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JAMES' PERSONAL WRITINGS: SLOVING
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2.18.2017

### Brilliant, courageous, necessary, profoundly helpful video.

https://seekjoy.wistia.com/medias/5hp4yvawi4

Standing Rock update: I'm experiencing less sheer Terror for the last two days than the day or so prior. There are many times the last 15 years.......

Standing Rock update: I'm experiencing less sheer Terror for the last two days than the day or so prior. There are many times the last 15 years when I have been in terrifying situations but not nearly so terrifying is this. The prospect of five to ten years in a Savage military prison system.

Why less terrifying? Yes, the material situation becomes more terrifying each day. The police and military come closer, the 22nd comes closer, now they're blockading certain materials a harbinger of blockading food and water.

I have learned many ways of dealing with such Terror all of which has been failing me up until 2 days ago. But yesterday morning one that I have not used before popped into my mind. By the way, when I awaken is the most terrifying time. Whatever mental perspective had given me some peace of mind the day before is not there when I wake up in the morning. Just the sheer physical existential Terror.

What popped into my mind mercifully as it turns out yesterday morning was something that Gandhi asserted and lived, non-cooperation with evil is a duty, and the United States of America government at virtually all levels and forms is consummate evil.

I have no idea how long that thought will be helpful to me but it continues to be helpful.

This morning when I woke up I needed even more help and it occurred to me to do what I have often done in the past but not for a long time, to attempt to summon to the man Jesus, king, Gandhi, Mandela, and to try and imagine what they would think about me being here planning to stay until I am put in prison rather than to cooperate with Injustice.

Welcome to the club, is essentially what I experienced. It was not jovial, it was not congratulatory, it was very matter-of-fact but very clear, so far, anyway. And comforting. I'm surely clear that being with them Is more important to me than anything else I can think of including avoiding 5 to 10 years of torture.

The sense I get from the man Jesus is, where do you think I'd be? The implied answer being, standing at Standing Rock waiting to be crucified by the state. Yes, there were years when he avoided doing that but it finally came time to stand and let the state show what it was made of, pure evil. That's how it is looking for me.

An added benefit, an added help, came later. the focus of my life in recent years has been the children and people of Palestine, particularly Gaza, and their Moment by moment torment by the state machine. They have not been on my mind in recent months. I've been preoccupied with things here and with my own selfish Terror. But today I've been brought a little additional peace by realizing that much more than ever before I now stand with people like this, live in actual solidarity with these earlier victims of American state Terror. And that feels right to me. I'm sure you can imagine.

I have zero hope for any of us in the future. I have written this but it continues to be the fact, and that I can still function at all amazes me. But I can. I would never have known that standing with what my soul tells me is right with no hope of helping anyone by doing so, I would never have known that I could function on just that. It seems that I can.

Envy is what I feel so often when I notice someone my age dies in their sleep. How merciful that would be. No, not by my hands. Why? I don't know. But it is not my inclination. I expect I'll serve out my sentence willingly. The Green Mile.

2.17.2017

Standing Rock update: the state is immoral resistance is Duty. Non-cooperation with evil is a duty. In creators eyes, the pure morality of my imagination, the land on.......

Standing Rock update: the state is immoral resistance is Duty. Non-cooperation with evil is a duty.

In creators eyes, the pure morality of my imagination, the land on which I am situated was given to human beings, two leggeds,  prior to any colonial forced creation among the Dakota tribe of a western notion of nationhood. Original Dakota Sioux individuals are standing here on this land and have declared those that stand with them sisters and brothers entitled to the to the same land as full sisters and brothers. Yes, this matters not. This Savage state will torment us like evil boys crushing so many bugs.  But I still may find that I'm unwilling to flee this hopeless, completely hopeless Showdown. that I will refuse to cooperate with the evil of the white Colonial settler Empire that has created such comfort and pleasure for me until recent years.

I whip saw between one moment leaving as quickly as possible and the next moment staying. What I have just written above has me staying, for the moment.

I believe that the choice to stay is virtually certain selection of years in Cruel, Savage, evil, satanic prison.

But for the moment I can hold on to the words above.

When the state is immoral resistance is Duty. Non-cooperation with evil is a duty.

This is a most agonizing, anxious, miserable time in my life. It is also probably the closest I have come to understanding what life feels like for billions of my underprivileged sisters and brothers who for decades have been victims of the state violence. I take little comfort in that but I acknowledge it none the less.

By the way, I have learned a new purpose that I am finding helpful, for prayer. Yes, still, I have no illusion that anyone hears the prayer. But when I pray for my expected persecutors, when I pray for those that do evil on purpose or by accident, I find that it creates a positive mental state for me. It is a way of Imagining the world that I want, behavior in that world that I want. And it helps me increase my understanding for and empathy for  those who are so bent on evil . In that it is no more than a psychological survival technique. But it may also prepare me mentally and spiritually as a better instrument for trying to help be a catalyst for others to bend toward good.

I have no hope for a better world. I lost that hope years ago. often I lose my footing and regain that hope but that is a mistake. The Titanic is going down, it hit the iceberg of near total amorality many decades or even centuries ago.

If there were hope in the world then staying here for a showdown, in creators eyes, between the forces of good and the forces of evil, those standing peacefully and prayerfully for a habitable future for our children, standing lovingly, a showdown between people doing that and people driven by Mammon, pure greed and hatred, such showdowns would be instrumental in creating a better future. But I see no hope in this. Not in 2017. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it it doesn't matter if it makes a sound. It makes no difference.

Earlier today I was momentarily held here by the realization that this is inclusive of people here in this camp that are among the most decent that I have ever encountered. for the moment it had me staying to stand with them. But I don't know what they stand for. We don't talk about it much. Each person has their own reasons.

Incidentally, for the first time in decades I find it difficult if not impossible to imagine a loving creator of us all. Partly, as I try to do so I encounter such a sense of disgust that Creator would have for humans which results in such active disinterest and dissociation that my imagination is unable to go further and find any available love in Creator, which I used to be able to do and have inform my walk. This makes things much more difficult.

I am terrified of the material future that awaits me. Terrified. With all of my Powers, all of my focus, developed over so many years, it takes all of my abilities to put one foot forward in front of the next. Dread does not begin to sum up and I feel about my personal future. I am not proud of this. But I admit it. And make no mistake this is so small, so petty, so selfish on my part. I can barely find the imagination to care about anyone but myself. I'm so sad about this. But so far it's the best I can do. These are very trying times.

2.16.2017

Standing Rock update: this update has been long overdue.. These last ten or fifteen days have been among the most difficult that......

Standing Rock update: this update has been long overdue..

These last ten or fifteen days have been among the most difficult that I have had in many years. Something continues to physically sap my strength and it seems to have to do with my lungs. But even if I were fit,  the world is being revealed as such a hideous nightmare that it makes finding my footing very difficult.

It may be teaching me, it is teaching me, it may be teaching me important lessons that only such extraordinarily difficult times and conditions could do. We live here physically in a police state. Machinery of police violence deliberately encroaches on us closer and closer every day. We are not treated as Citizens by the state. We are treated as viruses. The state does not care about citizens it cares about money. Does anyone not see this?

Have I been wrong for so many years or is what I've been doing wrong for this particular time? What I'm questioning is this, has my way of being to place my body in the way of harm to the most vulnerable, has that been, or more importantly, does that for the future speak the best way for me to serve? Certainly I do not think that it has been either bad or a mistake and certainly not a terrible mistake. But is it the best way for me to serve? the good farmer may live on a floodplain and occasionally have to get in the way of the flood, but it is not the way of Being for the farmer to be in the way of the flood. It is the way of being of the good farmer To plant and tend good crops.  the only crop in which I have any interest or hope is loving in the world.

It appears that for those of us that decide to stay in this Camp until the 22nd we are offering our lives to jail and or prison. Is that the best way for me to serve? I expect more informed information and Analysis will be forthcoming in several days to make the decision a bit clearer for me.

I don't know if it's cowardice, fear, wisdom, fatigue, worry, self-absorption, insight... that has me leaning toward moving on rather than jail or prison. All those negative things constantly work on me. Maybe the positive things work on me as well, they probably do.

Several years ago as I recall, I may have been deep into a hunger strike, I asked a question of future children that I have asked many times, What do you most want from me,  from us? And all of a sudden instead of the usual answer, a habitable Earth, I heard a different answer. Give us more loving, in the future. Send us more loving. I know this to be the more correct answer and the more radical answer. It does not preclude fighting as I have been for a habitable Earth but it does not necessarily equate to doing that.

The most radical answer each second is to do that which might Spark the most loving in the future . of that I am certain.

That could mean that I should offer myself for prison on the 22nd. Right now that is not feeling like the way. as I have written recently for it to be clear that jail and prison is the best way to serve much more clarity in terms of strategy, facts on the ground, support, Would be necessary then is currently visible although that may come visible within the next few days.

Life here physically, materially, in this world that is in Hell Fire, is almost unbearable for me, but more than bearable each moment as I devote each moment to being love in the midst of this community as I do with each waking breath, hours of dishes, sleeping in the water shed tending fire so that the water does not freeze. assisting with Construction. Doing Duty in the compost toilet. Helping to clean up abandoned structures, refuse, Etc.

My beloved friend Joe, one of the most wonderful Souls I have ever met, a volcano of contribution,  an architect and designer and Builder, has a vision for an Earthship which for each person residing there literally starves the black snake to death. He with help from people like me has been trying to help it get a foothold in this region and so far Petty jealousies and lack of Vision on the part of others has prevented this. The dream does not die Within Me. I want to see it happen and will do what I can to help if I see a way of doing so.

I am profoundly and morbidly afraid of the material future that awaits me. I'm not proud of this. But I admit it.