It's plain to all freedom-loving people that the Internet is, depending on how you look at it, either the battleground for freedom, or the means by which love workers will achieve freedom without battle.

One way or the other, some of us, at least, must know how to use what is obviously the Aquarian network, the most powerful instrument of freedom since the printing press. Just as Gutenberg's invention promoted the modern era through new literatures in vernacular languages, and created an immense new readership for works of science and history, philosophy and poetry — and thereby freed the European mind from kings and churches who had long controlled their people by keeping them illiterate — the Internet is a door to wonder or calamity. Bloggers are either the pit crew of the revolution or an affront to what used to be professional media, depending on one's point of view.

For those who love to surf it, the Internet is a portal to liberty that allows anyone to find or publish anything at once, form networks and alliances overnight, and engage millions of people simultaneously in activism, ceremony, meditation, and transformational events that aim at nothing less than liberating the consciousness of all humankind instantly, in a single incandescent moment of shared intention and all-embracing love.

The Internet Revolution Overseas

The Taliban banned the Internet as contrary to the Qur'an, while the terms of the struggle for control of the web — and with it, communications — have shifted in the United States. It remains to be seen how the feds will track and tax business transactions conducted over the web, so that they can gain control of the Internet without appearing to do so.

For years, India tried to control the Internet indirectly by requiring anyone who imported computer equipment to follow complicated and costly rules. Japan impeded the wildfire of the web years ago by setting the licensing fees of service providers so high that ISPs had to charge customers the equivalent of $100 a month. Market forces soon kicked in, of course, and convinced even the Ministry of Communications in Tokyo that only a person of doubtful sanity would try to stop the Japanese from using the gadgets they love.

This leaves the People's Republic of China, pulled in opposite directions by authorities who want to keep the country chained to socialist orthodoxy, and educated young fire dragons who long to go where they want, make lots of money, live in chic cities, hold elections that give parties other than the communists a chance, and even start a democracy. Tension has been building underground ever since the horrendous events in Tiananmen Square in 1989, then burst into guerrilla trickery a decade later when hackers began to move like lightning from one website to the next, broadcasting messages of liberty before vanishing into Shanghai and the night. They became the most thrilling freedom blaster scenario of 1999, and inspired cybertricksters everywhere to learn how to link up, log on, let fly, and clear out.

By 2005, China had more Internet users than communist party members. A fifth of the 80 million people who use the web in China make almost daily visits to bulletin boards that have become forums for political protest and tools for pulling a team or a multitude toward an abuse that needs to be seen and solved. In 2003, after the parents of a young man who had died in police custody placed on the web a petition that one of China's most progressive newspapers picked up and posted on the nation's largest news portal, thousands of comments hit the boards at once, and started a surge of protest that led to the trial and conviction of police officials and the government's dissolution of the arbitrary and deeply hated "custody and repatriation" system.

"Despite authorities' persistent efforts to control the Internet," writes social activist Xiao Qiang, "the rising tide of online opinion is a fact of life in Chinese society now and will continue to play an influential role in expanding the space for free expression and even in creating social change. The transformative effect of the Internet has already set China on an irreversible course toward greater openness and public participation in its social and political life." From such a heady brew of possibilities, heroic new faces must emerge. Perhaps the best known is the woman known as Stainless Steel Mouse.

The Stainless Steel Mouse Leads the Revolution

Liu Di, 29, returned to her post-graduate courses at Beijing Normal University after a year off from her studies as a guest of the Chinese government at Qincheng Prison, where she spent her time in solitary confinement. Had she earned this sentence in the usual way, as a member of a drug ring or a terrorist group plotting to make exploding bicycles? No. She was an outspoken blogger who had complained online about laws restricting Internet cafes, and other government limits on freedom of expression over the web.

Liu made it plain in her writings that she was not trying to start a movement, but was an ordinary person with a desire for freedom. This may be why she gained so much support from others who saw themselves in her that the government responded to pressure on her behalf and released her. She's back at her blog, working away again, offering the quiet suggestion that more freedom will not kill anyone, and may even make their lives a little happier. "Ignore government propaganda and live freely," she writes.

We don't know yet how many tens of millions of Chinese high school girls want to grow up to be Liu Di. Or how they use their time at school to draft what they'll put on their blogs tonight. They will be the bringers of freedom in the years to come. They know what people in Aquarian communities everywhere are learning. Soft, sincere inspiration does it. You don't have to be a star. You just have to speak from the heart.

©2011 by Dan Furst. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Weiser Books,
an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. www.redwheelweiser.com

This article was adapted with permission from the book:

Surfing Aquarius: How to Ace the Wave of Change
by Dan Furst.

Learn how to thrive in the Age of Aquarius! Surfing Aquarius is for people who want to make the best of the years just ahead by making brave, optimistic choices in a spirit of community. Surfing Aquarius shows how 2012 is the beginning of a spiritual transformation when awakened human beings will create new societies based on Aquarian principles of inventive teamwork and empowered service.

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About the Author

Dan Furst has been an actor, astrologer, singer, theatre producer, and ceremonial artist in New York, Japan, India, Indonesia, Hawaii and Egypt. His Universal Festival Calendar, published on his website since July 1998, has been widely cited and reprinted, and has made him one of the world's most respected authorities on sacred and mythic time and the Age of Aquarius. He has been a professional astrologer for 33 years and has read astrology and astrocartography for thousands of clients all over the world. He lives in Pisac in the Sacred Valley near Cusco, in Peru. Visit him online at www.hermes3.net