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.
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Whatever we think we know about the immediate future of humanity and our increasingly beleaguered planet, one thing is for sure: in the face of ecosystem breakdown, new viral threats, and the myriad of other crises that continue to mount, our expectations about life will be continuously tested from this point on. And there’s one experience that inevitably follows all the others we are set to face – the trail of panic, anger, shock and awe at each mounting catastrophe, from unprecedented bushfires to devious new infections like the Coronavirus – and that is grief.
We were shocked at the
extent and ferocity of Australia’s fires this southern summer and we are now
showing signs of outright panic in the face of Coronavirus and its resistance
to containment. Given the lack of political will for climate action, we can
expect more communities to be torn apart, both by supercharged climate chaos
and by less dramatic but just as shocking events such as empty supermarket
shelves (wait until the crop failures start to kick in!).
Now is the time to begin to face this new reality. We are at the end of one era and the start of another. As climate scientists proclaimed, the halcyon days of the Holocene are over; welcome to the Anthropocene, wherein humanity has become so technologically powerful and prolific that we threaten the very viability of our planet’s atmosphere. This is a time to demand leadership that cares about our future; but it also a time that cries out for tears, as we relearn how to process our grief at what is happening to us, to our loved ones and our world.
Members of the community were invited to come together and participate in a grief ritual to assist healing after the bushfires. Held at Rosedale, a badly burnt suburb of Batemans Bay on the far south coast of NSW the event was facilitated by Geoff Berry, an ecotherapist and organiser of the local branch of Extinction Rebellion. “People need the chance to really feel and express their grief after crisis, loss or trauma of any kind. Modern society doesn’t do this very well and we need to fill that gap.” said Geoff. People were invited to bring something that they held sacred, or that connected them with whatever mixture of feelings the fires had brought. The ceremony offered a safe space to share feelings and featured some of the classic elements of grief rituals the world over – giving thanks, connecting with the spirit of place, singing together and a water element for cleansing. Pictured: Ecotherapist Geoff Berry leads the group at Rosedale beach. All photos generously taken by Gillianne Tedder.
In the south east of Australia, the fires are finally out. There are even full dams on some farms, bringing welcome relief to farmers and animals on the land. But even as bushfire is replaced by Coronavirus in the 24/7 news cycle, the more mundane, long work begins: of clean up, rebuild, the counting of losses, and the healing, which will be ongoing now for months, years, even generations in some cases. The loss of small businesses in regional areas affected by the fires is already a steady trickle and with it, increased unemployment and heightened risk of mental health issues. This won’t make headlines, unless it adds up to a big enough number to create some fear and trembling about lost GDP.
Pictured: the devastation at Rosedale.
But as we Australians drag ourselves out of astonishment at the fact that we just joined our Pacific Island neighbours at the coalface of the climate crisis, some of us have decided to do something about it. In Batemans Bay, a small town known as the starting point of endless south coast holidays over the years, a small but dedicated local group of the Extinction Rebellion recently held a grief ritual against a stark backdrop of blackened trees and ocean vistas. As with the international group, they protest the lack of political will to act on the climate crisis that is exacerbating it daily. But enacting a grief ritual is also a time-honoured, even ancestral tradition, which is designed to help people affected by loss and trauma.
Pictured: group participation in the grief ritual.
Grief is a natural human
response to tragedy, so it’s strange that it’s not a more prominent part of
current discussions about how we learn to live with our dangerous new world.
Modern westerners are better at getting on with business, reacting and moving
on, than we are at dealing with deep feelings of loss. But no matter where we
stand on anthropogenic climate change, we will be undone, at some stage, by
grief – and this is not all a bad thing.
Grieving allows us to feel what is happening to us in a way that opens up the possibility of something new, as we displace the power of our loss. Since time immemorial, grief has been ritualised, given time and space so that it can be processed as fully as possible. This doesn’t need to be complicated; all that is necessary for grief to be more fully experienced is that it is given breathing space and a supportive environment. When we do this collectively, we confirm each other as well. But we don’t only need to do this for ourselves and for each other: if we want to become adequate ecological citizens, we also need to explore grief for Country, as the Australian Aboriginal peoples call the lands, the animals, the trees, the rivers and even the soils we live on and with. This is something we modern westerners definitely haven’t been very good at acknowledging. Now is the time to admit that blind spot.
Pictured: This can also be done without close interpersonal contact; the grief ritual was performed before the Covid-19 reality and could easily be adapted this new scenario.
Enacting a grief ritual on
Country after the monumental losses suffered this summer is touching material.
The rites follow an ancient pattern, of joining in a circle, speaking
truthfully about our deepest feelings and fears, singing a song of grief, and
allowing tears of deep sadness and rage to spill freely upon the sand. Participants
are invited to bring along an item that connects them to Country and a bowl of
water is used to add a timeless ceremonial element.
We commemorate our losses in
a way that is timeless yet timely, ancestral yet relevant, personal and
collective. Maybe even in a way that will help us to reconcile our relationship
with the first peoples of this Country – and with the earth itself.
We will not be afraid to talk about the climate crisis that fuelled this fire season, as the atmosphere of the earth is warmed by over a degree already, resulting in the extensive and damaging changes we are seeing today. We will face the truth as courageously as possible.
Pictured Geoff Berry, Trish and Jesse on Rosedale Beach
Because the truth may be bitter medicine, unwelcome in an era when corporate-owned media wants to divert our attention from the most dire threat to our planet we have ever faced. But, as the old saying goes, the truth will set us free. Free to act on climate, to build community, to be as resilient and self-sufficient as possible, because our governments have failed us, beholden as they are to vested corporate interests.
We must continue to demand better from politics and business, but we must also take time to grieve for what we have lost, to clear the way for active hope and regeneration, to be refreshed by the beauty of our love for the earth and the life it supports.
Dr Geoffrey Berry is the Australian Representative to the International Ecopsychology Society, an Extinction Rebellion leader, and CEO of the South Coast NSW Aboriginal Elders Association. His day job is in building a trauma-informed caring community. **Please feel free to Share and Subscribe!**
Initiation makes us into something we weren’t before. Successful ritual transforms our consciousness, expanding our minds beyond a little circle of desire and gratification, connecting us to the more-than-human world of nature all around us, the ecosystem we depend upon, the creatures who are our earthly kin, as well as connecting us to the spirit of life in the cosmos itself. This is what we used to get consistently in premodern society and what some people in more traditional societies, which are more resistant to the modern disease of disconnection, still get.
For those of us born into large-scale modernising cultures, religion tries to fill the gap, which is left as we turn away from this world of animistic life, but it gets so cold in those dusty halls and generally misses the meaty, gristly, blood-pumping point of the matter. That is, the living matter …
The best book I ever read on this subject was “Nature and Madness” by Paul Shepard. He pointed out what we had lost, how the turn towards technological domination of the planet came at such a great cost, as we allowed our initiation rituals to become severed from the word around us, and led by new types of elders, whose loyalties were to king and army rather than our fellow animals, our ancient homes in the forests and the mountains, the deserts and the seas. It’s a great book, but like my PhD on the meaning of light, it spends most of its time diagnosing the problem, leaving us to find solutions.
So I wrote this song, as a hint towards some things we could be doing to take our power back, as a signpost, a call to arms, an ecopoetic symbolic evocation of that world, as it calls us back to ourselves and to its living significance, within and without …
We are born out of the eggs of our mother, inseminated by our father, awakened to our immediate environment. As Caterpillar, the next stage includes wandering about in small circles, munching on the leaves we were born on, following the wisdom of our immediate and distant ancestors. In the same pattern utilised since time immemorial, our mother instinctively chose the right plant to lay her eggs on. Likewise, we’ve followed our own internal compass, to feed and grow, extending the range of our explorations until we find their natural limit. Next, it’s time to pull back. Think of it as a mid-life crisis, where we realise that the strategies we’ve utilised so far don’t work anymore; or an initiation, like into adulthood, where we know we have to step up to a new level, to leave behind the indulgences of childhood and accept the pleasures and responsibilities of being a fully fledged member of adult society.
Either way, we are in need of transformation. In terms of the climate crisis, we all face this now, which was the point of the original post that inspired this series: as a race of technologically driven modern humans, we are acting like children, despoiling our nest and hoping someone else will clean it up for us, But as George Monbiot recently warned, no one is coming to save us. Which makes it ironic that one of the most influential environmental activists of the time, Greta Thunburg, is a schoolchild. It’s also of note that the oldest cultures still alive lead the way when it comes to ecological wisdom; if only we could listen better. So what to do? In worldly matters, protest, join the movement that places ecological health above profit and endless growth, agitate and never give in. In terms of the inner life … well, that’s another thing.
Because there is no division between mind and body, or humanity and the rest of nature, our social lives completely infiltrate our psyche. The reverse also pertains; as below, so above, or as we think, so we feel and act. We need to take care of ourselves, our souls and our breath, if we are to live fully and not become victims of the stress, anxiety an depression that increasingly afflicts modern society. If we care about the damage humanity is doing to this beautiful, precious and now fragile planet, we need to take good care of ourselves even more so. Sometimes, we need to withdraw from the world and find solace within. Each night, as an allegory, we curl up into our restful world of sleep, allowing the relief of night time to wind us down and prepare us for another fresh day tomorrow. We choose a soft cocoon, just as the caterpillar does, and retire into it. And that’s where the magic happens. (Again, the feature image is the actual cocoon created on my little lime tree by the swallowtail butterfly.)
Inside our cocoon, we dissemble. Sleep turns our mind to goop. The butterfly appears as a transformation beyond the complete dissolution of the caterpillar; it no longer exists, except as a memory of this incredible new creature. This doesn’t happen for us, however. If anything, most of us probably find the loop of thoughts and habits that limited us yesterday kick straight back in almost as soon as we’re awake. BUT we can make the process of transformation more conscious, thus more effective. We might not wake up completely transformed into a beautiful new being, but each night something changes and over time we do transform. Why not make this more conscious with a simple ritual designed to support this process?
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Every morning i make a little space for myself and intone my thanks to the spirit of the butterfly. I ask that my night’s rest bring me new insights and allow the parts of myself that are still broken, or crawling inside their own cocoon, or dissolving into goop, or recrystallising and getting ready to break free, to find their way towards transformation into the more evolved being they are destined to become. Find your own way to this and allow the magic to work.
“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.
Everyone knows that Easter is based on an ancient pagan festival of rebirth – hence the eggs and bunnies, fertility symbols par excellence, aligned with a full moon of pregnant portent. Historically, Christianity overtook every sign of an alternative spirituality that it found, building over sites like Notre Dame as well as converting seasonal celebrations like the winter solstice, now swamped by the commercial celebration of Christmas.
In both of these cases, the major Christian celebrations are removed from the earthly and seasonal reasons behind them. Trying to explain this to my children, i spoke about the difference between Catholic and Protestant forms of the dominant western religion. Catholicism kept the rituals, the incense, the Saint days and other ways of representing the mystery of life alive. Meanwhile, Protestantism rejected the priestly power games to argue that each of us could work out our relationship with the divine within.
Meditate on the fact that you are the universe aware of itself.
While i wholeheartedly support any shift away from power dynamics that privilege middle managers and disempower any individual, i also know the cost of our modern dissociation from ritual. We are no longer proficient at dropping into the subliminal otherworlds beneath and within this physical reality. The ‘techniques of ecstasy’ that Eliade called the skills of the shamanic class are limited to (mostly) desacralised trance-like artists, the aforementioned priests (where they find an audience), and psychotherapists in their clinical rooms. Rarely do any of these settings provide us with the deep connection that we crave, to the cosmic spirit of life that courses unheralded through our veins, the planet, deep space and time.
Ritualise your relationship with nature at every opportunity
What we need, at Easter and Christmas and the solstices and equinoxes and every day, is that sense: that we are part of a living world, filled with the spirit of life, confirmed in our minds and bodies so completely that we no longer question it. This is what great myths always did – as Joseph Campbell described it, they put us in touch with the universe and keep us there. So, enjoy a chocolate egg or three, but also take time to meditate and ritualise your relationship to ultimate power, in the here and now, at whatever time you can. This is one of the greatest lacks in modern life and another reason we remain so disassociated from the natural world even while we destroy it in our ignorance.
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