Being Change

Consider this from The WorldWe Have by Thich Nhat Hanh: “The wisdom offered in the Buddha is that we accept impermanence – our own death and the inevitable death of our civilization. And after having accepted that, we will have peace and strength and an awakening that will bring us together. Then we will have the opportunity…to save our beloved planet.” (pg. 56)

Or this from Coming Back To Life by Joanna Macy: “Pain is the price of consciousness in a threatened and suffering world. It is not only natural, it is an absolutely necessary component of our collective healing…Pain has a purpose: it is a warning signal, designed to trigger remedial action. The problem, therefore, lies not with our pain for the world, but in our repression of it. Our efforts to dodge or dull it surrender us to futility – or in systems’ terms, cut the feedback loop and block effective response.” (pg. 27)

In The Green Boat – Reviving Ourselves In Our Capsized Culture, Mary Pipher talks about the Trauma-To-Transcendence Cycle – a process which “requires us to face the truth, feel the pain of (our) experience, and ultimately transform that pain into action and authenticity. As we move through this cycle, we can acquire the skills we need to overcome our sense of doom and discover our own capacities for transcendent coping…we can find deep within ourselves new strength, deeper courage, and an enriched capacity to love the world.” (pg. 4)

In So Far From Home – Lost and Found In Our Brave New World, Margaret Wheatley writes: “If we fully accept the world as it is – in all its harsh realities – then we can develop the very qualities we need to be in that world and not succumb to that harshness. We find our courage, morality, and gentle, non-aggressive actions by clear seeing and acceptance. As we accept what is, we become people who stand in contrast to what is, freed from the aggression, grasping and confusion of this time. With that clarity, we can contribute things of eternal importance no matter what’s going on around us – how to live exercising our best human qualities, and how to support others to discover these qualities in themselves.” (pg. 11)

Mary Pipher, in another of her books – Writing To Change the World – tells this story:

In September 2003, when I was fifty-five years old, I visited the Holocaust Museum, in Washington, D.C., to view the Anne Frank exhibit. I looked at the cover of her little plaid diary, and at pages of her writing, at her family pictures. Meip Gies, Otto Frank’s employee, who brought food to the family, spoke on video about the people who hid in the attic. She said that Anne had always wanted to know the truth about what was going on. Others would believe the sugar-coated version of Miep’s stories, but Anne would follow her to the door and ask, “What is really happening.?”

Even though Anne Frank ultimately was murdered, she managed (through her writings), in her brief and circumscribed life, to tell the truth and bequeath the gift of hope. She searched for beauty and joy even in the harsh, frightened world of the attic in which her family hid from the Nazis. Her writing lived on to give us all a sense of the potential largesse of the human soul, even in worst-case scenarios. (pg. 20)

We are now facing a potential “Worst-case Scenario.” If pain is the price of consciousness in a threatened and suffering world then perhaps these are the gifts: peace and strength and an awakening that will bring us together…new strength, deeper courage, and an enriched capacity to love the world…(becoming) people who stand in contrast to what is, freed from the aggression, grasping and confusion of this time… the potential largesse of the human soul….

Is it possible? It sounds so compelling I’m willing to go there. And it looks like I’m in good company.

*In the dark times, will there be singing?

  Yes. There will be singing about the dark times.

– Bertolt Brecht

Bill Plotkin continues to be, in my mind, one of the most important people on the planet – his work is that innovative, that necessary, and that potentially transformational. I feel moved to give him yet another mention in this blog.

Bill has written three books and, while each can stand alone as a brilliant contribution to evolving humans and restoring the planet, combined they offer a template for human/nature healing and wholing that is of truly epic proportions.

Creating the context for the other two books, Nature and the Human Soul “introduces a visionary ecopsychology of human development that reveals how fully and creatively we can mature when soul and wild nature guide us.”* Humanity needs to grow up and out of its current stage of (pathological!) adolescence, and in this volume Bill “presents a model for a human life span rooted in the cycles and qualities of the natural world, a blueprint for individual development that ultimately yields a strategy for cultural transformation.”

Soulcraft “is a trail guide for the mystical descent into the underworld of soul: what the descent is, why it is necessary, how to recognize the call to descend, how to prepare for the descent, what the process looks and feels like, and what practices initiate and accelerate the descent and maximizes the soul-quickening benefits of the journey.” This is a process that is sorely missing from modern day culture with devastating consequences.

In Wild Mind we discover that “our human psyches possess astonishing resources that wait within us, but we might not even know they exist until we discover how to access them and cultivate their powers, their untapped potentials and depths.” It shows us that “the key to reclaiming our original wholeness…is to fully embody our multifaceted wild minds, commit ourselves to the largest, soul-infused story we’re capable of living, and serve the greater Earth community.”

These three volumes embody a hero’s journey of initiation into our fullest human potential and a truly interdependent relationship with the natural world. They are beautifully written, deeply heartfelt and infused with decades of scholarship and the wisdom of experience. I hope you read them and then read them again. You can learn more about Bill, his books, and the Animas Valley Institute here.

* Quotes are taken from the books. I could not have said it better.

The following is a response sent to me by Deena Metzger after I asked her permission to use her photograph for the previous post. Please do read the post so you will understand the context. Deena is one of my favorite wise, compassionate, and creative elders and I encourage everyone to visit her web site and immerse yourselves in her work. Thank you, Deena, for who you are and for all you do.

“For a year, a dear friend and I regularly visited several animals, a polar bear, a gorilla and several elephants incarcerated in the Los Angeles Zoo, an hour’s drive for us. Billy, the elephant, had evident PTSD, swaying back and forth endlessly, listlessly; no matter how hard we tried, we could never indicate our presence to him though we hoped, over time, we might make a difference. There was, in contrast to what is said here (note: in the previous post), little left of him, but that is exactly why we tried as best as we could to reach him. The polar bear, Dreamer, never noticed either. But, the gorilla, that we called Miko, did notice and we bonded over the weeks. He engaged us in elaborate games of recognition and it seemed that for at least an hour he was relieved of his terrible isolation and confinement where he was also subjected to the on-going taunts of most of the human visitors.

The two female elephants who were friends and companions, and then Dreamer and Miko died within months of each other. We don’t know why Dreamer died. One of the elephants was sent to another facility, and her friend languished here. When the friend was finally returned, it was too late. Her friend died and she died soon afterwards. Heartbreak is a real disease. As real and terrible as trauma. Miko was sent to another facility as well — to be a breeder. He died within a few short months.

We had visited these animals in the ways we would visit a family member who might be incarcerated. We wanted to extend love to what others might see as damaged and not worthy of notice, or too painful to see. Some people, understandably, cannot bear going to the zoo, do not want to support such practices. But what about the animals who are imprisoned there? Heart contact — with as much or as little survives — is necessary. Heart contact is a medicine. Heart contact can begin the process of restoration of the earth. Since the poster, so much more has been added to my life than a simple breast. Bringing the poster into the world, and becoming a healer, I am so much more than I was once.”

I just finished a novel where one of the main characters survived the loss of a breast to cancer.

One day her granddaughter happened upon her in the bath, seeing the “still angry and red puckered flesh” where her breast had been.

“You notice that something’s different about me,” my grandmother said.

I nodded. I did not have the words, at that age, to explain what I wasn’t seeing, but I understood that it was not what should have been. I pointed to the wound. “It’s missing,” I said.

My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again.

“Yes,” she said. “But see how much of me is left?” (1)

I’ve been trying to come to terms with what I believe is the reality of Bill McKibben’s assertion that “the chance that we will in fact leave to the future a world at least as rich in possibilities as the world that was left to us is nil. As in, not going to happen.”(2) That the world has changed in ways that can never be recovered. And that there’s actually nothing I can do about it. I have to accept it; I have to let it go.

Yes, says Grandmother. But look how much of me is left.

But I can’t let it go. It’s unacceptable. It’s unbearable. All I can see is the scar. To see otherwise feels like a betrayal, giving in. Giving up. Yet, is it a betrayal to let go of something that’s gone? Should it be mourned? Yes. Should it be remembered? Absolutely, in intricate detail, so our future generations will know what they aren’t seeing.

But what about that which is still left and which is still rapidly disappearing? How do I stop seeing only the scar and recognize my grandmother again? “Once something’s spoiled, it’s easier to throw up your hands and walk away, which will be the great temptation for us,” says McKibben.(3) Indeed, I have been so tempted. So tempted.

But I remember a quote by Julia Butterfly Hill that went like this:

“If you’re the only person left, as long as your hope is committed in action, then hope is alive in the world.” As long as any of us keep love, compassion, beauty, peace, the sacred…alive in our hearts and we do not walk away from that which is “damaged”, then these will remain alive in the world. And if enough of us can do this, maybe the cancer will stop spreading.

This is a poster of Deena Metzger whose work I often cite. It is available for purchase on her web site. She transformed her scar into a winding branch with leaves, grapes, and a bird. Photo is by Hella Hammid.

¹Jodi Picoult – “The Storyteller” pg. 365

²Bill McKibben – Essay “Something Braver Than Trying to Save the World” in Moral Ground – Ethical Action For a Planet in Peril, pg.175. Kathleen Dean Moore & Michael P. Nelson,eds.

³Ibid. Also see his book “eaarth – Making a Life on a Tough New Planet”

…make assisting the Great Turning my priority over everything else.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been making a list of what I imagine are essential tasks humanity must take on to heal, evolve, and to restore our planet. This is my way of even beginning to discern how to move through the uncertainty and complexity of our world today. I wanted something around which I could set my personal intentions for how to be and what to do, and then let everything else go. My bottom-line essential task, which encompasses all the others I’ve come up with so far, is to make assisting the Great Turning my priority over everything else.

What else makes sense?

Everything from Nobel Prize winning scientists to indigenous prophecy to our own deepest knowing tells us that we are being called to a hero’s journey of epic proportions. Refusal of that call is not an option yet we all do it to some measure, and some far more than others. Despite our best efforts, and for many reasons, no one I know of is completely free from the gravitational pull of the old paradigm. We live between two worlds and I keep asking myself: what WILL free us – what will free ME – to follow the call as if all life depended on it which, of course, it does.

How do we begin to make assisting the Great Turning our priority over everything else? My bottom line: we have to grow up. Or, as Bill Plotkin puts it in his brilliant book “Nature and the Human Soul,” we need to become authentic, initiated adults and (re)create authentic, initiated cultures with respect for the already quite authentic Earth. Duane Elgin conducted a survey where an overwhelming amount of responses placed the developmental age of our human race at adolescence, and a dysfunctional adolescence at that. I think this is an apt analogy in many, many ways.

And how do we begin to grow up? We heed the call and step over the threshold. Imagining what that might look like is what BeingChange is about and I will be exploring all this and more. Every person’s journey is unique of course and I want to hear all about yours. Here’s a preview of some of what is on my “road of trials” – the series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that the person must undergo to begin the transformation:

Healing my addictions.

Doing the despair and empowerment work, learning to keep my heart open under any circumstances.

Making the descent into soul.

Placing myself within the larger contexts of nature and cosmos.

Practicing spiritual activism.

Discovering and doing my “true work” in the world.

What can you imagine are some of yours?

…called to be a hospice-worker to what is dying, midwife to what is waiting to be born…

On the homepage of this site, these words declare what I believe to be one of the most important tasks of our time. Following the thread of my last post, I want to look at what being a hospice-worker for our species and our planet might mean.

When my mother was dying at home with the aid of Hospice, my family members all had different ways of dealing with it. Some disappeared, some got drunk, some got religion, and some retreated behind a stony, affect-less wall. I settled into a paralysis of grief, denial, and powerlessness: I waited and I watched, I watched and I waited. All alone with her in her last hours, I waited and I watched. I had never been in the presence of a dying person before. I did not know how to be there for her and in the end I felt I failed her.

If I am to embrace the possibility that Mother Earth is becoming unable to support life, how can I be there for her? How can I be there for ALL my relations?

This story, perhaps, offers a clue. It is from the book “The Hope – A Guide to Sacred Activism” by Andrew Harvey (page xix.)

In Kathleen Dowling Singh‘s book “The Grace in Dying” she describes what she has named the “qualities of the nearing death experience.” I studied what I gleaned to be the essence of these qualities to see if they held any clues as to “how to be there” and “give my everything.” Indeed, I feel they are qualities of a profound spiritual journey of transformation that are relevant in all stages of life and death, personal and planetary. Meditate on them for a while. Tell me what you think.

The Quality Of Relaxation
an end of struggle, a letting go, “the emptying of self into the fullness of life.”

The Quality Of Withdrawal
a detachment from all but that which is most precious, in a way that is positive, purposeful, and transforming.

The Quality Of Radiance
an inner illumination, the experience of being filled with light.

The Quality Of Interiority
an accessing of the deeply interior space where creation is unfolding; a threshold or “liminal” experience.

The Quality Of Silence
much communication is beyond words; if there is communication, it is essential and deep, often symbolic or metaphoric, pointing toward the ineffable.

The Quality Of The Sacred
a feeling of entering holy ground; awareness moves closer and closer in to the great mystery.

The Quality Of Transcendence
development of a consciousness beyond the personal self; a transpersonal consciousness.

The Quality Of Knowing
becoming part of something vast; a recognition of the need to experience death so that the next experience might be begun.

The Quality Of Intensity
energy field opens, enlarges, intensifies; rises through the chakras.

The Quality Of Merging
an end of separation, a cessation of duality.

What would happen if I really let myself journey into the realms of death: of our species, of other species, of our planet, of all our human potential for beauty, creativity, compassion, evolution? What if I really opened my heart to this realm, to this possibility? What if I named such a journey sacred, a pilgrimage? What, then, could my living be like?

What if our planetary demise became my default scenario while always allowing for other possibilities? Because surely I believe that anything is possible. Yet, what if I embraced this default, again, as a sacred journey rather than a fearful, egoistic apocalypse – which is the story my culture would have me believe? This is not such a fanciful notion. Many spiritual and wisdom traditions see death as a great teacher and innovator. I know when I try to deny the possibility of planetary death, I feel stuck, limited, small. My heart feels closed and ironically dis-empowered.

I see our earth in great distress. I see us killing her with every mountaintop removal, every clear cut, every fracking, every oil well and tar sands extraction, every mine, every monoculture, every toxin we put into the air/soil/water/seed. We are killing ourselves. We are killing our bodies, minds and spirits with every war, every act of violence, every act of injustice, every act of arrogance and separation.

Clearly I see the planet and our human sensibilities as dying, but are they dead? Are they mostly dead? Soon to be dead? Even now I keep hearing reports that we have fifty years (twenty-five, ten, five) to change things around before we have reached irretrievable overshoot. Some suggest that we already have.

So it comes around full circle. I feel that a critical component of our planet-time is the willingness to face death, a death far more challenging, most likely, to grasp and accept than that of our own. The question is, accepting this, embracing this, what is the call? How does one answer the call? How goes the journey? Where is the gift?

I would like to share this story by Michael Meade from his book “The World Behind the World – Living at the Ends of Time.”

“Run Towards the Roar”

“As fears about the world accumulate and terrors abound, I often recall an old African teaching about fear. On the ancient savannahs life pours forth in the form of teeming, feeding herds. Nearby, lions wait in anticipation of the hunt. They send the oldest and weakest member of the pride away from the hunting pack. Having lost most of its teeth, its roar is far greater than its ability to bite. The old one goes off and settles in the grass across from where the hungry lions wait.

As the herds enter the area between the hunting pack and the old lion it begins to roar mightily. Upon hearing the fearful roar most of the herd turn and flee from the source of the fear. They run wildly in the opposite direction. Of course, they run right to where the strongest lions of the group wait in the tall grass for dinner to arrive. ‘Run toward the roar,’ the old people used to tell the young ones. When faced with great danger run towards the roaring, for there you will find some safety and a way through.”

To embrace this time of the Great Turning is to truly be immersed in messiness. To be sure, I feel my life and Being Change shapeshifting almost daily.

To be honest, I have been feeling some anxiety about not posting to this blog in a while. But I have just emerged from my most recent shapeshift – a time of deep inner process work that has been nothing less than profound. I welcome this profundity, this intensity, this depth, and I am gratefully (and mostly) unapologetic for my messiness.

Still, it’s tempting to feel like a life or a work is a failure if it doesn’t fit in the old, rigid constructs of timeliness or perfection. I must remind myself that these constructs are limiting and dis-empowering. Being a pioneer is messy. Being in the unknown is messy. What messiness is, really, in the context of this dying culture, is the willingness to stop, look and listen: to see, to feel, to wonder, to be courageous and creative, to be open to possibilities, to evolve. And surely to let go of any arbitrary sense of worthiness or success.

My original intention for this Being Change blog was (and is) to share with you my journey through the Great Turning. I cherish this journey and I value you, my co-pioneer. Being messy together is assuredly part of the bargain. There is sacredness there, don’t you think?