Symbiosis

Scientist James Lovelock suggests Gaia, the place we call home, is generating the conditions for life of which human beings are a subspecies in the abundant diversity of nature. Life is further described by Lynn Margulis as a conversation, in other words she would say development is community ecology and evolution is community ecology over time. This is symbiosis, it's life as we know it (or ought to know it!), it's all about cooperation, interplay and the dance. Earth and life upon it is indivisible.

The questions that challenges those at the frontier, on the transformative edge, is how to describe something new with a language that is old? Or maybe it's the other way round life and symbiosis is not new, it's the everything. What's relatively new in this scene is homos sapiens and from there the use of language. So really the challenge is how to describe something old with a language that is new. Not only that, but how to participate, contribute and keep journeying on the invisible path whilst resisting dominant thought collectives that are unbalanced, rigid and too often violent?

Sometimes the metaphors needed to describe our new and emerging understanding of life are yet to be born from our creative universal consciousness. Nevertheless we must continue because in flowing in the dance new ways of being are possible. Be watchful in this process for loneliness, abandonment, and disapproval. The invisible path, unseen by the many, brings us back into community, into harmony and affinity with all life. Language can be tricky, it is not always necessary, sometimes silence is enough. Listen to the silence to know the invisible path, to feel a part of the community ecology, to sense your place of healing and to reconnect to the web of life.

Personal values and their relationship with wider society mores ...

Here are some word's on the subject of personal values and their relationship with wider society mores. As you read them you maybe reminded of your own lessons from life;

"I never succeeded in learning much from my school lessons, but with living I learned well ...
I learned that injustice is endemic and is usually made acceptable by being carefully ensconced in tradition.
I learned that all people respond to stories that elevate the human spirit and appeal to our deeper sensibilities.
I learned that without courage and without risk life will pass like sand between our fingers.
I learned that the wild places, the animals, the clouds and the small streams have in them a magic that can heal and comfort.
I learned that friends, true friends, are more powerful than the worst enemy and more valuable than almost anything.
I learned that persistence, the absolute determination never to give up, never to lose hope, never to succumb to cynicism, will always eventually lead to attainment.
I learned that nothing is worse or more dangerous to a man or the world he inhabits than believing beauty be anything less than a goddess.
I learned that I did not have to participate in a world of mortgages, pensions, cars, tedious work and boring relationships.
I learned that in giving we do truly receive, and that to belong we must serve something bigger than ourselves.
I learned that the worst slavery exists in peoples minds and their unwillingness to be self-critical.
I learned that I could have adventure, could love beautiful women, could love children, could find meaning, fulfillment, and joy.
.... if, if, if, if, if ... [I] took a course for the unknown." (p.36)

For more of Mac's story on the invisible path take a look at his book.

Straw Bale House

This straw bale hobbit house was built in woodland in Wales. It took 4 months to create and cost about £3,000. I love it. What an amazing home. My new New Year's resolution is to learn how to build one. Wow, the thought of being able to live in my own home, built out of natural materials and in harmony with nature blows me away. For more info check the link http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm

Possibly the Best Christmas Music Video EVER!!!

Ouch! I'm getting a very bad 1980's haircut flashback and need to go and lie down for a while.

Copenhagen COP15

It's hard to wake up this morning and not be disappointed at what took place in Copenhagen. There must be, and are, positives to take from what happened. Obama named the need for trust. Trust between nations, trust between people. That there wasn't enough trust is possibly one of the contributing factors to the lack of agreement, the chaos and general failure to move forward on climate change. Obama also said the 'time for talk is over, it's now a time for action'. Well the world is watching. Not only that but if there are others like me, the world will move for change whether the politicians can negotiate and agree on targets, frameworks and policy's. Why? Because each of us knows what to do already and the time for waiting for a collective consensus, for a coalition of movement, for everyone to stand up and be counted together is over. We each have our own sense of knowing what to do, go do it! And as for COP15, the IMF, WTO, Davos, World Bank - it all may simply become irrelevant.

Hugo Chavez, took the time to look out the window at the conference centre, he could sense the seen and the unseen around him and this is what he said:



Barak Obama spent 13 hours at Copenhagen and this is what he said:



And finally Naomi Klein, activist and writer, observed Hilary Clinton in action and this is what she said:



We could get ourselves tied up in knots trying to figure out what the above and other well intentioned politicians, negotiators and commentators are talking about in an effort to determine what to do - or we can each go do what we know we need to do. Don't wait for someone else to tell you what to do!

Chuckie Chick gets festive and is visited by a beautiful golden angel ...

Oh the weather outside is delightful

And the fire inside is frightful,

All Chuckie chick wants to do is,

Play in snow,

Play in snow,

Play in snow!

Astonishing the Gods

"Do you realise that you know more than you think you know? Do you realise that if you use all you know, and all the possibilities within you, that there is almost nothing that you can't do? More serious than that is this fact: if you use more than you know that you know, the world will be as paradise. What we know compared to what we don't know is like a grain of sand compared to a mountain. But what we don't know, our unsuspected possibilities, is immense in us. That is our true power and kingdom. When nations do amazing things, that is because they create from what they know. And that is a lot. When they do extraordinary things, that is because they create from places in themselves they didn't suspect were there. But when a nation or individual creates things so sublime - in a sort of permanent genius of inventiveness and delight - when they create things so miraculous that they are not seen or noticed or remarked upon by even the best minds around, then that is because they create always from the vast unknown places within them. They create always from beyond. They make the undiscovered places and infinities in them their friend. They live on the invisible fields of their hidden genius. And so their most ordinary achievements are always touched with genius. Their most ordinary achievements, however, are what the world sees, and acclaims. But their most extraordinary achievements are unseen, invisible, and therefore cannot be destroyed. This endures forever. Such is the dream and reality of this land. I speak with humility."

- Ben Okri, 1999, Astonishing the Gods, Phoenix, London, pp.51-52 -

Thou Gaia Art I

the earth quivers wherever I go

in these zones of ripeness,

and sends out gentle visible waves --

through all things it vibrates in me,

wherever I happen to be

on the drifting floes --

you are the riddle under my feet

the depth in me, wherever I am

you are everywhere --

for Thou Gaia Art I

- Heide Gottner-Abendroth -

Gaia: Goddess of our Time?

Whole Earth from the moon, Apollo mission 1968

"If we stand back from this pageant, and try to see a pattern in the progression of human history and the evolution of consciousness, we might seek help from the philosopher Owen Barfield. In his book Saving the Appearances, Barfield distinguishes three stages in this pattern which he calls ‘Original Participation,’ ‘Withdrawal of Participation’ and ‘Final Participation.’ The first, earliest, stage is the goddess-oriented, hunting, gathering and agricultural phase of human evolution, which enacts what he calls ‘original participation,’ and which he defines as ‘the sense that there stands behind the phenomena and on the other side of them from man, a represented which is of the same nature as man.’ (11) What this means is that nature and humanity did not stand in opposition and did not, therefore, have to be apprehended by different modes of cognition. In the goddess myths all creation shared in the sacredness of the source because all creatures were the children of the Mother, created from the same substance, and all related to each other in a non-hierarchical way. There followed the second stage of the pattern, initiated by the myths of the god whose transcendent divinity orders from beyond creation, by the breath, the word, or the moulding of the clay. This could be characterized by the long process of collective withdrawal of numinosity, or immanent divinity, from nature, and the dissolution of the human bond with nature - setting the outer and the inner world free from each other, so that each could be explored separately. This polarizes humanity and nature - nature becomes an other, an object without soul or spirit - an ‘it’ - as ‘it’ has been for the last three thousand years. Now, he says, is the time for what he calls ‘final participation,’ which recreates the old participative relation to nature, but in an entirely new way: through the Imagination. This involves a dual relation to nature, one in which our contemporary experience of nature as separate from us is honoured but transformed by a conscious act of participation in which our essential identity with nature is experienced at a new level. This would be, in the language of the image, the Sacred Marriage of Goddess and God which brings forth the Child, the new imaginative whole. So the world becomes again a Thou, but a Thou within a poetic vision, honoured through choice and love.
It seems possible to make sense of the resurgence of ‘Gaia’ through this pattern. For when Gaia was the Great Mother Earth and clothed in numinosity, humanity was her child, and participated in her immanent divinity. This was the last of ‘original participation.’ After the long process of opposing and, in this century, despoiling nature, it may be that our images are moving us towards the creation of a new mythology, ‘the mythology of this unifed Earth as of one harmonious being.’ ‘Gaia’ as a metaphor, still bearing the memory of the Goddess yet inspiring us through the imagination, may yet be returning us to the sacredness of Earth who ‘gives life and takes life away.’ This is the ‘final participation’ of which Barfield speaks, as configured in the words of a modern poet, in an anthology entitled Return of the Great Goddess: ‘...for Thou, Gaia, Art I’. (12)"

Jules Cashford GAIA: AN IMAGE FOR OUR TIME? Article for Caduceus, 1997.
http://www.julescashford.com/

Turtle Totem

The turtle has one home in the swirl of water and emotion and another in the steady grounding of the earth. In some traditions the turtle represents mother earth and is the personification of goddess energy. Mother earth is all we need. She will care for us, protect us and nurture us if we do the same for her. The turtle has a shell on her back for protection and to carry her home wherever she maybe.

North America is often referred to as Turtle Island by the indigenous peoples. The turtle can teach us to slowdown and go with the flow. To be careful in new situations and to be patient in reaching our goals. The turtle often shows up in our lives when it is time to retreat into our shells to give us time to consider our ideas and plans until we are ready to express them. In this way turtle teaches us to be adaptable and to find harmony from within.

The turtle may suggest you need to ask yourself the questions; am I seeing as I should? am I hearing as I should? Pay attention to ensure you do not miss opportunities.

No compass can orientate me here, only a pledge to love and walk the terrifying distances before me.

"For the next few miles I simply walk through the pastoral country of Chelser Park, Meadows of serenity. This landscape will take care of me. The open expanse of sky makes me realise how necessary it is to live without words, to be satisfied without answers, to simply be in a world where there is no wind, no drama. To find a place of rest and safety, no matter how fleeting it may be, no matter how illusory, is to regain composure and locate bearings. Picking up stones, I find myself adding to cairns."

Terry Tempest Williams (1995) Desert Quartet: An Erotic Landscape, pantheon Books, New York, p.12.