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"And so on bad days we hear our own inner voices murmuring, 'It's hopeless. We've lost. The forces we face are too strong for us. Give up." These voices seem reasonable, sensible. But any Witch can recognize a spell being cast.
A spell is a story we tell ourselves that shapes our emotional and psychic world. The media, the authorities tell a story so pervasive that most people mistake it for reality. We're fighting a righteous war against the Source of All Evil, and everyone supports Bush, and corporate control is the only way to be safe and to provide what we need, and to question is Evil, too.
The counterspell is simple: tell a different story. Pull back the curtain: expose their story for the false tale it is. Act 'as if'.
* Act as if we weren't doomed, as if what we did in the next weeks and months could shift the balance of fate.
* Act as if the movement were coming back stronger than ever, attracting thousands and hundreds of thousands who have had their eyes opened by the war.
* Act as if this movement were the most creative, visionary, inspiring, funny, welcoming, transforming and truly revolutionary movement that had ever been. As if we had new language, new tactics, new ways of communicating that could waken the dormant dissent and the sleeping visions in every heart.
* Act as if a whole new public dialogue was beginning outside the boxes drawn by our traditional political lines and our TV sets.
* Act as if all the different factions in our movement were learning how to support each other, how to work in true coalition and act with true solidarity. As if all who should be allies were able to come together and work for our common goals.
* Act as of we were going to win.
Fear makes things worse than they are. Fear limits our vision and our ability to take in information, makes the power holders seem omnipotent, and leads to our suppressing ourselves, saving the authorities the cost and trouble of doing it. And despair leads to paralysis.
The counterspell for fear is courage: facing the possibility of the worst and then going ahead with what you know is right. The counterspell for despair is action in service of a vision. The counterspell for paralysis is stubborn, persistent passion.
Even if we're wrong, if nothing we do does makes a difference, courage and passion are a better place to be than hopelessness, cynicism and fear. If the authorities repress us, that's better than becoming people who repress ourselves. If we see our dreams ripped out of our hands, that's better than never daring to dream at all.
And if we tell our own stories with enough intensity and focus, we'll start to believe them, and so will others. We'll break the spells that bind us. We'll start to want that other world we say is possible with such intensity that nothing can stop us or deny us. All it takes is our willingness to act from vision, not from fear, to risk hoping, to dare to act for what we love."
Starhawk
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