I went on a fantastic time-travel trip down the rabbit hole to 1967 in San Francisco on a Magic Bus. Chris Hardman of Antenna Theater has created a 90 minute experience of the social revolution that launched an evolution of consciousness around the globe, the effects of which we are still processing.
The colorful Magic Bus tour starts at Union Square. It features 3D screens that periodically drop over the windows describing all the amazing and horrific events of 1967 which birthed the revolutionary summer of love. Glimpses of the city today – when the screens aren’t covering the windows – view Chinatown, the Haight, North Beach, the Financial District, Golden Gate Park’s Conservatory of Flowers ending back at Union Square.
In the process of revisiting the summer of love and all the emotions that it spawned, I was struck by how similar the summer of 2010 is to 1967. We currently are devastated by the greed, deception, fraud, unjust wars, etc., just as the youth were in the 60’s. Many then tried to make their voices heard by the establishment, but their cries fell on deaf ears and closed minds. Society was polarized. The 40-somethings were fighting to keep the ‘50’s materialistic Pleasantville mindset. It was pleasant on the surface only. Underneath it was inauthentic and toxic. Young people smelled it and rebelled.
All our young leaders who stood up for truth were killed. Despair was numbed by drugs, which eventually destroyed the benevolent mood of the summer of love and its inherent message. The movement had begun with the slogan “Make Love, Not War”. It championed the brotherhood of man, the unity of all under a banner of love with flowers as the symbol of a loving Universe. The ideas were magnificent obsessions, but were crushed as easily as flowers underfoot.
Unlike flowers, however, the everlasting gospel of Truth and Beauty cannot be crushed out of existence. It is still alive and can grow and even thrive if we awaken to hear the music. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. It wasn’t quite here yet in 1967, but it is here now in 2010. The planets are aligned and monumental changes are indeed occurring. The wind of change is more at our back now than it was in the ‘60’s. They were the lead wagon exploring a whole new consciousness on a mass scale. After 43 years we have had time to marinate in it, and it has changed the structure of our culture.
Many of the hippies that were literally “on the bus” in 1967 in San Francisco are alive and well and filling the part of mentors or sages for the awakened youth of today who are not willing to stand aside and see greedy criminals steal our country, our culture and our planet. Act II of the Summer of Love is the real deal. It is LOVE in all caps as an action verb. It is non-violence Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. style. It is awake and conscious and includes everyone from age 9 to 90.
What we have learned in forty three years is that talk is cheap. No one remembers what we say, but they never forget how we make them feel. Therefore, to effect a transformation of the world, we each have to be the change we want to see in the world. Then our very presence can lift others because we will be lighter and more loving. It isn’t what we are doing as much as it is who we are being.
In the ‘60’s many of us were running away from the realities confronting us from every direction. In the 21st century we need to be running toward reality, armed with truth and wisdom overlaid with compassion. There is strength in numbers; and therefore, it is imperative that we join and cooperate with others who share the vision.
If we make LOVE our driving creative force and the ultimate measuring stick of our progress, we can fulfill the promise of the ‘60’s. Let’s get “on the bus” and make love, not war.
Note: You may contact The Magic Bus for weekend rides throughout the summer in San Francisco, Union Square at www.antenna-theater.org
The other night I was watching America’s Got Talent. Barbara Padilla was the last contestant to perform. I think that most people were in awe as she sang “Ave Maria” from a pedestal aglow with white light in a gown that flowed around her to the floor.
(cut and paste this into your browser to see her performance 9/8/09)
Please watch the video of her performance through to the end as well as the judges’ comments. Notice Sharon Osborne’s comment at the end as she bows to her as a cancer survivor herself and as a woman. Piers said people would remember where they were and what they were doing on the night they heard her sing, (almost as we knew where we were on 9/11/01). It really was quite extraordinary. I felt so strongly that the essence of the Sacred Feminine, or the true personification of the Goddess was and is personified in Barara’s spirit and her voice.
She is not a virgin Mary, a holier than thou religioius saint, an evangelist for an ultruistic cause or any of that. She is a living breathing, sensuous, beautiful example of a complete woman. Her manifestation of the sacred side of femininity is actually able to bring spiritual and physical healing to others, because she is coming from the fullness of her heart.
I am always “beating the drum” about the need in the world for the return of the Sacred Feminine to offset the destructive, warrior nature of the patriarchial world we’ve endured for millenia. People generally misunderstand what I mean by that, and have flashbacks to the women’s liberation movement. That movement helped women come out of servitude, but it turned many men and women against women’s rights because it too had a warrior nature.
But now we have been blessed to experience a world performance of what the restoration of the Sacred Feminine looks like in 2009. Men and women alike acknowledge the rise of a transcendent awe and love that fills them in the presence of this beautiful energy.
Barbara inpires all of us to know that the Spirit she manifests is in each and every one of us. If each of us could go through our day with this open hearted feeling of love and compassion that we feel when hearing and seeing Barbara then world peace would not be far behind.
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