The New Earth: Reconnecting with Gaia

“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world — we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.”

She speaks of the Great Turning, the Mayans speak of 2012, the Christians see the end times, there are probably others who also feel change is coming. I like the words ‘the Great Turning’. The chinese speak of that in ancient philosophy.

Life is a wheel, in truth it is a spiral.

This blog will introduce you to Joanna Macy’s work that spawned the deep ecology movement. This connects with understanding the philosophy and experience of Gaia.

From Joanna’s website http://www.joannamacy.net/

For peace, justice, and life on Earth, fresh ways of seeing arise, and ancient ways return. This web site opens doors to the new bodies of thought, time-tested spiritual practices, and pioneering group methods, that I find to be powerful inspirations to understanding and action. I share these resources in service to the revolution of our time: the “Great Turning” from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization.

I actually went to one of her workshops early last year. What I liked about the workshop was that it is experiential. You are using your body to connect to the planet. You can see this is playback theatre (role playing concepts) or acting in some form to really feel the issue in your body. When I did the workshop I recall some activities where we had to walk in a labrynth (in circles, spirals) and retrace our lives from current time until before birth. Interesting notion. Some experience recollection of previous lives others recall events from their current life. They may recall being a child and move according to being a child. They recall the people around them at the time, so you move through the circle and remember. Really interesting. Another activity I recall was walking anywhere but in a parametered circle, and you look into people’s eyes and smile, you say nothing. Some feel uncomfortable about this as in society we are trained to not stare at people and not look into their eyes. As a clown I do it all the time. But very quickly. We walk and look and smile. It creates connection. Another is to stand with a person, this is a toughy, and just stare into their eyes. That I found very challenging, it is like a staring contest, you don’t look away, you don’t smile, just look into the other deeply. That is very intimate. I also recall indigenous rituals honour earth but having wood, feathers, objects to pick up from the centre and to speak of a story of your life. Could also be a sad event, could be a happy event, inspirational event and so on. So some may recall really joyous situations, others may cry feeling the sorrow. It is about expressoin of emotions, perhaps this is the work of women for the planet. We are taught to be open. That is why I can with this blog, I am so used to fully expressing, I am losing my fear of vulnerability by embracing it. So don’t poo hoo the crying girls or children, you may want to actually join in. As we release it, the toxins are released and we feel released. It also connects us to others more deeply. We showed our truth, they show us theirs. Not a bad bargain for crying. The idea that it is weak is a fallacy, it is the greatest strength to go into emotions and fully feel them, that is the human condition, we are not robots. When you really feel life, wow it comes to life. Think of making love mutually, can’t get more wild and natural than that. A constant giving when it is love.

I was reading last night about training of embracing feelings. It was taught to a child feeling bad, rather than block it by saying stop crying, distracting the child, or suppressing the feeling, the idea was to go into the feeling and really feel it. It is there for a purpose. It is nature speaking from within your body, in truth, so don’t deny your nature. If you are sad cry, if you are angry yell (not abusively just get it out), if you are jealous own it, if you are lonely reach out and so on. This is living authentically and re-learning our connection to ourselves and hence the natural world.

Good stuff hey.

Anyway, I’ll let Joanna Macy take over from here. Remember to be open to new ideas, you may feel at times it feels strange, but that is moving to a new track, always it is out of our comfort zone. After a while it becomes easy as you shake off the shackles of modern thinking. I will append information about her actual work and a piece she wrote in response to the Japanese crisis towards the end of this blog. Perhaps observe the way in which she speaks, embracing the pain and suffering. I note at the end a bit of an activist. We all have choices around that. My thought there is to not oppose as it strengthens opposition. It is better to love the US government but speak our truth democratically, takes out all the negativity which creates division. In conflict resolution don’t hate the person solve the problem is my vibe. But I am all for diversity of opinions. See what you think, if it resonates look into it, if not, you weren’t watching tv and that has to be a good thing ha.

She describes her work as:

# its sources in Buddhist teachings, living systems theory, and deep ecology;
# its experiential methods for group learning, known as the Work that Reconnects, including despair work, deep ecology work, and deep time work;
# information about workshops and trainings;
# empowering ideas, such as Nuclear Guardianship;
# practices for inspiration and renewal, such as the Council of All Beings and the Elm Dance;
# and we include here a link to our new song and celebration sister site: Songs For The Great Turning.

The History of the Work

This group work arose in North America in the late 1970s, when it brought together many antinuclear and environmental activists as well as psychologists, artists, and spiritual practitioners. Workshops, ranging in length from an evening to a week, in churches, classrooms and police armories, drew many thousands of people from within and beyond movements for peace, justice, and a safe environment. Because of my 1979 article “How to Deal with Despair,” and my 1983 book, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, it first became known as Despair and Empowerment work.

In the mid-1980s we began calling it Deep Ecology work, thanks to the consonance and inspiration we found in the deep ecological perspective. By then the work was spreading to Europe, Australia, South Asia, Japan and the Soviet Union. In 1988 Thinking Like a Mountain: toward a Council of All Beings, which I co-authored with John Seed, Pat Fleming and Arne Naess, was published, reflecting new forms of the work; and subsequent workshops often took the form of Councils of All Beings.

Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect our Lives, Our World, which I co-authored with Molly Young Brown, appeared ten years later to provide an up-to-date description of the theory behind the work and some sixty of its exercises, both new and old. Here the group work, reflecting the breadth of its applications, is called simply the Work that Reconnects.

Theoretical Foundations

These assumptions are the basis for the Work that Reconnects:

1. This world, in which we are born and take our being, is alive.
It is not our supply house and sewer; it is our larger body. The intelligence that evolved us from star dust and interconnects us with all beings is sufficient for the healing of our Earth community, if we but align with that purpose.

2. Our true nature is far more ancient and encompassing than the separate self defined by habit and society. We are as intrinsic to our living world as the rivers and trees, woven of the same intricate flows of matter/energy and mind. Having evolved us into self-reflexive consciousness, the world can now know itself through us, behold its own majesty, tell its own stories–and also respond to its own suffering.

3. Our experience of pain for the world springs from our inter-connectedness with all beings, from which also arises our powers to act on their behalf. When we deny or repress our pain for the world, or treat it as a private pathology, our power to take part in the healing of our world is diminished. This apatheia need not become a terminal condition. Our capacity to respond to our own and others’ suffering–that is, the feedback loops that weave us into life–can be unblocked.

4. Unblocking occurs when our pain for the world is not only intellectually validated, but experienced. Cognitive information about the crises we face, or even about our psychological responses to them, is insufficient. We can only free ourselves from our fears of the pain–including the fear of getting permanently mired in despair or shattered by grief–when we allow ourselves to experience these feelings. Only then can we discover their fluid, dynamic character. Only then can they reveal on a visceral level our mutual belonging to the web of life.

5. When we reconnect with life, by willingly enduring our pain for it, the mind retrieves its natural clarity. Not only do we experience our interconnectedness in the community of Earth, but also mental eagerness arises to match this experience with new paradigm thinking. Concepts which bring relatedness into focus become vivid. Significant learnings occur, for the individual system is reorganizing and reorienting, grounding itself in wider reaches of identity and self-interest.

6. The experience of reconnection with the Earth community arouses desire to act on its behalf. As Earth’s self-healing powers take hold within us, we feel called to participate in the Great Turning. For these self-healing powers to operate effectively, they must be trusted and acted on. The steps we take can be modest undertakings, but they should involve some risk to our mental comfort, lest we remain caught in old, “safe” limits. Courage is a great teacher and bringer of joy

Joanna’s response to Japanese crisis:

In this hour of anguish we reach out to our Japanese colleagues and all beings of that noble and stricken land. As our hearts unite in prayer for them, we experience our own non-separation from the immeasurable suffering inflicted by the successive earthquakes and tsunamis, and by the nuclear catastrophe these have triggered.

Having just begun the last week of my three-month retreat, I break silence to give voice to my solidarity with you all. By speaking to you, I remind myself of what we can remember in this time of grief and fear.

It helps me to remember what I learned in Novozybkov with survivors of Chernobyl: that is that there are two basic responses to massive collective trauma. One response is to let it destroy our trust in life and in each other, plummeting us into division, blame and despair. The other is to let the shared cataclysm strengthen us into greater solidarity, and deepen our knowledge of our mutual belonging in the web of life. Your communications are evidence already of that second response. Indeed the Work That Reconnects has been preparing us for it.

We remember to breathe. As we have practiced, we breathe through the reports as we hear and the images of disaster. This helps us simply take in what is happening, and not be blocked by horror or the desire to fix or flee.

We also breathe with those who are caught up in this tragedy, in the intensity of panic, shock, and loss. Feel how this breathing-with helps your heart-mind fearlessly and tenderly embrace them.

You see, if we understand and accept the Great Unraveling, we can let it break us open to greater realizations of our innate solidarity. That this realization in itself is a kind of “enlightenment” has been brought home to me in my retreat by two great teachers of Japan.

One is the 13th century Zen master Dogen. He illumines our connections with the ancestors and the future ones, so that we can experience these connections in the immediate present moment. So does the other figure, the archetypal bodhisattva Ksitigarbha, who is beloved in Japan, where he/she is known as Bodhisattva Jizo, with images .everywhere Both of them help us realize that we are not alone in this moment of time, but surrounded by past and future generations ready to help. We who inhabit the present can do what they cannot: that is to make choices and take action/ But the past and future ones are right at our side with support and guidance.

Also, to hold steady and open in this anguished time, try the Spiral of the Work That Reconnects. As I take in the catastrophe in Japan, the Spiral serves to ground my heart-mind, and widen its dimensions. It brings gratitude for all those at work to bring support and clear reporting. It helps me honor the heartbreak, to simply open to it and let it reveals our true nature and mutual belonging. It shows me how solidarity can move us forward, and offer us practical, immediate steps to alleviate suffering and enact safe, sustainable, and sane energy policies. An obvious urgency is to stop US Government subsidies and loan guarantees to nuclear industries, including bills that are before Congress now.

As radiation from Fukushima spreads, I know that protection of self and family is on our minds. I’m asking Anne to append here two kinds of information: about health measures, and some links to breaking news from Japan. See our page dedicated to this issue:

http://joannamacy.net/nuclearguardianship/fukushima-dai-ichi-2011.html

Love,

Joanna

So food for thought or thought for food, that is nourishing you. You are the change you are waiting for. Have fun with exploring yourself. A wild and expanding terrain.