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Iran's Cry for Freedom

Posted June 22nd, 2009 by Integral Life S...
In Reference to:
Iran: Evolution, Revolution, or Regression?

The cry for freedom arises in all of us. Sometimes it is repressed by our own internal mechanisms. We sell it for security or comfort or for being loved. Yet it is there beating in all hearts.


This cry for freedom has now burst forth in Iran.. When we recall the great love poems of freedom from Rumi we are hearing the Persian soul in love with love, freedom and truth. Even at the height of their empire thousands of years ago, they were known as the most tolerant of empires for their time, allowing allied states freedom of religion and cultural identity and freedom to leave the association.


But political freedom as we know it is a most modern phenomena. I have been reading about Thomas Paine of late, and while he was always a hero for me, I had no idea how much he is responsible for the American Revolution.


It was Thomas Paine, at Valley Forge, the lowest point of our revolution who issued the call that, “these are the times that try men’s souls.” He went on to ask if we were only sunshine patriots and summer soldiers, or were we ready to bear all costs in the defense of freedom.


If we were in Tehran today what would we do? Would we say, well I would loose my job, or what about the kids, to keep us off the streets? This is a defining moment in each person’s life and we each must choose to either serve our heart, or our mind. This is not to say that there is a correct response. For some staying home is following the heart, for others it is the opposite. No one can judge what another should or should not do.


We are one with our brothers and sisters fighting for political freedom everywhere. What we can offer is to take the burning desire for freedom into our own heart; to face our own forces of oppression and repression.


What keeps us from full surrender into the freedom and love that is already present? We can examine if this desire has been repressed under our desires for safety or the need to conform. We can examine ourselves and stay true to this burning desire for freedom. We can fully surrender to this call and realize we are this flame of freedom. We are alive and free and in form. Then each one of us becomes a burning beacon that lights the night and guides others on their way home.
 

--

Eli Jaxon-Bear

Fellow

Integral Life Spiritual Center

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attributing freedom: riff and echo

Posted June 23rd, 2009 by Kerry Dugan

Eli,

 

 “What we can offer is to take the burning desire for freedom into our own heart; to face our own forces of oppression and repression.”

 

That I believe. That we participate in one another through both our growth and resistances to growth. That we contribute to carving the grooves of human possibility, or deepening the grooves already laid, aligning our own struggles with identical struggles everywhere. And that each personal shift makes the collective expressions of that leap that much more likely.

With the recent Lebanese election fresh in memory, and with your mention of Thomas Paine, a champion of Reason, of modernity, of the shift from ethno- to world-centrism, I recalled Kahlil Gibran, and how his creative influence informed some of America’s “times that try… souls”.

Two lines he penned late in the first decade of the twentieth century came to epitomize the call to freedom, which is, of course, a call to responsibility. FDR/Gibran’s, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”, JFK/Gibran’s, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”, (from Vol. II of Gibran’s journals in English).

There seems to be a compound congruence in how we participate in one another. What we’ve seen these last weeks with the role of social networking in the flow of informations I see as rooted in the commerce of ideas which allowed Gibran to provide rhetoric to American politicians, which in turn I see as rooted in our individual relating to our own content, our “facing the forces” we contain. Whether it’s the broad strokes of the commerce of ideas washing over cultural identity-boundaries, or the intrapersonal honesty of examining our own character and values, transparent access to informations apparently can tend to set stages for transformation.

(re: Twitter’s role:

Franco Beradi, co-founder of Rekombinant, an Italian website dedicated to new media activism, in his essay, Biopolitics and Connective Mutation offers the insight that, “Politics should be re-conceptualized as the art of interference in the relationship between the techno-mediatic universe… and the ecology of mind.” . It looks to me like this week’s use of Twitter and Youtube by Iranian protestors hints at how the ‘green gift’ of internet may be promoting systemic translations to modernity, the potential of access to information to outweigh exit irritations.)

Gibran arrived in America (114 years ago this week) as the presidential campaigns for one of the country’s main ‘realignment elections’ were underway, the election by which the US entered it’s ‘Progressive Era‘, introducing political pluralism and culminating in the women’s right to vote.

30 years on since the last Iranian revolution, we see the generational tide percolating through the ferment of clashing values, precipitating eventual emergent progress. Meanwhile, we weigh in, along with all who ever struggled so, casting, not our vote, but our enactments, which don’t wait to be tallied, and count in ways we can trust without waiting to know why. Resonances we can intuit long before they’re understood.

Kahlil Gibran was at once an articulator of some universal human principles, truths to which any culture can relate, while also a staunch advocate of Syrian sovereignty out from under Ottoman domination. One of his themes was the recognition of how we trade liberty and freedom for stabilities of compliant conformity.

I no longer see it as only interesting that a Syrian nationalist, a Lebanese poet, could be the source of two of the most memorable (or reproduced) statements ever made by US Presidents. I think Gibran delved deep enough into himself to have spoken for everyone.

Just as the rise in the realization of being self-possessed removed the legitimacy of colonization, so freedom/responsibilities of the modern turn brings the person to the fore, and with the person, boundaries get clarified, asserted, crossed, reclaimed...

 

 

~*~

　

 

Have we all seen Terry Patten's recent blog?

 

K

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necessary dissonance

Posted June 24th, 2009 by Kerry Dugan

In further reference to this week's IN presentation, Iran: Evolution, Revolution, or Regression?

(btw, the hour long audio is, of course, well worthwhile),

I just came across another cogent piece. This one by Elza Maalouf, from her blog, Integral Politics in the Middle East.

Emerging Patterns in the Middle East: Lebanon and Iran's 30 Year Itch 

K

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Unintended consequences

Posted June 25th, 2009 by Charles Bowling

 

Hi All,
 
I almost feel sorry for the Mullahs that run Iran, in that they are bereft of the benefits of an integral perspective; which means in part a lack of capacity to deal with and perhaps forestall unintended consequences.
 
When threatened, their fallback position is repression, a policy that is exacerbated by a religious milieu that sees threats (both imagined and real) as heresy. But there are unintended consequences in this repression. The Soviets tried it, with gulags, show trials, state industries, and forced collectivized farms. An unintended consequence of which was -as my Hungarian friend Enok put it -"They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.' The result was eventual economic collapse.
 
Things are a bit different in Iran, but sooner or later the Mullahs will have to come to grips with the notion that informational autarky is no longer possible, i.e. Twitter, etc. They have been blindsided by technology before. I remember very well watching, for almost a decade, the war between Iran and Iraq. For the most part it was a cruel stalemate. Iraq had better armaments, Iran had a greater population. It went on year after year, only coming to an end, in part through an unintended consequence of advancing technology. Saddam, whose hero was Joe Stalin, used poison gas against villagers in Iran. After the deadly gas had dissipated, the Mullahs sent TV crews into the area, where they recorded ghastly scenes of bloodless corpses, dropped by a silent and unseen killer. Iranians were more than ready to prove that they were willing to risk dying for their cause, and in fact celebrated the death of 'martyrs', witness the fountain in Tehran that flowed red -symbolizing the loss of the bloodied fallen. But the images of those bloodless corpses, felled by poison gas, had an opposite effect on the population. It effectively sapped their will to continue the struggle. Soon after the fighting stopped.
 
So from my view, there is a self limiting feature in the singular perspective of the mullahs. And while they have access to weapons sufficient to repress street demonstrators, to do so will have unintended consequences, probably forcing the demonstrators into alternative procedures. Will we see the tactics of the 'demonstrators' go underground in some form of passive resistance or perhaps more openly in French-style selective labor strikes that would threaten to undermine an already negatively impacted economy?
 
Warmly,
Charles

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Iran

Posted June 27th, 2009 by Robert Maxwell

Iran cried for freedom when Anglo Oil took control of Iran. Iran cried for freedom when it tried to beak free from Anglo Oil but was stopped the Bristish Government with assistance of USA. Iran cried for freedom when it elected Mossadegh and dared to hope for a moment. Iran  cried  for freedom when Mossadegh was over thrown my Kermit Roosavelt and the CIA. Iran cried for freedom when the CIA and Mossad set up a secret police called Savak to terrorise the the opponents of the puppet shar. Iran cried for freedom when it over throw the Shar, the poor hoped for a moment, the wealthy fled. Now Iran cries for freedom again. I wish them luck but it may be that the causes and conditions for freedon to arise do not exist in Iran