by admin | Mar 6, 2022 | Awareness Practices
Let’s begin with the comment from the inaugural post in this new thread. If Teresita is right and most of us know deep inside that we are doomed in the near future, what do we get out of either facing this probability head on versus not thinking about it too much? As Teresita writes, “In a very human aspect we all want to live our lives … as if nothing was about to happen. Love needs to be circulating. The risk of depression and apathy is very high if we accept this truth just like that.”
So, let’s focus on attention and awareness. I want to face the truth of what is coming, so that i can live and die as consciously as possible. How to avoid sinking into depression, apathy, anxiety or fury, when we see that the human race is about to be culpable for the extermination of most life on earth, as the hothouse explodes into action over the next few years, if not decades? One way of thinking this through is to think in terms of investment and reward – a strikingly capitalist, or at least materialistic metaphor i know, considering we are talking here about values, psyche, heart and soul. But i’m going to try and stick to the here and now, the realities of our physical existence as much as possible, while we can. There will be time for the spiritual possibilities later.
Let’s roll the dice. Life’s a gamble, yes? We never quite know what the result of our actions will be. Let’s say we focus some attention on an imminent, planetary extinction event. What is the reward for this path? What is the reward, or possible set of outcomes, for avoiding this? Preparing the mind for chaos seems to me more valuable. What will we do when societal breakdown becomes one of the realities between now and then? When people are hungry, homeless, shocked, destitute, desperate? They will be looking for answers where there are none. The least we could do, as thoughtful people with the courage to look ahead, is to be ready with whatever little shreds of wisdom we can muster, like bits of flotsam on the flood.
I believe the horrors will be worse if we don’t prepare our minds, our hearts and souls for what seems inevitable. I want to live and die like a beautiful social primate, capable of self-awareness and generosity of spirit. We are all going to be challenged more than we can yet even possibly imagine. A bit of preparation can go a long way.
*NB: I’m going to try to keep these meditations short. Please Like, Share and Subscribe. Please leave comments, suggestions for the dilemmas we need to discuss, questions, debates, interventions etc.
Image: La Bête de la Mer (Tapisserie de l’Apocalypse) / The Beast of the Sea (Tapestry of the Apocalypse)
by admin | Mar 3, 2022 | Uncategorized
How then shall we speak of what is to come? It’s time to start talking about Near Term Human Extinction (NTHE).
It is the most momentous moment of our species, our swansong, the end. No more living or writing for posterity; that vanity is dust. Homer, Virgil, Dante, the older classics from the earliest recorded stories, will be consigned to the winds, along with all other human arts. And with us, so much other animal life, so many ecosystems, entire forests of life, wiped out. Let’s try to chew this down in bite size chunks, because i have had it marinating for a while, and i still can’t figure out how to talk about this in one hit. We’ll get to the nightmare scenario of 450 nuclear reactors popping because we won’t have the time or resources to decommission them safely later. And the new era of industrial flotsam and jetson, as entire cities scour the shore where once clean ocean passed by. Let’s cover that one later too.
For now, let’s stick with societal breakdown, the need for deep resilience as a minimum standard, the testing of all our mores, no matter how well rehearsed.
The floods smashing south eastern Queensland and north eastern NSW right now are off the scale. The megafires that threatened my home and torched billions of animal lives a couple of years ago were unknown until recently, too, Aboriginal Australians even saying they have no story for this scale – a sure sign it has not occurred for tens of thousands of years, for the length of their oral history.
This isn’t just anthropogenic climate change – this is ecosystem collapse. When the methane burps and so much more of the polar caps slips into the ocean that we see sea level rises in metres, we will know it is coming for good this time. The ocean wants us back and it keeps the lowest elevation real estate on the planet. That’s where we’ll end up. In the Deep.
Let me know what you think, what you want to talk about, how we’re going to process this together. Are you relieved someone is finally telling this story, even though it is about to end? Frightened, avoidant, carefree, devastated? I’ll add chapters, if you let me know how this conversation might unfold. We’re going to need a level of understanding we’ve rarely displayed before. I want compassion, empathy, spiritual generosity to lead. There’ll be plenty of nastiness to go around, without us adding to it. Let’s go.
by admin | Dec 30, 2021 | Awareness Practices, Ecomythic, Ritual, Sacred, Zen Animism
If i were to wish for one thing from a new year, a fresh start, it would be to become more grounded in reality, more capable of remaining aware of my breath as i move through life, more awake to the life of the world as it flows. To do that, i want to start by focusing on waking up from the dream of modern society, the consensus trance we are convinced is everyday reality.
This raises one core issue affecting us today: we are cut off at the root from nature. We are disconnected, as we wander the cities and the shopping malls, filling up on fossil fuels and alive to the 24/7 energy of the global village – but we have been doing so as if we were sleep walking. Now, it is great to see so many people waking up to the ruse – the capitalist shell game, where you never quite know where anything comes from unless you work hard to uncover the truth or make it to your local farmers market. Guiding people back to the place where everything comes from, the source – the earth and the stars, the elements and the ecosystem – is my path and my privilege.
I recently delivered the first ever Holistic Ecotherapy course and this was what we concentrated on. Reconnection. (By no coincidence this was the name of the album my post-punk art rock band Severins released last year). Sounds great, but exactly how do we reconnect, when we are trained so poorly by modern socialising forces?
We train our attention back. Back to the breath, back to the body, back to awakening to consciousness in the here and now. The mind wanders; bring it back. We practice mindfulness. But once we have that awareness back in place, we drop further down into the bodymind of this one precious life; we drop down into deep listening. This is immersive self-awareness. This is no separation between mind and body, self and nature, purpose and reality.
Now, we are nature listening to nature. We are awake to our place as a human self in a broad and living ecosystem. We are its human mind waking up to itself. There are plenty of other forms of intelligence in this ecosystem. At dawn on the morning of our final session together, a chorus of birds accompanied me down to my current favourite spot at Shark Bay and a yellow serpent coiled up in my belly, calling for some action. I felt the intelligence, the conscious awareness, of a living world breathing all around me, calling out to be heard. I felt the nervousness and responsibility of being the person who was ready to take note of this call and pass it on.
Ironically, in an online course, we were ‘together’ on separate laptops, in quiet bedrooms and lounges, all of us encased in four walls while we learnt to connect more deeply with nature. Such was life in 2021. We could still practice and everyone was given exercises to take out on their next sojourn to the great outdoors – even if this was a city park at lunch time, or a patch of grass in the backyard, or under a nearby neighbourhood tree. We vowed to take notice. Not always looking for something to attain, to receive, to be given – but to take notice, as if we were in love with our home and everything it has already given us.
To greet the place we live, to honour those who came before us, to give thanks to the earth and the elements and our kin, the other plants and animals who play their parts in maintaining a biosphere of life. If we feel called or ready to do so, to speak or sing our praise out loud, to offer gifts and service to nature, to treat it as if it was loved and to open ourselves to how that feels.
We also honoured the people and experiences that have brought deep listening into the public conversation, offered respect to the ancestors of the Country we are on, as well as our own ancestors, recalling our ancient and contemporary birthright to be here now, to feel we really belong in our bodies and our places. When we experience this level of love for our home, we don’t need to look anywhere else for a sense of accomplishment, transcendence or ecstasy.
Deep Listening, Deep Connection.
Join me for the next online Holistic Ecotherapy course here.
Please Like, Share and Subscribe, if you want more stuff like this. Beats what passes for news on the TV, yeah?
Images from top: by v2osk on Unsplash, by Andrew Neel on Unsplash, by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash, by Deniz Altindas on Unsplash
by admin | Oct 23, 2021 | Sacred, Zen Animism
We all know something has gone wrong with our relationship to nature. There is also growing evidence that when we feel connected to nature, our wellbeing improves. We see this improvement across all spheres of our life, as deeper connection to nature positively affects our physical and mental health, as well as supporting our emotional wellbeing. But there is also a deep knowing we all share, at a soul level, that we are meant to feel like we truly belong here. That, in spite of the fact that we often live in urban centres, we remain a part of nature – like we always were.
When we take time to nurture this connection, or even just learn to breathe in a certain way, we can rewire our mind and body, open up our hearts, and live a more spiritually satisfying life in the here and now.
On Wednesday the 3rd of November, from 7 – 8.30pm, i will offer a free presentation on ecotherapy. This will be followed by a three week short course, which will extend this introductory presentation in ways that will deepen your connection to nature in surprising ways.
The introductory talk will outline
- What ecotherapy is
- What ecotherapy can do for us, including improved physical and mental health, emotional intelligence, and embodied spirituality
- How ecotherapy is related to counselling and psychotherapy, as a system of knowledge as well as a set of practices designed to heal and empower
- The role of mindfulness, awareness and indigenous wisdom in nature healing
- And introduce some simple practices to help you deepen your connection to nature, find more peace and put the stress and hustle bustle of everyday life in context!
The free talk and online course are designed for anyone interested in creating or deepening their relationship to nature.
Sign up and find more details here.
Introductory Online Course
- Ecotherapy Certificate Course: Three sessions on Wednesday evenings 7 – 8.30pm, on the 10th/17th/24th November.
- Cost: Public: $180; Currently enrolled Metavision students $150
All Sessions include:
- Acknowledgement of Country
- Welcome to Self
- Co-creating a safe and sacred space for the work
- Working with vulnerability and confidence
- Stories of connection to and relationship with nature
- Nature Meditations (new one each session)
Session 1 concentrates on:
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- Finding your place, a special spot to commune with nature daily, so that you can
- deepen your understanding of yourself as an ecological citizen
- explore an expanded sense of self in a real way that can be integrated into your everyday life
- develop mindfulness in nature, learning how to bring a meditative quality to your personal ecotherapy practice
Session 2 concentrates on:
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- Deep Listening – to nature and to each other, so that we get
- beyond the monkey mind, which chatters incessantly within
- differentiate between ego and spirit, socialised self and the expanded eco-self
- hear the voice of nature with clarity and confidence
Session 3 concentrates on:
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- Learning from the animals and plants we share this planet with, so that you can
- recognise yourself in relation to your kin
- explore your totems, guides and spirits
- develop and deepen your connections to nature within and without, on earth and beyond
Sign up and find more details here.
Feature photo by Arthur Poulin on Unsplash. Solo man photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash. Meditation in nature photo by S Migaj on Unsplash Hands on tree photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash
by admin | Sep 8, 2021 | Awareness Practices, Ecomythic, Ritual, Sacred, Zen Animism
Every now and then, you have a conversation that brings everything together. After many years of working on a concept i have come to call the “ecomythic”, this interview with Al Jeffery from “spaces between” inspired me to become unusually coherent about this realm. Al’s approach offers plenty of space to explore, no pressure to conform to any expectations, even our own, and is a real breath of fresh air if you want to find out more about how other people are stretching themselves beyond conventional boundaries.
I was so pleasantly surprised by how much territory we covered in this hour. It’s like a melted down version of hundreds of hours of reflection, deep listening in nature, philosophy and the big picture of how we got where we’re at right now – you know, the history of civilisation, development of technology, showing proper respect for the spirits, that kind of thing.
There is a fair bit here to digest, and some of it arises out of non-ordinary reality, so if you would like to follow that path for a bit, here is your invitation. It’s called “Attuning to the Spirit of Place & the Ecomythic” and you can find it here.
