The Ecomythic Goes Viral

by | Apr 20, 2020 | Ritual, Sacred, Zen Animism

It’s like every conversation has to be about Covid-19, which in this digital age means the viral has gone viral. So what’s the ecomythic angle? What would we hear if we heard Nature Calling, if we tuned into the stories that are arising out of the earth, communicating to us about how we live on this planet? How we live as human animals, but also beyond the limited consciousness of the mortal; in the body, but also from the imagination, which flies beneath, below and above the physical frame, from the stars to the embers, as cosmic consciousness embodied here and now …

Well, think of it like this. What do you call an invisible enemy, which attacks your life support system from within, can be contracted by touching a surface that shows no sign of the infection, either stops you breathing altogether or merely gives you a dry cough, mutates occasionally as it crosses hosts, appears and disappears without a trace, sometimes not even showing up for the diagnosis, even with the best of modern medicine at hand? And what about when it creates total chaos around the world, shuts down the capitalist system, keeps nearly everyone cooped up at home and inspires panic buying of essentials like toilet paper, even when it can’t be seen?

Covid-19 has been talked about in terms of its symbolic potential (eg by Charles Eisenstein), and most importantly its ‘meaning’ in terms of the ecological crisis, but what about its ecomythic spirit? What kind of creature is this, that appears out of nowhere and has such powerful effects, completely rearranging human life almost overnight? A superstitious witness to such events would want to know what demonic spirit let this evil force loose upon the world, as well as what the victims did do to deserve it. This touches on the karma of the situation too, which points us back to the rise of the various plagues that have afflicted humanity over time. An objective observer would have to ask – has this got something to do with the way humans treat animals; seeing as living in close contact with them has something to do with it, and you’re doing this in order to eat them, skin them and trade them?

The existential level of questioning gets pretty brutal pretty quickly, but this is appropriate if you want to look the truth in the face (or as closely as you can get to this before you feel the need to look away). Joseph Campbell pointed out that compared to the human ego, the mythic universe is ‘adamantine’ in its challenge – harder than a diamond and as unflinching as nature when it comes to dishing out just rewards. If the human race is about to reap what it’s sown, over millennia of ecocidal abuse, then we should prepare for a near future of disastrously epic proportions. This looks like apocalyptic sci-fi on steroids, as the oceans begin to repel excess carbon and heat (its time of being a passive soak for our bad behaviour is effectively over). The only reason we can’t face the reality of this situation is because it is too horrible to digest; such a truth would make a mockery of all our plans, our love for our children and grandchildren, our hopes for the beautiful life this planet supports. But now that climate scientists have taken the gloves off, having admitted they’ve been too polite for too long, it’s time to face the future and its ecomythic power – to upset our dream of never-ending human glory, as even conservative commentators are now admitting (even if sometimes begrudgingly).

The dream of endless growth is closely associated with fantasies of immortality and these can be tracked across the history of human myth. Although such wishes exist in every culture, the dream of living in everlasting peace with an ultimate power (for example a Christian God) or in a field of deathless energy (such as the Buddha’s nirvana) seem like harmless fantasies compared to the scale of what modern, technologically developed societies do with the human lust for immortality. Because our modern world rejects both Gods and the liberation offered us by a mythically-informed depth psychology, we make our desires manifest instead, in desacralised rites of consumption.

That’s right folks, if we can’t have eternal afterlife we’ll just fill up right here, thanks. The sensual thrill of satisfying appetite – of fancy foodstuffs, of cars and hotel rooms and exotic holidays and sofas and sex & drugs & rock ‘n roll and electric light and everything – fills in for the spiritual paradigm we lost on the path to our materialistic paradise. This one, which is costing us the earth. Ironic, no? But wait, there’s more …

The paradox of ephemeral satisfaction – of feeling we have overcome the limits of life in the body, life on earth, in a materialistic orgy of consumption – is an ‘all feast, no famine’ deal we made with technology. It comes as a historical result of the agricultural myth (from around 10,000 years ago), that we can profit from the earth and not pay the ultimate cost, which is then dialled up by the machine age of the industrial revolution (starting around 250 years ago), then made global by colonisation, then exponentially skyrocketing over recent decades, as digital technologies concentrate our dream of being both primate and god at once. How about that? The more worldly and less seemingly religious we have become, the more the great spiritual ideal of living free and forever has taken hold of our imagination, like a feverish dream.

This is the karmic law of Covid-19. It’s not just that we reap what we sow, that we deserve to die en masse for treating the earth and its other animals like disposable resources for our profit. It’s also an Oedipal paradox: as we try to escape the traditional versions of our subliminal desires (for God/Nirvana), they revisit us in exotic new forms, from behind and below, in our dreams, when we’re not looking. We treat the earth like dirt and it gives birth to new lifeforms, some of which threaten to wipe us out in its name. It’s viral karma, joining the unprecedented bushfires and magnified superstorms and every other fury unleashed by the earth we thought we’d controlled for our own purposes. 

Just as Freud saw, the primal desire of ‘man’ (if not all men) to consume the mother’s body in a pervasive rite of carnal satisfaction cannot often be fulfilled by the individual male at large in society; but we can find myriad other ways to feel filled up on mind-blowing power, to feel fully nourished and filled with love, warmth and self-fulfilment. Sadly, many of these ways are not so wholesome or respectful of ‘the other’ that is required to satiate our desires. Many of the ways a patriarchal capitalist framework like ours offers to satisfy our inner needs are very far from being kind to others, or to our planet.

We cannot help wanting stuff, as embodied beings, but we have a choice as to how we satisfy our desires. Sure, if we are born (or ‘fated’, as the ancients would say) to be a certain type of person, to want certain things as a way of feeling satisfied, it can seem almost impossible to change that. Put another way, we are coded towards certain predispositions, both as a race and as individuals.  We seek nourishment, shelter, company, as a species; and perhaps lust, intoxication, the thrill of the gamble, any other sin to any degree, or none of them – perhaps the quiet life, a simple family existence, escapism or hard work. In any number of ways, we have a program from birth, a personality type, things we can change and things we cannot. As the old saying goes, wisdom is the capacity to discern which is which, to try and change what we can for the better and to accept what we cannot. The aim of a wisdom tradition is to offer guidance so that we don’t get lost in the labyrinth of our own desires, so that we come through the darkness of our challenges and find new light, integrating what we learn from our weaknesses and foibles and expanding our sense of self, so that we become greater and more spiritually generous, not giving in to our base desires and becoming more mean and selfish.

By contrast, contemporary capitalist society is 360 degrees of influence aimed at exactly the opposite outcome. It directs you to your cheapest thrill, your most immediate appetite, offering to satisfy it so long as you play the game. Likewise, modern politics – especially since the rise of the ‘Big Man’ era [find link?] – is designed to appeal to your fear of the other, to target difference as the problem, to become more judgemental and aggressive about your opinions. It’s only a small step from fighting over toilet paper to supporting war, and the same drive informs both – we are right, they are wrong, and we have a lot to profit from beating them. War is the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, riding across the horizon, following the Fires, Plague and Floods let loose by anthropogenic climate change. And all of this acts as a reflection and a logical result of how large-scale, colonising, capitalising societies like the West and China have been treating nature for millennia. Only now do we see what our unleashed power looks like, in the mirror of the world, as it unravels to reveal the hidden desire beneath those ads on television, that screen you’re reading this on, the constant news of the destruction of our world: the horrible irony that we have unleashed the demons of death by trying to run away from them. Only this time, according to the global power of unrestrained corporate greed and the military industrial complex (as we used to call it), the death we wanted to avoid is revisiting us on a planetary scale.  

Oedipus was warned he would kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, he ran to escape his fate, thereby making sure it happened, just as the seer predicted it would. We were warned too, by the sober deliberations of climate science, yet rushed headlong to our collective demise in the rush to satisfy the gamut of our desires, as if there were no limit. Ultimately, the ancient Greek tragedy has its redemptive aspect; Oedipus ends up a lot wiser and even has a sacred place named after him. It’s unlikely, short of a miracle of transformation, that our esteemed leaders will be afforded any such respect by future generations, if they are even to appear.

Oedipus is “filled with an inner strength as his fate nears” – he stands and walks (long after his horrible fate, having killed his father and married his mother).

PLEASE Subscribe (button top right of this page), Share, Like (if you did) and Comment/Question! 

Processing Grief in Times of Ecosystem Breakdown

Processing Grief in Times of Ecosystem Breakdown

by | Mar 16, 2020 | Awareness Practices, Ritual, Sacred

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!**

Return to the Breath

Return to the Breath

by | Nov 16, 2018 | Awareness Practices

When we think about the lack of action on climate change, as well as the ongoing rush to strip the planet of ‘resources’ and thus continue the devastation of the environment regardless of our obvious need to take care of the earth, we can easily slip into despair. Seeing as world politics including Australian ‘leadership’ seems to be going in the wrong direction, blind hope is not going to help us. So what do we do?

Aside from turning to the good things that are happening in our communities – and there are plenty of them! – we can return to the breath. Leave the societal realm behind and breathe into the body. This gets us back to the experience of awareness, of the one state we can definitely change for the better – our own body and mind. Deep breath awareness not only relaxes the mind and thereby reduces stress, it can also lower our heart rate and create space so that we are not merely reacting to the world at the moment, but exploring a space of freedom and creativity as well. We can also give some air to feelings that have compounded around the issue that has wound us up; we may feel sadness and grief, frustration and anger … this is a good opportunity to can allow ourselves to be human, to have the feeling and then to let it go (don’t rush!).

In the body, when we have breathed through our tension or anxiety, we can find comfort; we can recognise whatever needs to be changed, what it takes to be in our power, to be ready for action, to stand for what’s right, to be poised as an animate being capable of self-awareness … and when we have reignited these potentials, we can go further, breathe into the depths of the mind/body beyond the personal self, to the core truth of being human, which is that we are also more than this; we are interdependent beings, open to the elements through breath and ingestion, made up of DNA shared by plants and other animals and mitochondria and clay and water and salts …

Through breath we can find psychological freedom and return to the intertwined mystery of human being: we are consciousness embodied in self-aware primate form, both completely dependent on nature for our lives and also capable of experiencing ourselves beyond the limits of time and space. This is the paradox of being human; we are only here and now and also always more than this. Just like light and consciousness, metaphors for each other … but that’s another story, for another time.

For right now, return to breath, rebalance the self and remember the more-than-self, and return to the world ready to fight the good fight for another day.  Beyond all else …