by admin | May 20, 2022 | Awareness Practices, Ecomythic, Ritual, Sacred, Zen Animism
Glistening in tiny raindrops that resemble silver balls of dew, Arachne sits queen of her web, which has appeared overnight across my doorway. Usually i wouldn’t turn an outdoor light on before dawn, as i am comfortable in the darkness and keen to take in as much of the night sky as possible before Aurora shimmers silver across the horizon from the east. But i’m not at home. I’m staying in a rustic retreat centre in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, south east Queensland, leading an intensive for ecopsychotherapy students. There’s no sunshine, though. The rain of our Australian La Nina continues. Hopefully there’ll be no more flooding, although Mullumbimby residents are meeting again, in preparation for ‘Severe Weather’.
The light goes on and i step out, carefully, mindful that each step is a moment in time, not rushing to see if there is any chance of glimpsing the sunrise through the clouds. And there she is; i see her just in time, so that the door doesn’t take out her web, she doesn’t feel panicked as her airy world is shaken apart, and doesn’t end up crawling across my face.
Because i was moving slowly, i don’t have to clear silky strands from my face and help her back into her broken web. Instead, i take the time to stop in awe of her beauty. I know i should go and help my co-facilitator set up the hall for our morning yoga session, but i can’t drag myself away from this stunningly beautiful vision. Tiny crystalline balls of water glisten in the electric light, across her body and web, which is a spiralling cage of death to smaller insects, but a geometric pattern of wonder to me. My door has broken one long strand, which connects the web to the ground, so when i finally walk away, she is working on repairs.
There is no dawn glimmering today, so i can’t perform my Sunrise Ceremony, and the heavy cloud cover means no Venus, Jupiter, Mars or Saturn (or Aphrodite, Zeus, Ares and Kronos) either. I’ve been tracking this predawn planetary alignment for weeks, as i perform my morning prayers at home. It is good to be visited by the gods and goddesses, occasionally.
Back inside for yoga just after dawn, then out on Country after breakfast. What do we find when we reconnect with nature? Participants speak lovingly of rediscovering childlike delight in little things, of the watercourses they visit when they are stressed and how much calmer they feel after some time there, or of a rock in a special place that recreates a feeling of stability and confidence that has been eroded by modern reality. We speak of encounters with butterflies and ducks, of when we sense a grander scheme of things, when facing the ocean or the sky, or how we get our breath back with a walk in the bush.
We start with reality. Where are we at today? We probably shouldn’t have to work to find solace in nature, but we do. So, we create that space, sharpen our ears, make time and allow ourselves to sink back into connection. Many find deeper rest here, some feel more enlivened. All note the way their sense of separation from nature is dissolved, how they return to a feeling of being in relationship with the land, other animals, the elements. The rain has its magical rhythm, even for those who have been traumatised by the recent floods. Tears flow, wounds are reopened and healed over again, genuine smiles come easy … the earth sings and we tune in.
We sit in the Temenos, the sacred and safe space where all sharing is valid, where our vulnerable, soft, sometimes broken animal selves can peep out and find comfort in others. We practise walking therapy, deep listening to each other as well as nature, not talking over or waiting to respond, but being there, offering authenticity and the ‘unconditional positive regard’ recommended by person-centred counselling godfather Carl Rogers.
We choose Sit Spots, where we can become more aware of changes in the natural landscape from day to day, moment to moment. We open up the doors of perception and come back to our senses in the moment. We draw the mind back from its monkey-like grasping and from the machine that captures us all, all too often. Guided meditations draw our awareness down into the earth’s hum, into our unique being and our universal flow at the same time, into animal totems old and new. We learn from nature, like we always did. It provides endless metaphors of healing, empowerment and flow; the grass bounces back after being trodden down, a river flows around the rocks that seemed like barriers at first, a gentle breeze brings us back to our bodies in the here and now.
We let nature tell our life story for once, and sing around the campfire, like people have always done. It is all so easy, smooth and natural, we wonder how we ever lost this feeling in the first place.
*NB: boundless thanks to the participants and my co-facilitator Charlotte Brown. All photos by the author. If you feel moved by these words, please consider Subscribing, Sharing or Liking this post.
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 | Aug 21, 2021 | Awareness Practices, Ecomythic, Ritual, Sacred, Zen Animism
One of the two very vivid dreams I recall from my early childhood in the 70s was a warning about the current times. I think of it sometimes, as it informs me about how to steady myself for the extinction event that is currently escalating on our planetary home.
Although very young when I dreamt this, I am a bearded man in the dream, standing on a granite pavement, with my two children standing innocently next to me. It feels very Atlantean; we are part of an advanced civilization, proud of our place in the world. I had been in some kind of committee meeting, inside a marble hall, and had come out for some fresh air and to see my children. Suddenly, without warning, the ground began to rumble beneath our feet. In no time at all, the pavement was crumbling away, and I begin to lose my footing, which seemed so secure just moments before. I instinctively reached down, grabbed both of my children in my arms, and pulled them up to my chest. It felt good to have them so close, even as the world collapsed into an abyss beneath our feet.
And that’s it. Like so many dreams, it simply ends, having appeared to my young mind from … from where? Nothing in my early childhood offers a reliable compass for this vision. It is a spontaneous irruption from the collective unconscious, a pattern of longing, shock and adaptation, an archetype of life and death arising out of the storehouse of human myth and symbol.
But the imagery says so much – and its visionary power goes a long way to explaining why I have always known that the world as we know it would end in my lifetime. Now that we are seeing evidence of this everywhere, it is time to draw upon the endlessly fascinating world of myth to try and navigate the tumultuous seas that are crashing down upon us, as runaway climate disaster is matched by unstoppable ecosystem breakdown, all in feedback loops of their own.
So, what can the great stories from the collective annals of culture tell us about where we’re at now and what we can do about it? What wisdom can be imparted by studying the ancient ways, as well as waking up to the limitless miracle of the moment (which is really where myth points, endlessly).
The end of this world has been a consistent image in world mythologies, from Biblical revelations to Mayan calendars, from nuclear threats to Kali Yuga. There is little point in running over the false starts and fake prophets that have predicted that The End is Nigh! So, just as my MA tracked the way that our dreams link us to the mysterious worlds of myth, let’s return to its life changing power and see what can be further divined from it.
I mention that my dream felt Atlantean, knowing that the original inspiration behind the myth of a lost but highly advanced civilisation can be found in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias. In the latter, Plato tells of the fast and furious fall of the legendary Atlantis, when “there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune … the island disappeared in the depths of the sea.”
An entire civilisation disappearing in 24 hours is a classic ‘warp’ of mythic time, which is often elastic enough to stretch out towards the infinite (which we can experience when we practice timelessness) and back in towards the intimate (which is how we experience time in an embodied sense). Plato’s 24 hours can remind us of the riddle Oedipus answers to destroy the Sphinx at the gates of Thebes, unwittingly ensuring his own downfall: what creature has four legs in the morning, two during the day, and three at night? A human, whose life passes so quickly from the face of the earth that it may as well be one day – from crawling infant, to free standing adult, to the elder holding themselves up with a crutch – our entire lives pass as quickly as a mote in time.
This also makes sense in another way: the entirety of large-scale human civilisation – urban settlements built on the profits of agriculture and colonisation, magnified a hundred-fold with the industrial revolution – has risen and will fall in the blink of a geological eye. Our moment in the sun has been brilliant and short-lived. Like Atlantis – both the one Plato claimed was already an ancient myth in his day and the imaginative one that has been dreamt up many times since – we are now crumbling into the sea. And as in my dream, it is now happening very, very quickly. Technological development and ecosystem destruction have been increasingly rapid in postmodern industrial culture. But as I never tire of pointing out, the exponential pace of this machine was set in motion during the agricultural revolution, thousands of years ago, when we changed from treating the life around us as kin and instead started to think about it as a set of resources for our use.
And now, we are visiting panic time. Mental health issues are skyrocketing – a pandemic is highlighting and magnifying this, because we mammals don’t flourish when we are socially isolated – but we can expect this to continuously escalate, as the true horror of what faces us next becomes increasingly apparent. We don’t need old time prophetic predictions anymore – a hot house earth is now a matter of scientific certainty and will spell the end of the world as we know it (certainly for the beer and skittles reality we in the affluent west have enjoyed over recent decades).
The only thing left to do is to prepare for the best possible end we can, to draw near those or that which we love, resist the urge to become frantic, let go of our sense of entitlement, practice meditation and breath work and become proficient in dealing with grief. (I’ll keep practising environmental activism, btw, but the days are gone when we might have dreamt we were going to make any real difference to the near future of the planet.)
It’s time to spend the rest of our lives building relationship with the sliver of our consciousness that remains connected to the eternal spark of life. Paradoxically, the practice of seeking to awaken to the timeless can deepen our awareness of the moment, as we experience life in the body, in the here and now, this unrepeatable but soon to pass opportunity to be exactly who we are. Breathing in connection with all that is connects us to the spirit of life that emerges out of the universe and falls back into the ultimate matrix upon its death. Like everything else, we are the flourish of a brush stroke, the coming into being of a certain kind of energy, the passing of a firefly in the night.
My childhood dream is like a lifetime’s memento mori, a reminder that death awaits us all. My guiding metaphor for the awakening I seek out of it is the life cycle of the butterfly. We have been crawling along as caterpillars, but now it is time to create a cocoon, withdraw into it, and dissolve into goop. These old selves must die. This applies on multiple layers and across differing contexts of our lives; I recently emerged from a 5-year apprenticeship to nature spirit, guided again by my dreams, this time to leave the city and live a coastal life far away from my academic and other urban pursuits. This whole period of life, including work and parenting and being in the world in my way, was like a cocoon compared to my previous existence. But I also feel like every night is another cocoon, out of which we emerge renewed; as is every meditation sit, every relationship breakdown, every opportunity for change.
No matter what the context, we can see in nature that there is a basis for trusting that the goop of our dissolved self will re-crystallise, that a new being will grow and build strength, that eventually, after a long, dark night of the soul, we will break out of one cocoon and fly free to another dimension of ourselves. This is the cycle of energy that gives rise to religions: all that lives must die and out of death comes new life. Quantum physics tells us the same thing – life is energy and it is never completely snuffed out, just transformed. To believe that this is what happens to us, to our bodies and consciousness, when we die makes just as much sense as any other faith, like the one that states that consciousness arises out of physical matter and life is ultimately meaningless. As the world crumbles away around us, which myth will you choose? To hold onto the last vestiges of your sense of entitlement; to party as much as possible; to forgive and expand; to prepare for another dimension?
Every traditional culture teaches that part of us passes over to another realm. With an ear out for that wisdom, we can live for the moment and experience the vibration of a living, intelligent cosmos. If we do so while practicing compassion for the suffering of all beings, we may even realise some small measure of liberation from the confines of the self along the way. The possibility of spiritual liberation in itself should be enough to inspire us to reconnect with the ocean of eternity, beyond the iron cage of reason and the isolation of the individual.
I’ll still reach for my kids as the world crumbles beneath our feet. And I’ll still be thankful to feel their breath on my chest as we fall into the abyss below. That’s because the shadow of death does not seem a threat to me, but a promise. This is the ecomythic in action – inspiring compassion for all creatures, celebrating a living cosmos and an animate earth, within which we all dance, for that limited time we have allotted.
*NB: if you got something out of this post, please Like, Share and Subscribe. It really does help me to keep writing.
Photo of man with kids by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash; Collapsed street photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash; Sliver of light photo by Dyu – Ha on Unsplash; Butterfly photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash
by admin | Jun 3, 2021 | Awareness Practices
I recently ran an Ecopsychotherapy intensive, which requires time to reflect upon before i can share; it was so filled with exceptional moments, deep nature connection, spiritual richness and shared community that it was truly humbling and overwhelming. In the meantime, though, the question arises: why retreat?
The word “retreat” indicates that we are removing ourselves from a situation. In military terms, it often connotes a situation where we were in danger and had to run away in order to survive. Although our situation might not be so dramatic, the metaphor holds true in some ways. Everyday life in the modern world is a hectic reality and sometimes we just want to get out of the ‘rat race’. Too often we find ourselves caught up in circumstances where we feel we are fighting just to stay alive, to keep that job or position, to keep our relationship thriving, to pay the bills and keep our kids in school or our creative juices flowing in a world where everything has been reduced to the dollar.
The seemingly unending progress of economic rationalisation reduces everything in its path to commodification: what’s it worth? It doesn’t matter if it is our soul or what is left of nature; it seems that once the gaze of modern industrial society falls upon something, it is reduced to what it can be bought and sold for. No wonder the idea of a retreat seems so sensible!
Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash
But coming on retreat is more than just getting away from a crazy world, or a rushed existence. It is about remembering who we really are; the “me” behind what I appear to be like to others, the “I” beneath the socialised self that is caught up in all those games, the endless mystery and the crying child, the wounded romantic and the spiritually enlightened person that is forgotten in the hustle bustle of everyday life. Although the retreats i run are specifically designed to enhance deep connection to nature, these social aspects of ourselves are all present too. Every part of us needs to be included in a retreat, no matter what the focus is.
And regardless of the theme, by the time we leave a retreat, our boundlessly free spirit should be shining through again, ready to embrace the world and all its madness with loving arms and a compassionate heart. The person we know we are will be more ready, willing and able to step up to the bus for work, to the kitchen table for another day of family life or retiring reflection, to get back to our creative selves and to be here now. We retreat from the ‘real’ world of rushing about getting things done in order to return to it refreshed, better able to integrate our inner sense of worth with our outer existence in the physical and social world.
Photo by Rob Mulally on Unsplash
So, as well as going deep to rediscover our beautiful souls and loving them back into thriving, we concentrate a bit on how to integrate what we get out of the retreat into everyday life. When we’ve experienced really deep breath without any distraction, we take that out to breakfast and remain mindful of it, until it becomes natural again. When we have rediscovered that gentle child inside and how it viewed the world without judgment or hatred, we ask ourselves how it could remain alive inside our adult lives and concerns, to become a guide just as a good elder can. When we hear a bird calling to us to remind us that we are part of nature and can regain an ability to be in conversation with it, we work on hearing that voice whenever we need some wisdom to help us make a decision.
We retreat to rediscover; then we return to integrate and to share what we have learned with others. That’s how retreats work.
*NB: If you got something out of these words, please Like, Share and Subscribe for more! Lead photo credit: by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash
by admin | May 27, 2021 | Awareness Practices, Ecomythic, Ritual, Sacred, Zen Animism
Camped beneath a full moon by a remote coastline, I am alone again with the wind, the sound of the ocean, and a celestial mystery that reminds me that we are all children beneath the stars. I pitched my swag not long after dark, excited to be so alone out here, dive gear ready so that I can immerse myself as soon as possible after dawn in the roiling waters of our ancient birthplace, the ocean. I fell asleep early, exhausted by recent movements, as the full moon rose above the scrubby coastal trees of this place.
Then I awoke, a few hours later, dazed and confused by the moon, which was now only half visible. It took ages to refocus my mind around this mystery – the line down the middle of our lunar orb was distinct. This was no demarcation of heavy cloud cover, and neither was it a tree branch in the way. I kept watching, maybe only half awake, maybe having slipped into a sweet, harmless madness, or a liminal psychic cave of timeless mystery, or a crack in some sorcery set by the universe to capture those foolhardy enough to give themselves over to soul. My mind raced – what is happening? How can I fall asleep under a full moon and wake up mere hours later under a half a disc? Has time slipped, am I lost in its deep pools?
Then I noticed it slowly grow, towards three quarters full, waxing again now as if it were pregnant, bloating as it rolled around the sky, becoming full again before my very eyes.
A blood moon lunar eclipse. How could I not have known this was coming? How is this not front-page news? (I know, if I took more notice of media, I would have known this was coming yesterday too!) But if I lived in a traditional society, where we watched the natural world for its clues and signals every day, I would have known this was coming in a different way. It would have had more meaning. We might have been afraid of the lunar eclipse, as many cultures were, when the moon gets eaten by the night.
The ancient Mesopotamians, with whom I have an affinity since studying them in my full-time research days, would install a fake king for the night, in case the deadly juju of the eclipse infected the real regent with disease or death. For the Sumerians, the moon was a God, a masculine power in the night sky, as opposed to the Lady Luna we imagine drawing us into romance, mystery and the cycles of life. Nanna the Moon God was the bull of the night sky, the stars a herd of cows, all observed closely as they revolved around our planetary home. The Mesopotamians became renowned for the mathematical precision of their star gazing, another reason I loved them. Such patience, record keeping and meaning making under the celestial constellations. We don’t share this love or take this time anymore; we have created our own light in the night, artificial, reliable and easy (even though it is costing us the earth; but that’s another story).
Nowadays, it is up to us to wake up, to notice the world around us, to become aware of the cycles of life and death in ten thousand animate, intimate, real ways. I’m glad I didn’t know the eclipse was coming to swallow the full moon at night. The surprise was such a jolt, it gave me the opportunity to awaken anew to this mystery, to be confused by the cosmos all over again. In my scrambling for reality and understanding, I rediscovered a primal need, as the world as I knew it fell away beneath me, or rather above. Wherever we look for certainty, we’d better be ready for anything, it reminded me.
My Salute to the Moon, a brief version of the full yoga asana. This is included in my Nature Calling Online Course for those wanting to deepen their connection to nature. It’s freely available here.
Reassured, I got up and performed my salute to the moon, a regular ritual I like to do when I am under her pearly light. Tonight, I notice how her silver glows upon my hands and arms as I reach for the sky, as if I am imbued and glow with the power of deep connection to the cosmos. Safely full and unobscured again now, I can write my story in her light, unafflicted by the wyrdness of my lunar fascination, rebalanced by my salute to the sacred mysteries, by the circle of ancestors who deign to allow me to speak as a guest at their table.
She is behaving herself again, crossing the night sky towards the horizon, and I feel I have been given back my sanity, my faith in the rightness of things. Having lost it for a while there, I am brought back to life in the exact moment of the everpresent here and now, as ritual always does for me.
Perhaps, like me, you will join the rounds, hopefully waking up to the great mystery of consciousness coursing through our veins, hopefully breathing in and out with gratitude for this one wild opportunity at self-aware primate life in a body on earth, hopefully waking up …
*NB: If these words spoke to you, please Like, Share, join in the conversation (aka leave a Comment or question), and SUBSCRIBE to keep the juices flowing. (The blog Subscription box is in the top right of the Blog page.)
