who's the guru of the guru gang?

 

A crazily long time ago I managed to persuade my open-minded boyfriend at the time, Chris, to join me on a weekend trip to the Blue Mountains, Australia. We stayed at a cottage embraced by autumnal woodland in order to study techniques in meditation practice. I was really looking forward to having a break and enjoying a trip in to nature while taking my mind out of the grind.

When Chris and I arrived we slowly found ourselves participants of what seemed to be a real life comedy. We were welcomed in to the cottage on Friday night and shown our room. I suppose this was when things began to get strange as we found ourselves in a florally decorated room, with a charming patch-work quilt and one very strange framed photograph next to the bed.

“Urmm…. Who is that?!” Chris said to me quizzing said photo frame. We both started laughing uncontrollably as we realised that there perched next to our bedstead was a photograph of an old white lady with her hands in prayer staring right at us promising our nights sleep somewhat awkward. Unsure of what the protocol was at a meditation retreat with a strange old lady image next to our bed, whose eyes seemingly followed us, we decided to gently face her down as we settled in for a nights sleep.

Eight people from Sydney had made their way to the retreat in search of some stillness. Early in the morning. Michael, the meditation teacher had us settle in the studio for our first meditation. The session started with the teacher gently requesting whether we had any questions before we started…

“Yeeeeaaaa! I do…” a loud New Yorker voice called out from the front breaking the zen silence of the room with her voice.

“Yes? Please what would you like to ask?” replied Michael the meditation teacher softly, taking a breath and bringing the energy back to softness.

“Who’s that woman in the picture everywhere?!” she replied. Asking the very same question that Chris and I pondered upon the night before.

“Oh, you mean, our Guru? That’s Guru xyz.” (I’m sorry I don’t remember her name but it was a little long and unpronounceable)

“What’s a Guru?!” replied New York.

“Well, she’s our teacher. We honour her and respect her.” Said Michael calmly ending the subject. “Are there anymore questions?”

“Yes..." New York again with more on her mind. "Who’s the Leader?” she remarked.

“What do you mean?” Replied Michael patiently taking in a deep breath.

“I mean, who’s the leader of the guru gang?!” said New York incidentally raising a very valid point.

What followed was a very interesting dialogue whereby Michael tried to explain how revered his teacher was while funny New Yorker challenged him on every point in her very abrasive and loud zen-shattering voice.

It was quite hilarious and by the time the conversation finished there was little clarity on who indeed was the ‘leader of the guru gang’. The elderly lady with hands in prayer was obviously a special woman who had been a guiding light for the owners of the meditation retreat, however, without any personal connection nor inspiration from her or her life; Chris and I merely saw an old lady, hands in prayer with head tilted, staring at us creepily from our bedside table

The whole weekend was life stranger than fiction which had Chris and I joking about it for a while after. I still giggle to myself about some of the funny incidents that actually inspired me to write a comedy sketch based on it. While the meditation was beautiful and certainly beneficial especially with the backdrop of the stunning autumnal colours in the Blue Mountains, besides giving us the heebie-jeebies; the owner's guru did nothing to inspire us if I am honest.

This memory revisits me, mostly because it makes me a laugh a lot and also as a teacher it's something I realise is important to remember. I feel we can all be our own masters and learn to honour one another, that we are all creators, that we bring in to our world the people and situations that can teach and grow us while perhaps the most divine of teachers is one’s own inner self no longer manipulated by the expectations of society, people around us and I’m sorry to say, even our parents’, but free to explore our own ultimate potential as empowered guides to ourselves.

is it time to shake up australian politics?

Recently, an old pal of mine, Jessica Miller, an inspiring lady I know from my days in Sydney, put herself forward to grill some of the political big wigs in Australian politics through MTV Movement. I asked her to send me some thoughts on Australian policy and on what needs shaking up.

It’s very bloody easy to be angry, sad and bored by mainstream Australian politics. For the most part it trivialises people, favours the powerful and is snide and bitchy.

So maybe it’s time to shake it up a little?

According to the Australian Electoral Commission 65% of the people who voted in the last Australian Federal election were aged 40+, upon posting this stat to my Facebook wall recently, a good friend with a great track record in environmental activism replied “Well, I guess that was a big ‘fuck you’ to future generations wasn’t it’”.

I guess, kind of. The last election also had lowest voter turnout in Australian political history unsurprisingly (even though voting is compulsory in Australia) those choosing not to vote were young.

So are the kids over it?

I’m not Antony Green, but in it’s current format, I would say yes. And if the cage-rattlin’ Russel Brand v Jeremy Paxon seen by more than 8 million people on YouTube, is anything to go by – there seems to be some pretty good reasons for this.

Here are some that I’ve been thinking about:

WTF is actually going on?

I have a political science degree and a lot of the time I have no idea what is actually going on. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention in University (was hung over or exhausted from working till 2am at a bar to pay for the privilege of being there), but when I try to follow what is going on in Australian politics, it sometimes seems like the only options I have to learn about it are in sound bites, whose bum is big, really long columns, ‘polly raunch’ Daily Tele headlines or press gallery ‘in-club’ tweets.

There doesn’t really seem to be anyone who can do a good job of explaining what ‘the game’ is. Like where in the rule book does it allow the Palmer United party to get those Senate Seats? What are the preferential voting ‘deals’ about – are they even democratic? How come lobbyists with lots of money can access politicians and I can’t? And how much do they actually get paid as a ‘pension’? Why is it ok for them to then go and lobby for special interests, when ten minutes ago they were supposed to be lobbying for and representing ‘the people’?

It just seems that ‘the game’ of politics is something that can only be played by people who have law degrees, ‘hook-ups’ the right family or a tonne of money. And that seems a bit rough.

It doesn’t really feel like it’s for me.

Russell Brand was right. You know when you walk into a political room, because you feel like you don’t belong there. I am less intimidated by sparring a 100kg man, five rounds, full-contact Muay Thai with no headgear than trying to talk to a politician or physically being a place like Parliament House.

I doubt very much whether this is done on purpose, but if I as an educated, anglo, English-speaking white woman feels incredibly uncomfortable in a political institution, imagine what it must feel like for someone whose first language isn’t English, who hasn’t had the luxury of education, has troubles speaking, or who can’t afford shiny clothes and nice teeth?

The legacy hundreds of years of  ‘democracy’ is that it remains the domain of a very select and elite few. Given that the very vast majority can now participate remotely and directly with political decision-making, maybe its time for a radical rethink of what political culture, education and direct participation can be?

Are you lot actually even qualified to do this?

I was speaking to this very clever, important, (rich, handsome) responsible guy the other day and he said that when he interviews someone for a job he asks them to ‘So you say you’re good at [say cleaning], so tell me about a time you actually did that?’ – good move eh?

Because it’s all well and good for people to talk about how great they are but really, if your fridge is broken and you need it fixed, you're not going to get someone who writes about fridges, or who just so happens to have pulled a chicken out of the freezer a few times to fix it are you?

No, because that would be stupid.

So why then are the people who are responsible for making very big decisions and try to ‘fix’ big-arsed problems that really do impact upon peoples general happiness and well-being in an infinite way, are not the people who actually have real experience and genuine expertise in fixing a certain problem being the ones responsible to fix it?

For fear of write-waffle, my point is that for leadership and governance to be truly effective, representative and good at solving complex problems, you need a whole range of people involved and contributing – not just lawyers (of which 52% of Cabinet are versus 1% of the population), people who were privileged enough to go to private school (of whom 78% of Cabinet did versus only 35% of the population), and men (which make up 95% of the cabinet versus 49.4 of the broader population).

For creative problems solvers who are good at fixing things to do this at a national level means re-imagining the whole culture and seemingly pedigree-bred lines of getting into these positions.

So it is  really easy to be cynical, sceptical and pessimistic about the fact that young people or even just interesting and diverse people think that politics is a waste of time.

Or, we can all just get on with it.

The sad thing about big old antiquated institutions is that they seem to sometimes intimidate people into thinking that there is only one type of power, and if you don’t have it then you can’t change anything. Or you think its up to someone else to fix.

I think this is incredibly untrue, especially among young people.

Disillusioned by the whole shemozzle, everywhere you look people, and particularly young people, are really just getting on with it. They’re doing it in business, the arts, via social enterprises, in communications and marketing – they are shaking the shit out of it! The miserable thing about this is that many of them have to leave Australia to do it, instead they go to New York, London, Europe, Africa, Japan – places where there isn’t this stifling sense of ‘no!’. It sucks that all of my smart friends all now live in New York.

Moreover, last year Gen Y contributed 16 million hours of time volunteering each month, 192 million hours to charity – this is worth $3.1 billion dollars per year. So shove that down your ‘Gen Ys are so self-centred and lazy’ stereotype-pipe and choke on it.

So given that the real fixers of problems, creators of solutions and givers of time are actually not part of the formal political club, maybe we should just ignore the club and instead focus on doing things ourselves, joining others who inspire us, and support what they’re doing?

I’ll leave you with this idea:

Imagine for a minute that we all collectively decided not to pay our tax to the government but instead throw it behind someone we know personally who is doing great things in our community?

The idea is fraught obviously, but give it a little space to breath and I think you’ll find the imaginings quite delicious.

If you like the idea of shaking up Australian politics a little, Vote for Jess Miller in the MTV Movement here (now do it!) share and tweet about it using the #shakeitmiller & #mtvmovement hashtags @jem1ller

australian digital landscape

Recently on my visit to meet the remainder of my team in San Fransisco, I presented an update on the digital landscape in Australia. It was a brilliant exercise and a great opportunity for everyone to share their thoughts, qualms and questions on the subject.

I've boiled it down a little for the purposes of my blog.

Australian Digital Landscape

View more presentations from Jessica Brookes.

You have a voice here - feel free to use it. Even if you just want to tell me it sucks and digital smells.