By Keegan Anatole ~ Law of the Earth ~ t.me/Ecovillagenews
Do you ever look back at early life and appreciate clues as to a passion or purpose you’re living now? For instance, I can recall riding in the car with my mom—maybe I was around age eleven or so—speaking about philosophy. We were considering our ideas about governance, although at the time it just seemed like a conversation about some rules at school. Basically it went something like:
“Mom, I don’t think it should be so strict, and a lot of the rules we are told seem silly.”
With a mother’s sweetest care she tried to set my mind at ease, saying, “I agree that people should be able to decide things for themselves. The problem that I think leads to the rules you don’t like is morality. Wrong behavior is the reason someone came up with the rules.”
It rings true that the customs I saw as tyranny can be said to result from a general lack of trust among people… or confidence that we will choose to do the right thing on our own. Instead of setting my mind at ease my mother’s remark drove me down the rabbit hole, deeply exploring human nature and the forces which influence it on a quest to figure out how that trust could grow and bloom within mankind.
My quest brought me through all sorts of research about our species’ story and the power that shapes our destiny. The quintessential realization about that power is that it comes from with each one of us! In fact it is in every one and every thing.
…Now I’m going to express my grand theory of fortune (or misfortune as it may be)… Have you considered that the universe naturally tends to produce fulfilling experiences for its inhabitants when we honor ourselves and one another? To honor creation is to seek greater understanding continually. To understand ourselves and one another is to become freer from the fear of the unknown, which is one main culprit creating distrust in the world.
Also there’s another way to interpret the concept of understanding which adds another dimension to our tremendous need for it. Many people have made the observation that to understand might also mean to stand under, usually rejecting the concept and avoiding use of the word as a result. I propose that understanding between people, as a shared intention and way of relating, can equate to mutual support. Imagine two people taking turns standing on each other’s shoulders to climb over a series of walls.
Now imagine what two hundred people could do to with those walls! …But how do we achieve a higher level of mutual understanding? What will inspire more people to seek for it? This is the quest so many moments such as that far-off conversation with my mom push me to undertake.
Now let’s discuss my other mother, Mama Earth! She is so full of marvelous wonders, and every bit of her being has a magical story to tell. My life thus far has been a love affair with the discovery of her beauty and mystery, from her firmest features held fast to her breast across ages of time to her briefest butterfly, so exquisitely ephemeral.
The web of life is a tapestry of tales in which our own are amongst the blessed to belong. The majesty of our great Mother Earth commands our appreciation and calls us into gratefulness. It is our utterly tangible relationship to her which will allow us, her children, to meet on common ground and give thanks for the opportunity to share.
I believe the medicine of her most relevant lore, gathered and curated with reverence from as many sources as possible, can offer a deeply moving incentive to grow with the movement I’ve begun to describe. Relevant to what you ask? To those seeking to brave the adventure beyond the confines of society’s expectations; I’m talking about heeding the Norns rather than the norms!
The Norns are the Norse goddesses of fate, who sit at the foot of the World Tree and weave the tapestry of life. They are three sisters named Urd, Verdani, and Skuld, respectively representing birth and youth, the prime of life, and old age and death. Similar figures are represented in other mythology, such as the Greek Fates or Moriae, Clotho, the spinner of thread, Lachesis, the weaver, and Atropos, who cut the thread at the end of life.
I hold that it is our fate carry out our lives’ adventures in order to transform the world.
Adventures are my way of life since childhood, when mom and dad sat me on a dirt bike and sent me downhill on skis by age 5. (Those were separate events, but can you imagine them combined??) We went to a secluded mountain cabin in the high Sierras during the Summers, and I rode my mountain bike down forest trails to school from age 10 or so. One could almost say we were “nomadic” since we moved every few years, and if I wasn’t then, I certainly am now.
I also took an interest in acting and music, playing lead roles in school plays and musicals. Spiritual discipline entered my life through the martial arts at age 13 (numbers which have reversed as I write now in Spring of 2024.) My first sensei, in Okinawan Karate, gave us patches depicting Pine Trees when we had demonstrated strength and endurance. We were told the symbol also represents longevity, something I will achieve yet.
My older brother, Wade, my only sibling, shared the passionate journey across several martial arts, even including 3 months of intensive training at a Shaolin Kung Fu school in China. Unfortunately he didn’t live up to that third quality indicated by the Pine patch…despite his incredible strength and endurance. He fell to his death while rock climbing in an unfrequented area in 2020. May he continue along his soul’s journey in peace!
As shocking as it was, we were somewhat prepared since we knew he loved the perilous edge, having run with the Spanish bulls and free-soloed fairly long climbs in Yosemite. I am more cautious from that standpoint, although I have spent much of my adult life wandering the world with minimal planning, riding a cargo boat down the Mekong River here and driving the length of Mexico there…
I chose such a life not just to see the views but in order to give myself the freedom to detach and gain distance from much of the social programming which dictates people’s lives for them these days. It isn’t that I just want to go my own way; it’s more. Deep down I know our species must find a new Way of being.
I had to break free and grow my connection in mind and spirit to a higher power so that I could help others transform their lives when their time was ripe. More and more people are becoming aware that that time is now now! So what is this new way of being? How can one attain it?
Of course everyone is on a unique journey, and the way I see it the evolutionary shift we need to create for ourselves is basically about celebrating the expression of that uniqueness. Honoring the divine individuality within each of us—rather than masking it in order to conform to predetermined social norms—means transcending the programming instilled in us at school, home, work, and even our favorite media channels (especially there.)
So back to my story! I wasn’t just wandering without direction, no; I found my calling in a little thing called Permaculture. I’ll tell you how. In 2012 my brother and I were bicycling through Europe with a friend. Our paths diverged when I decided to attend Italian language school in Verona, and Wade went on to Pamplona for the human bovine stampede. (Our friend went his own way too; bless him.)
I had heard of an online network where I could find accommodation with locals and basically trade some work for a chance to live as a guest in their culture. After a fabulous stint studying in Northern Italy, I biked around the tip of the Adriatic sea and stayed with a couple different hosts in Croatia.
I didn’t realize it then, but this would kick off a twelve-year career of such work/stay arrangements which I chose to pursue instead of university. As a side note, I only learned recently that by engaging in such arrangements I was participating in something called Agorism and co-creating an economy parallel to (and free from) the mainstream markets morbidly manipulated by the mega money mafia behind all the central banks.
The second project I went to stay and help at introduced me to the world of Permaculture. It’s the home of a Dutch family in the north central region of Croatia, where they moved on a mission to enjoy and protect the beautiful wild forest and welcome campers! They were keen on gardening, hunted mushrooms, and dreamt of establishing a “food forest” to grow abundance for themselves and their guests.
I learned about successful natural farmers like Masanobu Fukuoka and the originators of the concept of Permaculture, or “Permanent Agriculture,” a system of design intended to create healthy human habitat in abundant cooperation with Nature. It’s basically a systematized resurgence of Indigenous Wisdom for modern men and women to integrate, thus performing a course correct from environmental catastrophe towards regeneration.
One of the other volunteers encouraged me to go take a Permaculture Design Course and also recommended a Vipassana Meditation Retreat. Having gotten a head start with martial arts and been exposed to yoga while growing up in California, now I was fully set on my path for conscious development! Up until then my studies had focused around language and performing arts, but traveling allowed me to converge with the revolutionary trajectory I was seeking.
To make a long story short, I did end up taking a Permaculture Design Course…in Costa Rica of all places! And what amazing nature to be in relationship with over there! I woke up to the roar of howler monkeys, watched six-foot iguanas, and helped grow a huge variety of amazing plants during the six months I stayed on as volunteer at Punta Mona Center for Sustainable Living after the three-week course.
I loved every bit of it, but nothing fascinated me quite as much as the human element, getting to be immersed in the local dialect of Spanish and learn new words every day while enjoying the rotating community of guests, volunteers, and collaborators. My mentor Stephen Brooks introduced me to the concept of “invisible structures,” meaning patterns formed by energy dynamics within the lawful, social, and economic realms. All the tangible manifestations in this Earthly garden are grown from these structures, which usually take the form of agreements of some kind. That’s why I like to call designing in partnership with nature “agree-culture.”
It seemed to me that that man was embodying Creatorhood more than anyone I had yet come to know. I could see that the connection he had with the jungle environment where we were living—filled with an extensive variety of plants, many of which he had brought there as seeds and nurtured into fruition—was divine. Through his devotion to the “garden” he was integrating "God in”…into-great-fullness! And I was grateful to witness.
I could have stayed there in blissful communion with nature, but the wide world called me back out, and I returned to college with the aim of studying linguistics. I might have known I would find the institution totally repellent after having opened my mind to a more connected worldview. In fact I knew deep down the university system was nothing less than brainwashing.
My spirit rejected the indoctrination agenda in academia, and I went instead to massage school. It might have been a promising career, but I also rebelled against the idea of getting a license to practice massage.
I thought, “Why should I need to ask the state for permission to trade my service for compensation? I live in the land of the free, don’t I?”
I will be exploring this question in my next article, and I invite you to explore with me so that by the power of our wills to live in freedom we become the people we are destined to be! (More testimonies on https://theliberator.us/interview)