Looking It In The Eye:

Transforming Ecodespair With

Equanimity

For

Completion of requirements

UPAYA CHAPLAINCY

2011

By

Avyn Norah Trace

Looking It In The Eye:

Transforming Ecodespair with

Equanimity

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Weaving a Lifeworld

Pg 1

Chapter 2: Zazen as Method

Pg 4

Chapter 3: Looking It In The Eye:

Tranforming Ecodespair into Action Pg 12

To The Lighthouse

Pg 12

At The Edge

Pg 14

Precious Frog

Pg 16

Evolve or Its Curtains

pg 18

Saalish Sea Mermaid

Pg 21

Looking Deeply at Security

pg 23

One Ocean, One Sky

Pg 25

Oil and Water on West Coast Canada

pg 26

Graveyards in the Gulf

pg 26

Chapter 4: Transforming Ecodespair with

Equanimity pg 27

The Group: Equanimity Through

Ecodespair pg 27

Our Next Evolutionary Leap is Living

Interconnectivity Pg 29

We Do Not Know So Do No Harm and

Commit to This pg 30

Models for Intending Focus

pg 31

A. SIBAM PILL

Pg 32

B. Cognitive Maps

Pg 33

C. Equanimity and Cessation

Pg 34

D. SIBAM 2 and SIBAM 3

Pg 34

Emergent Themes

A. Equanimity

Pg 35

B. Perception, Feeling, and Intention

Pg 35

C. Selfing

Pg 36

D. Mindfulness

Pg 37

E. Antidotes

Regulating Instead of Aversion

Pg 39

Equanimity Instead of Numbing

Pg 39

Right Action Based on Not

Knowing pg 40

The Thought of Interconnectivity

pg 40

F. Existential Responsibility: Not

Knowing is

Different From Not Wanting To

Know Pg 41

G. Felt-Sense of Connectivity:

Reverence for Life Pg 42

H. Are We Evolving?

Pg 43

I. Shift Is Happening

Pg 44

Current Context - Oil and Ocean

Pg 45

Chapter 5: Intentional Evolution: From

Ecodespair To Ecointelligence Pg 46

WorldViews

Pg 46

Fragmented Worldviews

Pg 51

Mindlessness

Pg 52

Consumer Culture – Greed and Delusion

Pg 53

Emotional Regulation Theory

Pg 54

Blame and Guilt

Pg 56

Transforming Moral Distress into an

Emergent Moral

Will to Power

Pg 57

“Sustainable Psyches”

Pg 60

Transforming Despair to Action

Pg 61

Healthy Narratives: The Root of

Effective Action Pg 62

The Buddha Was Right

Pg 63

Deepening EcoIntelligence

Pg 64

Chapter 6: Weaving the Diamond Sutra

Pg 65

     Weaving  a  LifeWorld    

How  to  be  in  the  truth  of  the  ecological  crisis  that  we  are  creating?    I  believe  that  this  question  represents  the  themes  of  our  time.      

Our  own  senses  bring  us  the  information,    scientists  provide  evidence,  and  activists  are  urging  us  to  act  in  ways  that  will  avert  the  harms  of  environmental  degredation  and  consequent  global  climate  change.    However,  to  the  surprise  and  frustration  of  all,  we  are  slow  in  this  process.      We  need  to  adapt  and  create  new  ways  of  being  and  yet  it  seems  to  take  a  lot  of  efforting  to  create  policy  and  legislation  that  promotes  well-­‐being  for  all.      Humans  are  capable  of  casually  opting  out  of  efforts  to  shift  worldviews  and  ways  of  being,  individually  and  collectively,  even  while  narrating  stories    of  ourselves  as  good  and  intelligent  and  sensible.    We  know  what  to  the  suffering  is;  we  know  what  our  worldview  and  way  of  being  is  that  causes  it;  we  know  how  to  move  to  and  through  cessation;  we  know  enough  about  how  to  be  in  a  co-­‐created  Lifeworld  of  Well-­‐Being.    What  stops  us  from  actually  proceeding  through  the  Four  Noble  Truths  and  emerging  into  a  new  era  of  Well-­‐Being?    

Effective  psychology  is  about  the  nexus  where  human  experience  meets  the  Lifeworld.      I  have  come  to  believe  that  need  to  intentionally  direct  our    worldview,  narrative,  and  way  of  being  to  be  in  an  aware  and    healthy  interconnected  flow  within  the  whole  of  the  Lifeworld.    Our  view,  our  speech,  our  actions  –  all  aspects  of  our  being  including  livelihood  are  needing  to  evolve.    We  can  do  so  intentionally  and  mindfully.        We  have  been  and  are  going  through  a  death  phase  in  our  culture  and  we  need  to  use  all  we  know  from  mystics  and  awakened  ones  who  come  before  us  on  this  evolutionary  path,  to  move  through,  toward  rebirth.    We  have  been  behaving  as  if  we  have  lost  our  guiding  principles  and  this  is  because  we  have  outgrown  the  previous  worldviews,  narratives  and    moral  guidelines;  as  such  we  need  an  emergent  ecologically  intelligent  moral  psychology.          Basic  psychology  indicates  that  individuals  and  collectives  develop  increasingly  complex  morality  over  time  –  moving  from  uninhibited  and  controlled  by  basic  impulses  and  drives  toward  compassionate  ways  of  being  based  in  the  wisdom  of  interconnectivity.      I  have  explored  this  issue  by  following,  teaching  and  practicing  the  various  threads  of  human  insight  as  they  have  emerged.    The  last  30  years  have  been  a  preparation  for  this  chaplaincy  and  this  weaving.    As  has  been  said  by  many,    we  need  to  go  through  our  own  individual  personal  transformations  at  the  same  time  as  the  collective  goes  through  this  transformation.    In  exploring  what  the  collective  is  producing  on  this  process,  i  feel  like  i  have  accumulated  a  wonderful  wool  collection.    I  found  many    healthy,  organic,  beautiful  threads  and  skeins  with  which  to  weave  a  new  fabric.          

I  set  my  scholarly  roots  in  sociology  and  psychology  in  the  70’s.    Specifically,    existential  phenomenological  psychology    was  deeply  satisfying  to  me  and  by  the  80’s    i  began  to  approach  Buddhist  thought.  For  my  doctoral  dissertation  i  wrote  about  death-­‐rebirth.  After  a    few  more  decades  of  accumulating    experience,  skills  and  practices  for  developing  reflective  processes  and  interventions  with  individuals  and    groups,  and  staying  with  the  wave  of  the  collective,  i  am  fully  committing  to  a  chaplaincy  journey.    Over  these  decades  i  have  accumulated  a  broad  and  deep  library.    Just  this  morning  i  pulled  two  books  at  random  off  of  the  shelves  and  came  up  with  the  answer  to  my  question:    

“One  should  identify  oneself  with  the  universe  itself.    Everything  that  is  less  than  the  universe  is  subjected  to  suffering...”  Simone  Weil,  Notebook.  

“The visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance; ... union or harmonious relationship with that higher universe is our true end... prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof – be that spirit “God” or “law” – is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world” (William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, pg 528).

From  both  of  these  I  can  make  the  comment:  we  know  already  a  deep  and  profround  truth,  we  know    where  we  create  suffering,  that  we  need  to  cease,    and  we  know  our  path  out  of  this  crises.    Knowing  is  not  enough.    We    are  not  living  what  we  know,  which    infers  a  lack  of  transforming  what  we  know  into  wisdom.        We  are  then  given  to  suffer,  to  feel,  to  deeply  experience  the  full  meaning  and  truth  of  how  we  have  been,  so  that  we  will  ourselves  to  the  wisdom  of  a  moral  way  of  being,  using  free  will  and  intentional  consciousness.    

To  most  fully  address  the  question  I  put  my  feet  on  the  ground  and  opened  my  heart  and  walked    and  listened  with  people  in  several  contexts.    The  themes  and  threads  throughout  this  document  emerged  from  field  trips,    group  contexts,  my  own  biographical  predispositions,  as  well  as  reading.    The  themes  are  not  new  to  me  or  to  many  others.    However,  as  so  often  happens,  through  articulating  and  developing  my  thoughts  about  them,  i  come  to  know  even  better  the  lived-­‐meaning  of  these  themes,  and  from  here  I  be  in  the  world  with  more  wisdom.    I  am  developing  a  whole  new  layer  of  insight  into  the  complexity  of  this  existence,  how  it  works  and  my  place  in  it  -­‐    but  when  i  have  to  print  a  final  draft  of  this  i  will  know  it  will  continue  as  an  ongoing  process.      

I    imagine  a  medicine  wheel  –  with  the  Eagle  in  the  East  flying  over  and  getting  a  big  picture  view  of  where  we  are  now,  and  back  into  the  history  as  part  of  the  trajectory,  and  turning  an  eye  with  an  intentional  look  toward  the  future.      In  the  South  is  the  frog  with  a  micro  view  of  things.    The  balance  of  earth  water  fire  air  here  is  subtle  and  precious  such  that  micro  changes  in  the  ph  balance  make  for  huge  implications  in  the  lived-­‐experience  of  many  lifeforms,  in  ways  we  as  humans  do  not  yet  know.    In  the  west  is  the  bear  digging  in  with  courage  to  

face  the  suffering  and  feel  deeply  the  embodiment  of  consciousness  in  this  Lifeworld.    West  Coast  Bears  live  on  the  interface  between  ocean  and  forest  streams,  and  are  intricately  intertwined  with  fish  and  berries,  shores  and  trails  through  the  woods.    In  the  North  is  the  White  Wolf,  ever  flowing  over  the  lands,  with  clear  wisdom,  adaptable  and  able  to  stay  strong  in  the  dark  of  the  night  .    

 As  the  wheel  goes  around  toward  a  new  era  I  find  the  Great  Vehicle  of  Mahayana  provides  a  deep  and  complex  thread  for  finding  my  way  around  this  ever  spiralling  Medicine  Wheel.        This  project  is  a  weaving  with  words  ,  each  thread  a  construct,  interwoven  into  a  fabric  that  reflects  a  complex  understanding  of  existence.    It  is  part  of  our  ongoing  integrating  of  this  ancient  and  strong  thread  first  carded  and  spun  by  Buddha,  and  adapted  and  moved  through  minds  and  hearts  and  cultures  over  time,  into  a  new  fabric.  

 

 

Zazen  as  Method    

I  feel  with  Zazen  as  method  that  I  reach  a  ground  that  is  both  comprehensive,  and  comprehending  in  the  active  sense.    For  moments  i  am  aware  of  living  between  purely  objective  and  purely  subjective.    I  become  a  point  of  awareness,  within  the  fabric  of  existence:    Perching  on  this  nexus  point,  being  in    both  the  “inner”  and  the  “outer”  as  interwoven  and  reflective  of  each  other,  and  being  attuned  with  and    present  to  this  experiencing.    So  elusive  to  name.  Like  grasping  water  or  air.    Impossible  to  photograph  both  the  macro  perspective  and  the  micro  at  the  same  time.    Physics,  psychology,  and  philosophy  give  many  examples  -­‐  particles  and  waves  -­‐    ways  of  being  in,  perceiving,  describing,  reflecting  upon,  languaging,  representing,  examining,  organizing,  evaluating,  strategizing,  intervening,  and  describing  again.      

Behind  all  of  this  is  the  uncertainty  principle.    Yet,  if  i  step  back  from  worldviews,    further  and  further  into  not  knowing,    i  still  see  many  nameable  themes.    One  is  that  everything  is  connected.    So,    everything  i  do  effects  the  web  of  life,  just  like  i  am  affected  by  everything  that  happens  on  the  web.    Another  is  

that  my  way  of  being  manifests  my  worldview.    Further,  every  idea  or  word  or  concept  in  a  worldview    is  a  representation  created  by  the  mind  and/or  introjected  from  the  collective.    Mind    (individual  and  collective)  has  perceiving  and  organizing  functions,  rendering  the  experience  of  existence  into  meaning,  given  the  limitations  of  consciousness  in  any  current  form.    Also,  consciousness  has  the  capability  to  be  resilient,  adaptable,  fluid,  zoomed  in  or  out;  it    can  reflect  upon  itself,  and    reorganize  and  shape  itself.  We  can  do  this  with  will.    As  humans,  still  low  on  some  grand  evolutionary  scale,  we  are  not  always  able  to  be  in  the  worldview  we  have  constructed  while  at  the  same  time  be  in  the  awareness  that  we  have  constructed  this  worldview.    

 Reality  can  be  discerned  and  named,  and  always  we  have  to  remember  that  our  parsings  and  namings  are  not  the  thing  itself.    They  are  the  minds  efforts  to  parse  down  and  construct  a  version  of  reality  that  is  comprehensive,  and  that  we  are  able  to  apprehend.    To  do  so  each  person  regulates  how  much  of  reality  they  can  let  into  their  awareness.    They  un/consciously  decide  what  to  do  with  the  dissonant  information,  how  to  contain  and  express  emotions,  and  what  to  do  with  the  information  and  emotions  they  cannot  intetgrate.    We  are  also  driven  to  grow  –  to  see  and  feel  and  understand  more  deeply.    These  drives  –  to  know  and  to  protect  the  self  –  work  together  to  shape  character  and  defense  structures.    

We    are  also  driven  to  act  upon  realilty,  and  to  co-­‐shape  our  Lifeworld,  and  lately,  as  a  species,  to  reflexively  realize  that  our  actions  always  have  more  consequences  than  we  intend.        We  are  not  always  able  to  perceive  the  coconstituted  outcome  of  our  actions  while  we  are  planning  the  actions  or  enacting  them.    We  are  developing  an  increasing  capacity  to  see  this  co-­‐arising.  Ultimately,  we  have  a  moral  responsibility  to  intentionally  weave  a  healthy  world.    So  we  have  to  look  deeply  and  honestly  and  see  effects  of  our  actions,  but  defense  structures  protect  us  from  seeing  what  may  not  feel  good  to  see.  

It  is  at  this  level  of  these  more  or  less  conscious/unconscious  worldviews  that  our  work  lies.    We  can  develop  practices  through  which  we  have  the  possibility  to  intentionally  examine,  deconstruct  and  reorganize  a  part  or  whole  of  a  worldview  when    insight  makes  evident  our  dissonance  or  ineffectiveness.      The  

more  we  focus  our  attention  on  developing  such  deep  seeing,  the  more  we  become  free  of  delusions  about  reality  and  our  place  in  it.  Reality  becomes  unbound.    We  perceive  with  fresh  eyes  and  fresh  possibilities  for  numberless  creations.    When  our  actions  are  unexamined  everything  suffers.    If  we  then  look  deeply  into  this  suffering  we  can  root  down  to  increasingly  pure  causations  to  see  exactly  where  to  stop  that  suffering.    We  can  discern  where  worldview  and  way  of  being  need  altering  and  we  do  so.    By  attuning  with  the  suffering  we  create  frameworks  for  percieving,  and  ways  of  mapping  our  understanding  so  that  we  can  effectively  reorganize  to  more  complex  and  adaptive  forms.  

One  way  of  deeply  seeing  is  placing  frameworks  around  the  pure  phenomenal  experience  and  looking  for  themes  and  details.    Another  is  looking  at  phenomena  as  it  emerges  into  consciousness,  in  a  way  that  is  seeing  the  thing  itself,  in  as  much  as  we  can  do.      In  some  sythesized  version  of  examining  and  naming  my  own  experiencing  i  know  the  both/and  experience  where,  by  intending  my  perceptual  frames  to  do  so,  i  perceive  how  objective  and  subjective  are  inseparable,  one  existing  without  the  other  only  conceptually.    If  i  try  on  such  a  conceptual  map  then  i  experience  how  an  approach  that  is  objective  or  subjective  limits  understanding,  in  fact  distorts  understanding  of  the  very  phenomena  “i”  seek  to  explain  and/or  describe.      I  must  then,  intend  my  consciousness  toward  a  position  of  Being  within  the  Lifeworld,  and  witnessing  my  Being  within  this  Lifeworld,  and    of  watching  the  witnessing  of  Being  in  the  Lifeworld.  

If  i  reach  into  either  Buddhism  or  existential  phenomenological    psychology  i  can  rest  for  a  moment  in  subcultures  which  reject  the  “notion  of  cauasality  in  its  linear  or  additive  form  (i.e.  rejects  the  belief  that  change  is  initiated  and  directed  by  external  events)...cause-­‐effect  relationships  have  no  place  in  the  elucidating  of  the  lifeworld...  because  the  person  and  his  or  her  world  co-­‐constitute  one  another  rather  than  events  in  one  realm  causing  events  in  the  other”.      From  here,  both  approaches    share  a  similar  goal.    The  “goal”  of  existential  phenomenology  is  to  become  conscious  of  and  understand  phenomena  as  they  are  immediately  experienced.    “Phenomena  ,  as  they  are  present  to  us,  seem  to  reveal  themselves  in  different  ways,  depending  on  how  we  look  at  them  or  “take  them  up”  in  our  

many,  varied  perspectives  and  life  situations...  Only  after  seeing  these  different  reflections  and  varied  appearances  on  repeated  occaisions,  does  the  constant,  unchanging  structure  become  known  to  us”  (Valle  and  Halling,  1989,    Pg  13).    

In  the  mid-­‐70’s  i  had  trained  in  quantitative  methods  for  systems  analysis  for  a  masters  in  social  research.    I    then  underwent  a  major  trauma  which  initiated  a  transformational  process.      This  process  was  reflected  in  the  methodologies  i  was  drawn  to  when  i  returned  for  my  doctoral  studies  in  the  early  80’s.    I  was  fascinated  by  the  emergent  qualitative  approaches  to  studying  the  experience  of  being  human,  especially  Existential  Phenomenology  .    Many  authors    integrated  “Eastern”  thought  into  their  work.      

As  method  for  this  paper  i  feel  comfortable  with  returning  to  my  base  of  phenomenological  hermeneutics.      In  fact,  i  found  it  refreshing  to  return  to  these  roots.    One  of  the  many  books  i  reread  in  preparation  for  writing  this  document  was  Simone  Weil  on  The  Need  for  Roots,  (1952)  who  is  referred  to  as  the  patron  saint  of  all  outsiders.    She  wrote  this  document  when  “commissioned  to  outline  a  plan  for  the  renewal  of  Europe  after  the  scourge  of  Nazism”;  I  access  it  because  i  feel  like  we  are  morally  compelled  to  develop  a  plan  for  renewal  of  Earth  after  the  scourge  of  global  corporatism  and  its  consumer  based  culture.      Simone  wholeheartedly  and  with  fierce  compassion,  points  out  how  “in  the  cult  of  materialism  we  witness  a  devastating  loss  of  spirit  and  consequently  of  human  values”.    She  counteracts  this  with  a  “radical  vision  for  spiritual  and  political  renewal,  with  a  passion  for  truth.”    Her  method  is  to  look  deeply  at  life  in  ways  not  confined  by  the  dominant  collective  worldviews,  write  from  the  heart,  and  keep  her  vision  clear  and  her  voice  strong.  

Hermeneutics,  as  the  study  of  understanding,  is  basically  concerned  with  meaning  and  interpretation.    “But  understanding  a  text  is  not  possible  if  one  approaches  it  in  a  purely  academic  or  intellectual  fashion”.    Instead,  we  must  find  ways  to  “emphasize  one’s  own  personal  existential  engagement  with  the  text.  ...  it  is  a  voice  we  must  hear,  and  through  hearing  understand”  (Valle  and  Halling,  1989,  Pg  15).  Notably,  “text”  represents  any  form  of  “information”  or  way  of  parcing  up  existence:  words,  descriptions  of  behaviours,  processes,  situations,  

contexts,  inner  experience,  images,  art,  or  chunks  of  written  text;  it  may  be  a  thread  of  wool,  or  a  chapter  in  a  book;  it  may  be  a  bird,  or  a  bees  antennae.    

 The  text  itself  is  having  its  moment  within  the  historicity  of  human  understanding.    “Life  is  a  text  that  human  beings  are  constantly  involved  in  reading  and  interpreting”  (Valle  and  Halling,  1989,  pg  15).    Drawing  from  the  descriptive  phenomenological  base,  interpretations  are  made  with  the  intent  of  deepening  felt-­‐sense  of  understanding,  by  moving  back  and  forth  from  part  to  whole.  By  seeing  the  particle  then  the  wave,  by  being  the  particle  then  the  wave,  we  begin  to  understanding  how  to  be  with  these  wisdoms.  It  is  like  weaving.      For  me,  this  is  an  essential  part  of  what  happens  for  me  during  Zazen  sitting  practice.  

Gadamer reconceptualized the hermeneutic circle as an iterative process through which a new understanding of a whole reality is developed by means of exploring the detail of existence (Wiki).

Again  the  weaving  metaphor  works  for  me  -­‐  i  can  focus  on  a  thread,  a  cluster  of  threads  or  a  section  of  pattern,  and  return  with  my  vision  to  the  whole  again,  as  a  way  of  trying  to  comprehend  and  apprehend  the  complexities  of  the  lived-­‐experience  of  looking  at  the  blanket,  or  wearing  the  blanket.    The  fabric  becomes  container  and  canopy,  protective  and  drawing  lines  in  reality.    The  fabric  is  alive,  flowing    with  existence  and  consciousness.    The  ends  are  loose  and  free.  

The  process  of  self-­‐reflection  is  essential  to  conscious  ethical  and  moral  engagement  by  humans.    Without  it  we  are  technocrats,  maneuvering  “the  world”  as  we  believe  it  to  be  “out  there”  in  order  to  meet  our  self’s  agenda,  with  no  ethical  reviews  in  place.    Such  an  approach  denies  interconnectivity,  and  perpetuates  the  suffering  of  all  things.    Increased  disconnection  and  isolation  for  our  species  via  specifiable  social  and  technological  developments  have  conditioned  masses  of  people  to  be  Hungry  Ghosts  with  a  will  to  destroy  and  use  all  of  the  material  world  at  once  so  they  can  have  access  to  unnecessary  things,  all  produced  at  the  expense  of  well-­‐being  for  many  and  much  in  our  Lifeworld.        Our  challenge  as  a  species  is  to  grow  past  this,  to  grow  through  it  as  if  it  was  just  a  stage,  and  to  live  within  a  paradigm  that  is  to  uplevel  human  development  toward  

an  expanded  worldview  of  our  Being  in  the  Lifeworld  that  is  conscious  of  interconnectivity,  and  is  adaptive  and  intentional  in  the  whole  of  evolution.  

Throughout  the  document  i  use  the  term  “Lifeworld”  as  part  of  my  method.    A  method  is  designed  to  develop  lenses  through  which  we  perceive  the  world,  cognitive  maps  through  which  we  examine  and  describe  the  world,  ways  of  being  through  which  we  interface  with/in  the  world.    Lifeworld  is  a  concept  that  assists  in  framing,  mapping,  living.    Existential  Phenomenologists    use  the  term  to  mean  “the  world  as  lived  by  the  person  and  not  the  hypothetical  external  entity  separate  from  or  independent  of  him  or  her”.    It  is  subdivided  into    a  version  of  inner  world,  inter  world,  and  with/in    world  –  all  of  which  are  intertwined.  Each  parcification  is  an  expression  of  a  perspective  on  lived  experience.    “The  Lifeworld,    being  given  directly  and  immediately  in  human  experience,  is  the  beginning.    It  is,  therefore  not  at  all  like  the  worldview  of  the  natural  scientist  which  is  constructed  or  built  up  for  explanatory  purposes  ...The  life-­‐world  is  not  a  construction  of  consciousness:    It  is  co-­‐constituted  or  co-­‐created  in  the  dialogue  of  person  and  world“  (Vale  and  Halling,  1989,  pg  9).    As  such,  “Lifeworld”      expresses  the  codependent  arising    of    a  phenomenon’s  distinguishable  aspects.      Few    words  in  English  fully  express  this  unity.    This  language  represents  the  dominant  global  worldview;  it    is  a  classifying,  categorizing,  compartmentalizing  language.    The  languages  of  connectivity  have  been  colonized  away  (Wade,  2010).          

The  Lifeworld  “is  prior  to  and  the  foundation  of  reflective  (as  giving  birth  to  our  reflective  awareneness)”  (Vale  and  Halling,  1989,  Pg  10).    It    is  “both  independent  of  knowledge  derived  from  reflective  thought  processes,  and  yet,  being  prereflective    it  is  also  the  indispensible  ground  or  starting  point  for  all  knowledge”    (Vale  and  Halling,  1989,  Pg  10).      This  is  the  base  that  i  try  to  get  pared  down  to  in  my  awareness  when  i  am  sitting  or  writing  or  reflecting;  this  is  the  type  of  writing  i  am  most  affected  by  in  terms  of  expanding  my  understandings  and  perceptions  and  namings  of  reality.    The  process  liberates  me  from  the  constricting  experience  of  being  caught  in,  identifying  with,  or  believing  that  a  view  of  reality  i  have  fabricated  is  “the  truth”.    In  this  way  i  let  go  of  Relative  Truths  yet  keep  coming  back  to  Absolute  Truth.        

We  are  constantly  weaving  a  worldview.    I  found  David  Suzuki  has  a  sub  heading:    “Weaving  a  Worldview”.    Two  of  my  favourite  books  have  long  been  Weaving  the  Visions:  New  Patterns  in  Feminist  Spirituality  by  Judth  Plaskow  and  Carol  Christ,    1989,  Reweaving  the  World:  the  Emergence  of  Ecofeminism  edited  by  Irene  Diamond  and  Gloria  Orenstein  (1990).    In  my  worldview,  the  one  i  am  weaving  in  this  paper,    consciousness  has  intentionality.    Here  the  use  of  the  word  of  “intentionality”  is  a  specialized  one  that  has  a  different  meaning  than  the  word  intention  has  in  everyday  speech.    “Whereas  intention  normally  refers  to  a  purpose  or  agenda...  ‘intentionality’  addresses  the  ongoing  dimension  of  our  consciousness  that  we  are  always  in  relation  to  that  which  is  beyond  us”  (Vale  and  Halling,  1989,  Pg  11).  

In  my  own  experience  i  keep  trying  to  return  to  some  kind  of  edge  –  an  integration  of  perspectives,  ideas,  threads  that  lead  me  to  a  further  outpost  –  one  that  hasn’t  been  written  or  said  in  quite  this  way.        At  this  point  i  know  that  while  i  am  creative,  adaptive  and  effective  in  my  practice  in  the  world,  i  am  not  at  a  place  where  my  writing  offers  a  new  vision;  rather  i  write  myself  into  the  sangha  of  others  who  feel  and  write  and  think  and  be  in  similar  possibilities.    Every  time  i  have  that  thought  i  hear  John  Lennon  singing  in  my  head  “there  is  nothing  you  can  say  that  hasn’t  been  said,  there  is  nothing  you  can  do  that  hasn’t  been  done....  all  you  need  is  love”.      So  in  my  own  efforts  to  be  a  particle  in  the  wave  of  intentionally  expanding  human  evolution,  i  eliminate  the  internalized  oppressors,  i  smile  at  my  ego’s  need  to  come  up  with  the  answers,  i  notice  and  walk  away  from  resting  in  other  people’s  great  works,  and  i  try  to  find  the  edge  of  my  own  understanding  and  how  that  matches  an  edge  of  our  collective  understanding.    To  best  represent  this  on  paper  i  use  Bricolage  as  weaving  with  words.

Bricolage -“refers to the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of available things, or a work created by such a process. Borrowed from the French word bricolage, from the verb bricoleur, the core meaning in French being "fiddle, tinker" and, by extension, to make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are at hand”. I appreciate this from Derrida: “If one calls bricolage the necessity of borrowing one's concept from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent, it must be said that every discourse is bricoleur" (Wiki).

Weaving  is  bricolage  and  takes  place  as  i  sort  wool  and  organize  notes.    Writing    is  akin  to  the  joy  of  walking  into  my  studio,  mindfully  laying  a  clean  sheet  upon  the  floor  and  pouring  out  my  baskets  of  wool.    Patterns  are  strewn  in  skeins.  Varied  colours  and  textures  and  hues  sort  themselves.      We  parse  up  experience  into  bits  of  story  and  place  them  under  emergent  existential  themes;  which  help  name  the  worldview  we  live  by.    These  themes  are  threads,  which    intentionally  directing  consciousness  is  ever  using  in  designing  fabric.    The  “fabricating”  serves  to  contain,  name,  and  order  the  wholeness  of  the  lived-­‐experience.  

Whatever  draws  me  to  specific  phrases  in  the  books,  or  bits  on  the  forest  floor,  or  shapes  in  the  starfield  of  thoughts  crossing  through  the  flashlight  beam  of  my  awareness?    When  i  retake  this  perspective  and  identify  a  thread  of  thought  that  is  affecting  me,  I  can  then  let  go  of  a  position.    Each  thread  is  connected  to  a  field  of  thought  which  orders  and  shapes  and  influences.    Zen  has  taught  me  to  better  perceive  and  release  these  threads.    I  am  then  immersed  in  a  new  way  of  experiencing  the  flow  of  life  as  i  am  given  to  it  live;  it  through  me  and  i  through  it.  I  spend  time  in  the  Void  between  handling  of  each  thread  as  it  emerges  in  the  universe  that  is  my  minds’  access  to  collective  explorations  and  cosmic  facts.  Over  time  i  order  each  possibility  under  thematic  headings  as  well,  remembering  that  themes  are  not  the  things  themselves.    At  a  turning  point  i  proceed  to  sorting  and  naming  and  organizing  and  forming    cohesive  descriptions  that  represent  a  version  of  existence  that  is  as  expansive  and  as  truthful  as  i  can  articulate  at  the  moment.    The  blankets,  shawls,  and  scarves  are  representations  of  this  process.

Somehow  Zen  takes  me  beyond  thinking  about  all  of  this  and  i  am  not  yet  fully  able  to  describe  how,  or  where  it  takes  me.    I  feel  it  though.    It’s  a  physiognomic  knowing,  that  is  strongest  when  i  am  in  the  Zendo  participating  in  the  Heart  Sutra  chant.    I  get  this  profound  feeling  in  my  whole  parasympathetic  system,  a  surge  of  intensity  ripples  through  and  i  feel  on  the  verge  of  understanding  something.  Sometimes  i  think  i  actually  “have”  that  something  and  a  rush  of  oxytocin  seeps  out  into  every  cell.  At  the  same  time  i  feel  calm  while  i  watch  myself  “having”  this  experience.    When  my  mind  leaps  to  find  words,  or  try  to  extract  what  that  was  about  from  the  words  of  the  text  itself,  something  is  lost.    

Yet  this  elusive  naming  of  this  transcendent  feeling  is  what  i  search  for  –  trusting  it  will  liberate  me/us  in  some  important  way.    I  trust  it  and  i  am  striving  to  integrate  this  into  my  own  felt-­‐sense  of  truth.    Yet,  striving  makes  it  more  elusive  and  it  then  becomes  so  that  my  practiced  ways  of  knowing  and  understanding  are  not  helpful;  even  the  more  intuitive  ways  of  knowing  that  i  have  developed,  let  alone  the    more  reasoning  based  logical  sequential  approaches  which  are  a  result  of  my  trying  to  understand  and  find  my  place  in  the  general  language  of  our  dominant  culture.      It  feels  like  my  second  language.      So  as  i  see  these  i  drop  them  too.    This  something,  somehow,  sometimes,  is  what  calls  me  to  Zazen  again  and  again.  

 

 

 

Looking  it  in  the  Eye:    Transforming  Ecodespair  into  Action  with  Equanimty  

How  to  be  in  the  truth  of  the  ecological  crisis  that  we  are  creating?  Look  deeply  and  really  see:  “a  drop  of  dew,  a  bubble  in  a  stream,  lightning  in  a  summer  sky”,    the  transitory  yet  incredible  beauty  in  life,  the  intricate  interweaving  of  the  elements  and  flow  and  creativity.  

As  Chaplains  in  training  in  March  2010    we  had  the  honour  of  being  with  Joanna  Macy  for  3  days  while  she  ran  us  through  a  process  for  dealing  with  despair,  a  progression  she  has  developed  and  refined  over  the  decades.    Shortly  after  my  return    home  a  major  disaster  took  place  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  -­‐  an  unstopped  oil  spill  that  poured  crude  toxins  into  the  ocean  in  amounts  unprecedented.      In  late  April  i  wrote  to  one  of  my  chaplaincy  companions  who  was  situated  there,  asking  her  how  she  was  doing  given  the  emerging  crisis.      I  said  I  would  go  there  as  a  companion  on  the  path  if  she  felt  it  would  be  useful  in  some  way.    She  said  she  was  going  to  see  what  was  needed.    The  time  passed  swiftly  and  although  we  emailed  back  and  forth  nothing  was  lined  up  immediately.    It  seems  that  it  was  important  i  do  my  other  field  trips  first.  

To  The  Lighthouse  

I  was  invited  for  the  a  five  day  weekend  over  July  1    on  a  trek  to  a  lighthouse  at  Cape  Beale  on  the  NorthWestern  coast    of  Vancouver  Island.    A  friend  who  has  been  a  field  biologist  for  30  years    had  to  retire  as    because  the  ocean  hatcheries  she  has  worked  on  all  of  her  adult  life  have  been  destroyed  by  logging  and  resource  based  developments.  So  she  has  become  a  lighthouse  keeper.  We  drove  for  hours  on  logging  roads  to  get  to  the  trailhead,  and  after  an  8  hour  hike  through  varied  and  intense  terrain  on  a  rarely  used  trail.    The  trail  was  a  quest  in  and  of  itself,  and  it  was  definitely  an  experience  of  crossing  a  portal  culminating  with  wading  through  the  incoming  tide  with  our  packs  carried  over  our  heads  to  get  to  the  island.    We  saw  bear  and  wolf  tracks  below  the  tide  lines,  meaning  they  had  been  there  very  recently.        It  turned  out  that  there  were  5  of  us  women  and  a  lively  dog  named  Tosh  staying  in  a  lovely  well  kept  house  overlooking  miles  of  coast  line,  layers  of  islands  and  a  horizon  showing  the  unlandmarked  sea.      Here  we  spent  the  weekend  watching  whales  (5  kinds),  3  good  sized  black  bears,  otters,  and  a  wide  variety  of  bird  life.    We  also  scrambled  over  coast  line  and  up  and  down  various  cliff  faces  and  forested  hills.  We  cooked,  and  I  confess  to  drinking  some  wine,  and  had  great  conversations  about  ecopolitics  and  the  situation  we  all  find  ourselves  in  with  ecodespair  and  the  ways  we  cope.    Here  was  a  vet  who  travels  to  attend  to  the  needs  of  animals  when  natural  disasters  occur;  a  biologist  displaced  and  relocating  herself;  a  poet  who  has  lived  on  the  edge  through  all  of  her  adult  life;  a  trauma  specialist;  and  myself,  an  ecopsychologist  and  emergent  ecochaplain.    There  were  three  lovely  black  bears  working  the  beaches  on  that  island.    I  named  them  Shiney,  Sleek,  and  Shy.      We  watched  each  other  from  afar.    We  would  see  where  they  were  and  post  ourselves  on  a  different  point  and  sit  for  hours  and  watch  whales  –  two  pods  of  orca,  small  though  they  were,  were  particularly  amazing  to  us.    The  huge  male  and  his  small  family  moved  up  and  down  our  field  of  vision  everyday,  and  blessed  us  with  a  few  leaps  that  were  impossible  to  catch  on  camera  but  will  remain  ever  in  my  heart.    His  sheer  size  and  his  constant  efforts  at  herding  and  protecting,  and  the  three  calves  playing  and  exploring,  with  the  four  mothers  grazing  and  weaving,  left  me  with  both  a  peaceful  glow  and  a  deep  aching  intensity.    We  are  fighting  to  get  the  listed  as  endangered.    Once  while  i  was  on  the  lowest  rocks,  one  of  the  females  rose  out  of  the  sea  to  see  who  i  was,  and  i  felt  her  gaze  pierce  

me  deeply.    All  i  had  to  do  was  to  stay  present  and  look  her  in  the  eye.    Otherwise,  we  would  sit  for  several  hours  while  they  moved  across  our  line  of  vision  and  all  we  would  say  were  occaisional  choruses  of  aaahhhh’s.    A  pod  of  women  witnessing  a  pod  of  orcas  witnessing  a  pod  of  women.    I  felt  a  deep  vibration  of  excitement  and  enlivenment  and  a  sincere  wish  for  the  well-­‐being  of  these  and  other  critters.    We  would  watch  while  a  lone  minke  would  shop  around  the  rocks    bobbing  for  a  while  in  one  area  and  then  surface  hundreds  of  meters  away  to  resume  her  explorations.    Grey  whales  were  further  out,  announcing  their  journey  across  the  horizon  by  eliciting  occaisional    “Thar  she  blows”  from  one  of  us.    Sometimes  we  would  see  two  or  even  three  at  a  time.    Some  of  us  could  recall  decades  ago  watching  tribes  of  20-­‐30  moving  through  at  a  time.    Now  every  one  spotted  was  like  a  precious  blessing.      

In  the  evening  with,  and  after,  our  meals  we  would  interlace  our  talk  with  brief  interjections  of  the  theme  of  “oh  they  still  exist,  it’s  all  going  to  be  okay,  if  we  could  stop  the  nonsense  now”.    I  asked  each  and  all  how  they  survive  this  process  of  feeling  deep  connection,  knowing  how  precarious  it  is,  while  on  the  other  side  of  the  continent  oil  was  drifting  unstopped  throughout  the  Atlantic.    We  talked  about  how  because  of  the  moratorium  being  developed  in  off-­‐shore  drilling  in  the  U.S.  there  would  be  increased  pressure  to  lift  the  moratorium  here  in  Canada  in  order  to  keep  the  oil  flowing  through  the  economy  and  lifestyles.    We  talked  about  how  to  balance  looking  it  in  the  eye  and  enjoying  fully  a  moment  that  is  here,  how  we  are  called  to  witness  the  beauty  of  rare  hummingbirds  and  abundant  eagle  seasons,  and  that  this  witnessing  is  as  important  as  political  activism.  In  fact,  without  deeply  feeling  the  connection  and  beauty  of  what  is,  and  how  precious  and  precarious  is  the  habitat  for  what  remains,  we  are  each  unable  to  sustain  our  gaze  into  the  mess  humans  are  making  of  this  world.    We  talked  about  how  our  minds  work  to  keep  us  alert  and  enegaged  to  compartmentalize  the  degree  of  damage  we  are  tuned  into  at  any  given  moment.    We  climbed  to  the  top  of  the  Lighthouse  and  surveyed  the  protected  realm  and  felt  the  wisdom  of  having  such  a  bubble  and  how  precarious  is  the  life  of  a  bubble,  the  truth  of  the  fact  that  it  is  one  ocean,  one  sea  of  salt  water  that  sustains  life  on  this  Earth.  

At  The  Edge  

When  I  got  home  from  Cape  Beale,  there  was  an  email  from  my  sister  chaplain  saying  “we  are  a  go  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico”,  and  we  emailed  and  planned.      This  would  fit  perfectly  with  the  scheduled  earlier  three  weeks  of  training  in  Dharma  on  the  Edge,  ecochaplaincy  at  Prajna,  and  a  Sesshin  back  at  Upaya.    Dharma  on  the  Edge  with  Jimmy  and  his  son  and  Roshi  and  Fleet    turned  out  to  be  a  great  framework  for  the  entirety  of  chaplaincy  practice,  and  especially  for  our  time  in  the  Gulf.      If  that  wasn’t  Dharma  at  the  Edge  i’m  not  sure  what  is.    We  were  preparing  to  be  on  the  edge  of  the  continent  in  a  place  on  the  edge  of  ecocide.      

As  it  turned  out  I  was  in  another  house  on  the  edge  of  an  island  with  five  women,  a  synchronicity  of  bookends  for  my  summer.    The  polarities  for  possibilities  were  real  and  embodied.    Instead  of  watching  whales  and  tracking  bears  and  counting  eagles  I  was  breathing  the  stench  of  dead  sharks  washed  up  on  shore,  crying  with  a  lonely  egrets,  pelican,  and  porpoise.  All  amidst  the  constant  background  reek  of  oil  and  chemicals.    Instead  of  the  pounding  of  the  surf,  there  was  the  hum  of  machinery  24  x  7  gathering  and  chemically  washing  sand  from  the  beach,  and  dumping  it  back  onto  the  shore  to  absorb  oil  as  it  washed  up.    Instead  of  five  kinds  of  whales  there  were  five  shades  of  black  and  brown  men  “cleaning  up”  a  horrible  mess  –  too  hot  for  hazmat  suits  or  even  rubber  gloves,  they  were  doing  this  with  their  bare  hands.    It  was  way  worse  than  I  imagined  it  would  be.        I  have  pages  of  journal  notes.    I  have  shown  my  photos  a  dozen  times.    People  with  lots  of  experience  are  left  speechless.    It  has  been  necessary  to  use  this  as  opportunity  to  phenomenologically  explore  my  own  experience  as  an  ecochaplain  and  write  it  up  for  my  project,  using  written  materials  to  help  me  reflect  upon  my  experience.    The  theme  that  has  kept  me  grounded  is  the  process  of  shifting  from  ecodespair  to  sense  of  connectivity  not  only  with  all  that  is  alive  on  the  planet  right  now  from  oceans  to  people  but  with  the  truth  of  being  an  individual  in  a  tribe  of  a  species  that  is  soiling  our  nest.      

Something  shifted  in  me  during  the  time  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  I  may  not  yet  have  integrated  it  enough  to  completely  describe  the  fullness  of  my  experience  by  the  time  this  deadline  arrives.    I  am  working  to  integrate  the  experience,  feel  the  depths  of  feelings  and  find  words  for  this  stream  that  is  still  evident  in  me  at  all  times,  and  balance  my  process  with  antidotes.    I  live  in  a  

nature  preserve  within  an  ecosystem  that  has  been  classified  as  Engangered,  on  the  edge  of  the  Saalish  Sea  that  we  are  fighting  to  protect  from  off-­‐shore  drilling.    A  few  weeks  ago  we  managed  to  have  two  kinds  of  orcas  declared  endangered  so  that  we  can  pursue  the  moratorium  on  off-­‐shore  drilling,  and  tanker  traffic  up  and  down  this  coast  at  the  same  time  as  pressure  from  our  neighbors  to  increase  it  intensifies.    The  political  process  on  this  is  pumped  high  everyday,  and  updates  are  regular,  although  barely  evident  in  mainstream  media.    The  whole  of  the  question  is  a  microcosm  of  the  dynamics  of  our  times.      I  reach  to  books  to  assist  me  in  this  task,  I  listen  to  other  people.  I  am  so  grateful  for  my  sitting  practice  and  walking  practice  and  writing  practice.    Without  these  I  would  have  had  to  go  numb.    I  am  grateful  I  can  come  back  here  to  my  sweet  little  cabin  in  the  woods  and  weave  and  write  and  hike  and  hang  out  athome  base.    I  can  walk  into  my  place  of  work  and  have  depthful  and  varied  experiences  of  sitting  with  people  as  they  reflect  on  their  lives  and  their  place  in  existence,  remotivating  themselves  to  actionThat  is  why  i  practice,  why  i  travel  to  study.      I  am  grateful    for  the  teachings  at  Upaya,  that  the  practices  and  frameworks  are  integrating  into  my  understandings  and  habitual  ways  of  thinking  and  being.      I  am  grateful  beyond  words  that  I  can  sit  down  and  write  this  and  know  that  all  of  my  cohort  are  writing  up  their  materials  at  this  moment  too.    I  have  to  access  all  of  this  gratitude  and  more  in  order  to  stay  fully  present  with  the  details  of  my  experience  in  the  Gulf.  

Precious  Frog  

One day in the fall of 2010 i was writing on this project and decided it was time to go for a hike in the woods. One of the many things i am constantly incredulous about is that i have somehow arrived at this cabin in the woods, that i designed and had built for myself and my son, and i can walk out the door and into a protected and valued ecosystem. When i pay my i am aware that i am moving toward freeing this piece of land and arriving at a place that when i die i can leave it to be adjuncted to the park. So i was writing and i went for a hike. I was moving along a trail that is so familiar to me. i have lived here for 12 years and been on it many times every week. Still i was given an entirely new experience. I was thinking about what i was writing when the progression of thoughts was pierced with a high pitched squeal. I stopped and looked around, thinking perhaps it was a baby bird which had fallen from a nest. I heard it again and it was coming from a few feet away on the forest

floor. I looked and saw half burried amongst the leaves, a large garter snake with a tree frog in its mouth. The frog was swimming with its forearms, resisting being consumed, and screeched in terror yet again. I picked up a twig and poked gently at the snake who opened its mouth. The frog leapt out. I prodded the snake under a branch and turned to find the frog, to see if it would make it, but it was long gone. When i found it, it was already 8 feet up a tree and moving fast. This experience somehow buoys me, and i often think of it. A slight intervention and the tree frog, a rare species and one of the reasons this is listed as an endangered ecosystem, is safe and alive and living its life. After hearing its screams no one can tell me it is just a dumb creature with no pain and no will to live. I have many of them around my home and in my garden and i have truly come to realize they communicate to me and are sentient. They know me and watch for me to come by with water in the garden and let me know when they are thirsty and where they are. They nestle amongst the flowers and clearly enjoy them. I have found frogs eating aphids and spit bugs and mining beetles on the roses, insects that drill into the apples, and cutworms that would finish off the peas and beans and corn while young. While at the Joanna Macy workshop i took my turn with the talking stick lamenting the draining of a lake that bred these specialized red legged inch long critters, to make room for more landfill for the city. I made a commitment when i signed the documents about this 8 acres, to do what i can do for them, and the frogs let me know they appreciate it. Even if they didn’t, i would. The requirements seem small and natural, like them eating an insect on a rose; me going to a meeting or writing a letter is like picking up that twig and nudging the snake away. I wish i could always so easily make a difference.  

Somewhere  in  this  story  is  the  answer  to  my  “question”:    

In  the  face  of  ecological  destruction,  how  do  i  be,  what  can  i  do  and  how  shall  i  do  it?    Living  on  a  nature  reserve  with  these  rare  little  frogs  as  real  things  and  as  symbols  of  the  fragility  and  endangered  state  of  our  world  is  a  gift.    It  makes  my  path  of  action  clear  and  easy.    Climbing  to  the  top  of  the  mountain  and  revering  the  ocean  makes  my  path  of  action  clear  and  easy.    (Insert:  Photos  of  frogs  on  lilies  and  roses  and  around  the  house.).    As  Joanna  Macy  says,  in  Coming  Back  to  Life,“  passion  is  the  price  of  consciousness  in  a  threatened  and  suffering  world.    It  is  not  only  natural,  it  is  an  absolutely  necessary  component  of  our  collective  healing.    As  in  all  organisms,  pain  has  a  purpose:    it  is  a  warning  signal,  designed  to  trigger  remedial  action”  (pg    27).  

That  i  feel  the  pain,  like  the  frog  in  the  snakes  mouth,  is  no  question.    That  i  have  a  strong  will  to  live,  is  no  question.    That  the  world  screeches  so  i  can  hear  it  is  no  question.  That  i  will  speak  to  my  dying  breath  about  it,  and  act  to  the  last  moment  is  an  expression  of  gratitude  for  this  existence.    That  there  are  moments  of  peacefulness  in  which  i  will  rest  and  feel  the  reality  of  the  hum  of  the  universe  flowing  in  and  around  “me”  is  a  deep  and  abiding  joy.    That  i  make  wholehearted  committment  to  intelligently  doing  the  work  of  ecochaplaincy  is  clear.      

Evolve or It’s Curtains In the Joanna Macy workshop of March 2010 at Upaya, she began by invoking the spirit of Juzo – “willing to go down to the deepest suffering and be with it”. That she is willing to fly over the destroyed Appalachian mountains, or the Alberta tar sands – Canada’s second greatest shame, after appalling geneocide this horrendous ecocide - and not only lives to tell the tale but sparks and breathes with joy while she leads us, is great inspiration and liberation for me. The recent passing of her life partner did not leave her withdrawn and in a cave, although she acknowledged her journey with grief she continued her work in the world with enough energy flowing through her to ignite that Zendo full of heartful people. She was able to put forward the question “how do we face what is going on in the world and not go crazy?” She often used her high intelligence sense of humour to make her commentary – “we are not just brains at the end of a stick”. “Act your age – gaia has been here for 4 billion years – our species is acting like early teenagers”.

She offered a solution, a way of thinking and feeling and being “in this moment of such peril and promise there remains a deep interconnectedness which is being talked about in all places and through all fields of thought, our Earth is alive and we are part of it.” “You can’t step in the same river twice” (Heraclitus – ponta rae) because everything is

constantly transforming. This brings great hope, it isn’t over till its over – witness the frog. Not in the sense of linear causality but in the sense of existing in a field of interconnectivity. “We are the Earth: thinking, feeling, speaking together.” We see ourselves as part of a complex system and linear thinking comes apart and liberates us. It’s one ocean that connects us all, we can’t fool ourselves into believing that oil in the Gulf isn’t soon everywhere in the entire global ecosystem.

In Western thought, Bateson made the oft referred to observation that we cannot track our current situation back because time and evolution and adaptation are not linear – we are part of a complex self-organizing system. As Buddha declared everything is independently co-arising. It is our conditioning that has us see parts of the whole as separate. For example, as Joanna Macy and other social analysts state clearly “we live in a political economy that measures only financial growth, not growth of wisdom, intellectual power, art, health, well-being. When you select one aspect of it all and focus on it, your vision and sense of how things work goes out of balance.”

I appreciated Joanna Macy’s way of saying things “when you collapse you evolve to something with a more embracing identity and sense of connection – if you can’t do that its curtains”. Her Deep Ecology work is Work that Reconnects. This process begins by seeing and honouring our pain, staying present with it, grounded and then feeling the gratitutde for the beauty, wonder and incredible intercomplexities of existence – this is very subversive to the consumer culture. From here we go forth into the world and interact and in this way influence the ongoing flow of human impact within the web.

When you own and honour your pain something new emerges, something unpredictable. This process alone makes us part of the largest social movement ever, and liberates us from the dominant culture that wants us to shop till we drop. This promotes the transition from the old order to the new, from industrial growth society to a life sustaining

society. Macy describes in detail the three dimensions of shift that happens as Interdependently Co-Arising emerges and sustains us. There is a shift in our structure and way of being, that reflects shifts in consciousness and leads to activism.

“I am not John Seed defending the rainforest, I am the rainforest defending myself through this little piece of humanity that i have cradled”. This is most definitely how i feel living and “acting” from here. After being burned out as an activist, by the Alberta and B.C. governments and corporations, i have been cradled and healed by these trees and frogs that i live with and all of their friends, and i am reemerging as an ecochaplain.

Joanna describes: “the distress we feel at this point is inconvenient and threatening to dominate the culture and the leaders say we are sentimental and weak and they can do what they want”. “In refusing to know and to feel we become numb and become our own anaesthesiologist” which leaves us vulnerable to the dominant cultures intention to “reduce us to an experience of our separate sense of self”. Joanna ran us through a series of actions designed to protect the flame of caring and giving a damn” because we cannot connect and do effective action without reverence, gratitude and caring. She quotes Rilke saying “what would it be like if your task was not to save the world but to love it”. With this as the main frame for her vision Joanna manages to see we are cradled by the Mystery and it’s right that we don’t know everything. The Industrial revolution produced a world that institutionalized greed, hatred, and delusion; the Great Turning is promoting its unravelling. In my view then we are intentionally weaving in our subculture, our languaging, our intentions and our gratitudes for the beatitudes, so that they are not lost in the next version of existence that our species produces. In a sense we are unravelling a weak, childish weaving, and reforming it into a Diamond Path. If we really “see the world” in a drop of Dew, a bubble in a stream, lightning in a summer cloud” and as “a phantom in and a dream” we cannot do harm.

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Ecochaplaincy is engaged Buddhism. The term almost seems redundant. To be a chaplain would mean to care deeply and see deeply into everything, and eco is a frame for that. Buddha himself was in a politically complex system and he was a political and social change agent. Pastoral authority comes from the deep will to address issues of structural violence with a moral compass that is strong and unwavering (Roshi, March 2010). And: “Engaged Buddhism happens with two hands – social action and social service and the intention of the human heart unifies them. Your strength is in your ability to hold yourself upright in the midst of things.” I love this. We are not separate from the people or the river we are serving.

Saalish  Sea  Mermaid  

Lasquiti  Island  #1Between  Cape  Beale  (early  July)  and  going  to  Upaya  (early  August)  and  going  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  (Late  August),  I  went  to  Lasquiti  Island  (Mid  July).    This  was  a  “field  trip”  during  which  i  had  conversations  with  over  a  dozen  activists.    This  is  a  beautiful  island  in  the  midst  of  the  Saalish  Sea,  one  of  the  Gulf  Islands,  as  they  are  referred  to  around  here.      The  fact  that  we  are  currently  fighting  full  throttle  to  prevent  increased  tanker  traffic  and  pipelines  and  offshore  drilling  in  this  area,  while  it  is  referred  to  as  “the  Gulf  area”  by  the  corporations,  and  i  have  just  come  back  from  seeing  first  hand  the  effects  of  corporate  handing  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  which  is  referred  to  as  the  Gulf,  is  seen  by  my  mind  as  a  direct  line  between  dots  that  make  lines  that  help  me  see  what  is.  

Lasquiti  is  “off  the  grid”,  i.e.  there  are  no  cables  roiling  about  on  the  ocean  floor  taking  power  to  the  populace  there.    Anyone  who  has  electricity  uses  solar  or  wind  electricity  generating  devices.    There  are  400  people  living  on  the  island  full  time,  some  are  second  or  third  generation.    Many  are  highly  educated  –  lots  of  Ph.D’s  in  physics,  math,  computer  science,  environmental  science,  biology,  chemistry,  philosophy,  sociology,  political  science,  and  more.    Some  of  these  people  were  in  the  who’s  who  of  the  Canadian  intellectual  crowd.    The  friend  i  went  to  see  is  a  former  international  specialist  in  mapping  scenarios  for  preserving  wilderness  and  wildlife  corridors.    He  has  had  huge  impact  on  saving  caribou  and  reindeer  herds,  vast  tracts  of  boreal  forests  in  Europe    and  Canada,  

jungle  in  Africa  and  the  Amazon,  grizzly  bear  corridors  in  the  western  forests,  reefs  off  the  continents.    He  now  owns  200  acres  of  wilderness  on  this  island  and  is  making  a  go  of  farming  off  of  the  grid.    He  is  solar  powered  and  can  do  some  of  his  work  from  home.    He  still  travels  to  meetings  anywhere  and  everywhere,  just  less  of  it,  having  trained  a  few  of  the  younger  set  in  his  way  of  visioning.    He  has  had  serious  bouts  of  despair  and  intense  engagement  with  local  politics  as  well.      His  wife  weaves  and  creates  community  and  contemplates  it  all  very  deeply.      

One  day  she  and  I  hauled  out  their  kayaks  and  set  off  to  cross  a  couple  of  bays  and  visit  with  a  few  different  households  down  the  coastline  of  the  Island.    There  are  80  miles  of  coastline  on  the  island  so  we  were  just  touching  into  a  sense  of  it.    Seals  danced  about  our  kayaks.    All  manner  of  birdlife  checked  us  out.    Rocks  reaching  out  of  the  water  serve  as  breeding  grounds  for  so  many.    Looking  up  the  open  channel  i  can  see  four  other  of  the  larger  named  and  populated  Islands,  although  this  channel  is  locally  called  the  String  of  Jewels  for  these  many  emergences,  all  abundantly  populated  by  critters.    There  is  lots  of  organic  gardening,  fresh  herbal  teas  and  locally  grown  fruits  and  healthy  fresh  baking  among  the  humans  here.  Exploring  of  permaculture  scenarios  are  experimented  with,  often  written  about,  organized  and  coherent  in  form.    I  met  artists  whose  works  i  have  seen  in  West  Coast  galleries,  authors  whose  poems,  novels,  commentaries  and  philosophies  i  have  read.  I  met  a  formerly  internationally  renowned  physicist  who  sailed  with  his  family  around  the  world,  including  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  where  they  stopped  for  an  extra  while  because  it  was  so  beautiful  and  the  swimming  was  incredible,  with  sea  turtles  and  dolphins,  etc.  in  abundance.    He  is  a  wiry  fluff  ball  of  an  elder  –  lean  and  bronzed  and  energetic  and  hale;  silver  wild  head  hair,  from  eyebrows  to  crown  to  beard.  He  makes  specialized  coins,  each  representing  one  of  the  Gulf  Islands.    I  was  gifted  with  the  one  that  had  an  orca  on  one  side  and  a  mermaid  on  the  other.    He  asked  me  if  i  wanted  it  in  my  pocket  or  on  a  chain.    I  said  on  a  chain  and  pulled  out  my  silver  chain  i  wear  most  of  the  time  with  some  form  of  pendant.    He  drew  from  his  velvet  case  this  specific  coin  with  a  loop  for  the  chain.    His  bright  blue  as  the  ocean  eyes  sparked  through  those  eyebrows  as  he  handed  it  to  me.    I  opened  the  chain  and  removed  the  Isis  i  was  wearing,  placing  it  in  a  zippered  pocket  in  my  

wallet.    I  slipped  the  Silver  from  the  Saalish  Sea  onto  the  chain.    He  told  me  that  if  i  took  her  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  dipped  her  in  the  water  there  i  would  help  to  heal  the  wound.  So,  that  night  on  Lasquiti,  and  a  month  later  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  each  full  moon  nights  i  wrapped  myself  enough  to  prevent  being  feasted  upon  by  mosquitos  and    noseeums  -­‐  abundant  on  both  islands,  and  similar  in  their  tenatious  work  to  pierce  my  protections.    I  walked  to  the  beach,  which  was  right  off  of  the  front  step  on  either  island,  and  sang  and  sat  and  prayed  and  asked  the  Saalish  Sea  mermaid  to  swim  first  in  the  fresh  clean  healthy  alive  Saalish  Sea    and  then  in  the  filthy  toxic  Gulf  waters  for  a  moment.  When  i  did  a  ceremony  on  the  beach  to  the  bright  white  full  moon  her  reflection  on  the  Saalish  sea  was  clear  and  sparkly  like  a  dance  and  on  the  Louisiana  bay  it  was  taupe  and  tepid.  

 In  trauma  therapy  one  of  the  most  effective  techniques  we  have  is  pendulation  where  we  direct  conscioiusness  to  notice  the  healthy  zones  and  then  the  unhealthy,  right  down  to  a  cellular  level  in  each,  and  then  back  and  forth  so  that  the  unhealthy  can  be  reminded  of  the  healthy.    The  orca/mermaid  wanted  to  see  deeply  what  the  state  of  the  world  was,  since  it  is  all  one  ocean  and  we  all  emerge  from  it,  and  through  various  channels  ultimately  return  to  it.    She  rode  with  me,  over  my  heart,  through  the  trip  to  the  Gulf  and  encouraged  me  and  reminded  me  frequently  to  not  go  numb,  not  go  to  sleep,  not  dissociate.  Just  to  regulate  the  intensity  of  the  experience  in  my  nervous  system  and  emotional  body.      The  first  thing  i  did  when  i  got  home  was  go  to  the  ocean  and  wash  her.  

Synchronicity?  -­‐  I  joined  faceboook  somewhere  last  year.    In    July,  between  Cape  Beale,  Lasquiti  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  I  signed  up  for  ‘cbc  docs’  –  a  website  showing  documentaries.    As  i  was  the  2000th  person  to  sign  on  i  won  a  dvd  of  David  Suzuki  on  One  Ocean.      

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Looking Deeply at Security

Gulf of Mexico - Young Alabama White Man – one of the security guards at the muster station where the black clean up crews are fed and watered and cooled down before being bussed back to their work sites. He was on his lunch break

sitting in the shade at the bottom of the tower, reading his book. We had to go by him to climb the tower, and he was identified by his navy tshirt with yellow large letters – “security”. Blue eyes and dark hair, tall but quite lean. He reminded me straight away of my son. I introduced myself and said would it be okay if i climbed the tower and he said, “i am just on my lunch break, you have a good day now”. I said, “oh, i thought you might be guarding access to this tower but now i see you are on your lunch break reading a book in the shade”. Since he responded with a light smile i said “well i like to read during my breaks too, mind if i ask what you read?” He instantly responded with a spark and a smile and told me about his book. He went into detail about how it was called The Aphgan and how he was learning so much in reading it, and it was about “how we have made them into our enemies but they aren’t really and why we are manipulated to be at war with them. Scratch below the surface and you see a lot more than is on the 6:00 news.” With that he paused and became still and looked into my eyes and said, “course i have to say ‘no comment ma’am’ if you ask me what is going on around here.” I said, “Well, it is always important to look deeply at things, they are always way more complex than we are conditioned to see”. He nodded and said: “Please scratch below the surface while you are here. We need this .” Then he sighed and put out his hand to shake. There was really nothing more i could say to that, but as I shook his outstretched hand i said i was grateful for what he is and his existence is precious to us all. He ended the conversation with “It’s nice to shake hands with another deep seeer, so the pleasure is mutual, Ma’am” in his southern gentleman accent. I laughed to myself as i ascended the stairs to the platform at the top of the tower. He reminded me so much of my son, except for the accent and the hair colour. Even his eye shape and the colour of blue, and that heartful open smile at the end. We surprized each other.

Another such moment was in the grocery store. On Grand Isle there is one grocery store and when we went there, always we would see many of the clean-up crew men looking for food. One man made eye contact with me over the apples and i said hello. He was about 6’4”, very dark skin, about 45. His body was strong, his eyes seemed very gentle to me. He looked surprized but nodded. I said are you with the clean-up crew. He said yes, he was from X and had been here for several months. I said thank you for doing this work, that has to be really hard out there.

He actually teared up and bit his lips. After a moment he said, thank you very much ma’am. I nodded and walked on with my shopping. A few days later i met him in the store again. He came up to me by the lettuce and started with a direct statement. He said thank you for saying that to me the other day. I felt different ever since. No one has said that to me. It’s hard to realize you all look deeply enough to see us. I can’t talk to you about what it’s like out there, but thank you for saying that.” And he took my hand and gave me a sincere nod and sauntered away. Those were two of a number of specific interactions that deeply affected me. I was not surprized. Somewhere along the way one of our chaplaincy group said it’s not a conspiracy theory if it’s true. So one outcome of this trip is i am liberated from this particular internalized criticism of my worldview. I don’t speak it much, and i am wanting to ensure that my voice tone in these writings is not infused with a bitter or cynical edge. My job is to be descriptive of what i see and to attempt to use this information to illuminate reality, so that i can perceive it more honestly. This is a way of transforming my delusions, and sinking deeply into the numberless creations that could be freed and that would be beneficial to all forms of Life.    It’s a way of staying out of ecodespair.

One  Ocean,  One  Sky                              

Lasquiti  Island    has  many  people  with  various  degrees  of  despair  about  the  state  of  the  world.    One  woman,  a  well-­‐known  artist,  said  she  was  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  grew  up  there,  but  has  been  on  Lasquiti  for  30  years.    As  soon  as  she  heard  i  was  going  there  she  began  to  sob.    Everyone  was  surprized  because  she  is  “stable  although  sensitive,  as  we  all  try  to  be”.    But  when  my  friend  told  them  my  plan  for  a  journey  to  the  Gulf  this  woman  cried,  instantly  and  deeply.    We  were  sitting  on  their  deck,  an  art  form  of  hand  carved  logs,  overlooking  the  ocean  and  the  sun  was  mid-­‐afternoon.    We  were  drinking  fresh  juice,  nectar  of  the  local  much-­‐loved  earth.    She  talked  about  her  life  journey,  her  art,  her  connection  with  the  life  forms  around  her,  and  when  she  comes  back  from  visiting  her  family  down  there  she  looks  out  onto  the  view  and  imagines  oil  platforms  and  derriks  everywhere  on  the  bay  and  out  into  the  Saalish  Sea,  like  they  have  done  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.    6  weeks  later  when  i  was  at  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  on  the  first  night  i  went  out  onto  the  deck  and  looked  over  the  water  and  saw  what  she  meant.    

 I  am  from  the  Canadian  Prairies.    This  reminded  me  of  looking  out  over  the  prairies  at  night,  from  the  Handhills,  where  i  emerged  from.    A  host  of  hills,  glacial  deposit  from  receding  ice  age  times,  in  the  middle  of  the  flat  prairie.    When  i  was  a  kid  i  would  ride  my  horse  up  there,  dog  with  us,  to  these  hills.    We  would  find  arrow  heads,  hammer  heads  and  debree  from  our  First  Nations  Ancestors.    I  would  see  wolves,  moose,  coyotes,  fox,  mountain  lions,  several  kinds  of  deer,  wildflowers,  birds,  insects,  and  ancient  plants.    We  used  to  be  able  to  see  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Northwest  of  us,  200  miles  away  as  the  crow  flies.    And  in  other  directions  only  prairie,  vast  horizons,  very  big  sky.    So  here  i  was,  the  first  night  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  at  our  beach  house,  and  i  am  on  the  deck  being  attacked  by  noseeums,    and  i  look  out  onto  a  sea  and  see  a  vast  horizon  speckled  with  lights,  stars  upon  the  sea,  spread  about  like  farms  on  the  prairie  when  i  was  a  kid.    Only  more  closely  populated  on  this  sea,  populated  by  oil  equipment  and  lights  and  flares.    It  is  an  industrialized  sea.    As  the  week  progresses  and  i  take  a  boat  ride  and  look  afar  from  the  tower  for  a  few  more  days  i  will  be  again  and  again  hit  with  a  wave  of  nauseau  about  the  extent  of  the  impact  of  oil  mining  here,  even  without  this  largest  spill  in  history,  this  place  has  been  completely  desecrated  and  industrialized.    As  a  kid  i  rode  my  horses  in  the  moonlight,  to  the  top  of  the  hills,  to  look  at  the  sky  and  the  land  with  the  light  peeking  through  the  darkness,  from  the  stars,  from  the  farmlights,  and  the  several  towns,  and  a  highway  with  nighttransport  trucks  moving  on  it  bisecting  the  view  about  a  third  from  the  horizon  line.    As  a  kid  when  i  rode  in  the  moonlight,  to  the  top  of  the  hills,  to  look  at  the  sky  and  the  land  with  the  light  peeking  through  the  darkness,  falling  stars  and  meteors  were  the  same  to  me  as  the  trucks  on  the  highway,  or  vehicles  following  the  grid  of  gravel  roads.    On  those  hills  i  felt  the  timeless  reflective  nature  of  sky  and  land,  and  a  few  most  special  times  there  were  aurora  beurealis.    Recently  i  was  on  the  prairies  and  hiked  to  the  top  of  the  hills  one  night.  Over  the  35  years  since  i’ve  moved  away,  gas  and  oil  development  have  speckled  the  terrain  like  starfields.    It  looks  like  the    Gulf  of  Mexico  now.    And  just  North  of  the  Prairies  are  the  Tar  Sands.    Nothing  more  need  be  said  here.  

I  recall  the  Saalish  Sea  as  seen  from  amongst  the  Gulf  Islands,  or  the  Pacific  Ocean  as  seen  from  the  coast  line,  for  example,  Cape  Beale  Lighthouse  and  the  

cliffs  on  that  island,  which  is  part  of  the  Broken  Island  group  off  of  the  coast  mid  way  up  Vancouver  Island,  which  is  Midway  up  Turtle  Island.    All  on  Westerly  sides.    Grand  Isle,  Louisiana  was  on  the  SouthEast  corner  of  Turtle  Island.    At  this  point  the  Pacific  Northwest  is  relatively  clean.    It  is  going  to  take  a  lot  of  action  to  keep  it  so.    There  is  huge  pressure  for  Canada  to  produce  more  oil  for  our  major  “trade-­‐partner”  who  has  now  placed  a  moratorium  on  their  own  off-­‐shore  drilling.  

 

Oil  and  Water  on  West  Coast  Canada  

For  years  i  have  worked  as  a  consultant  for  non-­‐government,  non-­‐profit,  and  government  based  people  who  impact  environmental  research  and  policy  development.    Many  other  clients  are  engaged  professionally  or  as  subculture  volunteer  activists  in  Western  Canada.    Every  week  i  have  the  opportunity  to  serve  these  people:  psychologist,  consultant,  now  chaplain.  The  oil  issue  is  huge.  

Graveyards  in  the  Gulf  

One day, while on Grand Isle, Louisiana, i walked by myself all through the town and found the cemetary. It wasn’t hard to find, since it was on Cemetary Road. This one had white painted tombs, mostly above ground, with names that were French, Northern European, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portugese. An elder woman came by and talked to me for about 15 minutes, then invited me into her yard for a lemontea. We sat together for a while, and she told me all of her relatives “are in that cemetary, and they died of all kinds of things and they lived through all kinds of things first, and we have had hurricanes and hard times but never anything like this before. We are used to hunkering down and getting through and we will again but usually those things pass. There is no telling how long it will take for life to really return here, or what shape it will take”. She was certain it wouldn’t happen in her lifetime and she “never ever thought such a thing as this could happen, and no telling where it will go from here”.

Even so, she was smiling and had some spark and said she greatly enjoyed our little talk.

Another day, on our boat ride amongst the islands, bayous, and bays, one of the statements made by the Captain was “This is a graveyard”; another was “Mother Nature’s got a lot of work to do, and it won’t happen in my lifetime”. I still feel his ache.

One of the clean up workers i spoke to said, “it’s all dead here, but still somebody’s got to clean it up, tha’ be us.”

Transforming  Ecodespair  with  Equanimity  

The  Group  –  Equanimity  Through  EcoDespair  

I  started  the  group  in  September,  on  just  a  few  weeks  notice    after  i  got  back  from  the  Gulf  and  politicking  and  activism  on  West  Coast  oil  was  heated  up  here.  I  have  worked  as  consultant  or  psychotherapist  with  a  wide  range  of  people  who  work  on  these  types  of  processes  over  the  years.    I  invited  some  of  them  to  participate  in  the  group.        I  let  them  know  that  i  wanted  to  explore  what  works  with  transforming  ecodespair,  and  to  write  about  it  for  my  project  with  a  vision  of  developing  materials  for  psychotherapy  practice,  teaching,  and  group  facilitating,  as  this  grows  toward  ecochaplaincy.    I  set  up  a  weekly    3  hour  Tuesday  evening  meeting.    We  referred  to  it  as  the  Transforming  Ecodespair  Group  (humourous  subtitles  developed).    

There  were  16  participants,  all  ecoactivists  as  professionals  -­‐    coalition  leaders,  non-­‐profit,  government  policy  writers  and  legislators,  researchers,  aboriginal  rights,  enviro  science  and  technology,  philosophers  and  educators.    We  began  each  evening  with  some  version  of  Thich  Nhat  Hanh  practices  for  calming  the  body  and  mind.    Stop,  calm  the  body  and  mind,  look  deeply  at  what  emerges,  witness  your  body,  heart,    and  mind,  trust  that  right  action  will  become  clear.    Looking  deeply  means  to  see  first  without  questions,  to  feel  and  resonate  with  the  emergent  material,  and  to  then  carefully  allow  the  mind  to  enter  into  engagement.    From  here  is  a  horizon  of  possible  right  actions,  choices  made  based  

in  right  view.  Then  we  sat  for  30  minutes.    We  did  a  check  in  with  reflections  on  personal  experience  -­‐  descriptive  SIBAMs  (see  below),  professional  challenges  and  understandings  about  how  they  are  using  conscious  intention  to:  self-­‐regulate  nervous  system  activation  and  emotional  range  and  tolerance  levels;    develop  antidotes;  and  engagement  with  the  Mystery.    Our  goal  is  to  name  how  each  works  internally  to  intend  optimal  physical,  emotional,  social,  mental  and  spiritual  health  while  remaining  active  in  collective  transformation  processes.  

The  people  in  the  Transforming  Ecodespair  group  were  helped  by  their  connections  with  each  other.    The  cultures  of  the  places  they  work  are  all  some  version  of  positive  mental  attitude  covering  collective  and  individual  depression.    These  are  experienced,  practiced,  educated  and  committed  professionals  all  on  the  ground  where  it  counts,  so  it  is  deep  and  intense.      So  much  is  happening    here  politically  on  environmental  issues  –  we  are  right  on  the  edge  of  the  battlefield,  fighting  for  territory  and  trying  to  transcend  the  polarity  of  “to  develop  or  protect”.      Each  participant  is  involved  in  multiple  dimensions  and  progressions  of  stewardship  and  rescue  of  ecosystems,  such  as  watersheds,  flora  and  fauna.    Some  are  on  the  ground  everyday  doing  microbiology,  some  are  riding  in  choppers  and  boats  counting  whales,  some  are  in  boardrooms  and  meetings  all  day  everyday  promoting  policy  and  legislation,  sovereignty  and  research  development.    Some  write  and  teach  and  research.    Everyone  feels  the  connectivity  and  the  danger,  the  Mystery  and  the  precariousness  of  our  position.  

Our Next Evolutionary Leap is Living Interconnectivity  

One  of  the  main  themes  upon  which  we  all  agree  is:    “Interconnectivity”    is  our  next  revolution  in  understanding  our  existence.        This  Wisdom  of  Interconnectivity,  is  a  felt-­‐thought  that  affects  everything  else.    Transforming  our  suffering  into  wisdom  involves  returning  to  the  depths  of  the  physical  body  and  feeling  sensation  and  emotion,  putting  words  to  what  we  physiognomically  know,  and  letting  the  worldview  reorganize.          

Interconnectivity  aligned  with  ecodespair  is  not  just  about  global  warming,  species  extinction,  recycling  and  solar  power,  or  about  our  use  of  resources  on  our  planet.    Felt-­‐sense  of  interconnectivity  leads  us  directly  to  love,  loss,  despair,  

compassion,  and  action;  to  amazement,  open-­‐heartedness  and  wonder  as  well  as  doubt,  confusion,  and  fear.    It  leads  us  to  look  deeply  into  concepts  such  as  space  and  time  continnuums,  infinity  and  morality,  and  a  deepening  consciousness  of  all  that  is  from  as  many  perspectives  as  we  can  stand  in  and  retain  cohesion.    It  has  to  do  with  what  might  emerge  as  capitalism  expires  as  god  on  our  planet.    It  takes  us  way  beyond  environmentalism.    

Socioeconomic  political  structures  have  not  only  drastically  damaged  the  environment,  they  have  had  a  very  oppressive  and  distortive  effect  on  the  realm  of  human  thought.    We  thought  ourselves  into  the  worldview  that  allows  this  way  of  being,  i.e.    the  strand  of  a  consumer  driven  economy,  and  we  are  going  to  have  to  feel  our  way  out,  and  act.    We  have  built  ourselves  a  way  of  being  that  is  complex  and  difficult  to  change,  as  long  as  we  feel  separate  from  the  world.    Yet  even  at  this  point  on  the  precipice  of  climate  catastrophe  we  are  only  just  beginning  to  be  capable  of  perceiving  the  profundity  and  magnitude  of  this  thought.    The  crisis  we  have  created  directs  our  gaze.  

As  long  as  there  have  been  thinking  humans,  they  have  pondered  Interconnectivity.    It  is  at  the  core  of  Buddhist  philosophy  as  well  as  western  Existential  Psychology.    However,  something  else  humans  developed  has  impeded  our  evolution.    Now,  when  the  sense  of  a  separate  self  has  developed  to  capitalism  and  consumerism,  which  have  tentacled  into  every  aspect  of  life  on  this  planet  -­‐  seeping  via  chemicals,  drowning  like  drift  nets,  soiling  like  tailing  ponds  -­‐  we  are  less  and  less  able  to  delude  ourselves  any  longer.    Everything  we  do  has  ramifications  throughout  the  web  of  life.    Our  delusions  are  fading.    The  enchantment  of  capitalism  is  evaporating.    We  have  a  chance  and  the  necessity  here  to  be  consciously  re-­‐enchanted  with  the  Mystery.  

Thinking  this  thought,  feeling  the  truth  of  it  in  the  lived-­‐experience,  leads  us  to  a  new  worldview  and  way  of  being,  to  the  Fourth  Noble  Truth  and  the  Eightfold  Path  of  Well-­‐Being.    This  is  the  thought  that  liberates  us  from  the  greed,  avarice,  and  delusions  that  keep  us  feeling  separated.  When  we  believe  the  delusion  that  we  are  separate  from  an  “environment”  then  it  becomes  easier  to  create  mountains  of  waste  and  to  destroy  various  lifeforms  and  ecosystems.      It  seems  

that  we  can  barely  comprehend  and  apprehend  our  interconnectivity,  let  alone  our  engendering  of  e  Mass  Extinction  and  Ecocide.      In  the  group  we  looked  at  this  a  lot,  how  the  mind  comes  in  to  reduce  the  stress,  confusion,  disorientation  produced  by  the  overwhelming  neurological  response  to  looking  it  in  the  eye.  

Mind  strives  to  unplug  us  from  attending  to  the  manifestations  of  our  collective  death  wish,  and  either  shuts  us  down  into    depression,  distracts  us,  or  reaches  for  some  kind  of  optimism.  It  actually  tries  to  create  a  separation  from  the  thing  itself,  from  the  human  processes  of  destruction.    Yet  when  we  slow  down,  establish  equanimity  and  calmness,  step  out  and  look  closely  at  various  dimensions  of  our  experience,  we  see  how  any  form  of  separation  that  the  mind  concocts  cannot  lead  us  out  of  the  despair.    Cyclically,  it  is  a  symptom  of  the  despair  and  the  mind  then  tries  to  separate  out  further,  intensifying  the  despair.    If  we  feel  just  enough  to  access  the  pain  we  are  stopped.      We  have  to  follow  it,  to  meaningful  and  wholehearted  action.    Because  of  the  felt-­‐sense  of  connectivity  there  is  both  the  suffering  and  the  energy,  motivation    and  moral  imperative  to  take  action.    Interconnectivity  is  as  much  about  opening  our  minds  and  hearts  and  attuning  deeply  and  acting  from  this  place,  being  from  this  place,  as  it  is  about  knowing  something  in  particular,  or  a  specified  process  of  healing  and  recovery.      

We  Do  Not  Know,  So  Do  no  Harm,  and    Commit  Your  Life  To  This.  

 This  thought  leads  fairly  quickly  to  “we  do  not  know”  which  is  both  liberating  and  terrifying.  If  from  there  we  weave  in  the  threads  of  “then  use  all  of  your  life  energy  to  generate  love  and  connection  and  care  for  Life  on  Earth”  and  “be  as  conscious  as  you  can  to  ensure  you  do  not  contribute  to  harm”  you  have  a  sacred  braid,  strong  and  balanced,  to  “hold  onto  in  the  void”.    This  is  what  praxis  means  -­‐    action  that  is  thoughtful  and  thought  that  is  active.    Once  we  open  in  this  radical  way,  we  cannot  go  back,  we  realize  that  every  act  is  impacting  in  ways  we  will  see  and  not  see,  know  and  not  know,  want  and  not  want.  

Along  with  this  ecological  crisis  is  emerging  a  collective  holding  of  the  most  important  questions  of  who  we  are  and  where  we  are  and  what  we  are  here  for.    We  are  thrown  back  into  deep  existential  questioning,  knowing  that  there  is  a  lot  we  do  not  know.    Interconnectivity  becomes  the  ground  for  all  forms  of  answers.    

It  requires  that  we  build  it  in  to  all  levels  and  dimensions  of  perceiving  and  understanding  reality,  as  fully  and  consciously  as  possible.      A  spirit  of  inquiry  is  the  leverage  on  the  loom,  it  compels  the  thoughts  and  keeps  them  moving.    The  thought  of  interconnectivity  is  the  reed,  it  keeps  thoughts  focused  and  ordered.    We  do  not  know  where  things  will  go,  if  we  stay  present  and  ordered  and  committed  and  compassionate,  we  have  the  best  chance  of  being  Life  Affirming.  

Models  for  Intending  Focus    

Here  are  some  models  we  played  with  on  different  evenings  for  re-­‐viewing  our  experience,  and  then  forming  theory.    These  models  all  emerge  from  moving  back  and  forth  between  individual  and  collective  namings.    Mapping  out  the  experience  we  draw  lines  amongst  clusters  and  themes.    We  can  then  step  back  into  the  ground  of  lived-­‐experience  and  let  go  of  any  particular  type  of  frame  for  perceiving  or  mapping  our  thinking.    Maps  begin  to  influence  reality  in  a  hurry,  so  it  is  important  to  always  return  to  “the  map  is  not  the  territory”.      It  is  not  enough  to  section  off  a  small  piece  of  reality.    We  return  to  the  big  picture.    

A. SIBAM  PILL.      An  adaptation  of  the  much  used  SIBAM  model  in  psychotherapy.    I  first  came  upon  this  in  bioenergetics  in  the  70’s  and  i  have  seen  how  many  models  have  adapted  it  for  use  since  which  gives  me  permission  to  take  the  liberty  to  continue  to  adapt  it.    It’s  pretty  basic.    For  this  conversation  we  define  it  as  individuals  experience,  then  as  a  collective,  then  ecosystemic.    We  tried  to  make  it  comprehensive  -­‐  everything  from  neuro  to  political,  emotional  to  spiritual  as  seen  in  art,  myths;    individual  and  societal  descriptors    and  narratives  reflect  each  other.    To  incorporate  these  aspects  of  the  Lifeworld  I  arrived  at  SIBAM  PILL.    Everyone  agreed  this  beats  Big  Pharma.  

Perspective   Individual   Collective   Ecosystemic  Sensory,  embodied   Neuorological  and  

percpetual  Internesting  Media;    DNA  evolution  

Geography  and  Climate  

Imaginal  –     Images,  symbols  &  Metaphors  

Mythos  &  Conditioning  

Symbolic  Reflective  

Behaviour   Way  of  Being   Capitalism  vs  Sustainability  

Adaptation  and  reaction  

Affect   Emotional   Zeitgeist  &  Ethos   Weather  and  Water  

Intelligence  Meaning   Cognitive  Map   Socially  

Constructed  worldview  

Impact  on  lifestyles  

Political   Socialist  vs  ethnocentric  

Caring  leaders  vs  Despots    

Sustainability  and  Recovery  

Interpersonal   Worldview   Paradigms   Web  of  Life  Language   Narratives  &  Art   Social  Narratives   Voice  of  the  Earth  Lifestyle   Livelihood  &  

Lifestyle  Economics  with  Respect  

Conscious  Evolution  

Sensory  is  neurogiological  and  perceptual  frames;  neurological  development  to  draw  in  or  eliminate/reduce  certain  information  through  the  physiological  systems,  includes  patterned  and  conditioned  responses  to  information,  as  well  as  how  to  store  and  organize  at  a  neurological  level.  On  the  collective  level  –  “Internesting  Media”  (not  a  typo)  is  how  the  collective  communicates  and  edits  and  sorts  and  distorts  information,  and  communicates  it  to  influence.  Imaginal  from  myths  and  archetypes  to  symbols  (eg.  Rainbow  Warrior,  polar  bear  on  an  ice  chip).    Behaviour  –  everything  from  denial  to  distraction,  ego  defense  mechanisms,  passive  aggression,  adopt  a  religion  that  lets  you  wear  the  bumper  sticker    “earth  may  burn  but  i’ll  be  in  heaven”  as  you  tear  down  the  road  in  a  hummer.  To  political  action.    Affect  is    emotional  attunement  and  resonance  as  well  as  one’s  own  emotional  responsiveness  to  “reality”,    from  anger  to  compassion.    Meaning    is  cognitive  maps  and  narratives.      

B.  Cognitive  Maps.    Here  is  one  example:  

Social Construction

NeuroPsych

Embodiment

Emotions &

Emotional Regulation

Attachment

Mindfulness

Spirit

Narrative

Complexity: Self-Organization

 

We  reflected  on  a  number  of  these  and  also  collectively  sorted  through  theories  relating  to  the  Second  Noble  Truth  -­‐  Causation  of  this  Suffering  –  How  do  individuals  and  collectives  think  and  behave  and  how  do  defense  mechanisms  work  on  micro  and  macro  scales  to  cause  and  perpetuate  this  current  situation?    As  humans  we  don’t  stop  doing  something  that  we  either  like  or  are  simply  used  to  doing  without  a  lot  of  pressure  to  change  –  our  other  drivers  have  to  override  the  pattern  –  drivers  for  novelty  or  for  survival.    We  don’t  cease  because  we  are  caught  in  a  closed  system  –  one  that  both    causes  the  way  of  being  and  defends  it.      

C.  Equanimity  and  Cessation.    The  Third  Noble  truth,  Cessation,  was  where  we  spent  a  lot  of  our  time,  not  intellectualized,  but  returning  to  the  felt-­‐sense  of  possibility  over  and  over  because  otherwise  people  do  a  version  of  a  bipolar  swing  –  from  hope  to  despair  -­‐  unless  they  practice  equanimity  on  the  way.    This  requires  staying  embodied  and  present.      Here  is  where  the  transformation  happens.    Everyone  has  to  operate  on  the  premise  that  in  some  way,  and  to  some  degree,  we  can    intervene  to  stop  this  craziness.      According  to  self-­‐organizing  systems  and  uncertainty  principles  we  don’t  know  the  effect  of  an  intervention  until  we  watch  the  outcome,  although  to  a  certain  degree  we  can  predict  –  i.e.  the  universe  does  have  ordering  patterns.      In  fact,  that  is  how  we  got  in  this  mess.    Lots  of  interventions  in  the  ecosystem  either  without  thought  of  consequence  –  or  we  thought  we  would  have  one  effect  and  perhaps  did  but  didn’t  realize  the  other  impacts  that  would  happen.    Intentionality  does  matter  –  intention  when  creating  tailing  ponds  at  the  tar  sands  is  not  based  on  well-­‐being.  

D.  SIBAM  2  and  SIBAM  3.        SIBAM  1    is  the  intrapersonal  world  part  of  Lifeworld.    It  is  also  helpful  to  look  at  SIBAM  2  -­‐  in  the  social  world  part  of  Lifeworld.    It  follows  that  SIBAM  3  helps  us  discern  an  experience  of  the  with-­‐world,  or  world  around,  part  of  our  Lifeworld.      As  a  group  we  returned  to  this  frame  over  and  again.    When  we  would  slow  down  and  sink  into  a  moment  we  found  we  had  co-­‐developed  language  which  was  based  in  this  structure.  

SIBAM1  -­‐  intra   SIBAM2  -­‐  inter   SIBAM3  –  with/in  the  Lifeworld  

Sensation  –  internally  experienced  indicators  of  neurophysio  response  to  thoughts  and  world  

Sensation  –  Internally  experienced  indicators  of  resonance  and  attunement  with    the  

Sensation  –  Internally  experienced  indicators  of  attunement  with  beyond-­‐self  existence  

social  world    Images  –  of  self  in  lifeworld  or  as  parts  of  lifeworld  as  witnessed  

Images  –  information  and  connection  

Images    -­‐  micro  and  macro  representations  of  connection/separation  

Behaviours  –    self-­‐regulating    

Behaviours  –  socially  interacting,  way  of  being  

Behaviours  –  interacting,  attuning,  acting,  lifestyle  

Affect  –    emotional  field  

Affect  –  felt-­‐sense  of  connectivity;  Attachment  dynamics  

Affect  –  felt-­‐sense  of  attunement,  flow,  enagement  

Meaning  narratives   Morality     Mystery  Emergent  Themes  

A.  Equanimity  

The  quality  of  compassion  developed  with  mindfulness  practice  is  balanced  by  the  cultivation  of  equanimity.    Equanimity  is  an  attitude  of  nondiscriminating  open  receptivity  in  which  we  remain  present  to  all  experience.    Equanimity  allows  us  to  see  what  is  before  to  trying  to  fix  things.  In  avoiding  suffering  by  imagining  a  cure,  we  may  miss  our  opportunity  to  really  be  with  what  is.      These  moments  may  be  the  most  transformative.    Equanimity    means  that  we  stay  present  and  available.  It  is  the  essence  of  our  capacity  to  empathize  and  deeply  understand  our  experience,  while  remaining  fundamentally  grounded  in  the  face  of    life’s  vicissitudes,  and  feeling  deeply  both  our  connection  and  our  emotional  experience.    This  allows  for  a  capacity  to  self-­‐regulate  while  looking  suffering  in  the  eye.    Equanimity  involves  a  nonjudgemental  openness.    When  equanimity  is  coupled  with  presence,  we  are  able  to  connect  intimately  with  others  in  the  depths  of  their  experience,  without  being  drawn  into  the  vortex  of  their  suffering.      

B. Perception,  Feeling  and  Intention.  

From  group  and  individual  mindfulness  practices  emerge  a  very  different  way  of  viewing  what  we  refer  to  as  self  and  world.    Our  individual  identity,  and  the  notions  we  have  of  the  world  in  which  we  are  embedded,  is  regarded  by  the  Buddhist  tradition  as  an  elaborate  fabrication.    It  is  a  complex  and  nuanced  formation,  that  takes  years  and  much    of  our  life  energy  energy  to  develop  and  maintain.    Consciousness  according  to  classical  Buddhist  theory,  is  found  at  the  

most  elemental  discernable  unit  of  experience  -­‐  a  moment  of  contact  between  a  sense  organ,  a  sense  object,  and  the  awareness  of  the  object  -­‐  each  itself  a  product  of  an  entire  process.    Close  witnessing  at  this  nexus  point  reveals  a  synthesis  of  cognition,  sensory  discernment,  and“knowing”  that  forms  the  core  around  which  consciousness  is  layered.    Consciousness  is  thus  an  emergent  series  of  momentary  phenomena  which  is  at  the  same  time  “agent,  instrument,  and  activity  of  awarness”  (Bhikku  Bodhi,  2000  quoted  on  Olendzki,  2005,    pg  245).    I  experience  how  “the  object”  can    be  something  that  is  a  noun,  a  verb,  a  discernable  thread  of  complex  interconnectivity  in  many  forms  as  a  process  or  a  slice.    As  a  particle  in  a  wave,  or  as  a  wave.    And  the  movement  back  and  forth  between  perspectives  is  important.    Like  the  eagle  flies  in  the  east  for  the  big  picture,  and  the  frog  or  mouse  is  in  the  south  at  the  microlevel.    My  eyes  on  the  screen  in  the  immediate  moment,    the  expansion  of  time  and  space  to  include  my  felt-­‐sense  of  connection  with  Upaya  and  my  cohort,  the  thread  of  my  bhodisattva  vows,  the  participants  in  my  group  .  These  subjective  experiences  become  the  temporary  object.    Subject  and  object  co-­‐construct,  co-­‐create,  co-­‐flow  through  forms.    We  can  develop    understandings  of  the  complex  weaving  of  the  ecosystemic  level  and  the  psychospiritual  experience  level.          

 A  Buddhist  psychology  framework    directs  awareness  to  examine  co-­‐arising  with  the  three  aspects  of  perception,  feeling,  and  intention.    These  terms  have  a  unique  and  precise  meaning.    “Perception”  and  perceptual  frames  develop  through  conditioning  processes  that  shape  the  frames  over  time  with  experience,  media,  culture,  education  systems,  etc.  The  perceptual  frames  can  become  self-­‐fulfilling  or  keep  adapting  and  evolving,  and  they  can  be  shaped    with  conscious  use  of  intention.    Neurology  and  behaviour,  cognitions  and  feelings,  worldview  and  patterns  of  interacting  all  co-­‐constitute  perceptual  frames.        “Feeling”  is  used  in  Buddhist  thought  to  refer  to  the  tone    of  affect  associated  with  experiences  of  sense  or  cognition.    The  basic  hedonic  tone  of  pleasant,  neutral  or  unpleasant  is  part  of  this  experience,  through  which  we  are  moved  toward  avarice    or  aversion    by  trying  to  perpetuate  the  experience,  or  to  aviod  or  end  it.    “Intention”    is  an  integral  part  of  this  model  of  continuously  co-­‐arising  factors.    Intention  is  in  the  attitude  taken  toward  the  lived  experience:  intention  is  a  more  active  and  

creative  function,  influencing  how  the  experience  is  organzied  within  worldview  and  way  of  being.  Intention  manifests  as  action  when  activities  of  body,  speech,  and  mind  are  consciously  or  unconsciously  initiated  to  act  one  way  or  another.    

C. Selfing    

Zen  Brain  (2010)  expressed  the  idea  of  self  as  a  process  of  continually  unfolding  dynamic  systems,  interconnected,  and  influenced  by  consciousness.    This  concept  of  self  as  a  verb  –  “selfing”  -­‐  fits  the  current  conception  of  what  i  try  to  do  in  psychotherapy;  keep  the  self  evolving,  transforming,  reorganizing  toward  increasingly  complex  capacities  for  holding  a  coherent  picture  of  the  Lifeworld  and  one’s  relationship  to  all  things  in  the  web  of  life.    We  are  trying  to  use  intentional  consciousness  to  shape  our  sense  of  self  and  our  experience  of  reality.        Strands  get  woven  in  or  out  while  selfing.      

One  of  the  many  delusions  that  can  get  woven  in  is  creating  the  notion  of  self  as  something  constant  out  of  what  is  ongoing    process.    Self  can  develop  deeply  rooted  belief  systems  that  are  imposed  upon  all    perception  and  thought;  delusions  can  then  become  part  of  the  core  ordering  processes.      If  self  is  operating  optimally    it  flows  with  intentional  growth,  learning  and  transformation.      If  it  is  operating  with  delusions,  things  can  go  wrong  quickly.  

As  we  develop,  cognitive  abilities  scaffold  the  construction  of  a  complex  hierarchy  of  self-­‐evaluations  in  which  there  are  general  self-­‐schemas  at  the  apex  and  these  are  most  resitant  to  change  especially    if  they  have  become  highly  automated  due  to  dissociative  trauma  responses.    Once  we  can  no  longer  self-­‐regulate  as  part  of  an  integrative  process  we  dissociate  and  develop  feedback  loops,  delusional  defense  mechanisms  in  order  to  relieve  our  phsyiological,  emotional,  cognitive  and  spiritual  suffering.    With  our  intense  self-­‐awareness  and  reflexivity,  our  evolving  emotional  and  spiritual  intelligences,  we  are  traumatizing  ourselves  with  images  and    stories  of  what  we  are  doing.    If  we  don’t  regulate  this,  fear  scenarios  can  become  core  delusions,  and  create  a  pressing  need  for  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  or  the  avoidance  of  pain.    Clearly  this  is  why  humans  are  capable  of  ignoring  and  denying    the  needs  for  well  being  of  other  people  or  life  forms  or  ecosystems,  or  even  themselves.    When  one  desire  is  satisfied  another  emerges  such  that  no  meaningful  sense  of  peace  or  fulfillment  can  ever  be  

maintained.      Dukkha  –  denotes  this  type  of  suffering.    In  deluding  ourselves  that  the  self  is  meaningful  we  we  spend  much  of  our  time  and  energy  trying  to  fortify,  aggrandize,  and  defend  ourselves  –  spurred  on  by  a  fear  that  failure  to  do  so  will  lead  to  our  annihilation.    Dukkha  hijacks  our  selfing  process,  such  that  intentionality,  feelings  and  perceptions  are  all  directed  toward  relieving  dukkha.    

D. Mindfulness  

Mindfulness  teaches  us  to  regard  this  ongoing  stream  of  textured  experience  as  an  thread  of  focus,  a  thing  itself,  and  to  put  the  world  and  self  we  have  constructed  in  its  proper  perspective.  The  process  of  selfing  becomes  seen  by  consciousness  and  we  see  more  clearly  how  self  operates,  and  how  to  reorganize  it.        We  become  aware  we  are  applying  the  perceptual  frame  while  we  are  doing  so;  a  range  of  options  for  being  emerge  onto  the  horizon.    

Buddhist  psychology  focuses  on  seven  factors  of  awakening:    mindfulness,  investigation  of  phenomena,  energy,  joy,  tranquility,  concentration  and  equanimity.    With  mindfulness  we  train  our  minds  to  be  simply  present  with  currently  arising  phenomena;  we  develop  clearer  understanding  of  the  flow  of  emotions  and  mental  states,  of  perceptual  frames  themselves  and  of  expanded  or  altered  worldviews.    Energy,  joy  and  tranquility  expand  as  concentration  and  equanimity  deepen.      We    are  able  to  be  with  what  is  with  insight  and  wisdom  as  well  as  deep  emotional  attunement  and  interconnectivity,  leading  to  reshaping  of    perceptual  frames,  shifts  in  sense  of  self,  and  re-­‐organizing  of    worldview.  

Mindfulness  is  a  powerful  antidote  for  suffering  at  the  same  time  as  it  deepens  the  possibility  for  suffering.    The  suffering  of  life,  and  now  the  intense  guilt  and  shame  we  feel  for  simply  being  human  becomes  ever  constant.    How  do  we  live  with  this?    Compassion  begins  to  be  a  necessary  organizing  principle  for  selfing.      Living  for  a  healthy  Lifeworld  is  more  compelling  than  living  for  oneself.      Looking  suffering  in  the  eye  holds  more  potential  for  transforming  the  suffering  into  wisdom  than  looking  away.      A  deep  freedom  comes  with  this  realization  that  the  way  to  transform  our  own  despair  is  to  be  in  the  fields  of  suffering  and  be  part  of  transforming  it  with  loving  kindness.    

Mindful  awareness  is  different  from  metacognition  in  that  mindfulness  involves  participant  observation  with  the  intention  to  be-­‐in  and  describe  from  within,  at  first  without  interpreting;  also  without  judging  or  evaluating,  or  entanglement  in  cognitions.      The  specific  position  is  awareness  of,  from  a  place  of  being-­‐in  while  observing  and  describing,  the  essence  of  the  lived-­‐experience.    We  see  that  our  thoughts  are  conditioned  through  experience  and  it  is  not  a  given  that  they  are  true;  that  thoughts  are  always  happening  and,  like  feelings,  they  are  transitory  and  only  real  in  and  of  themselves.    If  we  don’t  focus  energy  on  them  the  mind  will  cogitate  other  forms.      Some  forms  are  more  useful  and  effective  than  others  in  generating  well-­‐being.    The  mind  develops  persistent  grooves  in  neurological  networks  as  we  repeat  specific  and  thematic  thoughts.    With  mindfulness  practices  we  see  these  habitual  forms  and  reorganize  away  from,  for  example,  negative  narratives,  and  toward  the  eightfold  path.  

E. Antidotes  

Regulating  instead  of  Aversion.  Aversion  from  information  is  a  big  part  of  self  creating  this  eco  mess.      Regulate  instead,  by  feeling  and  naming  emotions.  Limit  the  retraumatization.    There  is  no  point  sitting  in  a  group  and  repeating  horrible  images  and  scenarios.  Helping  people  build  awareness  and  regulate  their  own  information  immersion  and  emotional  response  to  within  the  window  of  tolerance  (Ogden,  2003)  so  that  they  can  stay  engaged  in  action  is  crucial.    ‘Pendulation’  is  one  of  the  most  effective  strategies  for  this–  moving  back  and  forth  from  the  wound  to  the  healing  context  so  that  we  do  not  move  outside  of  the  window  of  tolerance  for  too  long.  Everyone  in  the  group  emphasized  this.  

Rachel  Carson  writes  her  natural  process  of  pendulation  with  the  antidote:  

“I  know  well  a  stretch  of  road  where  nature’s  own  landscaping  has  provided  a  border  of  alder,  viburnum,  sweet  ferm,  and  juniper  with  seasonally  changing  accents  of  bright  flowers,  or  of  fruits  hanging  in  jewelled  clusters  in  the  fall.    The  road  had  no  heavy  load  of  traffic  to  support;  there  were  few  sharp  curves  or  intersections  where  brush  could  obsrtuct  the  driver’s  vision.    But  sprayers  took  over  and  the  miles  along  that  road  became  something  to  be  traversed  quickly,  a  sight  to  be  endured  with  one’s  mind  closed  to  throughts  of  the  sterile  and  hideous  world  we  are  letting  our  technicians  make.    But  here  and  there  authority  had  somehow  faltered  and  by  an  unaccountable  oversight  

there  were  oases  of  beauty  in  the  midst  of  austere  and  regimented  control  –  oases  that  made  the  desecration  of  the  greater  part  of  the  road  the  more  unbearable.    In  such  places  my  spirit  lifted  to  the  sight  of  drifts  of  white  clover  or  the  clouds  of  purple  vetch  with  her  and  ther  the  calming  caps  of  wood  lily”  (from  Silent  Spring,  pg  281).  

Equanimity  Instead  of  Numbing  Leads  to  Courageous  Deep  Seeing  Instead  of  Delusions.      Here  is  another  much  used  Thich  Nhat  Hanh  quote:  

 “The  environmentalists  must  learn  to  take  care  of  themselves.    Activists  need  strength,  especially  spiritual  strength.        Activists  who  want  to  protect  the  earth  have  to  learn  to  protect  themselves”.      

A    person  who  cultivates  equanimity  moves  through  the  world  responding  to  events  as  they  emerge,  and  manifests  the  intentions  of  generosity  kindness  and  understanding.    Freedom  from  involuntary  conditioning  develops  and  the  drive  for  action  by  compulsion  is  dissolved.    Narcissistic  delusions  about  entitlement  of  gratification  of  desires  melt  away.    Emptiness  evolves,  in  a  vast  field  of  equanimity.    This  leads  to  differentiation  from  the  dominant  culture  and  toward  the  emergent  wave  of  people  leading  us  into  a  new  worldview  and  order.  

Transforming  Ecodespair  into  Right  Action  Based  on  Not  Knowing.    Many  wise  people  agree  that,  in  truth,  we  don’t  know  a  lot  at  all.    Lay  down  the  maps,  and  frames,  and  lenses,  concepts  and  baskets  –  and  all  we  can  rest  on  is  Interconnectivity,  a  continual  unfolding  of  what  is,  and  a  not  knowing  of  what  will  come,  or  the  full  complexities.    If  we  rest  in  these  we  feel  a  deep  seeing  into  the  true  way  all  things  are  inherently  connected  and  the  way  out  becomes  obvious.    The  view  is  one  whole  open  space  –  as  far  as  the  eye  can  see.          From  here  the  mind  has  a  job,  that  is  to  fabricate  a  view  of  reality  the  helps  us  survive  and  flourish  and  understand.    Even  in  this  age  of  high  technology  and  information  we  are  left  to  stand  in  an  infinte  and  interconnected  field  of  is-­‐ness  and  not  know.      

“When    we  really  stop  to  see  what  is,  we  have  to  realize  we  actually  possess  very  little  power.    We  are  a  long  way  from  being  able  to  effectively  manage  our  world...  there  are  gaps  in  our  knowledge  large  enough  for  the  future  of  the  planet  to  fall  through”  (David    Suzuki,  The  Sacred  Balance,    Pg  18).  

If  we  don’t  presume    we  know  what  is  in  the  view,  we  can  look,  see  it  freshly,  and  shape  it  according  to  our  most  integral  morality  with  the  best  outcome  for  all  as  the  measure  of  our  success.      

The  Thought  of  Interconnectivity.    The    experiential  and  philosophical  implications  of  the  ecological  crisis  has  engendered  the  thought  of  interconnectivity  as  an  antidote.    As  our  minds,  more  and  more  of  them,  imagine  interconnectedness,  the  web  of  being,  we  realize  the  web  is  vast,  and  immeasurable.    Reality  is  boundless  and  if  i  vow  to  preceive  it,    in  a  respectful  silence  of  not  knowing    then  i  am  comforted  and  kept  warm  by  the  felt-­‐sense  of  interconnectivity.      

F.Existential  Responsibility:  Not  Knowing  is  Different  from  Not  Wanting  to  Know  Another  type  of  ecodespair  is  the  existential  anxiety  of  knowing  what  we  

feel  responsible  for  knowing.    Usually  we  stop  wanting  to  know  what  is  possible  to  know  because  suffering  accompanies  the  context  or  content.    In  contemporary  trauma  psychology  we  find  many  views  about  how  mechanisms  of  distortion  and  dissociation  reduce  trauma  victims  awareness  of  events,  to  a  point  where  information  or  accurate  self-­‐representations  become  inaccessible  to  consciousness  because  the  content  is  too  terrifying  or  painful.    This  is  referred  to  as  “metacognitive  shutdown”  wherein  a  person  loses  access  to  reflexivity  and    introspection.    Metacognitive  shutdown,  emotional  numbing,    and  delusional  thinking  all  are  ways  of  dealing  with  despair,  by  not  wanting  to  know.        

Experiencing  ecocide  as  violent  leads  many  survival  intending  systems  to  increase    necessary  and  sustained  attention  to  threats  to  the  Lifeworld.    This    draws  energy  and  focus  away  from  the  developmental  tasks  of  self-­‐awareness  of  inner  thoughts  and  feelings.    Furthermore,    traumatically  induced  dissociative  states  and  amnesic  gaps  contribute  not  only  to  a  temporally  discontinuous  sense  of  self  but  also  to  increased  dissonance,  incongruence    and  incoherence.    The  integrative  function  of  the  psyche  is  interrupted  to  such  a  degree  that  being  and  action  in  the  world  are  misguided,  limited,  inapproriate  or  ineffective.  I  am  continually  faced  with  how  this  happens  in  people  traumatized  by  images  in  the  media  or  damage  they  have  witnessed  to  their  local  ecosystem.  

Splitting,  fragmentation,  compartmentalization  are  the  most  common  dissociative  strategies;    all,  by  definition,  preclude  a  sense  of  the  coherence  of  the  self.    A  fragmented  self  perceives  a  fragmented  world.    The  formation  of  a  coherent  picture  of  self  in  relation  to  the  Lifeworld  includes    processes  which  perform  organizational  functions,  provide  predictive  structures,  and  guidelines  that  allow  one  to  interpret  and  give  meaning  to  life  experiences,  and  to  behave  in  ways  that  are  healthy.    When  we  are  overwhelmed  with  emotion,  this  integrative  function  is  hijacked  and  the  energy  is  used  to  develop  and  protect  delusions.  

       

G. Felt-­‐Sense  of  Connectivity:  Reverence  For  Life       When  we  consciously  sink  into  the  depth  of  embodied  presence  in  the  web,  everything  reorganizes  to  this  spiritual  level.      When  we  connect  consciousness  with  our  body  in  the  world,  the  neurological  attunement  with  the  Lifeworld,  and  the  thought  of  interconnectivity,  and  engage  with  equanimity,  we  develop  an  understanding  that  places    “relationships  at  the  center”  (Brown  and  Glaver,  2009,  pg  2).      From  here  change  occurs  with  cascading  effects.    “Different  parts  of  the  real  world  interact  synergistically  when  placed  together...new  properties  that  arise  from  complexes  cannot  be  predicted  from  the  known  properties  of  their  individual  parts.    These  “emergent  properties”  only  exist  within  the  whole.    So  we  can  never  learn  how  whole  systems  work  simply  by  analyzing  each  of  its  components  in  isolation”  (Suzuki,  2002,    pg  17).  In  this  view,  not  knowing  is  an  honest  statement  and  a  liberating  position.      

This  is  an  important  aspect  of  Right  View,  which  leads  toward  Right  Intention.    This  means  aligning  our  ways  of  perceiving,  thinking,  being  and  doing  toward  interconnectedness,  doing  no  harm,    and  bringing  wisdom  to  action.  If  we  have  high  social  intelligence  we  use  our  knowing  and  wisdom  for  the  good  of  all  (Goleman,  2004).    “A  thing  is  right  when  it  tends  to  preserve  the  integrity,  stability,  and  beauty  of  the  biotic  community.    It  is  wrong  when  it  tends  otherwise”  said  1940’s  conservationist  Aldo  Leopold.  This  statement  has  become  

the  oft  referred  to  touchstone  of  the  emergent  ecological  worldview,  as  is  Albert  Schweitzer’s  powerful  idea  of  “reverence  for  life”.    

Having  outgrown  a  religious  base  to  guide  our  species,  and  with  consequences  too  huge  to  fully  comprehend,  we  have  to  evolve  our  own  moral  philosophy.    A  version  of  this  question  then  becomes  –  how  do  we  intend  to  use  the  knowledge  we  have  developed  about  how  the  world  works?  The  intensity  of  our  moral  despair  is  forcing  us  to  develop  an  Emergent  Moral  Philosophy.    

As  an  example,  in  Vibrant  Matter  the  political  theorist  Jane  Bennett  (2010),  renowned  for  her  work  on  nature,  ethics,  and  affect,  shifts  her  focus  from  the  human  experience  of  things  to  a  social  theory  that  recognizes    the  active  participation  of  nonhuman  forces  in  events.  She  posits  a  'vital  materiality'  that  runs  through  and  across  life.      Political    analyses  might  change  were  we  to  acknowledge  that  agency  always  emerges  as  the  effect  of  ad  hoc  configurations  of  human  and  nonhuman  forces.  Such  a  view    might  spur  the  cultivation  of  a  more  responsible,  ecologically  sound  politics:  a  politics  less  devoted  to  blaming  and  condemning  than  to  discerning  the  web  of  forces  affecting  situations  and  events.    

H. Are  we  Evolving?  

    I  often  find  an  antidotal  mantra  is  “we  are  evolving”.    However,  it  seems  prudent  to  wonder.    In  1968,  anthropologist  Gregory  Bateson  organized  a  week-­‐long  conference  in  Austria  on  the  effects  of  conscious  purpose  on  human  adaptation.  He  asked  participants  to  consider  the  question:  “whether  human  consciousness  perhaps  especially  as  it  is  shaped  in  modern  western  culture,  ‘might  contain  systematic  distortions  of  view  which,  when  implemented  by  modern  technology,  become  destructive    of  the  balances  between  individual  man,  human  society,  and  the  ecosystem  of  the  planet’”  (quoted  by  David  Suzuki,    The  Sacred  Balance,  Pg  139).  In  other  words,  is  western  culture  perhaps  fatally  deluded?      If  so,  what  can  we  do  with  our  intentionality  to  change  our  consciousness?  We  are  just  beginning  to  understand  this  concept.  

“Evolutionary biologists ... show that natural selection does not necessarily lead to increasing levels of complexity and greater intelligence... there is no splendid evolutionary ladder leading steadily onward and upwards towards Homo Sapiens” (Suzuki, Pg 14).

We  only  evolve  to  higher  consciousness  if  we  intend  to.    I  want  to  explicitly  weave  in  this  strand  about  the  conscious  evolutionary  leap  required  for  survival  of  our  Lifeworld.    Suzuki  states  baldly  that:      

“changes  of  such  magnitude  do  not  happen  easily,  and  sometimes  they  do  not  happen  at  all.    A    number  of  human  civilizations  have  ceased  because  they  did  not  adapt  in  time,  and  destroyed  their  environment.    Radical  changes  have  occurred  in  times  of  political,  economic,  and  social  crises,  often  during  or  at  the  end  of  wars”  (Suzuki,  2002,    Pg  167).        

He  isn’t  afraid  to  look  it  in  the  eye  either  and  say  what  seems  to  be  evident  from  one  perspective.    He  is  diligently  trying  to  jump  start  massive  levels  of  shift.  

Similarly,  Brown  and  Glaver  (2009),  say:  

 “Social  change  of  the  magnitude  that  is  now  required  has  sometimes  been  triggered  by  great  unheavals  such  as  wars  or  economic  depressions.    Unfortunately,  history  also  offers  horrendous  examples  where  change  did  not  happen  in  time”  (pg  141)  .        

Gwynne  Dyer  (Future  Tense,  2004),  a  well-­‐known  and  highly  regarded  ecosociopolitical  analyst  and  forecaster  says  it  is  way  too  late  to  turn  it  around.      The  human  prospect  is  fully  immersed  in  an  ecological  crisis,  and  our  options  are  narrowing  into  a  range  of  high-­‐risk  scenarios.      

In  simplified  terms,  this  collective  crisis  pushes  the  shift  of  our  worldview,  inspired  by  the  moral  distress  of  being  dependent  on  a  society  that  causes  such  ecological  destruction.      Our  way  of  being    has  to  be  guided  by  a  worldview  that  is  more  harmonious,    and  nondestructive.    Based  in  a  fundamental  change  of  values,  we  have  to  evolve  away  from  the  anxious,  illusory  pursuit  of  money  and  possessions,  toward  reverence  based,  honouring  of  the  Lifeworld.  

I. Shift  is  Happening  

As  a  species  we  are  trying  to  mature,  and  we  have  given  ourselves  a  great  challenge.    We  are  on  the  edge  of  a  collective  awareness  of  our  own  reflexivity  and  of  our  place  in  existence.      We  are  trying  to  develop  a  clear  headed  wisdom,  and  have  a  clear  mind.    Seeing  through  the  fabrications  created  by  mind  to  protect  us  from  the  experience  of  void  when  seeing  deeply  into  our  reality  is  what  Zen  practice  is  about.  

At  the  root  of  the  shift  we  have  to  awaken  and  shine  the  light  on  the  lived-­‐experience  of  despair  we  feel  about  the  convergence  of  ecological,  economic,  and  sociopolitical  crises.      How  can  we  not  see  a  profound  spiritual  crisis  at  the  heart  of  this  situation?    This  crisis  is  about  human  identity  within  the  emergent  unfolding  of  Life.      The  good  news,  in  my  mind,  is  that  there  is  a  leading  edge.    Explication  and  clarification  on  a  common  purpose  has  well  begun,  with  what  Paul  Hawken  calls  “the  greatest  movement  in  the  world”.      There  are  various  excellent  books  charting  the  history  and  current  manifestations  of  ground  up  movements,  as  well  as  emergence  of  leaders  who  create  a  massive  shift  (Mandela  and  Gorbachev  come  quickly  to  the  collective  mind).    I  return  again  and  again  to  the  thought  that  many  times  in  human  history  we  have  shifted  quickly.    This  time  we  have  the  potential  for  more  intentional  consciousness,  if  we  can  maintain  our  equanimity  as  we  look  it  in  the  eye.  

Current  context  –  Oil  and  Ocean  

Today Our House of Commons passed the motion to not allow oil tankers up and down the b.c. coast. This is so intense that is for me to hear. We sat tonight in our group and it was incredible. In the check in people were emotional about that, also with realizing that this is just a small part of the whole journey. This has been such an intense group. So tonight was our last night, for now. What a great moment to end on after all the inner ground we have covered.

The other part of my volunteer work was to develop and be part of a letterwriting campaign to help impact the decision. We got 7500 letters in. Many other groups were doing some other versions of petitions and letter writing campaigns as well and lobbying with research. I feel really good about that but in truth i feel that the

most important contribution i made to the process was facilitating this group.

                 Intentional  Evolution:    From  Ecodespair  to  EcoIntelligence    “Man  is  a  creature  who  makes  pictures  of  himself,  and  them  comes  to  resemble  the  picture”  (Iris  Murdoch,  Metaphysics  and  Ethics,    1956).        Worldviews  

I  would  like  to  set  an  even  bigger  picture,  that  of  human  relationship  with  Earth  over  time.        Who  are  we  as  a  species?  How  did  we  get  to  this  place?  Who  directed  this  flow  of  events  and  why?  Where  should  we  go  from  here,  and  how  will  we  get  there?  What  are  the  chances  that  we  will?  What  will  happen  if  we  don’t?    As  we  deepen  our  own  sentience  through  conscious  reflection  and  awareness,  how  shall  we  guide  ourselves  now  that  we  take  responsibility  for  doing  so?  

I  will  approach  this  by  looking  at  the  grand  narrative  in  which  we  live.    Hannah  Arendt  (1958)  wrote:    “The  purpose  of  the  historical  analysis...  is  to  trace  back  modern  world  alienation,  its  twofold  flight  from  the  earth  into  the  universe  and  from  the  world  into  the  self,  to  its  origins,  in  order  to  arrive  at  an  understanding  of  the  nature  of  society  as  it  had  developed  and  presented  itself  at  the  very  moment  when  it  was  overcome  by  the  advent  of  a  new  and  yet  unknown  age”  (The  Human  Condition,  Pg  6  ).    We  are  well  into  this  process  of  

emerging  into  a  new  age,  where  we  do  not  know  what  will  come.        Iris  Murdoch  (1956)  describes  a  series  of  shifts  in  collective  perspectives  in  the  philosophy  of  morality  where  emotion  and  Mystery  got  squeezed  out  of  the  conversation  –  and  this  leaves  us  with  no  premises  on  which  to  be  moral.  That  we  create  the  narrative  and  then  live  up  to  it,  is  one  thing  we  are  having  to  become  aware  of  at  a  collective  level.  I  feel  that  the  most  basic  premise  to  stand  upon  is  well  expressed  by  Simone  Weil:    “One  should  identify  oneself  with  the  universe  itself.    Everything  that  is  less  than  the  universe  is  subjected  to  suffering...”  (Notebooks,  1943).  

How  did  we  come  to  create  a  worldview  that  so  separated  us  from  our  roots  and  caused  this  much  suffering?  

Above  I  have  referrenced  three  highly  intelligent  women  writing  about    where  we  were  as  a  culture  and  how  we  got  there:    Post  WWII,  secularizing,  becoming  global  and  less  local  in  our  awareness,  experiencing  shock  trauma,  and  heading  into  an  economy  that  will  create  and  feed  upon  hungry  ghosts.    Murdoch,  Weil,  and    Arendt  were  writing  these  commentaries  in  Europe  while  North  America  was  raising  the  flag  of  consumer  culture.  The  questions  raised  by  them,  as  examples  of  the  leading  edge,  were  not  yet  considered  seriously  by  the  dominant  intellectual  culture.    But  now,  50  –  60  years  we  have  taken  ourselves  to  a  place  where  we  have  to  look  deeply  at  what  they  said.    Manuel  De  Landa  is  a  contemporary  philosopher  who  writes  books  like  A  Thousand  Years  of  Nonlinear  History;  with  years  of  well-­‐developed  elucidation  of  complex  systems  theory  to  draw  upon,  he  tells  the  story  beautifully.    At  this  point,  we  understand  ourselves  much  more.    Yet,  the  questions  Arendt,  Murdoch,  and  Weil    posed  still  hold  our  feet  to  the  fire.  

How best do i hold the very question?

Stop, Calm the body and mind, sit with what emerges...

The choice points appear on the horizon immediately, do i write about our progressive alienation from our ground? Do i write about the development of technology, the rise of religions that serve capitalist economy, do i just look at the

last 60 years of consumer society? I could begin with lists of authors of excellent books written from these and many other angles. I think instead i will try to stay consistent with my overall approach to this project. I am trying to write in non-academese, non-journallese, non-conversational, non-theraperutic, non-psychological styles. Why? Because that would be me stepping outside of many of the various frames i have used for writing over the years, and this is a turning point for me. My job is to live the turning points. I vowed to step further into the unknown. I, like the species of which i am a part, need to step out of my many safe and well-developed frames, and maps, and theories and models and ways of being. i have moved through 5 different mappings over the last two years. I take a roll of meter wide newsprint ansd cover a 10x8 section of the wall in my studio. I draw on the images and words representing various aspects, angles, dimensions, layers, foci of human experience. In the end they all look like webs of related concepts. I enjoy this process intensely. Every map gets more complex and more simple. More comprehensive and paradoxical. The question changes shape yet is always recognizeable; it is as fluid as the answer. Yet it all circumambulates around core concepts. Whether i find pieces of them written by others in books, or poems or music, or reflected or symbolized in art, or pure and raw in the Forest, it all says the same thing.

Life is precious, and we have led it to a precarious place by not understanding the basic reality of interconnectivity. As a species we once knew this but unconsciously; although others suggests our remaining indigenous folk and higher forms of animals still live within this wisdom. I wonder what it would really be like to live in a world where we hadn’t forgotten, or ridden over it with our selfishness and greed, and unethical uses of our technologies and power, toward our present situation where we have such pressure to grow up in a hurry.

Over my life time i have always felt i am a witness, watching the lifeworld. When i discovered existential philosophy i found writers who put my sense of things into words, who asked the questions my mind also produced, who followed tangents and rivers of thoughts that flowed through me as well. It was such a relief in those early years to realize there were other humans like me. When I came upon EcoBuddhism in the early 90’s i found fields of thought huge and integrated, focused on the questions i was passionate about. In the years since, i brought it to

practice through teaching in and coordinating a graduate program, developing and running a non-profit training and community therapy service, and my consulting and private practice. Most significantly in those years i raised my child and together we spent a lot of time outdoors, learning about being in the world as well as being at home. Over the 5 years as he has launched himself, i have returned to writing and art, and i was drawn to this chaplaincy program. I entered in saying i wanted to further explore Equanimity Through Ecodespair . And i have, through this process, specified where i intend to focus my consciousness and professional engagement. This has all have taken me deeper and further in my capacity to witness and stay present and to regulate my system, and to be clear about where i am when intentionally interacting with/in the Lifeworld, using my life energy to influence the evolutionary flow of humanity, in my own small way. This world is precious and we have imperiled Life here.

How  did  we  develop  these  worldviews  that  allow  us  to  be  so  destructive?  A  frequently  framed  review  of  prehistory  in  the  tale  of  the  development  of  self  and  society  and  Lifeworld  is  that  at  some  point  we  became  capable  of  identifying  sequences  and  patterns  in  the  Lifeworld  –  seasons,  tides,  migrations,  plants.  Our  brain  developed  that  incredible  ordering  capacity  and  we  developed  knowledge.    

“This information was woven together into what anthropologists call a worldview – a story whose subject for each group is the world and everything in it, a world in which human beings are deeply and inextricably immersed. Each worldview was tied to a unique locale and peopled with spirits and gods. At the center of the story stood the people who had shaped it to make sense of their world. Their narrative provided answers to those age-old questions: Who are we? How did we get here? What does it all mean?”( Suzuki, The Sacred Balance, 2002, pg 12).

So  our  brains  developed  worldviews,  language,  stories,  representative  art,  religions,  technologies,  economies.    And  in  the  drivers  seat  was  the  will  to  survive.    I  see  with  incredulity  the  creative,  adaptive  and  generative  capacity  of  the  human  brain,  and  would  see  that  we  are  on  the  cusp  of  intentionally  shaping  our  own  being,  directing  our  own  consciousness  to  shape  us  as  we  move  forward  in  time,  and  around  the  spirals  of  developmental    progressions.    

“Many worldviews endow human beings with an even more awesome task: they are the caretakers of the entire system, responsible for keeping the stars on their courses and the living world intact.

In this way, many early people who created wordlviews constructed a way of life that was truly ecologically sustainable” (Suzuki, Pg 12).

A history of worldviews that got us painted into this corner of dualism

A commonly referred to frame could come under the subtitle of the development of western thought – to which there are commonly described learnings, discoveries, events and social processes that we have gone through to develop the frameworks for organizing our selves and our societies. Most reviews of such a history draw out a few specific representative moments – they line up like stars in a sky and our eye looks for rhythm and connection, to form a pattern or a line that makes sense out of it all.

Capernicus, in 1543 was looking into the night sky and developed a new view of the cosmos and our place in it. When he wrote On the Revolutions of Celestial Orbs, he placed the sun at the center, instead of humans. Galileo, in 1610, became the Starry Messenger and announced our planet is one of many in a universe filled with many suns. When Darwin put forth The Origin of Species, he liberated us from the confining vision that had once given us solace and order. All of this was preceded by Pico in 1486 announcing that god had given us this world and the ability to run it. In historicizing the concept of ‘self’ Tarnas identifies how: “the modern self began to emerge, with astonishing force and speed, just over five hundred years ago (Tarnas, 2006, Cosmos and Psyche) when Pico della Mirandola prepared the Oration on the Dignity of Man for a host of male dominant culture philosophers, gathered in Rome, 1486. Pico named a new type of human emerging, and “by naming he shaped it” (Tarnas, 2006). In fact, this becomes a defining characteristic of the human self.

As  Pico  told  the  story:  “When God had completed the creation of the world as a sacred temple of his glory and wisdom, he conceived a desire for one last being whose relation to the whole and to the divine author would be different from that of every other creature. At this ultimate moment God considered the creation of the human being, who he hoped would come to know and love the beauty, intelligence, and grandeur of the divine work. But as the Creator had no archetype remaining with which to make this last creation, no assigned status for it within the already completed work, he said to this final being: “Neither a fixed abode nor a form that is thine alone nor any function peculiar to thyself have We given thee, to the end that according to thy longing and according to thy judgement though mayest have and possess what abode, what form, what functions though thyself shalt desire. The nature of all other beings is limited and contrained within the bounds of laws prescribed by Us. Thus, constrained by no limits, in

accordance with thine own free will, in whose hand We have placed thee, shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature. We have set thee at the world’s center that thou mayest from thense more easily observe whatever is in the world. We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honour, as though the maker and the molder of thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer” (Quoted on pg 3 – 4 , Tarnas, 2006, Cosmos and Psyche, empahases mine.)

This  became  the  announcement  of  the  new  form  of  human  existence,  which  by  nature  aspires,  creates,  shapes,  and  defines  itself  -­‐  or  at  least  has  the  potential  to  do  so  -­‐  as  a  species,  as  cultures,  and  subcultures,  down  to  communities,  families,    and  individuals.    And  is  beginning  to  be  aware  of  this.    So  when  Capernicus,  Galileo  and  others  said  we  weten’t  the  center  of  the  universe,  all  powerful  and  in  charge,  we  developed  a  split  in  our  psyche.  

Later  was  Newton  and  Descartes,  and  many  others.    These  cosmologies  forever  changed  the  intellectual  and  moral  fabric  of  the  Western  World  –  initiating  a  process  of  paradigm  disintegration,  the  apex  of    which  we  seem  to  be  approaching  at  this  moment.    Emergent  behind  this  is  a  new  ordering  of  our  world  and  a  consequent  new  world  order.    It  is  the  nature  of  a  growing  child  to  outgrow  the  fabrics  used  to  shape  and  contain  and  protect.  How  can  i  think  of  either  a  bible  or  a  burqa  and  not  see  them  as  both  protection  and  oppression;  either  way,  something  to  see  as  co-­‐created,  for  good  and  for  ill.  All  things  are  part  of  the  galaxy  of  possibility;  human  hearts  and  eyes  are  drawn  to  the  Light.  

Fragmented  Worldviews  Dualism  is  already  fragmentation.    And  it  creates  rationalization,  

justification,  projection,  and  all  the  other  defense  mechanisms  which  keep  “us–them”  perspectives  in  place;  that  is,  dualism  defends  itself.    From  this  premise,  of  a  subject-­‐object  separation,  and  a  forgetting  that  this  is  just  one  perspective  through  which  to  examine  and  study  and  describe  the  world,  but  neither  the  only  way  nor  the  best  way,  we  are  fragmenting.  

 It  always  feels  paradoxical  to  me  that  science  both  proves  our  interconnecteness  and  yet  gets  used  to  create  our  alienation.  For  the  last  300  years  science  has  been  coopted  to  take  what  is  whole  and  parse  it  down  into  bits  

manageable  for  a  human  moment,  attempting  to  isolate  each  fragment  and  control  the  factors  selected  by  someone’s  cognitive  map  of  how  things  work  or  how  things  will  work  best  for  themselves.    Even  when  pure,  although  science  observes  and  measures  until  a  reliably  consistent  understanding  of  a  bit  of  nature    is  formed,  “what  is  ultimately  acquired  is  a  fractured  mosaic  of  disconnected  bits  and  pieces,  whose  parts  will  never  add  up  to  a  coherent  narrative”  (Suzuki,  2002,  Pg  15).      The  Heisenberg  uncertainty  principle  shows  that  even  the    position  of  a  particle  cannot  be  known.    “If  there  is  no  absolute  certainty  at  the  most  elementary  level,  then  the  notion  that  the  entire  universe  is  understandable  and  predictable  from  its  componenets  becomes  absurd”  (Suzuki,  2002,  Pg  16).        

Even  though  we  know  this,  we  have  people  or  schools  of  thought  that  take  on  the  job  of  constructing  the  coherent  narrative  based  on  some  knowledge,  and  then  these  people,  for  social  or  political  reasons  spend  their  lives  defending  these  worldviews,  and  stop  remembering  they  were  fabricated.    What  seems  to  be  agreed  upon  by  thinkers  who  put  language  to  our  processes  of  self  development  and  species  development    is  that  in  various  ways  we  construct  worldviews  and  then  forget  that  we  did  so;  even  when  we  do  remember  we  realize  we  construct  versions  of  reality,  we  will  often  use  that  to  spin  falseness  and  pretense  adn  gain  power,  instead  of  facing  reality  and  dealing  with  it,  or  questioning  worldviews.        This  is  one  of  the  traps  we  are  caught  in  right  now.  

With  no  cohesive  worldview,  or  ‘canopy’  as  Loy  (2003)  would  call  it,  under  which  to  protect  ourselves,  we  are  prey  to  those  who  would  shape  one,  for  their  own  purposes,  and  draft  it  upon  us.    If  we  don’t  pay  attention  we  take  in  all  kinds  of  suggestions  for  belief  systems  that  would  better  serve  someone  else’s  agenda.    Furthermore,  without  a  strong  moral  worldview  that  helps  contain  the  lived-­‐experience  humans  are  subjected  to  their  own  drives  and  emotional  responses  to  experiences  and  events.    The  level  of  emotion  can  be  over  or  underwhelming,  depending  on  effectiveness  and  strategies  of  practiced  regulatory  processes.    As  in  the  outer  world,  if  policy  is  not  clearly  grounded  in  well-­‐being,  the  strategies  for  survival  and  flourishing  can  be  drawn  into  unhealth.      

Mindlessness  

Arendt,  in  The  Human  Condition,    (1958)    declared:  “This  seems  to  me  among  the  outsanding  characterstics  of  our  time”  the  “very  simple  solution  to  which  “is  nothing  more  than  to  think  what  we  are  doing”  –  and  this  becomes  the  central  theme  of  her  books.    The  answers  to  the  real  questions  “can  never  lie  in  theoretical  considerations  or  the  opinions  of  one  person,  as  though  we  dealt  here  with  problems  for  which  only  one  solution  is  possible”.    Instead,  she  proposed  a  “reconsideration  of  the  human  condition  from  the  vantage  point  of  our  newest  experiences  and  most  recent  fears”  which  is  named  as  “obviously  a  matter  of  thought,  and  thoughtlessness  –  the  heedless  recklessness  or  hopeless  confusion  or  complacent  repetition  of  “truths”  which  have  become  trivial  and  empty”.      Arendt  sees  and  names  clearly:    “Surely  nothing  could  be  worse”.  ..  “the  highest  ....  activity  of  which  men  are  capable,  the  activity  of  thinking,  is  left  out”.    Arendt  pointed  out  that  if  we  continue  on  this  path  then  our  brain  will  not  understand  what  we  are  doing  at  which  point  “knowledge  and  thought  have  parted  company...  then  we  will  indeed  become  the  helpless  slaves...  thoughtless  creatures  at  the  mercy  of  every  gadget  which  is  technically  possible,  no  matter  how  murderous  it  is.”    She  saw  in  the  50’s  how  people  have  been  emptied  of  meaning  and  connection  and  were  ripe  to  be  moulded;  she  named  how  this  thoughtless  human  tide  was  being  turned  toward  empty  consumerism.    Now  50  years  later,  our  world  is  dying  because  so  many  sheeple  have  been  coopted  into  being  shoppers  for  stuff  they  don’t  need.          

Consumer  Culture  -­‐    Greed  and  Delusion        

Our  species  was  finally  consumed  by  collective  and  individual  demand  for  consumer  goods  in  the  twentieth  century.    This  had  been  building  for  at  least  600  years  but  really  took  hold  over  the  last  century.        Social  historians  identify  how  as  early  as  1907,  “the  new  morality  does  not  consist  in  saving  but  in  expanding  consumption”.    Very  quickly,  having  more  and  newer  things  has  become  not  just  something  we  want  but  something  we  need  as  the  center  of  our  identity  and  our  security,  until  we  can  see  that  it  is  an  unconscious  addiction.          By  the  50’s    came    the  pivot  point  toward  the  situation  we  are  in:  

 

“Greed  and  the  constant  stimulation  of  new  desires  that  feed  it,  until  quite  recently  regarded  in  most  societies  as  sinful  or  at  least  unpleasant,  have  increasingly  become  acceptable,  even  glorified.    Simultaneously,  modern  industrial  activity  has  embraced  a  pathological  giganticism,  increasing  corporate  consolidations,  and  ruthlessly  crushing  the  small-­‐business  players,  as  well  as  the  natural  systems  on  which  all  economic  activity  depends”  (Brown  and  Garver,  2009,    Pg  5).  

 Many  authors  writing  about  this,  refer  to  a  moment  in  American  history  where  after  WWII  retailing  analysts  wrote  “Our  enourmous  productive  economy...  demands  that  we  make  consumption  our  way  of  life,  that  we  convert  the  buying  and  use  of  goods  into  rituals,  that  we  seek  our  spiritual  satisfaction,  our  ego  satisfaction,  in  consumption...  we  need  things  consumed,  burned  up,  worn  out,  replaced,  and  discarded  at  an  ever  increasing  rate”  (an  oft  quoted  paragraph,  eg.  here  from    Suzuki,    2002,  Pg  21).    The  explicit  and  accepted  dominant  worldview  was  that  this  unchecked  economic  growth,  with  no  premise  in  ethics,    leads  to  increasing  wealth  and  through  the  market  system,  provides  the  basis  for  the  satisfaction  of  the  needs  of    the  dominant  tribe.    Over  the  next  60  years  capitalism    took  an  extreme  form  and  the  planet  is  now  seen  through  the  perceptual  frame  of  resource  development  by  and  for  the  reigning  dominant  culture.    “As  consumerism  has  taken  root  in  culture  upon  culture  over  the  past  half-­‐century,  it  has  become  a  powerful  driver  of  the  inexorable  increase  in  demand  for  resources  and  production  of  waste  that  marks  our  age....  Human  consumer  cultures  support  –  and  exaggerate  –  the  other  forces  that  have  allowed  human  societies  to  outgrow  their  environmental  support  system”  (Flavin,  State  of  the  World  2010).      All  of  this  leads  to  what  some  call  “The  Great  Collision”  between  “a  finite  planet    and  the  seemingly  infinite  demands  of  human  society”.    Now  we  have  mountains  of  garbage  that  will  be  here  for  eons.  

Psychology  was  hijacked,  along  the  way,    to  study  consumer  trends  and  advertising  and  to  use  media  to  shape  peoples  worldviews;    the  surge  of  pleasure  and  status  based  on  purchases  was  funded  for  study,  and  overrode  being  a  good  or  moral  person.      Because  of  the  inherent  emptiness  in  consumerism,  more  consuming  is  required  to  fend  off  the  hungry  ghosts.      People  even  attempt  to  use  psychotherapy  as  a  way  to  perpetuate  this.  

Concurrent  with  this  trend  was  increased  urbanization  in  most  cultures  which  created  a  schism  between  us  and  our  Lifeworld.    Any  residue  of  the  Christian  religion  was  coopted  to  justify  that  the  world  is  “for  us  to  use”.    We  easily  forget  our  dependence  on    uncontaminated  air,  water,  earth,    healthy  regulation  of  solar  rays.    We  forget  that  biodiversity  is  important  to  our  soul  and  body  as  it  is  to  any  other  living  thing.    It  has  become  easy  for  millions  of  people  to  remain  separate  from  the  source  of  food,  water,  clothing  and  heat,  and  the  consequences  of  their  consuming  ways,  and  to  enslave  the  people  who  produce  these  things.    “We  imagine  a  world  under  our  control  and  will  rush  to  sacrifice  almost  anything  to  make  sure  our  way  of  life  continues.  As  cities  continue  to  increase  around  the  world,  policy  decisions  will  more  and  more  reflect  the  illusory  bubble  have  come  to  believe  is  reality”  (Suzuki,  2002,    Pg  25).  

I  clearly  believe  that  the  change  in  worldview  provoked  by  the  wisdom  of  Interconnectivity  will,  must,  lead  to  our  next  evolutionary  revolution.   Emotional Regulation Theory    

One  of  the  outcomes  of  all  of  this  is  that  humans  have  also  been  alienated     being  and  worldview  unless  we  feel  deeply  our  connection  to  ourselves,  others  and  all  that  is.    But  the  dominant  worldview  and  lifestyles  promote  separation  and  numbing.    When  people  do  experience  intense  emotions  as  response  to  information  about  terran  devestation  they  are  quickly  overwhelmed  and  return  to  a  plethora  of  consuming  behaviours  –  from  drugs  and  alchohol  to  sex  or  gadgets  –  we  have  created  a  world  where  people  do  very  intense  things  in  large  amounts  in  order  to  numb  and  distance,  while  at  the  same  time  feeling  something.  

 i  have  studied  emotional  regulation  theory    with  the  lead  thinkers  and  practitioners,  and  taught  it  and  practiced  it  for  decades.  To  really  know  what  you  are  doing  with  this  takes  a  serious  course  of  study,  practice  and  therapy.    As  such,    I  will  skip  offering  a  summary  of  emotional  regulation  theory  and  refer  the  reader  on  to  any  number  of  highly  regarded  texts  which  have  extensively  developed  this  complex  theory  and  practice  (eg.  Ogden,  2006;  Solomon  and  Siegel,  2003;  Schore,  2003a,  2003b).  An  excellent  summary  is  offered  by  Laurie  Leitch  (Upaya,  2009).  

In  the  group  we  named  the  practice  of  flooding  the  media  with  painful  images  “emotional  warfare”.    Whether  reading  the  newspaper  and  texts  of  contemporary  writers  from  any  direction    eg.  ,  internet,  facebook,  news,  media,  novels,  movies,  etc.  or  just  going  out  the  door  and  observing  the  changes  in  any  local  habitat  and  neighborhood  –  we  can  find  metaphors  and  storylines  of  this  issue  which  prompt  a  range  of  responses.    Some  become  psychologically  numb  as  they  aclimatize  to  the  litany  of  environmental  bad  news.    Others  are  overwhelmed  with  fear  and  anger,  outraged  by  social  and  envrionmental  injustices.    Sometimes  people  just  tune  out,  ignore  or  avoid,  practicing  denial  and  apathy.    People  get  isolated  and  just  don’t  know  what  to  do,  and  they  co-­‐develop  cultures  of  avoidance    as  a  way  of  regulating  what  is  happening  for  them  emotionally  in  response  to  what  they  are  aware  of  ecologically.    Often  people  who  have  training  and  experience  in  ongoing  activism  burn  out.    As  individuals  and  small  collectives  they  become  consumed  with  anger  and  bitterness  and  fear.      They  may  continue  to  be  involved  but  are  basically  dissociated  and  because  of  the  feeling  of  being    ineffective.    It’s  a  sad  way  to  lose  the  energy  of  a  lot  of  people  who  care  and  feel  connected  with  the  Lifeworld.    

“Overwhelmed  by  the  magnitude  of  global  environmental  change,  plummeting  into  an  existential  despair,  wondering  whether  there  is  any  way  out,  if  there  is  anything  that  can  be  done  to  rectify  the  situation,  to  alleviate  the  anxiety,  to  move  through  the  guilt  and  blame...    Rather  than  being  moved  to  action,  they  are  immobilized  by  their  emotions.”  (Thomasow,  2007).      

The  profound  challenge  is  to  develop  effective  ways  to  reflect  on  the  emotional  consequences  of  these  awarenesses  and  images,  to  use  them  to  lead  to  action  premised  in  looking  deeply  at  these  issues  as  they  manifest  in  the  world  and    within  onself.    The  “despair  and  empowerment”  work  of  Joanna  Macy  and  some  other  recent  innovative  approaches  in  ecospirituality  help  people  stay  present  with  themselves  in  the  felt-­‐sense  of  the  psychospiritual  experiences.      It  takes  deep  self-­‐reflection  and  connectivity  to  liberate  the  energy  from  anger  and  despair  and  release  it  to  be  used  for  connection-­‐based  action.        Joanna  Macy  describes  how  “a  dread  of  what  is  happening  to  our  future  stays  on  the  fringes  of  awareness,  too  deep  to  name  and  too  fearsome  to  face.”    

Personally,    i  have  written  dozens  of  letters  and  recently  joined  an  interdisciplinary  research  team  watching  the  oil  issue  in  Western  Canada.      I  am  striving  for  a  non-­‐angry,  well-­‐informed  and  equanimous  stance  -­‐  “strong  back,  open  heart”  (Roshi  Joan,  2009)  -­‐    in  the  face  of  policy  and  law  as  it  is  developing,  or  not,    in  my  homeland.      I  am  following  the  various  layers  of  conversation  in  the  culture  –  from  basic  media,  to  commentary  offered  by  intellectuals  representing  many  perspectives,  and  descriptions  written  by  people  on  the  inside  of  environmental  policy  and  law,  as  well  as  through  the  lived-­‐experience  of  clients,  group  members,  and  peers.    I  feel  less  overwhelmed,  and  can  catch  the  moment  when  i  want  to  dissociate  more  easily.    Then  i  intervene  –  usually  by  going  outside  or  go  to  reflective  evolutionary  psychology.    Either  is  Big  Picture.  

Blame  and  guilt    

Some  of  the  many  identifiable  threads  moving  through  people’s  inner  experience    with  regard  to  the  development  of  ecological  intelligence  and  identity  are  those  of  blame  and  guilt.  

“In the last 30 years, much has been written about the dark side of industrial civilzation. There are stinging critiques of affluence, linking the imperial leviathan of states, corporations, technology, and belief systems in the service of progress and economic growth, if not personal greed and power. ... economic growth, for all its material benefits for a few, has wreaked ecological havoc... at some point many people recognize that they are reflections of a culture that has perpetrated environmental deterioration. With only a modicum of self-reflection a person must ask: to what extent am i responsible for all of this?” (Thomasow, 2002, Pg 155).

Thomasow  (2002)  identifies  how  people  go  through  a  variety  of  distinguishable  phases  as  they  acknowledge  the  magnitide  of  destruction:      Initially  they  claim  some  form  of  ignorance,  and  then  blame  a  perceived  perpetrator  –  greedy  industrialists,  imperial  nation-­‐states,  misguided  worldviews  –  some  form  of  externalized  other.      When  forced  in  some  way  to  perform  closer  self-­‐reflection,  they  begin  to  acknowledge    their  own  culpability.    Just  being  a  member  of  the  culture,  consuming  goods  based  in  destruction,  and  not  doing  anything  to  stop  these  atrocties,  is  perpetration.    This  leads  to  feelings  of  existential  guilt  and  

shame.    For  a  while  people  find  themselves  moving  back  and  forth  from  the  “perpetrator  without”  to  the  “perpetrator  within”  aspects  of  the  “blame-­‐guilt  loop”.    Some  are  inspired  to  lifestyle  changes  and  action.    I  see  all  of  this  in  clients.      

  A  number  of  writers  refer  to  Fingarette,  in  The  Self  in  Transformation  (1963),    who  interpreted  the  psychodynamic  and  spiritual  implications  of  blame  and  guilt,  and  followed  with  how  these  feelings  can  be  transformed  into  responsibilty  and  action.    Beginning  with  conscious  description  of  the  blame  experience  people  spend  time  in  the  emotional,  quasi-­‐pleasurable  brooding  upon  the  others  wrongdoings;  the  increase  in  self-­‐righteousness,  the  moralistic  attack  upon  the  wrongdoer,  and  the  resulting  sense  of  catharsis.    Then,  i  observe,  most  people  go  back  to  doing  what  they  were  doing,  being  how  they  were  being.    What  is  very  important  here  psychologically  is  the  dissonance  which  is  always  below  the  surface  and  remains  unconscious,  leading  to  what  I  call  “emotional  leakage”  in  the  form  of  the  predictable,  involuntary,  sponataneous  blaming  behaviours. At  this  point  a  different  form  of  depression  has  developed,  usually  with  self-­‐destructive  undertones.    Once  this  happens  people  sometimes  develop  symptoms  major  enough  to  require  interaction  with  other  people,  which  can  then  make  the  situation  worse  or  better.  

What  allows  and  supports,  encourages  and  forces  people  to  move  through  these  stages  so  they  can  take  responsibilty  for  their  actions  and  move  forward  to  second  order  change  in  themselves  and  society?    

Transforming Moral Distress into an Emergent Moral Will to Power

There  are  a  number  of  specific  experiences  of  ecodespair.    One  is  of  moral  distress  –  where  people  can  see  what  the  right  thing  to  do  is  in  the  situation  but  cannot,  do  it  –  for    there  will  be  big  consequences.        The  best  antidote  is  to  establish  and  maintain  equanimity.     As  Joanna  Macy  says,  despair  cannot  be  banished  by  injections  of  optimism  or  sermons  on  positive  thinking.  Despair  must  be  acknowledged  and  named,  and  appreciated  as  a  normal  human  response.    “If  you  are  not  enraged,  you  are  not  paying  attention”  was  a  meme  around  a  few  years  ago.    People  ofen  feel  shame  for  feeling  angry.    I  often  find  myself  looking  a  client  in  the  eye  and  saying  it    is  healthy  for  you  to  feel  these  emotions,  it  would  

not  be  normal  for  you  to  not  feel  these  feelings,  given  what  you  know,  or  given  what  you  have  seen,  or  experienced.  Their  nervous  systems  often  visibly  relaxe  and  there  is  a  release  of  tears.    Unless  there  is  a  serious  trauma  background  that  hasn’t  been  worked  through,  people  predictably  move  back  into  their  bodies  fairly  quickly  at  this  point,  and  a  deep  breath  heralds  a  reconnection  with  themselves,  others  who  feel  the  same  way,  and  Life  itself.      

Now  there  is  energy  from  the  thawing  psyche  and  body.    Energy  that  can  intentionally  be  used  to  heal  the  person  and  the  Lifeworld.      

“Despair  work”  is  different  from  griefwork  in  that  its  aim  is  not  acceptance  of  loss  –  indeed,  the  “loss”  ...  is  hardly  to  be  “accepted”.    But  it  is  similar  in  the  dynamics  unleashed  by  the  willingness  to  acknowledge,  feel  and  express  inner  pain.    From  my  own  work  and  that  of  others,  i  know  that  we  can  come  to  terms  with  apocalyptic  anxieties  in  ways  that  are  integrative  and  liberating,  opening  awareness  not  only  to  planetrary  distress,  but  also  to  the  hope  inhernet  in  our  own  capacity  to  change”  (Joanna,  World  as  Lover,  World  as  Self,  page  16.)  

By  acknowledging  the  feelings  of    moral  distress,  which  follow  from  witnessing  ecological  wounds,    people  access  their  own  will  to  power,    more  able  to  intentionally  transform  their  fear  and  suffering  into  commitment  and  action.    From  here  some  people  can  emerge  to  lead  public  process,  policy  development,  and  effective  strategies  for  action  –  or  be  in  many  ways  supportive  of  this  -­‐  all  of  which  can  only  happen  if  people  are  moved  at  this  deep,  inner  level.      “If  you  cannot  take  moral  action  then  you  are  in  a  state  of  moral  distress”  ;  “Our  goal  is  to  increase  our  moral  sensitivity  so  our  moral  character  can  take  moral  action  whenever  possible,    so  that  we  do  not  go  into  moral  distress  and  become  demoralized”  (Roshi  Joan,  August,  2009).          

Many  people  live  not  only  with  awareness  of  what  is  going  on  in  the  world,  but  the  moral  distress  of  not  quite  being  able  to  live  up  to  the  goals  and  ideals  of  an  ecologically  intelligent  life  and  feeling  they  don’t  have  enough  impact  on  the  big  picture;  they  feel  hopeless  and  helpless.      I  often  feel  as  i  sit  with  these  clients  that  we  are  about  the  work  of  evolving  the  human  nervous  system  from  overwhelmed  into  actionability.    We  have  the  neuroscience  in  place,  and  an  understanding  of  where  physics  meets  psychology,  and  we  know  about  

intentionality  of  consciousness  and  have  ways  of  establishing  this  and  reflecting  to  see  what  we  are  developing.    We  are  shifting  nervous  systems  and  embodied  consciousness  structures  in  order  to  be  in  this  world.  For  example,    living  on  the  eightfold  path  as  a  percpetual  framework  for  reflexivity,  as  a  culture,  as  a  species,  as  a  single  or  collective  consciousness,  as  a  substream  within  these  or  as  a  key  to  the  pattern  that  connects,  and  as  a  way  to  intentionally  reconnect.          

The  measure  of  both  therapeutic  and  moral  progress  is  the  ability  to  acknowledge    both  feelings  of  guilt  and  moral  responsibility  for  doing  something  about  the  issues  created  by  our  species,  and  actually  changing  way  of  being.    One  of  many  things  we  have  learned  in  studying  colonialism  is  that  the  path  to  maturity  and  insight,  both  as  individuals  and  members  of  a  community,  is  learning  how  to  include  the  historical  legacy  of  our  ancestors,  taking  reponsibility  for  changing  worldviews  and  healing  outcomes  over  which  we  personally  had  no  control.    This  is  an  essential  aspect  of  interconnectedness  as  it  occurs  through  space  and  time.      Joanna  Macy’s  work  evokes  this,  allowing  us  to  merge  the  suffering  of  the  past  with  the  liberation  of  the  future.    This  is  a  precarious  balance,  being  present  with  what  co-­‐arose  from  before,  with  the  potential  to  co-­‐create  tomorrow,  held  within  the  conscious  being  of  choices  made  in  this  moment.    Time  is  not  linear.  

When  we  live  in  a  field  of  interconnectivity,  as  consciously  as  we  can,    we  respond  according  to  our  best  moral  judgement  and  our  deepest  compassion.    There  is  the  therapeutic  and  moral  imperative  to  construct  a  viable  future.    We  already  have  basic  knowledge  at  some  level  about  what  the  suffering  is,  what  causes  all  of  this,  and  how  to  stop  it  -­‐    although  as  of  yet  enough  of  us  don’t  know  it  well  enough  to  collectively  walk    the  path  of  well-­‐being.    Each  of  us  is  a  particle  in  the  wave.    Which  way  do  we  send  our  energy?      

Most  people  who  can  survive  such  a  process  are  drawn  to  action  for  moral  or  reasons,  inspired  by  their  experiences  in  nature.    This  is  very  well  described  by  my  interviewee:    ““this  may  all  be  happening  but  it  won’t  go  unchallenged,  not  on  our  watch”;    “I  am  driven  by  moral  responsibility  and  passion  for  our  environment”;“I  have  the  skills  and  have  the  knowledge  –  I  have  the  role”;    “We  

are  so  destructive.    I  am  here  to  bring  awareness  and  change  and  do  something  and  to  me  it’s  my  reason  for  being  here,  and  i  feel  a  deep  sense  of  responsibility”.    “I  have  a  tremendous  drive  and  passion  and  determination”.  

“Sustainable  Psyches”  

 “Environmentalsits  cannot  implement  a  sustainable  society  unless  they  learn  how  to  cultivate  sustainable  psyches.  These  are  parallel  healing  processes,  the  ability  to  restore  an  ecosystem  and  the  personal  awareness  to  restore  one’s  psyche.  An  overdeveloped,  polluted,  disturbed  ecosystem  is  no  different  from  an  exploited,  burned-­‐out  psyche.    Both  require  the  full  attention  of  the  reflective  activist”  (  Thich  Nhat  Hanh,  quoted  in  Brown  and  Glaver,  2009,  pg  164).      

How  do  we  cultivate  sustainable  psyches?    How  do  we  develop  the  personal  awareness  to  restore  our  psyche?  How  do  we  give  full  attention  to  the  health  of  the  psyche?  How  do  we  see  it  as  a  reflection  of  the  state  of  the  world  and  possibility  in  it,  and  the  world  as  the  reflection  for  this  in  us  as  well?      First,  the  answer  to  all  of  these  is  to  intend  to  do  so,  directing  our  will  to  power  to  focusing  on  these  questions  and  talking  about  them  and  attending  to  them,  and  living  by  the  worlview  we  reflexively  develop.      

Part  of  building  sustainability  is  to  intentionally  develop  reflexivity,  as  the  system  is  constantly  in  motion,  you  constantly  have  frameworks  for  seeing  and  describing,  and  discerning  and  deciding.    We  can  access  a  clear  manifestation  in  the  internal  world,  in  the  soma,  in  the  emotional  body,  in  the  heart,  in  the  mind,  in  the  nervous  and  muscular  systems,  but  also  in  being  in  the  world.      Much  of  sustainability  for  most  people  active  in  ecological  issues  is  to  fill  their  cup  and  get  to  inner  peace  when  they  are  in  Nature,  when  they  feel  gratitude  and  wonder  –  my  case  study  and  the  group  members  all  do  this,  and  describe  it  as    fundamental  to  their  well-­‐being.      

As  the  case  study  said  –  “You  have  to  be  in  it,  to  feel  it”.      She  elaborated  on  how  you  have  to  be  in  the  Lifeworld  to  feel  the  connectivity,  and  the  physiological  attunement  that  occurs,  and  the  emotional  equanimity  that  occurs  through  being  in  wilderness,  and  carry  that  with  you  into  the  boardrooms  and  meetings  of  all  kinds,  and  into  the  hard  places  to  look  the  hardest  parts  about  our  current  

evolutionary  development  in  the  eye.    And  turn  it  inside  to  ensure  highest  ethical  and  moral  integrity.    Be  deeply  honest  and  responsible.    Being  in  the  wilderness  is  a  big  enough  and  old  enough  and  strong  enough  container  for  being  a  fully  as  possible  conscious  human.    Since  this  is  an  infinite  path  and  the  suffering  is  great,  sometimes  large  tracts  of  wilderness  are  required  for  it.      

Transforming  Despair  to  Action    

With  expression  of  despair  we  have  released  energy  to  be  directed  toward  right  action.      If  we  don’t  move  it  to  action,  just    talking  about  it  pulls  people  out  of  distraction  but  leaves  them  in  the  despair.    It  is  best  to  take  small  doses  of  despair  and  transform  them  into  a  clear  strategy  and  commitment  that  is  doable.    Releasing  large  doses  of  despair  without  dealing  effectively  with  it  simply  traumatizes  the  person  and  does  damage.    The  energy  most  often  will  move  along  much  practiced  paths  which  are  already  causing  the  person  such  suffering.    The  most  common  black  hole  is  to  make  a  big  plan  and  do  nothing,  and  the  despair  deepens.  The  premise  of  titration  is  crucial.    It  is  most  important  to  move  it  through  and  end  each  round  with  a  deep  settling  into  the  connectivity,  intentional  integration  into  worldview  and,    and  trust  in  oneself  to  complete  the  action.    Then  we  can  build  on  each  action  taken  within  the  field  of  interconnectivity.      

Healthy  Narratives  :  The  Root  of  Basic  Effective  Action  Plans  

Stepping  out  of  the  narrative  at  certain  points  when  the  emotion  emerges  toward  expression;  being  present  with  and  feeling  the  emotions  as  they  emerge;  not  identifying  with  them,  clinging  or  sinking  into  them,  or  floating  of  into  dissociation  with  them,  are  important  aspects  to  integrating  the  emotion  into  the  narrative.    Delve    into  the  minute  slice  of  experience  with  fullest  attention,  then  back  into  a  layer  or  several  of  different  perspectives.        We  are  always  storying,  so  we  work  with  the  intentional  consciousness  in  shaping  the  story.    What  story  feels  healthy  and  good,  the  body  lets  us  know.    We  are  a  species  that  creates  stories,  and  becomes  the  stories.    When  our  minds  select  and  order  incoming  information  into  meaning,  we  are  creating  narratives.    And  the  narratives  shape  the  sense  perception,  information  gathering  systems.    These  are  effected  by  emotions,  so  make  those  conscious,  bringing  full  presence  and  ground  to  them;  hold  them  with  

gentle  kindness  and  compassion,  they  body  will  indicate  saturation  point,  or  when  the  energy  has  dissipated.    This  is  Right  View.    Right  Worldview.  

Another  way  to  perceive  the  narratives  is  that  a  truly  scientific  attitude  means  not  believing  everything  you  think,  or  someone  else  thinks.  It  means  that  your  thinking  keeps  encountering  phenomena  and  experience  that  cannot  be  parsed,  labelled,  reduced  or  boxed.    It  means  not  knowing.    “If  modern  science  has  not  created  a  coherent  worldview,  and  consumerism  does  not  fill  the  emptiness  of  life  lived  without  one,  how  can  we  restore  our  connection  to  the  rest  of  life  on  Earth  and  live  rich,  fulfilling  lives?  Where  can  we  find  a  new  story?”  (Suzuki,  2002,    Pg  25).      Here  Suzuki  refers  to  Berry:      “it’s  all  a  question  of  story.    We  are  in  trouble  just  now  because  we  do  not  have  a  good  story.    We  are  in  between  stories.    The  old  story,  the  account  of  how  we  fit  into  it,  is  no  longer  effective.    Yet  we  have  not  learned  the  new  story”  (Thomas  Berry  The  Dream  of  the  Earth,  quoted  in  Suzuki,  2002,  The  Sacred  Balance).      

 It  is  our  nature  for  us  to  stand  in  the  void  and  in  the  interconnected  web  and  story  and    conceptualize  about  it.    We  don’t  even  need  to  try,  it  is  just  what  our  brain  does,  whether  we  know  it  or  not,  so  it  is  important  that  we  do  it  intentionally  lest  the  unconscious  patterns  take  over,  or  we  give  it  over  to  people  with  immoral  motives.    We  do  need  to  try  to  remember  we  created  frames,  maps,  boxes,  compartments,  models,  theories  and  blankets    in  order  to  try  to  understand  it  all.      We  need  to  build  the  courage  to  stand  in  not-­‐knowing  and  drop  these  mental  formations  and/or  adapt  them  as  needed,  in  order  to  understand  existence  and  our  place  in  it  with  ever  increasing  complexity  while  staying  in  touch  with  the  most  basic  principles.      

The  Buddha  was  Right    

So  this  is  the  outcome  of  my  project.    I  knew  that  going  in  but  what  i  have  flowing  through  my  work  now  is  a  much  deeper  seeing  and  feeling,  just  because  i  spent  so  much  time  and  energy  focusing  on  it.    The  Four  Noble  Truths  and  the  Eightfold  Path  can  be  helpful  as  a  loom.      These  frameworks  help  in  making  progression  along  an  intentional  evolutionary  path  toward  manifesting  well-­‐being  and  co-­‐creating  it  with/in  the  web  of  Life.    I  am  a  particle  in  a  wave,  my  pace  and  

direction  is  influenced  by  and  influences  the  wave.    I  commit  my  life  energy,  the  life  energy  that  flows  through  the  form  which  i  inhabit  through  this  time  and  in  this  space  and  across  this  dimension.  i  commit  this  life  energy  to  lean  into  the  farthest  edges  of  that  wave  that  is  possible  for  my  nervous  system  and  its  adaptabiilty  and  creativity  as  developed  to  date,  and  as  i  intend  it  to  continue  to  develop  in  the  future.      

As  within,  so  without.  The  shifts  we  are  trying  to  navigate  over  time  move  from  what  we  know,and  what  we  don’t  know    about  ourselves,  to  how  we  relate  with  what  we  know  and  what  we  don’t  know,  to  intentionally  forming  ourselves  within    a  field  of  Interconnectivity,  within  the  whole  of  the  Lifeworld.  

Deepening  Ecointelligence      We  are  having  to  come  into  consciousness  of  how  we  are  co-­‐weaving  our  

Lifeworld  and  how  to  more  intentionally  do  so  to  the  betterment  of  all  things.    We  then  have  the  job  of  constructing  the  coherent  narrative,  of  weaving  a  blanket  out  of  these  threads  of  thought.      Holding  this  thought  of  interconnectivity  deeply  also  means  that  there  is  ultimately  no  metaposition  from  which  we  can  make  pronouncements  about  existence  and  our  experience  in  it.    Given  where  we  are  in  the  overall  process  of  disorganization  and  reorganization,  death  and  rebirth,  things  may  get  much  worse  before  they  get  better,  and  some  things  we  have  already  done  from  which    we  will  never  recover.    Extinction  is  extinction.    And  we  better  look  it  in  the  eye  so  we  stop.    We  must  keep  adapting  and  creating  new  frameworks  for  dealing  with  outcomes  that  are  already  given,  and  for  diverting  from  even  more  damage.        Darwin’s  basic  teachings  were  that  mutation  and  uncertainty  prevail.    Evolutionary  psychology  can  use  this  concept  of  interconnectivity  to  join  the  threads  of  what  we  know  enough  of  now  to  sense  a  representation  of  the  web  as  far  as  possible,  and  to  weave  a  stronger  fabric,  one  which  keeps  everything  healthy.    This  requires  strong  and  honest  threads.      

These  are  not  only  end  times.    We  can  see  glimmerings  of  what  is  emergent,    enough  to  weave  a  fabric  that  is  complex  and  beautiful  and  reaches  out  to  unlimited,  unknown  zones.    Our  new  forms  of  thinking  and  being  must  have  the  

patterns  in  them  already  of  transcending  the  apocalyptic  vision.      With  mindfulness  and  intention  we  can  move  from  an  entangled  web  of  greed,  delusion,  and  aversion  to  suffering,  toward  nurturing  life  and  feeling  wonder  in  the  face  of  what  is,  as  we  look  it  all  in  the  eye.  

 

 

 

 

 

Weaving  the  Diamond  Sutra    

This  project  is  a  weaving  with  words  ,  each  thread  a  construct  in  a  fabric  that    reflects  a  complex  understanding  of  existence.    Weaving  is  making  a  fabric,  every  thread  intentionally  in  place.    Like  a  belief  system  -­‐  adapted,  altered,  reorganized  into    integrated  ecelctic.  I  am  weaving  my  own  path  as  i  go.    Trying  at  times  to  allign  myself  with  others.    With  some  more  than  others.    What  thoughts  or  practices  or  frameworks    help  me  express  my  answer  to  the  question:  “How  do  I  best  be  in  the  truth  of  the  ecological  crsis  that  we  are  creating?”      

Oh!    You  should  see  this  world,  a  drop  of  dew,  a  bubble  in  a  stream,  lightning  in  a  summer  cloud,  a  phantom  and  a  dream.  

With  Deep  Attunement.    To  ‘see’  as  in  being  in  with  fullest  presence  possible.  Neurological  wires  intentionally  plugged  into  the  Oneness.  Perceptual  maps  synchronized  with  the  Beauty  and  Harmony  with/in  the  Lifeworld.    Mind  using  curiosity  to  see  things  with  Fresh  Eyes.  A  drop  of  dew.    A  bubble  in  a  stream.  Each  exquisite  and  a  miracle  and  transitory,  and  energy  and  elements  moving  through    flow.      

Gathering  wool.    Gathering  thoughts.    I  am  weaving  with  wool  from  all  over  the  world  –  lots  from  the  Canadian  West  Coast  Gulf  Islands,  lots  from  various  places  in  South  Americas  –  labels  say  ecuador  and  uraguay  and  peru,  peru,  peru.    I  have  wool  from  italy,  france,  spain,  india,  nepal,  england,  scotland,  ireland,  ,    norway,  swede,    europe,  new  zealand.    Lots  of  individual  and  family  lives  based  in  

the  economic  development  and  resources  spent  getting  this  wool  to  my  studio  so  i  can  select  from  this  incredible  palette.    And  I  think  of  Mauss  and  The  Gift.  

So  I  have  made  16  of  these  Diamond  Path  fabrics.    Each  weaving  is  a  connection  on  the  Diamond  Path,    these  weavings  have  threads  touched  by  each  of  us  in  the  Zendo,  woven  together  and  sent  out  into  the  world  in  many  places.  We  are  connected  by  the  experiences  that  are  woven,  threads  of  experience,  in  the  zendo;  concepts  and  moments  and  felt-­‐sense  of  connectivity  and  reality  co-­‐forming.    Our  interconnectivity  is  represented  in  these  weavings,  and  they  reflect  a  process  of  chaplaincy.    Different  threads  of  existence  interact  synergistically  when  placed  together.    New  properties  that  arise  from  complexes  cannot  be  predicted  from  the  known  properties  of  their  individual  parts.    These  “emergent  properties”  only  exist  within  the  whole.    My  journey  of  chaplaincy  is  from  Cape  Beale  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  wide  and  deep  ranging,  testing  Equanimity  Through  Ecodespair.      Something  has  worked  here.    I  feel  more  enlivened  and  clear  on  what  i  am  here  for  and  where  and    how  to  serve.  

When  i  am  about  to  be  overwhelmed  with  emotion  or  activation  while  deeply  seeing  life  as  it  is  with    such  large-­‐scale  intense  suffering,  feeling  in  my  body  the  permanent  sorrows  and  losses,  my  mind  now  offers  the  precept  of  “not-­‐knowing”.    It  is  an  air  tank  in  the  void;  a  log  in  the  vast  ocean;  a  tent  within  a  blizzard.      Yes,  when  i  am  regulating  ecodespair  weaving  works  very  well.    As  i  write  I  weave.  As  I  weave  I  write.    I  am  the  weaver,  I  am  the  woven  one  becomes  a  form  of  refuge.    Weaving  connections  in  thought,  between  people.  Weaving  conceptual  maps,    and  my  perceptual  neurosystem.  When  i  read  someone  else’s  expression  of  a  concept  i  try  it  on  in  my  phenomenological  world  and  attune  to  and  with,  feel  and  resonate  with.    As  a  psychologist  i  sit  with  people  to  be  more  attuned  and  more  honest,  to  base  their  actions  on  connectivity  With  non-­‐Self,  With  World,  and  WithIn  Spirit.        Buddhism,  among  other  things,  is  a  frame  for  psychotherapy  –  body,  heart  and  mind  in  a  collective  context;  it  is  about  making  the  unconscious  conscious,  it  is  about  expressions  and  understanding  processes.      Thich  Naht  Hanh  and  The  Dalai  Lama  both  use  models  of  Stop,  Calm,  attune  and  align,  look  deeply  and  be  witness  with  what  emerges,  then  perceive  the  8-­‐fold  path  to  see  how  to  be  in  such  a  way  that  well-­‐being  is  ensured.    Instead  of  staying  at  Noble  truths  one,  two  or  three  –  moving  forward  in  the  4th.  

Looking  deeply,  mind  insists  upon  distractions.  This  often  is  the  first  stop,  the  first  regulatory  strategy,    against  a  spiral  into  ecodespair.    My  mind  wants    to  pull  out  books,  stacking,  flipping,    marking,  reflecting  on  concepts,  phrasings,  images,  mappings,  theories  and  action  plans  –  all  offered  by  others  in  the  collective  who  are  focusing  on  these  same  themes  and  questions.    I  feel  less  alone,  i  feel  the  energy  of  the  wave,  i  intend  the  direction  of  my  particle  in  an  intentional  wave.  Books  are  a  way  of  attuning  with  the  herd,  and  we  are  herd  animals,  pack  anaimals.    Once  i  connect,    I  calm.    Then  my  eye  moves  to  the  openest  place  in  the  view  out  of  the  window  –  sky  woven  with  pine,  fur,  cedar.  

  This  impermanence,  we  are  wired  to  survive  it  or  we  wouldn’t  still  be  here.    It  is  painful  for  us  when  someone  dies  and  we  somehow  go  on.    To  be  assaulted  with  images  about  species  or  ecosystems  or  the  planet  dying  is  beyond  both  our  comprehension  and  our  wiring  .    Furthermore,  if  this  was  happening  because  a  comet  was  going  to  hit  us,  or  a  solar  flare  burn  us  off,  it  would  be  one  thing.    That  we  have  created  this  mess  is  something  else  altogether.    Overall,  we  aren’t  facing  it  very  honestly  because  it  is  felt  as  ‘too  much’.    For  people  who  can  hold  large  chunks  of  this  current  narrative  for  moments  at  a  time  the  impact  is  huge  on  their  nervous,  cognitive,  and  emotional  systems.    Mutating  these  conceptually  discernable  aspects  of  our  being  which  are  intertwined,  attuned  with  the  body  of  the  Lifeworld  means  we  feel  deeply  the  suffering  of  it  as  much  as  we  feel  the  Beauty  and  the  imperative  of  action.    This  is  our  way  into  the  next  form.    In  the  group,  when  we  tuned  in  to  this,  all  experienced  intense  physical  and  emotional  pain  and  some  version  of  joy  –  usually  connected  to  consciousness  within  the  mystery.    Transforming  moral  distress  is  our  necessity,  we  need  to  just  let  it  drive  us,  and  maintain  our  equanimity  and  felt–sense  of  connectivity.  Our  capacity  and  success  in  adapting  worldviews,  nervous  systems,  ways  of  being  is  our  main  hope.  

We  have  arrived  at  massive  disorganization  so  that  we  can  re-­‐organize  in  a  more  complex  form  right  at  the  roots  of  our  culture,  economies,  physiologies,  and  ways  of  being  in  order  to  better  hold  more  of  the  reality  of  the  Lifeworld  in  which  we  live.    If  we  stay  in  emotional  overwhelm  the  wish  to  die  starts  to  emerge,  as  part  of  the  plan  to  kill  off  the  pain,  with  addictions  for  numbing  or  thoughts  of  suicide,  or  complete  distractions,  often  meaningless  –  certainly  relative  to  this.    It  

is  best  then,  in  order  not  to  actually  kill  the  physical  body  or  the  attunement  and  connectivity,  to  titrate  the  quantity  of  qualitatively  intense  experience.  And  to  ride  with  equanimity  the  waves  of  pain  and  joy,  hypoactivation  and  hyperactivation,  and  to  intend  the  energy  in  the  waves,  and  the  particples  in  the  waves,  toward  well-­‐being.      This  is  weaving  –  in  for  a  few  and  out  for  a  few.  Pendulating.    Seeing  patterns  and  progressions  and  watching  things  complete  themselves  and  new  versions  appear.    All  of  this  at  a  micro  and  macro  level.  Each  thread  intentionally  interwoven  with  the  others.  

I  end  up  with  a  shawl  or  blanket  that  is  fluid  and  moves  and  evolves  to  shape  itself  around  and  with  you  as  you  move  through  life.    It  accumulates  memories,  and  these  can  be  blown  out  by  a  moment  in  a  zen  breeze  when  the  fibers  expand  and  fluff  up  to  hold  more  space  between  them.  Ready  to  be  reshaped  while  wrapped  around  us.    It  is  a  fluid  art  form.    

To  some  extent  i  am  in  control  of  threads  –  but  that  is  just  representative  of    where  i  attune  my  perceptual  faculties.    This  process  is  ancient  in  the  human  psyche  –  weaving  was  one  of  our  first  art  forms  –  some  suggest  it  must  have  preceeded  cave  painting.    Most  likely  people  sat  in  a  circle  around  a  fire.    Makes  sense  to  me.    People  were  organizing  things  needed  for  survival;    weaving  clothing  and  blankets  came  naturally  while  building  and  tending  a  fire  with  threads  of  plant  fiber  in  hand.    Baskets  to  carry  things  would  have  been  an  important  leap,  suggesting  further  innovation  as  needed,  based  on  what  was  ready  to  hand  in  a  moment,  and  then  intentionally  gathered  afterwards.    I  think  weaving  taught  them  a  lot.  Humans  have  become  incredibly  adaptive,  creative  and  innovative  when  needed.  We  also  teach  each  other.    Right  now  we  need,  the  Life  world  needs  us,  to  intentionally  shape  a  next  evolutionary  progression.      

I  go  to  a  precept  of  not  knowing  and  this  allows  me  to  weave  a  different  future  than  ecocide,  one  that  is  congruent  with  a  lot  of  other  aspects  of  our  species  as  well.  It  is  shifting  over  to  another  perceptual  frame,  like  a  different  colour  in  the  weft  that  makes  what  is  strung  emerge  differently.    My  job  then  is  to  be  present  and  bear  witness  to  what  emerges,  in  this  case  on  the  loom,  or  on  the  computer  screen,  or  on  the  shores.  When  i  sink  into  these  immediate  

perceivables  my  heart  sings  the  beautitudes,  my    neurochemistry  shifts,  my  physiology  levels.      In  this  moment  i  am  happy  to  be  alive,  the  gnawing  inside  about  the  state  of  the  world,  that  is  otherwise  constant,  begins  to  dissapear  into  far  background,  until  it  reemerges.      It  is  truth  that  animals  are  dying  as  i  type,  that  children  are  starving  and  rivers  are  burning.    It  is  also  truth  that  the  trees  i  am  looking  at  are  drinking  deeply  of  the  winter  rains,  the  frogs  are  singing,    and  the  creek  is  calling  and  i  have  the  sauna  warming  up  and  a  weaving  to  come  to  and  my  old  dog  and  my  old  cat  and  the  fire  which  all  need  tending  as  the  day  progresses.    And  that  at  this  moment  it  is  all  i  can  do.      

 

At  Zen  Brain  Roshi    talked  about  social  and  political  implications  for  a  world  that  is  addicted  to  self.    The  shenpa  of  the  narrative  self  that  is  constructed  causes  a  lot  of  suffering.  What  about  a  world  that  is  interdependent  and  interconnected?    She  referred  to  Dogan    and  the  concept  of:  myriad  things  are  without  a  divided  self.    Sentience  is  no-­‐self,    “To  study  the  way  is  to  study  the  self;    

to  study  the  self  is  to  forget  the  self;    

to  forget  the  self  is  to  be  actualized  by  myriad  things.”  

I  have  my  wool  laid  out  and  it  is  time  to  weave  the  chaplaincy  blanket.      I  watch  while  my  heart  and  body  select  the  colours  and  skeins.    Downstairs  to  the  loom.    Stoke  the  fireplace  and  proceed  to  set  up  my  threads.    Wind  the  wool  on  to  measure  until  there  are  352  threads  for  the  warp.    I  want  the  three  pure  precepts  as  stripes,    with  two  other  stripes  that  will  fall  to  the  background  –  these  are  Absolute  Truth  and  Relative  Truth.    So  that  makes  four  sections  for  the  Four  Noble  Truths  and  these  can  build  up  in  waves  in  which  particles  will  simply  appear.    I  often  use  sets  of  8  or  16  threads  for  the  Eightfold  Path  or  the  16  wonderful  precepts.    I  won’t  know  what  this  will  really  look  like  until  the  weft  is  on;  the  fabric  will  emerge.      But  there  are  basic  rules  on  the  loom.    Everything  is  connected  -­‐  colours,  threads,  patterns.    In  these  moments  I  feel  in  synch  with  the  art  form  and  I  feel  a  rhythm  and  I  feel  I  am  not  alone  in  the  process.  There  is  a  bigger  field  of  which  I  am  a  part.    It  isn’t  like  someone  else  talks  to  me  or  guides  

my  hand.    It  is  far  more  subtle  and  less  distinctive  than  that.    It  is  just  these  types  of  indicators  of  harmony  and  synchrony  that  let  me  know  I  am  a  part  of  the  pattern,  i  shape    and  am  shaped  by,  the  pattern.