but building lives that represent our full human potential.
There’s a desperate need for it. We can all feel it. We can
smell it. We can taste it, and this is a privilege to taste these fumes and to
smell these toxins because with them we can rebuild our body. The technology is available and becoming increasingly so. Now, we need to design ways to make it accessible. Yoga is an ancient technology, which you learn to integrate into your cellular structure, your cellular memory. We have the wisdom
traditions washing up on these shores day by day. In this city, we live at the crossroads of
consciousness, and if we can get ourselves to a point where we're clear and able to receive, to process, to take in air and breathe out love, inhale air and
matter and exhale something far more than that, something ineffable, then we’re
what’s right in the world. At that point, there’s no stopping it. The revolution, the architecture
is ours to be built.
I dream of a world where each one of us, not just here in
New York, but in Bangladesh, in the slums outside of Nairobi, up in the Arctic, down in Patagonia, have the possibility of discovering our
genies and practicing it each day. What this requires is a world that’s much
less violent, that is much more patient. We have the tools, so I guess what
it really requires is an ever expanding coalition, a reunion, the great
chorus of angels who are willing to live their dreams now, those who don’t want to
wait and are going to go to whatever lengths it takes to share their brilliance with the
world. That’s what we need.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/