Greta Thunberg rules! Listen to her speak truth to the world direct.
I’m going to the strike. I’m taking my kids out of primary school. I don’t care if they get it yet or not. They need to know that i care and that they are going to. Why? Because climate scientists have been pointing this out for over 25 years, since they said (at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992) that overwhelming indications pointed towards massive damage being done to the earth’s biosphere by modern industrial society. Since then, unfortunately, it’s been mostly business as usual: mass media has supported politics aligned with global corporations, to continue supporting the damage done, in the name of profit. It’s frustrating to know this and to watch people – even intelligent, open-minded adults – clutch at straws and try to believe that we can continue to destroy the earth and not pay the ultimate price.
Sometimes, it takes an innocent or an outsider to destroy our illusions and smash the bubble of lies we have woven for ourselves. The Emperor has no clothes! Now, again, a child has come to wake us up. This is kinda embarrassing. How is it that a strike has to be called by children, who want to leave school to try and make political leaders realise that they have to act now if we are to save the environment from irreversible damage? It’s not like we have lacked credible science or anything … no less than the IPCC – that’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading international body for the assessment of climate change, and a source of scientific information and technical guidance for Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – has been trying to wake us up for years.
But we all love a good story, especially when it means we can enjoy creature comforts and believe we are chosen to live in the lap of luxury, not merely by the good fortune of technological development and historical serendipity, but because … we are special. That is the power of myth. A powerful myth convinces you that you can have it all; you can enjoy life here and now and in the body, as well as knowing that you are destined by the forces of the universe to carry on in splendour and majesty beyond this mortal coil. Doesn’t that sound great?! Yeah!
And to think, without destroying our planetary home, we could have all of this, with a sophisticated understanding of how myth works within and without. In the world and in our hearts and body/minds, we are star dust, evolving to be at one with eternal consciousness, unlimited … unless we choose not to. And then we become forgetful, worldlings, limited, socialised, attached, adult. And then, we need the children, the fools, the artists, the whimsical, the poets, to remind us. That we are more. As Marianne Williamson put it, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”
So don’t just let the kids lead the way! Strike! Join them (and us). Why can’t we organise and resist the devastation of the world as adults? Because we are so caught up in the myth of technological progress and plenty that we are drunk on it. We can’t always see the truth so obviously dangling before our eyes. But Greta can. The kids can. And we can wake up to it too. It’s about time. Let’s speak out and make our kids proud. They’ll remember this, when the damage really starts to hit in the near future. They’ll know that we cared enough to strike out, against the mainstream, for change. And that we never gave up.
Right now, for those of us who are informed about the state of our beautiful planet, is a time for mixed emotions: anger, sadness, grief and rage all seem logical responses to the environmental devastation being wreaked upon our beloved home in the name of obscene profits.
I feel all of this, on high rotation, on an almost daily basis. But, while i let myself be tossed upon waves of hopelessness and loss in the name of authenticity, i also always remember that we have to keep coming back to love: love of self, love for others and especially love for the earth. And there is one other thing that is so deeply coded into our biological and cultural DNA that reconnecting with it makes us much stronger for the struggles we have to face. This is the transformation of our consciousness. This is something we have done consistently, throughout our evolution, until the modern age saw us distanced from a culture of ceremonial rites, of initiation into the great mysteries, of psychological and spiritual growth as a core focus of our lives.
But we can get all this back; in fact, we must, unless we want to be passengers on our planet’s destruction, passive consumers allowing the destruction of our ecosystem to go on beneath our very eyes. Right now, we are like the butterfly, emerging: already transformed beyond what we were before, we have cracked the seal of our cocoon and are breaking free of old limits … but we haven’t yet built up the strength required to fly as free as people can be.
My metaphor for a process of immersive, experiential evolution is, as you have guessed, the butterfly. Let me take you on a brief journey through the metamorphosis promised by this spirit animal par excellence.
Caterpillar half way through creating its own cocoon for transformation into Monarch Butterfly
First, consider this simple fact: the caterpillar chooses to enclose itself within the cocoon. It is driven by its genetic code, but by contrast, we can choose to make this decision, to enter our own ecomythic underworld of darkness and mystery, to allow ourselves to be unravelled and dissolved, until we are ready to reappear afresh. Let’s underscore that point, because it reflects our modern relationship with ritual: we need to be unafraid of the darkness, of unknowing and letting go, of being torn asunder by grief and anger, of dissolving into our own goop in an act of faith that we will be reborn, reawakened for a new day.
Now to actually change from a caterpillar to a butterfly takes another thing altogether, and that is complete dissolution of our former being. This is what we require of society right now, in terms of dealing with the ecological crisis. And in order to be a functional part of this planetary transformation, we as individuals need to be true to our full emotional range without giving into the depths of despair or the peaks of rage we might feel when faced with the realities of ecosystemic destruction.
We need to feel everything, allow it to wash over us, and then be reawakened: to our power, to our love, and to our consciousness as it evolves into something entirely new … something planetary yet personal, ancient yet timely, informed yet passionate. Meditate on Butterfly Spirit and let it guide you, receive its spiritual sustenance as you come home to self, and return to society empowered and more capable of helping it to radically transform as we know it must.
“Choose Transformation, Create Cocoon, Allow Yourself to Dissolve into Deep Feelings, Wait, Crystallise, Reform, Grow Strength, Break Out of Former Limits, Fly Free. Repeat Daily.”
Geoff Berry, outlining the rites of the Butterfly: Adapt and Practice, Practice and Adapt.
If we have finally hit the point where we have to admit that our esteemed leaders are not listening – to us, to climate science, to the voice of hope for a peaceful, healthy earth – then it is probably also a good time to let ourselves synch in to a new way of evolving. I’m going to try to outline this in under 300 words, by using dot points, to illustrate that we are still capable of profound possibilities in a digital age hurtling towards some very uncivilised outcomes.
We are here.
This means our ancestors survived and evolved successfully, across a myriad of different environments, and we can do the same. But to do this, we need to …
Adapt to reality.
Our planetary climate is heating up, drying out in many places and flooding more in others, making every micro-climate more challenging. But …
It’s business as usual at the top.
Business and politics are following the military/industrial complex model of colonisation, appealing to the lowest common denominator of our worst tendencies like greed and fear, and consolidating their power over divided peoples at the same time. So …
We have to do two things at once:
We have to get organised, hold the powers that be to account, demand action that combats climate change by taking care of our environment and treating all people (as well as animals, plants and places) with dignity and respect – all of which sounds very boring but necessary; and
We can get back in touch with our ‘deep time’ selves, as well as our fleeting sense of being alive in this very moment, right where we are, in this mind and body. This could be the fun thing that balances out the serious stuff with a blend of timelessness and existential awareness: that realisation that we are consciousness embodied, a deep time experiment in primate bodies, with the capacity for self-awareness, able to perceive complex problems and solve them with win/win solutions, social animals with personal identities and mystic abilities and the ABILITY TO SEE THE ENORMITY OF THE UNIVERSE THROUGH INSANELY POWERFUL TELESCOPES AND IMAGINE OUR PLACE IN ETERNITY ALL AT ONCE!
OK, i got a bit excited there, but watch this video and be reminded of how incredibly, unimaginably vast the universe is. And that’s just the physical one we can sense with our limited beings. Life is beyond words. Let’s party like there’s nowhere else to go*
*The universe may be very large but we can’t get anywhere else in it. The scales are too big. This is home.
NB: sorry i went over 300 words. But hey, get off the internet and read some Virgil or Shakespeare. That’ll test your attention span 🙂
PS i tried to talk about this video once during a public presentation in Hong Kong and CHOKED ON MY TEARS! Egad. I’ve performed better, but at least i found out how i really felt about the universe – cosmic!
