We are on bated breath today, holding a prayer that our democratic legislators will not yield, that they will hold fast against the coercive forces demanding the surrender of our fundamental rights. We stand at the crossroads of freedom and control, watching as the kleptocracy—the few who truly hold the reins of power—threaten to withhold life-sustaining resources unless we bow to their coup.

This is no different from the tactics used by any perpetrator of family violence, a tyrant-economic coercion as a tool to bind us, to keep us compliant, to strip away our power through the very means that should nourish us. The ruling party seeks to force our hand, to turn the essentials of life into weapons of submission. But we are not the ones to be crushed beneath the weight of their greed.

Soft rebellion, in these times, is the refusal to be bound by their threats. It is the steady resistance that does not rise to meet violence with violence, but with a quiet strength that refuses to be owned. It is the knowing that our survival is not in their hands, that even when they withhold the bread, we will find a way to grow the grain in the cracks of their empire.

Today, I address the seventh concept in Soft Rebellion: Disrupting the Spectacle.

I believe we can do two things at once: we can witness the machinations of the current regime, we can track their every move, and yet we do not have to surrender to their coercion. We do not have to let their spectacle consume our gaze or dictate the rhythm of our days. Yes, we see them—their power plays, their manipulation, their endless theater of control—but we do not have to enter the stage they’ve set for us.

Soft Rebellion: Disrupting the Spectacle ~ Restoring Sovereign Attention

There is power in starving the spectacle, in slipping through its grasp, in refusing to be its audience. In turning instead to the ancient, the intimate, the real. To the work of mending, tending, listening. To the slow and stubborn acts of care that regimes cannot predict, cannot subdue.

This is a rebellion of sovereign attention—a remembering that our gaze is sacred, that where we look, we weave and connect through mycelial networks toward a deeper, unseen unity. That the world is not made only by those who wield force, but also by those who refuse to be entranced by its display.

Soft rebellion understands the power and timing of turning away. Knows when to slip out the back door of the burning stage and into the wild night, where older rhythms pulse beneath the manufactured noise. Knows that to starve the beast, we must turn our attention elsewhere—to the quiet, patient work of weaving something else into being.

This is a magic of refusal. A soft rebellion that does not waste its fire reacting to every provocation but instead stokes slow, steady embers beneath the soil. That refuses to amplify the propaganda, to take the bait, to play by the rules of a dying empire.

Instead, we turn toward the work of healing. Of tending the bruised and broken places in ourselves, in our kin, in the land. We build shelter in the ruins, plant gardens in the cracks, sing songs older than conquest. We dream, not as escape, but as invocation—calling forth futures that refuse to be dictated by those who profit from despair.

The spectacle wants your attention. It feeds on your gaze, on the charged pulse of reaction, on the breathless cycle of crisis that keeps you ensnared. Like a parasitic fungus hijacking an ant, it seeks to control movement, to dictate focus, to pull the body toward its own demise.

But we are not the fruiting bodies of empire. We are the mycelium beneath.

Power, when it is fragile, must be seen to be believed. But the networks that outlast empire do not need to be visible. They thrive underground, in the unseen spaces where roots exchange breath, where fungi weave survival beneath the leaf litter, where life continues whether or not the spectacle acknowledges it.

Soft rebellion is not passivity. It is choosing to move in ways the eye of power cannot track. It is refusing to be an audience member in the theater of control. It is turning attention elsewhere—not as retreat, but as strategy. The empire wants you transfixed. Mycelium wants you interconnected.

A Ritual for Slipping the Snare and Regaining Sovereign Attention

1. Withdraw from the Spectacle
Turn off the screens. Step away from the noise. Feel the pull of withdrawal—the ache of a system trained to equate vigilance with agency. Let that false tether snap.

2. Root into the Hidden World
Step outside if you can. Touch the earth, press your hands to the bark, to the soil. If indoors, hold a mushroom, a wooden bowl, or seeds—something that holds the wisdom of underground networks.

3. Listen for the Unseen Currents
Breathe deeply. Mycelium works in silence, breaking down the old to make way for the new. Tune into the quiet intelligence of what thrives unseen.

4. Speak Your Intent into the Web
Whisper a vow—not to escape the world, but to engage it differently. Resist the spectacle’s pull and move like mycelium: adaptive, unseen, thriving in the places power forgets to look.

5. Move Like Mycelium
Carry this way of being into your day. Weave quiet threads of care, defiance, and repair. Share knowledge in whispers. Tend the roots, not the fruit. Work in ways that cannot be traced, erased, or stopped.

When you return, move like mycelium—decentralized, adaptive, impossible to root out. Choose the unnoticed paths. Tend the soil, so when the old world crumbles, something nourishing already grows in the cracks.

Carry this quiet defiance in your bones. Let your attention be a blessing, given to what is alive, what is worth tending.

Soft rebellion is not inaction. It is a shifting of the loom, a refusal to let empire choose the thread. A turning away from spectacle, and toward the slow work of renewal.

So, as we track the spectacle from the margins, may we not be consumed by it, but instead, cultivate spaces where true connection thrives. My wish for you this weekend is that you find moments of quiet rebellion—intentful, rooted, and connective.

I’ll return on Monday with the eighth and final facet of the soft rebellion that is shaping our times.

Until then, may you weave beauty into the world in small, subtle ways, nourish the bonds that sustain you, and move through your days with the patient strength of the willow. Let this weekend be one of deep presence, of weaving what is real, what is alive, and what is worth tending.