Coming Home to An Animate World

The Listener
Heron appears and I am drawn in, captivated
Heron invites stillness by the flowing river
Heron brings me joy

Track and observe the patterns
You don't have to know the meaning
The answer is never the answer
What's really interesting is the Mystery

Coming home is coming alive
Resistance and judgement show up
The conditioning to be right
Leads to the suffocation of judgement
Like chains tying my hands together
Constricting my ability to touch the world

Being lost is an achievement
Where any direction leads to surprise
Disorientation shifts my perceptions
Leading to the possibility of the liminal,
the imaginal, inviting in dream states

The Westernised mind emphasise thinking and sensing
Feeling and imagination are dangerous
to the establishment, they don't like it!

If we fall in love with the earth community
We can discover our souls, our unique and precious gifts.
Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness
we are the only life form we know
who is not capable of naturally occupying
it's own niche in the world.

Through our souls we connect with the rest of life
Through our souls we become relational and dynamic beings
Our bodies are always in conversation whether
We are conscious or not
Everyones place in the world matters
I matter
You matter
We all matter
Mary says, 'Let the soft animal of our bodies
love what it loves'

Let your body feel before you mind thinks
Feel yourself touched as well as touching
Seen as well as seeing
Heard as well as hearing
Let your animal self out to play, to be, to relate
Be a visionary artisan of cultural change
Antonio says, 'What have you done to the garden entrusted to you?'

When big emotions get stirred up
Are they ours?
Are they our ancestors?
Are they transpersonal?
Are we tapping into a bigger well of grief?
Grief resonates from our longing to participate
When we honour the dead we enliven the world

Ceremony allows us to participate in the world
As if it mattered

What do the bones say?

We gathered as a near complete group on the Sunday evening to arrive together and meet one another in circle and then around fire. Colin described Becoming Indigenous as a 'connection and remembering of the wild'. This brought me some peace and an alignment with my earlier feelings about the programme. The following morning we walked up to the Elmhirst Centre via the 2000 year old Yew tree to honour and acknowledge this ancient ancestor among us, to mark our presence and the beginnings of our journey together. Colin Campbell held a reading of the Bones. This ritual, a first for me, is from the African continent. Colin has memorised over 600 or more poems out of a pantheon of 6000+. These poems are visionary and metaphoric insights into the communications from the patterns the bones have made in their fallen state.

In Colin's tradition diviners hear the lore. The lore seldom gives easy answers. It will be cryptic, metaphoric and paradoxical. In the opposing forces between the modern and traditional ways a heat is created. The key is holding this heat between the ambiguity and antagonistic forces. Undertaking a reading of the bones invokes the ancestors, human and more than human. We thus click into the greater nature of things. The divining comes from a collective culture. An individual universe culture like we find in the West is ontologically different to a collective universe or culture.  Collective culture or consciousness is mythic, whereas an individual consciousness is cognitive. The latter contains the ego. The modern disease of self consciousness inhibits our capacity and freedom of expression. The ego believes the self is vulnerable. Alternatively in a healthy collective culture the notion of separation does not exist. Therefore the need for personal protection does not exist, it makes no sense. Differentiation is a modern phenomenon.

Much of the modern disease comes from the awareness of attrition, heat and tension arising within us  from the old ancient ways and the new individual ways coming up against one another. If we understand that randomness does not exist, that we don't live in a hapless universe born from a chance event. Rather everything has a place and everything is related to everything else, then multiplicity exists. It doesn't matter what we look at, be it leaves blowing on the forest floor, the entrails of an animal we come across or tea leaves in the bottom of a cup - whatever it is - the universes is constantly communicating and conversing. It's up to us to discern what is meaningful at anytime. It's up to us to tune in and listen. And it is up to us to decide how and in what way to respond.

We are pick up information all the time in many ways and we are constantly giving out signals. This creates a relational process. Humans are sense-making animals. It is our way to interpret sense and meaning from the information, conversations and communications we encounter.

Divination is the art of applying meaning in what we encounter - in what we see.

From the Bones that morning Colin shared with us two poems.

1. Tearing Apart - 'The Time Between'

The separation of one from another creates space for something else to move in. This is about fundamental change.

Q: How much of what you cherish of whey are can you pull apart anklet go, leave and move on?

This is the opposite of accumulation. This is about emptying out. The fear of loss this invokes is deep. Change for many of us is associated with loss.

Invitation: To trust no matter how much the disillusionment that what is needed will remain and sustain.

2. Cutting - 'Severe and Separate'

Invitation: leave behind what is cut.

This is a transition phase. A period of letting go. Like the child being separated forth mother. It may appear brutal and yet it is vitally necessary to survival. This is the paradox experienced during this time. Now we have to find another way. Evolutionarily we are programmed to find another way. Like the caterpillar turning into the butterfly. That which was known is cut off and taken away.

Q: How do we find meaning, find a navigational tool in this process?

Like the baby leaving the mother who looses the umbilical cord. The 'How' is in recognising the process of change and being with the happening in itself. Remembering that which sustains us will find another way. That which does not sustain us no longer serves and has to go. This is terrifying. The fundamental change happening has little interest in the terror. We have to hold the crisis of loss alongside the process of change.

The degree to which we allow the dissolution to occur is what will serve is now. Try to reduce and or remove resistance. And remember we are not in control of the cutting. The cutting happening is done to us. It's how we respond and react whilst the cutting is happening that counts. Ironically, paradoxically everything we have accumulated up to this pointing our lives does not serves us now.

The two poems of Tearing Apart and Cutting relate to Death.

Sit and be with these poems.

Let them begin the dismemberment and dissolution process and allow the fall as if I am the fool setting out of my journey.

Thirteen Moons

Over the first weekend of September around 400 women from tribes of four, if not more, continents gathered at Lower Merripit Farm, Dartmoor. Lead by the amazing Carolyn Hillyer we pilgrimaged, sang, drummed, crafted, ate, travelled, made friends, changed old patterns, created new stories and weaved ourselves deeper into the mystery.

Ceremony and council are ancient practices humans have been undertaking for thousands of years. It seems essential to now remember these ways and share them more openly and widely. We are in conversation with everything all the time. If only we listened more. Dedicating time to stop and listen more intently is beautiful and sacred.

There were solemn, reflective moments in the story sharing. There were humorous, riotous moments too. Stepping into this charged and empowered space, women can remember this rebalancing of their role and contribution to community and to one another.

Thirteen Moons Festival was an incredible experience. Thank You to Carolyn Hillyer and all the Kindling sisters who made it happen.

Becoming Indigenous - Rewilding

Brasilian Portuguese has a well used word 'saudade' that is not simple to translate directly into English, however, it is easy to translate into Welsh 'hiraeth'. It variously means longing, homesickness, yearning. The translation websites then take the meaning to another place 'nostalgia' and this is where we take a wrong term in my opinion because it harks to the past. Moving between languages and cultures can reach a boundary of understanding.

There are languages that still carry words to describe this feeling of coming home or longing for home that English does not describe in a single word. That in itself is interesting to me. Why does the English language not have a hireath or a saudade?

A hiraerth or saudade for what? That is where I find myself today. I'm asking what does this feeling of longing and yearning have to do with people living in the modern world? For me it suggests that modernity is missing something or ailing in some way. That deep inside people are waking up to this notion of separation within themselves, from life, from Gaia and the cosmos.

It is said that Indigenous peoples have kept this connection, this flame of transcendence alive. Indigenous people use ritual, ceremony and rites of passage to maintain and build their relationship of deep belonging and connection to all that is.

I have been on this path, that I call the heart path for quite a  number of years now. Nevertheless, from September I am taking a deep and intentional dive into becoming indigenous. Will I be claimed by the land, animals, trees and plants of this place in which I now live? Will I discover new worlds? How will I be shaped and changed by this experience? I cannot say until I live into each moment. I guess this is not so much a place of destination as a reordering of perspectives. Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.

What I don't want is a mimic of other cultures or a misappropriation of ways from other lands. This would represent another form of exploitation and theft upon which much of my ancestral inheritance is based. If nothing else a certain humility, respect and etiquette needs to emerge from this experience if it is to be different from the modern path I have been brought up in and that predominates around me. I live in a taking culture, a  linear world that feeds a story of competition, scarcity and lack. All of this breeds enormous amounts of fear and anxiety. That results in hierarchy and separation. 

To live from a place of connection, relationship, wholeness, cyclicality, reverence and love would be counter cultural. To learn how to give now that would be different, and to uncover what my gifts are that I am meant to give back into my community, now that would be good to know.

I like to think of this process I am going through as 'Rewilding'. The word 'Wild' in English has resonance and energy. Wild acknowledges that we humans are not in control of everything nor are we at the top of the chain of evolution. Wild indicates to me that I share in common with all forms a life a sense of togetherness in process and with purpose.

  

Say yes to boredom

I remember as a kid being so bored on Sunday afternoons. Especially so in the winter months when it was cold, dark and rainy outside making it next to impossible to be outdoors. From behind the window looking out on the world there seemed very little to do besides wait for Monday and school which was a tad more interesting than nothing.

Boredom is not the preserve of the bone idle. Even if it was it would venerate idleness to greater heights. Learning to be bored is a life lesson. Boredom is a state of being we are meant to believe is indicative of a lack of imagination.

I'd like to offer a counter view. Boredom is in fact the road to wisdom. By embracing a state of nothingness we potentially embark on an inner journey of self discovery.

Boredom is the doorway to new insights.

In the last few days I have been able to slow down for the first time this year. By slow down I mean I have no where to be and mostly nothing to do. No plans have been made. There is nothing readily available to occupy me except for myself. When I have been on the life/work treadmill for a long period of time I get out of the practice of simply being. My transition from doing to being is mediated by a period of boredom. This lasts until I can adjust myself. Until my imagination fires up. Until I listen to what I love and get myself together to reconnect with what matters to me in that moment.

Now there will be some reading this who will say, just flip the switch - why does it take time to go from doing to being? And I'd say, most people conflate doing what they want with 'being'. Without transitioning through a state of boredom or awareness I don't think doing what you want is 'being'. It is another form of busyness.

Busyness is a distracted state of doing what we think is expected of us, seeking approval or wanting to please others, of buying into a story of acquisition and/or aspiration.

Knowing yourself sufficiently to be in a state of being takes more than a recognition of external influences. It requires a deep relationship, listening and dialogue with the soul. That doesn't come easily. Hence in my case the meeting of boredom first.

From this perspective boredom is to be welcomed as it is the precursor to something more mysterious, deep and life enhancing than a linear experience of busyness and doing.

This is why I say yes to boredom.

Jesus to Shesus

This is a photograph of a postcard of a huge stained glass window I found myself sat before this afternoon. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take your own photographs of the window. I have always found this enormous vibrantly coloured image of Jesus an impressive sight. When I visit Buckfast Abbey I am often drawn to the quiet room at the far end of the main building to sit in front of this window.

Today I am reminded of a presentation by Sean Kelly given at Schumacher College in 2010. I remember asking Sean why Jesus was born a man and not a woman? His reply, which to this day still startles me, was, 'No one would have listen to what he came to say if he was born a woman'.

What Sean seemed to be saying is that great thinkers, philosophers, theologians and spiritual teachers come in the male form so that we will pay them more credence.

I know we live in a patriarchal world, but nevertheless, OUCH!

As one half of the world that happens to be born into a woman's body, to be told by someone purporting to be a liberal progressive thinker, that by being a woman the world will not listen to what you have to say no matter how wise - these are harsh and demoralising if not offensive words indeed. And when I stop to reflect I can name woman whose words have made a difference; Mother Theresa, Hildegarde of Bingen, Maya Angelou, Joan of Arc to name a few. But that's simply it, they are a few when balanced against the predominant avalanche of patriarchal voices history and contemporaneous times presents us.

When will the human species be ready for Shesus?

At the centre of the modern story is the idea of Gaia, a whole system supporting life on planet Earth. No Gaia, no life and more specifically no human beings. Gaia is a female goddess. Thus we are presenting Earth and her life supporting systems as generative, life giving and female. Gaia is speaking to us constantly and whether we be a listening scientist, consumer, gardener, nurse, priest or poet many of us are hearing a similar message ... "our ecological systems are changing to such an extent that temperatures will rise to levels that will no longer support human life (and many other forms of life hence the 6th mass extinction we are now experiencing), as temperatures rise we will experience sea levels rising, floods, droughts and other climatic events. All of which add up to a big ole hollering from Mama Gaia to say mind your ways homo sapiens, if you're not carefully you'll unwittingly dismantle the conditions that support life on earth.

Granted this earthly message from Gaia is not coming in a readily digestible movie, TV broadcast or book. It is coming through in more naturalistic languages.

My question to Sean Kelly and his like is, will we hear her voice in the babbling brooks and the reshaping of rocks, in the cries of the animals, birds and fish, in the shifting and swaying seasons, will we hear it this time when it comes in non-human form and yet in a projected feminine voice?

I ask because it would appear we humans don't listen to woman, human or otherwise?

Can we change?

Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that the Dalai Lama will not be reincarnated as a person but as a community. Now that is a radical thought. When you think that all, if not most, of the primary spiritual and religious leaders of the last 3000 years have been male would it not be as radical if the next spiritual voice was female and non-human. Gaia. Now that is possibly even more radical. Not only is she here and speaking to us, she has always been here and always been speaking to us. We are born of her and go back to her in our death. You could say the bigger body is trying to communicate with her billions of little bodies.

Can we hear her speak to us?

Being a Sensitive Person

I remember painful times when I have been told I am hyper-sensitive. The implication being I am too sensitive and basically it is perceived as a weakness, failing or pain in the ass by others. The end result can be attempts to hide the sensitivity, avoid certain people or situations for fear of judgement or to simply turn the feelings on myself. None of which makes a sensitive person feel particularly good.

My culture does not like to emote so much. Disconnecting head from heart is in the long run from my own experience a coping mechanism that can have some nasty physical and mental consequences. I would not recommend this strategy.

I want to say to all those sensitive people out there, and apparently according to some random unreferenced statistic I read we make up to 15-20% of the population, be courageous and continue to live from your authentic truth. That means embrace your sensitivity and see the positivity and gift that it offers you and your community.

The biggest lesson for sensitive people is to not let others who might not understand our gift change us. It is often easier to hide our sensitive side than to be judged by it. Continue to live your truth and be proud of your sensitive nature. It is who we are, and the Universe needs us to share it. Doing so will create a more loving, kind and peaceful world.

Always remember being sensitive is a gift and even the greatest gifts can be a burden at times. Remember these lessons to keep you grounded in your true nature while honoring yourself and those your gift serves.

Finally because we feel things deeply doesn't mean we always have to respond, jump in or try and intervene. This can be very disempowering for others who need to go through though times and come out the other side. The world does not need fixing or saving. Nevertheless an occasional hug or gentle smile to someone in need does not go amiss.

Blame

Click the link below for a funny and yet incisive short animated film opening up my awareness of the corrosive effects of blame.

Brene Brown on Blame

Buzz and the Dandelions

I have written about dandelion nirvana day before. It is the celebrated calendar time when dandelion seeds lift up and fill the air with their mini helicopter floating seeds. Today I came across this super cute video of a little persons response to dandelion seeds being blown to the four quarter winds. Nirvana day is now synonymous with infectious giggly laughter. I love this. If you are ever having a bad day watch this video on repeat and you may find your mood shift and lift just life the dandelion seeds.

Many ways of knowing

Scientists are the worlds describers and labellers. They categorise, compartmentalise, dissect and draw maps of the world we inhabit and yet as tempted as they are to cross the line into being explainers, into the ones that hold the answer to questions beginning in why? that is a domain their lens of perception and understanding cannot and should not go.

In a typical Sunday surf through the inter-webs I went from a youtube dialogue with Deepak Chopra on consciousness to savants and from their found the amazing individual Danial Tammet. He introduced himself to the audience of a TED talk as a high functioning autistic savant - nice! He is high functioning in the sense he can use and calculate numbers, learn and remember languages in ways most of us cannot. Daniel has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia - meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world.

Here is the TED Talk.



What I find fascinating about Daniel is his ability to describe and share with us his experience of perception or knowing or as some might say consciousness. And as he shows us in his talk synesthesia is not limited to numbers, it can be extended to anything including art, language, literature so that the way we see, perceive and experience the world is possibly far greater than we could ever have imagined and also more unique than the confinement of rational positivistic science would let us believe.

There is nothing new here. Nor do I think Daniel is claiming newness. Maybe by example and openness Daniel along with many other high function autistic savants are showing us our field of possibility, our potential and pathways to extended ways of perceiving that have always been there and now need remembering and reactivating in us.

Daniel has a special relationship and appreciation of number. In particular he has a fondness for pi. This extraordinary number that continues into infinity. Daniel has painted the number Pi. On his Blog Daniel shares a poem by the Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) that sings the praises of one of his favourite numbers.

The admirable number pi:

three point one four one. All the following digits are also initial, five nine two because it never ends. It can't be comprehended six five three five at a glance, eight nine by calculation, seven nine or imagination, not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison four six to anything else two six four three in the world. The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet. Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may hold out a bit longer.The pageant of digits comprising the number pi doesn't stop at the page's edge. It goes on across the table, through the air, over a wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, clouds, straight into the sky, through all the bottomless, bloated heavens. Oh how brief - a mouse tail, a pigtail - is the tail of a comet! How feeble the star's ray, bent by bumping up against space! While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteen my phone number your shirt size the year nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floor the number of inhabitants sixty-five cents hip measurement two fingers a charade, a code, in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm, as well as heaven and earth shall pass away, but not the number pi, oh no, nothing doing, it keeps right on with its rather remarkable five, its uncommonly fine eight, its far from final seven, nudging, always nudging a sluggish eternityto continue.

I am heartened and encouraged that my perception and consciousness is so much more than rational reasoned thought. That pictures, images, colours, textures, smells, sounds, feelings, intuitions, hunches ... whatever you might call the other than reasoned impulses and experiences that flavour and inform my life are real, have value, are valid and meaningful.

What would my life be like if I was more in tune with this part of my consciousness?

And how do I extend my many ways of knowing to embrace further these qualities and abilities?

Spiritual Warriors

Time to bear witness in times of difficulty, hardship and suffering ... so far this year 1750 men, women and children have drowned whilst making the highly risky crossing of the Mediterranean in search of freedom and safety. What kind of world am I living in that makes these kinds of choices for some even a possibility?

Today the partner of a friend was turned away by the Border Agency at a British airport and sent back from whence they came, leaving them both separated - again when will I live in a world where we recognise and respect the heart has no borders. Really, really is this how it is meant to be ... scarcity and fear and isolationism are a state of mind. And minds can be changed if we are prepared to open our hearts.

In the words of Meg Wheatley, what the world needs now is 'spiritual warriors' - can you hear her call?

Thank Goodness for Northwoods

The Peace of Wild Things

BY WENDELL BERRY

When despair for the world grows in me 

and I wake in the night at the least sound 

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, 

I go and lie down where the wood drake 

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. 

I come into the peace of wild things 

who do not tax their lives with forethought 

of grief. I come into the presence of still water. 

And I feel above me the day-blind stars 

waiting with their light. For a time 

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Generation of the New Economy GNE

Oikos in Greek means household or home.

Nomos in Greek means the law, especially governing human behavior.

Another way of interpreting the meaning of economics is the human behavior governing the home or household.

In modern terms economics has become defined in neoliberal terms as the body of knowledge that understands the way the production and consumption of goods are distributed by people.

As a child I played the board game 'monopoly'. The endgame is the accumulation of wealth until one player dominates the game. The winner takes it all.

Capitalism as modern neoliberalism is also known is possibly reaching its endgame. It is also reaching ecological and social limits.

All of which spell social and ecological harm and collapse. The winner maybe taking it all too the bank, but the social and ecological losers are being mortally harmed.

This means homelessness, poverty, joblessness, illness, water issues, climate change, biodiversity loss, air pollution. In short a sick society and a sick planet.

Those wishing to find an alternative economics to capitalism and the neoliberal political agenda are exploring movements within new economics, that is, something wonderful in my backyard SWIMBY. Or as Charles Eisenstein puts it ‘the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible’.

There are many groups, movements and activities within new economics. These include; the commons, cooperatives, social enterprise, community interest companies, sacred economics, the gift economy and many more …

My inquiry is how can the other than human be listened to and included in new economics? Where is the heart space in new economics? What impact can mindfulness and contemplation play in new economics? What are the stories emerging that tell the tale of new economics as it happens? In economics how can we value the qualities of life as well as the quantities?

In other words how can I reclaim economics and make it relevant and inclusive to the time I am living in?