About 10.000 years ago something happened that changed the course of human evolution. Instead of living as tribes in small groups, we came together in huge civilizations.

This is where the patriarchy was born. This is also when science was born, the rise of religion, of nation-states and agriculture. And this is where we need to look, to understand our sacred enemy in the battle between light and darkness.

Yes, the enemy. We don’t have time anymore to simply accept everything that goes on in the world, or in our own mind. We need to become warriors. Lives depend on it. The enemy of greed, of competition and of domination is running amok on Earth. And our own wellbeing depends on it too.

It’s time to grow our inner strength, what Gandhi called Soul-Force, Satya Graha.

Let us begin by looking at what could have been the first tree-huggers on Earth. In India 1730, villagers from the Bishnoi community 480 miles southwest of Reni faced an impossible ordeal. The local king had sent soldiers to their village to cut down the surrounding forests for the construction of a new palace. For the villages of the Bishnoi faith, the trees were holy and not to be touched. To protect the trees, they held the hands of each other around them and hugged the trees, preventing the soldiers to get through with their axes. The situation escalated and the soldiers began killing the villagers. Villagers from nearby Bishnoi communities who heard about the killings came to their help and a council was set up to determine what they should do. They decided to stick with their non-violent protection and kept sending more and more volunteers to hug the trees. In the beginning, they only sent their elderly, but when the king started blaming the villagers to only send their useless members, they started young men, women and even children who were killed by the soldiers. Shocked by the perseverance of their passive resistance, the king ordered the soldiers to withdraw, after over 300 villagers had been killed. He then personally traveled to the village to apologize. He made a decree that the trees surrounding the village would never be cut and the center for the massacre became a destination for an annual pilgrimage for all Bishnoi.

This story of the king sending out soldiers to destroy the natural world to harness resources has been playing out throughout history and continues to this very day.

Today, instead of Kings sending orders to troops to cut down trees for a new palace, we have bankers, CEO:s and politicians sending orders to other companies to cut down forests, to dig for oil and excavate mountains, leaving destruction in their wake.

Why does it continue like this? We have had revolutions, we have changed our faiths and nations many times over, but this pattern has prevailed. Or rather, we have kept it alive. Our culture has kept it alive.

Our culture fosters us into obedient citizens and has a wide range of forces at its disposal. Cultural forces that keep us in place, stereotypes, norms, laws and social rules.

Follow orders, get a job, marry, get children, get a house, work, retire, die.

Don’t get crazy ideas.
Don’t try to change the system.
Don’t care too much of others.

This is what we are taught. Its been the same since we had monarchies. A culture of service to the state, and obedience to the laws.

We have been taught to obey and follow the authorities, who know better than us.

In the old days, this used to be the authorities of the elders of a tribe (who might actually have known a lot more than us). Then 10.000 years ago it shifted, instead we began to follow the authorities of priesthood and royalty – the authority of the king, the emperor!

We did this for so long that we became too obedient for our own good, and for the good of the planet.

Today our emperor’s have become political leaders, company CEO:s and shareholders.

Our priests have become scientists, we have a scientific authority overtaking the religious authority.

Instead of being told by the priests interpreting the holy scriptures what is good and bad for us, we have our scientists interpreting experiments and randomized controlled trials. Studies to show what we should eat, how we should raise our kids, our school systems, etc.

Even though this is an incredible upgrade on so many levels, it still has its obvious flaws.

The more bereaved we are from our own inner authority, our inner sense of trust in our own experience, the easier we are to control by the cultural forces keeping the old empire in place.

What if your gut and taste can actually tell you what is really good for your body?

Or your heart tell you what is the right course of action?

It’s time to awaken the spirit of the rebel!

Your inner sense might tell you it’s wrong to keep consuming, to keep living the way you do, but you will have to find your own inner authority to dare to break the cultural forces doing their very best to tye you into this lifestyle.

One aspect where these cultural forces express themselves is in our rigged economy.

Our economy today is a game we have collectively created, with horrible rules.
Why would you make such a game that the poor keeps getting poorer and the rich getting even richer?
The answer is of course, that the rich get richer. Our economy has been designed by people with their own short-sighted winnings in mind, instead of having the good of the planet and all beings in mind.

Ask yourself,
How can our housing system get so crazy that most of the middle class are expected to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars – simply to buy a home to live in?

Ask yourself
How can our culture around work get so crazy, that we produce goods tens or a hundred times more effectively than a hundred years ago, but without a similar rise in salaries or decrease in working hours?

All of this madness can only continue to exist because we are not resisting it.

This is what the tree-huggers knew. Any danger to the living Earth, to our trees, must be held back at any cost, even at the cost of our own lives.

The trees for me symbol life, known as Yggdrasil in the old nordic stories. In these stories, there is something called Ragnarök – the prophetic last battle between good and evil that revolts around the tree of life. In Ragnarök, the Gods of Asgard protects the tree of life with their own life.

Just like our Indian tree-huggers, who knew that if the trees get cut down, their village will die. Without the trees, their ecosystem would slowly collapse and they would no longer have the rain and water needed for their crops.

Today, this is happening everywhere. Everywhere our sacred enemy puts its claws, everywhere the Empire of oil, greed, and numbness comes with its foul stench of corruption, leaving tracks of death and destruction in its wake.

Yes, we do have an enemy in this world. But learning from our forerunners, we must always remember that the most potent enemy is our self. Our judgments will not change the world, our violent revolutions only put new masters on top of the pyramid of power (looking at you Sovjet, China, North Korea).

What we need to fight this enemy is love, the strong confident love of the heart of a rebel.
Our weapons are not guns but flowers and mass dis-obedience. Nothing scares the empire as when we stop obeying.

This is what we remembered collectively in the 70ies. The Flower Power that rose in the West and made ripples all across the world. Peace and Love

But what happened with the hippies? Why did the destruction continue?

I’m going to suggest that the movement died because of a lack of vision. Just like how today’s climate movement will die unless something changes.

The hippies knew that our way of living is harmful, it’s short-sighted and brings havoc and suffering across the globe.

Their protests eventually worked and the US pulled back their invasion from Vietnam. But then what? What was the hippie vision besides stopping the war?

And what is our vision today? If we only protest against climate destruction, what happens to our movement when new laws are in place?

Will we go back into being an obedient citizen again, living in this rigged economy, all of these rigged systems?

Unless the climate movement merges with the movement for economic justice, and we make a stand together, united in our vision the movement will never take us all the way to true freedom as a people.

After the end of the Vietnam war, most hippies got children and succumbed slowly to the comforts and cultural forces of obedience to the state and empire.

But when a flower blooms, it can produce seeds. When you push these seeds down in the ground, they will rise again, only even stronger this time.

This is where we are now.

And where best to find inspiration on how to rebel against the empire, then in the hearts of the people whose ancestors have been resisting it throughout history?

The natives of the Americas, of Africa, of Australia and their endless struggles against oppression nations. Struggles that continue today, with the Freedom movement in the US spearheaded by Martin Luther King, the non-violent rebellion in India with Gandhi and the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

Just a few years ago this same battle expressed itself at Standing Rock, where many Native American tribes came together to protest with civil disobedience against the oil pipeline that was about to be constructed across their land and under the Missouri River.

This struggle, this Ragnarök is going on every day on Earth, at mass protests against the Elände Gelände coal mine in Germany, and the recent, global protests outside Parliaments by students.

Beside all these protests we also need a vision, a vision that unites us as one human family. Stewards of the Earth, taking care of each other and the limited amount of land, water, and resources that are available for us. Sharing… creating, enjoying, playing, living a good life together in balance with the Earth and all beings here

I’m asking a lot of you now. I’m asking you to embody your own vision. How does paradise Earth looks like for you?

And how can you bring more of this rebellious spirit into your own life? Where are your battles where you can take a stand for goodness? Using all of the beautiful tools of non-violent resistance that our collective wisdom has gathered over the past decades.

How can you resist the Empire and the oppressive mind with your soul force, your Satya Graha….as Gandhi called the non-violent force that permeated the Indian peaceful revolution.

How can you protect the Tree of Life from the raging fires of greed?