Bushfires in Australia and wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, and everywhere else they are raging out of control, take out plenty of prepper properties, as well as more conventional buildings (not to mention the millions of other lives). The recent floods in northern NSW, outrageous in their extent, must have washed out countless veggie patches, some of which would have been substantial. The days of thinking that individualistic, survivalist forms of prepping, to create climate proof shelter and food sources, are over.
I’m still growing as much food as i can, but now i know that could all be flooded out tomorrow. I’m still hunting in my local ecosystem for protein, but now i know those same floods make conditions for my chosen sport – spearfishing – completely hopeless. I see that my own humble efforts are part of a bigger picture of trying to become free from the mass markets and their supply chain weaknesses; and i see that none of us can become free of climate chaos.
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We knew ecosystem collapse was going to be non-linear, but now the results are starting to become known. They are not completely random – superstorms will whip up more intensely in certain places, due to ocean currents and prevailing wind patterns, while droughts and heatwaves will become more prominent in some places than others. But regardless of the randomness or predictability of the effects, one thing we can be sure of is that we are about to be as psychologically assaulted as people have ever been. And this time the “we” really is everyone.
Sure, the 1% and other assorted squillionaires might hold out longer in their bunkers, enjoy whatever media they have pre-recorded and swill whatever goods they have shelved while we bake on the surface above. But eventually, apocalyptic conditions will affect all of us, everywhere, all the time, increasingly. All humans as well as most other animals and complex life forms are going to be as ‘baked in’ as the feedback loops that now ensure that climate action will no longer be enough to mitigate a mass extinction event.
Given that those exponential graphs still ain’t going nowhere but up and off the charts, i think it is time we got all post-doom and cranked up the volume on our spiritual response to this reality. And by spirit, i simply mean the essence of a thing, the enlivening force, the mysterious energy that explodes into life as the universe, and as consciousness, and incarnates as us sentient beings, intelligent primates, self aware and embodied by some miracle we did nothing to deserve.
In fact, celebrating this is half my answer. Getting back to thankfulness, appreciating our outrageous fortune, loving life in all its myriad forms while we still can. Recognising that all the work we do for our environment, all our attempts at evolving social justice, every act of compassion is a drop in the ocean of eternity – not producing anything, not changing the direction of the world, just doing good for its own sake.
Surrendering to this is humbling and beautiful. My Zen practice – a prosaic term for breathing in the miracle of presence in every moment – has never been so strong and lasting into the day as it has been since i gave up thinking i was going to change anything except the way someone thinks for a while, the way a child smiles when i am genuine with them, the way a bee flies on when i rescue it from tidal seawater, the way a plant flourishes because i watered it.
Aside from this deeply personal response, which all of us can make, immediately, and keep doing, there is community. That will be the subject of my next post; how we can work together, in groups of like-minded individuals, for mutual support. I’d like to be doing this more in my local area, but in the meantime i am currently facilitating retreats to help people connect more deeply with nature, for the purposes of therapy and liberation, and i recently enjoyed Jem Bendell and Katie Carr’s Leadership and Communication During Societal Breakdown course.
These are the most effective prepping activities we could be doing right now. Getting better at living again, for the moment, for the little things, while we can, together and alone. There’ll be plenty of big stuff to attend to, no matter where we live, soon enough. And in the meantime, children still smile when you are kind to them. Even adults do sometimes …
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How can we learn to live in the light, more often, with better outcomes?
Let’s start with the physical reality of being lit from within, with a loving glow, and then work our way towards putting that into practice in everyday life. First of all, if you have had an experience like this, there is no reason to doubt its value or ‘truth’, because we are literally lit from within, just as all matter is aglow with life. Part of any modern concept of ‘enlightenment’ must include this physical reality: that all life radiates out from a cosmic conflagration in space, which is still happening everywhere, all the time. Light is associated with so many positive connotations because of this fundamental life-giving force. This is why an experience of inner light and its gnosis is so highly valued, whether it arrives spontaneously or is inspired by a particularly radiant sunrise or sunset, the romance of moonlight, the simple glint of a dewdrop on a leaf, sparkling in the breeze, or any other phenomenon.
However, despite learning from physics that everything is made from starlight, including our minds and bodies, the origin of consciousness still remains a sacred mystery. Being self-aware allows us to live a life filled with meaning and spiritual growth. Understanding how and why light has been used as the preeminent metaphor for consciousness – for our ability to think, to read these words, to consider them, weigh them up and decide where we stand in relation to them – can deepen our capacity to become more awake to the miracle of our lives as conscious beings.
I have also learnt, mainly from my experience of meditation practices, but also from neuroscience, that this realisation can improve with practice, just like everything else. As self-aware primates, we truly are the universe becoming aware of itself. Both our bodies and our minds are lit from within, in a way that overcomes the seeming separation of mind and matter. In fact, we are better off thinking of ourselves as a ‘bodymind’ that glows with life and consciousness, something the shamanic arts have always known. Experiencing this realisation can dissolve doubt and confusion, leaving spiritual generosity, forgiveness, understanding and gratitude in its wake.
Now, we need to rekindle the light within more than ever. In a ‘post-truth’ world riven with fake news and political corruption, media propaganda and data mining, we need trustworthy guidance. This will become increasingly important as climate chaos, resource wars and other forms of societal breakdown threaten us with correspondingly fierce internal storms of anxiety, depression and grief.
Such guidance is available to us, both as we grow in faith in our own personal abilities to discern right from wrong and in great stories filled with the power and authority of collective wisdom. These kinds of stories are traditionally called myths. Mythic lore is not merely the fanciful narratives we have been taught to mistrust, as if they were the childlike explanations of a universe that hadn’t yet been explained away by science. Myths are multidimensional universes of information, designed to enable us to manoeuvre through chaos and evolve beyond dangerous new circumstances. The mythic symbol of light is especially capable at conveying such information, when it is interpreted with respect, appreciation and familiarity.
‘That Inner Glow’ Retreat is now SOLD OUT. However, the book is forthcoming, so keep your eyes open for that later in the year!
There’s a beautiful tree out back of my place. I love its almost symmetry, the way it fans for the sky, maximising on the available sunlight and growing strong, even as we are still in drought, long term. Since the fires, trees have been getting cut down everywhere up and down the south coast. It’s slash and burn on the the roadsides, as there is an unusual amount of licence granted for those kinds of actions right now. Putting in fire breaks, cutting down trees, clearing out shrubby undergrowth, making areas around houses more safe.
Newly cleared roadside
Fair enough. I’ve seen examples down backstreets that were lined with dry, scrubby undergrowth, which the locals see as little more than unnecessary fuel left to burn. Some get grumpy about greens stopping them from burning off, some know that’s not right, many admit that regardless of the politics involved, it has also happened because we don’t listen to the Aboriginal knowledge about how to burn country so that it regenerates. We have the option of doing that now, which is why i am working with local elders to see it happen.
But sometimes you sense that some people are also enjoying this. Almost taking revenge on the bush, for being so difficult. Yeah, there’s a lot of it out there, but we’ve seen this summer how vulnerable it is. And we don’t actually have to perpetuate the archetype of the pioneer, always ready, willing and able to tear the bush down to extend the property.
Properties need to be made as safe as possible and traditional owners burnt in small patches to leave cleared spaces too … but geez we love to slash and burn don’t we?
Trees are not the problem, the way we’ve managed them are. A forest is not just a carbon sink and a home to so many animals and plants. It is a place to breathe and a generator of wellness for the entire ecosystem. In physical terms, forests help produce – along with the sea – the oxygenated air we breathe, so perfectly balanced for the sustenance of mammalian and so much other life. And in psychological terms, time spent in forests boosts our mental and emotional health.
One thing I saw, during the NYE fires in Broulee, was that people’s mental state during crisis is paramount to their outcomes. Both in the way they respond in the moment, to needs like getting hoses ready to fight ember attacks; and in the way they come through it, afterwards. There’s a real case for eco-grief work, taking into account people’s personal experiences (even when vicarious) in consideration also of the wider context of the climate crisis. My work with the International Ecopsychology Society is always a heartening reminder that we heal and grow through crisis with nurturing guidance and thankfulness practices.
We need to remember how to live in and with the forests, with love and respect, rather than either logging them relentlessly or leaving them untouched, which leads to dangerous fuel loads. There are many stories of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people having profound layers of ecological wisdom when it comes to maintaining life in the broadest spectrum of ecosystems.
Bruce Pascoe in Dark Emu and Bill Gammage in The Biggest Estate on Earth have reminded us of how we can live within the natural world without compromising the very fabric of life that supports us. Traditional cultures have so often lived in this way.
By contrast, the process of colonisation, fuelled by more developed technologies (of agriculture, war, industry and now digital), is designed to extract wealth from the earth and accumulate it in urban centres. We need to shift away from this culture and back – as well as forwards – to one that respects its home. Traditional people like the Walbanja where I live know how to practice hunting and gathering, tending to Country, cultural burning, harvesting and ensuring future seasons are plentiful. We need to listen to them and learn better how to keep forests and grasslands healthy, how to propagate robust populations of plants and animals into the future, while the forests they live in and with help create rain as well as fresh air. Comparatively, excessive clearing creates drought, then allows more topsoil to run off when floods follow. We’re seeing it again. Let’s listen to the elders on Country, for better results.
Artwork generously supplied to SCAE by Raymond Carriage
Geoff Berry is CEO of the South Coast NSW Aboriginal Elders Incorporated Association, who create employment for Koori and at-risk youth with rebuilding and regeneration projects. SCAE aim to build culture and communities that respect tradition, and seek to perpetuate the best aspects of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures, for the good of all, in a modern context.
The first bird turned out to be alive, still. Only just though. It was so weak i could approach, nudge, and note its feeble movement in protest as my dog backed away from the scene.
The next one was certainly dead, turned up so that you could see its guts had been eaten out. Then the next, and the next. These were Shearwaters, which had failed their migration and fallen upon the beach, only to have whatever small amount of nutrition that was left in their stomach eaten out by whatever sea creature or other bird could get at it.
I’ve only lived on this coast for 4 years, so saying i haven’t seen this before doesn’t amount to much. But something stopped me in my tracks; more than just the individual deaths, more than the mounting evidence of the current and ongoing extinction event that is seeing the end of so many species we can’t even keep count. My favourite animal of all, the Monarch Butterfly, have lost over 80% of their population over recent years (see here).
I later found this report, about the Shearwaters not arriving at their usual destination in Victoria. It was updated only days ago, here. What’s happening is part of a larger pattern. Climate science makes this clear and calling it a Mass Extinction Event seems accurate (although our political leader’s self-serving inaction makes the term ‘extermination‘ more accurate, as suggested by Jeff Sparrow recently). Professor John Arnould cautions us not to panic abut the failed migration this year. But it’s just another sign. They’re adding up.
We’re going to need to get better at dealing with death and destruction as the climate emergency rains its blows down upon us over the coming months, years and decades. In many places, for many creatures, the chaos has already taken its toll. Some people think the planet would be better off without us, but right now, we’re holding the keys to the nuclear reactors and so many other places that could make everything much worse for much longer if we can’t maintain the little control we have left over the damage we are doing every day.
But it will be the grief that undoes us. The countless moments of loss and trauma as we watch our loved ones fall upon the earth, their stomachs empty as the crops fail; or the shock as our communities burn to ashes on the wind in the next horrific fire; or the anguish as we are swept away on hitherto unimaginably fierce storms … the actual details of our undoing will be sickening, so that we cannot celebrate the end of the anthropocene with a clear conscience. We’re going to have to get better at grieving loss, because just as it came for these few birds on my local shore, it is coming for all of us, whether we act now to make our fates less harrowing or not.
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.
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