Your starter kit to revolution.
Pick an issue (any issue) and PAUSE for it.
PAUSE for planet
PAUSE for peace
PAUSE because to say no to economic systems with exploitation built into their very functioning
PAUSE because we need a higher consciousness to responsibly manage existing technology
PAUSE because the government isn’t reflecting your values
PAUSE because justice
PAUSE because love is your highest order
PAUSE for wild and free childhoods
PAUSE because you don’t want to live in racism
in patriarchy
PAUSE because you don’t accept hunger
when there is plenty, elsewhere
PAUSE ad nauseum
PAUSE because rape makes you sick
PAUSE because hate makes you sick
PAUSE because we are sick
And no solution can emerge from frameworks of division
PAUSE if you’re a selfish ass hole
take the week off
PAUSE for existence
because we’re here for more than paying bills
PAUSE in solidarity with gay unborn baby whales!
PAUSE in favor of
in resistance to
PAUSE because you are mad as hell
and you’re not going to take it anymore
PAUSE because you’re a human-being goddammit
and your life has value *
PAUSE the fuck out of PAUSE
because you care
In a gesture that is for the people, PAUSE.
Our aim is not consensus.^
We don’t need agreement to pause, we only need to pause to PAUSE.
Number one:
Decide on collective PAUSE for six full days. Stop the money from moving. Disrupt the illusion of “inevitable” and of “just how the world works”. Nah, y’all. This is one way and we can do it different. This system runs off our fuel, our currency. We are flow, the game doesn’t exist if we don’t play by its rules. **
PAUSE entails not buying anything from anywhere, stop conducting business. When market stops, overculture *** stops. Stay home. PAUSE from work, PAUSE from school. Decide on a self-enforced lockdown. Be the disease that takes down empire-thinking.
Life depends on us, we are it. Transformation is possible and you are proof.
Rebuild trust in and among we-the-people. May we show ourselves our own power.
The status quo is not working. There are enough of us who want a world built on love that it can exist. May we be very still and very quiet. May we listen, may we be, may we move in alignment.
The least we can do is PAUSE. PAUSE to say enough to othering in all its forms: environmental degradation, war, social and economic inequality. Enough floundering, enough of being battered by a rat race to grow the wealth stores of a few. Enough coping. Enough compromise. Enough complicity. Decide that the mental health crisis is symptomatic of an insane overculture and decide to shift the environment so that we might be free from the ails of a toxic workplace-liveplace.
We can do this. We can stop. It is perhaps the only thing that makes sense. Covid taught us. Death teaches us. Everything can stop in an instant. May we be the disease, let us be the disease that ends patterns of exploitation. May we be the cure, let us restore health to ourselves. May we be a place of rest for an ailing Earth so that it can heal. This planet, like our bodies have an incredible capacity to heal, be a healing environment, let restoration happen.
Overculture tells us there’s no time for PAUSE. There is only time for PAUSE. PAUSE is as dangerous as it is simple. We are dangerous because we are one love.
PAUSE is as playful as it is challenging. May we enjoy ourselves, follow your bliss. PAUSE requires us to face all of everything which will be uncomfortable. Don’t panic, you are capable of facing everything because everything is with you. Everything is you.
We have missed our aim, let us try again different.
If you have questions, seek. Let the process of sorting through the implications and strategies be the work of becoming citizens of a world where there is room enough for everyone.
Let your most important thing align with you how you spend your energy, time, focus, and resources.
As for me and my household, we will PAUSE.
Number two:
Prepare for PAUSE. We don’t turn our face.
Logistics are good trouble for PAUSE. Each problem is an invitation toward intimacy with the realities we’ve created. Each of us live in ever moving spheres of influence, it is your responsibility to use your position and resources to implement PAUSE with compassion, delight, and to the best of your abilities.
PAUSE isn’t the solution, but from the process of choosing PAUSE, solutions for collective wellbeing will emerge. Many and varied resources for PAUSE will rise up. We are one another’s resources, we are the network that makes PAUSE possible. All together, we know how to address all implications of PAUSE. We are the system and we can PAUSE ourselves.
Preparing for PAUSE is the medicine. We have to find one another and know how we will work to care for one another’s needs. No one person has enough knowledge to effectively implement PAUSE and every person can absolutely choose PAUSE for themselves. PAUSE requires individuals and affiliated organizations to query the logistics for PAUSE. Each one of us gets to decide how we PAUSE, what our PAUSE looks like.
How shall we arrange ourselves? PAUSE will affect each of us differently and the ease of PAUSE is not evenly distributed. The political in the personal will be made plain, we will see how internalized overculture has become.
Make sure that you have enough food, sufficient shelter, and connection to others before going into PAUSE. PAUSE is NOW. Orient now for PAUSE, PAUSE has already begun. Align all efforts with PAUSE as focus, we must course correct. How you PAUSE is directly related to what you deem most important. Carry out PAUSE from your highest value.
We are not well but may it be well with our souls. The material preparations for PAUSE are directly related to the energetic transformation of PAUSE. We are all mind and body, act accordingly.
If you are unsure, ask for help. If you are afraid, ask for help. If you have questions, ask them. If you have ideas, say them. Move carefully and trust yourself.
This information is reaching you at the speed of trust. There is always enough time for the right work. (x) When you doubt, when you have lost the way, walk backward until you find home, walk your way forward to see that you’ve already arrived.
Number three:
Invite others into PAUSE. Share broadly and share personally. Share person-to-person in ways that bring delight, in ways that engender connection. The micro reflects the macro, the collective reflects your inner universe. Turn your habitat into a healing biotope, let the flourishing spread.
Number four:
If you are willing and able, help facilitate PAUSE for someone else.
Let there be as many expressions of PAUSE as there are people to embody it. Let PAUSE happen in solitude and let PAUSE happen in solidarity. May we resist all tools of division and allow for the multiplicity inherent in oneness.
If you are already engaged in practices of lightwork, shadowwork, helping work, activism, care work, creative work, or community organizing: let PAUSE nourish your efforts and allow the networks you’ve built to become resources for PAUSE.
This will be the reweaving of social fabric. Commit to being a part of tending to the solutions arising from the act of PAUSE.
Movements move even as they stay center. This document is a draft of an evolving movement, a living document, engage with it as such. Learn freely, express freely, share freely. Let your draft take a new form, let it reflect your particular curiosity, creativity, and courage. Update in real time, change your mind, risk failure, have fun. Dance for PAUSE, art for PAUSE, write for PAUSE, educate for PAUSE, learn for PAUSE, hold vigil for PAUSE, sit for PAUSE, recite PAUSE, commune with PAUSE.
Notes and questions to consider:
All of us here lived through Covid shutdowns. I propose we employ that lived experience to help us consider best practices for PAUSE. In my estimation, there should be essential workers for PAUSE (though very much more limited because unlike Covid measures, market is not something we want to do during PAUSE). It seems to me reasonable and helpful for doctors, nurses, first responders, utility and sanitation workers to practice PAUSE without interrupting their services. Honor these folk and look out for their needs.
Incarceration? How do we implement PAUSE for inmates?
The systems maintaining status quo during PAUSE are not excluded from the critique of PAUSE but maintaining them will provide an appropriate level of security so that the work of PAUSE might be truly experienced and heard.
May we practice mutual love. May we trust our collective capacity to apply knowledgable care to address every contingency arises from this effort. I mean, why the hell not?
