Had this dream that I was helping an underground movement working for African American rights. Actually not sure if I was in the States or in another country. a lot of covert crawling through tunnels and jumping over barbwire fences to get to secret meetings… I was like “the white connection to the outside world” so to speak it seemed to be. All very hush hush and dangerous. The people in charge were all black from what i can remember and we were in a very impoverished environment. I was constantly sleeping amongst or jumping over homeless type people in rags or box-homes.

At a time when I am rethinking where to fuel my activist energies right now, a lot of prayer and meditation and observation about it… feeling the peace/anti-war movement is always going to be there but as a species we are essentially fucked in the face of these giant corporate-controlled entities that pose as governments on planet earth right now. ten million people marched to protest the United States’ invasion of the country of Iraq and it did absolutely nothing. It had no effect. There are still over one million Iraqi civilians dead at the hands of the so called “coalition forces.” Meaning what? corporate controlled/Matrix Styled robot-soldiers who do whatever “force” tells them to do. And we the people of the planet truly just have no say in it.

Inspiring that that many people came out on one single day to protest all over the planet? sure. but is it going to stop newly elected US president Obama from attempting to occupy Afghanistan? No. Won’t even be an issue. I don’t think anything is going to wake Americans up to the horrors of war and what it actually means for foreign insurgents to enter your country, boss you around, put up blockades, kill innocent people, and arrest thousands of your neighbors until it actually happens in their own country. Then we may be able to muster enough understanding to build a real coalition of a large enough group of people to actually have an effect on these “selected officials” and their war-mongering ways. Until then, anyone anywhere in the world is a target for arrest, occupation, imprisonment, or death at the drop of a hat if the United States and other large nations decides that’s what they want to do.

We not yet be living breathing batteries as suggested in the symbolic Matrix film series, but the people of earth for better or worse are clearly prisoners of powers much stronger than they are able to overcome. Only they’re not machines. (perhaps they are?) But by all accounts they appear to be living breathing human beings no different than ourselves. We live in a comfortable prison for some to be sure. Say if one lives in Kansas or New York. Not so comfortable for many others… Zimbabwe, Liberia, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, China, on and on the list grows…. or shrinks, depending on how one views it.

So the last few months I have really begun praying and meditating frequently and intensely on “what next?” in terms of where I might be able to better serve more people in real tangible ways. After Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and Grenada and Panama and Nicaragua and Iraq (and so many more I simply fail to mention out of being too lazy to want to look up right now) it is clear that any efforts put forth by “the people” of earth to stop war-mongers is moot and in essence a waste of valuable time effort and energy.

It does though explain two things: why people as powerful and influential as Bono and Al Gore and Bill and Melinda Gates take on other causes, rather than what one suspects they believe in their hearts to also be a worthy cause – peace on earth. AND it also helps explain the motives and actions of people such as the Weather Underground, Che Guevara, Osama Bin Laden, the IRA, or the leaders of the Iranian Revolution. Crazy? Sure. But what they were/are fighting against was/is equally crazy.

So like the Buddha i sit quietly and meditatively torn between two worlds: out and out underground revolutionary to the death, even if it means three weeks or months from today i breathe my last breath in this current form. Or a more elegant peaceful and orderly style of helping… albeit one that requires more patience and a more mature ability to endure the ludicrous and unnecessary atrocities and lies, death and destruction that surround us at every corner of the globe at the hands of people who live in our own backyards and neighborhoods. Decision not made yet. So I sit.

Worthy causes: poverty, AIDS in Africa, women’s rights around the world, human trafficking and slavery, every 3.9 seconds someone dies of hunger or thirst somewhere in the world. If we wanted to we could end it in a year or two. But again, if WE WANTED to. Equal education. Gay rights. Fair trade. Blacks and Latinos still have it pretty tough. And no one even bothers to dare broach the stomach churning plight of the Native Americans and the other indigenous peoples of the planet. But that is one I would love to see brought up and finally faced and reconciled in our lifetimes…

We ask and it shall be given… so every night I am thrown into these random dreams/nightmares involving some sort of revolutionary events I have found myself entangled in. Some more terrifying than others. Some tame and reasonable and more “court and circus oriented.” Some downright “action adventure movie” style craziness. Each morning I wake up and scribble down as much as i can remember of what I was doing, how I felt, if the goal seemed a noble one… how I truly feel about it… if I believe that it is my calling to take it on and try to help…. a transition phase to be sure. But one that I will soon have an answer for I am sure.

Still one-hundred and ten percent behind helping bridge peace with the country of Iran, bring Tibet back to the Tibetan peoples, freedom of the Chechens, feeding the hungry, housing the poor, fighting poverty, and general do-gooding. But there is plenty more we can do… that’s for sure. In time we will know….

“We must be aware of the real problems of the world. Then, with mindfulness, we will know what to do and what not to do to be of help.” – Thich Nhat Hanh