Tag: Interconnectedness

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Good Grief: Truth Rituals for Our Times

Rachael Millson

We are living in challenging times. The systems and culture we have created in our world are showing themselves for the destructive force they are for our planet. Increasing consumption, coupled with population increases means that our human species’ use of resources exceeds the Earth’s capacity by an increasing margin year on year. Today we need around 1.75 planets to provide the resources to meet our demand for consumption and to absorb our waste. According to WWF, by 2050, or even sooner, this will have increased to the need for 2 planets, ‘borrowing nature’ from future generations.

Many of us feel the burden of the irreversible loss of eco-systems, degradation of soils, loss of wild places, pollution of fresh water, and other ecological losses, and experience feelings of deep grief, coupled often with regret for our own lifestyle practices that have contributed towards this.

For others there is continued and growing anxiety about the trajectory the human species is currently following, and further losses that are feeling inevitable- including runaway climate change and species extinctions, even the fear of our own extinction.   For many there is a growing feeling of urgency, coupled with the pain of feeling somehow paralysed or powerless.

As we see war unfold again in the Middle East this week, and violence and suffering continuing in many countries across the world, including South Sudan and Ethiopia, the sense of despair and helplessness can feel extremely acute.

Here in South Africa, these feelings of grief and anxiety, present themselves on top of extreme societal ‘complex trauma’, a traumatic history that for many remains unprocessed and unresolved. The adverse living conditions of many South Africans, extreme poverty (currently 45% of South Africa’s population) and extreme inequality (the richest 10% hold 71% of the wealth), compounds this trauma. 

All of this can feel extremely distressing and overwhelming.

It’s no surprise it feels this way. The planet Earth is our home, our place of shelter, our provider of all that we need. When we see her change and come under stress, it’s only natural to grieve and to feel concerned. Our fellow people are our brothers and sisters and we all have the capacity to show and receive compassion, deeply rooted in our mammalian instinct of caring.

“We are capable of suffering with our world, and that is the true meaning of compassion. It enables us to recognize our profound interconnectedness with all beings.” – Joanna Macy

And yet, there’s also something much deeper here. All of the losses, the trauma, the destruction, the pain we cause, results from a narrative that still governs our thinking and actions, in a deeply subconscious way – the story of separation. A deep-rooted separation, that stretches back over centuries, from our very selves and our true nature, from each other and from the Earth. This worldview that we exist as individuals, separate from all other individuals and from all other beings in nature, has ripped apart the fabric of what it means to be fully human, and to feel our full belonging first and foremost as members of the Earth community, and to live in the truest sense of ‘Ubuntu’. For many of us, this separation is where our deep grief originates, and it is through holding this grief in community that we will be able to find our way back home.  

Grief is not typically invited in our society. The typical response  is rather to numb our feelings, finding ways to distract ourselves so we don’t feel the pain. Yet deep grief is a way for us to be present for the world, and to come into our full authentic power to make and support change, with no pretense that we can carry on the way that we are.

“Don’t ever apologize for crying for the trees burning in the Amazon or over the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies. Don’t apologize for the sorrow, grief, and rage you feel. It is a measure of your humanity and your maturity. It is a measure of your open heart, and as your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal.” – Joanna Macy

We invite you to join us for a series of Truth Rituals, based on the Work That Reconnects by Buddhist Scholar and Earth Elder, Joanna Macy, and adapted to suit our South African context. These Truth Rituals will be held outdoors in sacred spaces and are open to all. Through coming together and expressing our rage, fear, despair and emptiness, we will find our way back to our hearts and to a way of living in right relation with ourselves, all other beings, and our home planet Earth.

Join us on Sunday 22nd October: 9am – 11.30am for our first ritual of this series, at a very special sacred site –  All Seeing Pyramid Rock, Blackhill.  Meeting point is at the car park near the top (Sunvalley side) of the Glencairn Expressway and we will all move towards the site together. For more information and bookings please contact us on 061 864 6799 or  gaiaspeaking@gmail.com.  Recommended donation: R200 – R300

Resources & Networks

The Sanity Project by Charles Eisenstein

Joanna Tomkins

Rachael and I joined the Sanity Project in June. Hereunder some words from its emissary….

Introduction to the Sanity Project (on the network New And Ancient Story – NAAS)

“With this offering, I aim to establish an oasis of sanity, a studio of sanity, and an incubator of sanity for coming times. We have seen in recent years a mounting madness that took on a new and virulent form during the Covid era. Though that particular expression of madness has abated, the social and psychic conditions that spawned it are still in place. Our politics, our culture, and our public discourse swing to new extremes of derangement.

Getting swept up in mass hysteria is just one type of insanity. Resisting it takes a psychic toll. Those who try often succumb instead to despair, depression, addiction, extremism, and conspiracy theories.

I speak here from experience – I too went a little crazy during the Covid years. The experience confirmed that I cannot stay sane alone. At key moments, friends and allies said the right thing to me at the right time and brought me back to sanity. With this program, I aim to pass that gift onward and to create conditions by which many of us can stay sane together.

What do I mean by staying sane?

  • To hold center, and return to it when you lose it
  • To hold a good and true story of self and world
  • To be able to abide in not-knowing for as long as it takes for authentic knowing to emerge
  • To hold peace amid information warfare
  • To distinguish and hold your truth in the midst of hysteria
  • To build sustaining connections with human and other-than-human beings, to have an ongoing experience of kinship.
  • To build resistance to manipulation and covert fundamentalism
  • To access a wholesome wellspring of sense, meaning, and identity
  • To fortify the integrity of body/mind/spirit
  • To mutually reinforce all of these with others, to form islands of sanity in a world that is still far from sane
  • To be a seed crystal that brings a higher level of sanity to all you touch”

Join here | The Sanity Project (charleseisenstein.org)

Hereunder also is an animation that he directed and his interpretation under that…

“Hi everyone, I am so proud to share with you this short film, the first I’ve written and directed myself. It has deep relevance to the theme of this program. I won’t comment on it yet, because I think the story itself exercises more power than any interpretation of it can. So please take it in as you would any other film. Maybe watch it a few times.” 
– Charles Eisenstein –

“The choice that [this film] represents isn’t only a choice made before lifetimes. It is an ongoing choice, day to day, moment to moment, about how to engage the world.

One way to engage (or really, not engage) is to stay in whatever temporary comfort realm one can manage with distractions, entertainment, addiction. Yet none of these can be permanent, and even the most sublime experiences of immersion in nature or lovemaking cannot be prolonged beyond their right span. At some point, the awareness grows that we are on the brink of a pit, that right beneath us, just a shift of attention away, is a world that begs our service. To rest, to recharge, is important in order to render that service well, but when the batteries are full, restlessness will seize even the most indolent among us. So, the choice to attempt a permanent disengagement from the world to abide in its pleasurable precincts is futile.

A second way to engage is with a heavy spirit of duty, overcoming by force of will a reluctance to enter the fray, carrying a subtle distaste for the lower realms. It comes from a false sense of superiority, and leads as well to a partiality of engagement. One stays half in, half out, never fully committing to embodiment.

The film portrays a third choice. The luminous beings plunge into the pit — all the way in. And they do so in peace, in joy, in serenity. They do not feel sorry for themselves as they take the plunge. They meet their mission gladly.

I will confess — I didn’t actually make this film for you. I made it for me. I’m the one who has so often hung back from life, stayed timidly a little bit above the fray. I’m the one who often engages life joylessly, with too heavy a sense of duty. I’m the one who, sometimes, sees people with ungenerous eyes blind to the truth that they here on the same mission I am.

As I enter more deeply into the “fray” of a political campaign, I hope to do so as the people in the film do — fully, but not as a fighter, not to become a creature of the Pit. I will watch this film from time to time to help me stay serene in the knowledge of what I and all others are really here for. May this film help you, as it has helped me, to see with generous eyes and speak with generous words that summon what is seen into manifestation.”

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Moving Beyond Business as Usual…

Rachael Millson

I’m originally from the UK and this year have taken the opportunity to travel back there to visit family. I haven’t spent much time in the UK recently, what with Covid travel restrictions and the dissonance I feel in terms of my own carbon footprint when I travel by air. As a result the changes that have taken place in the UK to move towards a more ‘eco-friendly’ way of living were very noticeable to me: A huge interest in electric vehicles; plant-based alternatives to meat diets available everywhere; more sustainable packaging options; significant growth in renewable energy (nearly 50% of the UK’s power is now generated from renewable sources, up from just 20% in 2010).  While the changes I’ve seen here are truly necessary, at the same time I find myself still asking the question of whether these changes truly have the potential to go to the depths we need in order to ensure a life-affirming future for all, one that regenerates our natural and cultural systems, or are we simply trying to find ways to perpetuate ‘business as usual’, albeit with a green tinge?  Things are never simple, and the devil is always in the detail.  It feels like we are moving towards ‘less bad’, within the context of the consumer-conformist society we live in, rather than a truly regenerative culture.

Regenerative Urban Culture…

It feels that we urgently need to reframe our actions and responses within a new context: One that moves beyond the story of separation that we have been operating within, towards one of interconnection and regeneration. 

Our economic systems have been built on a paradigm of separation, essentially extractive both in terms of ecology and wealth distribution.   This sense of separateness from nature began over 500 years ago with the advent of civilisation and the increasing rationalistic portrayal of nature as a resource to be used for human betterment.

While we hear businesses telling customers and investors what they are doing in terms of social and environmental responsibility for most (with a few notable exceptions – check out the incredibly inspiring Patagonia story), this is mainly about minimizing risk in order to maximize profits (business as usual).  The fundamental question remains of whether it is possible to shift business models sufficiently in order to meet the culture and nature crisis we find ourselves in, or do we actually need to entirely rethink our economic models? It seems to me that as long as we continue to see the environment as a subset of the economy, and nature as ‘natural resources’ to be used for economic gain, nothing substantial will ever change.

Otto Scharmer’s work is helpful here. Scharmer states that in order to meet the challenges of this century we need to update our economic logic and operating system from an obsolete “ego-system” focused entirely on the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that emphasizes the well-being of the whole. This sounds very much like the African cultural concept of ‘Ubuntu’, an African Nguni word that means ‘humanity to others’ and has a correlated meaning of ‘I am who I am because of others’.

If applied in the operations of business, Ubuntu has the potential to create strong collaboration and business that has a focus on community development.  The social enterprise movement provides some hope of genuine alternatives. The gift economy is another way of conceptualising an emergent economic system whose focus is not on profit and growth. However, while gaining significant momentum, both of these are still emergent especially in the South African context.  And yet for all of us no matter where we are, we have the opportunity to actively use our economic power to support these alternatives, organisations who are proactively operating in support of a better world.

A shift from the ‘business as usual’ paradigm requires a shift in consciousness. This shift can neatly be articulated as a shift from separateness to interconnectedness. This is about seeing the core truth of who we really are, spiritual beings having a human experience, connected to all other beings – human and non-human – on this home planet Earth.  From this place, our decisions look very different from those that are taken within a ‘business as usual’ story.  

As Einstein so famously said ‘ If we want to change the world we have to change our thinking…no problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it’ We are not going to solve the problems created by the industrial growth culture using the rules, methods and mindsets of that same culture.

Reversing climate damage has to do with the creation of a new human story.  The role for each and every one of us revolves squarely around the courage to step into this – a story of reconnection and interbeing, a story of regeneration, a story that recognises we are nature and it is us.

If we want things to really change, it will happen because we give ourselves the opportunity to connect with our beautiful home planet, and we acknowledge that the true solutions to the climate crisis are also the solutions that create a profoundly different and better world for everyone.

Ideas and examples of what you can do as part of this emerging consciousness to follow in part 2 of this blog.

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Messages from my Mother

Joanna Tomkins

The size of the networks of solidarity expressing and providing support to Ukrainian refugees is another sign of the capacity of human populations to come together to share their feelings and act upon them. When we open our hearts to the other, individual or collective, human or more-than-human, we are apparently able to reverse years of injustice.

Let us take good note, as Gaia teaches us how to come together. Whilst we fight opinion wars around the scary viruses and the dark oils she produces from her bowels, we are coming together through networking. We are developing the capacity to respond en masse to disaster. We are developing resilience as we slowly come to realise that we need to drop what we are doing to run helter-skelter to the bedside of our sick Mother.

Aaah, here you are, she smiles. I Knew you would come! So you took me for granted, did you?, she cries. As Mother squeezes black oil out of her body, she moans, Can you not see me crying!?

Although our planet shows signs of illness daily with unbalanced ecosystems, biodiversity loss and climate change, she is widely ignored. So, she sent a message for all to receive, from the tyrants of the Kremlin to the humblest Amazonian tribesmen, one that at the core of our ego, one that can threaten our life if we ignore it. This hyper-sophisticated virus carries varying ethos-changing messages for all, whether awoken by fear of suffering, or toppled into passionate love for life, no-one has been left unshaken. Have we heard her plea now? Can we decrypt and put to good use the information we received as individuals, who are also part of the human collective and part and parcel of the Earth? As first world refugees are in the spotlight, do we remember the hunger-stuck refugees who have been huddling in tents in the desert for years? As we breathe through plastic ventilators or clad our beautiful faces with plastic masks, do we remember how our bodies deserve to be fed and cared for, the bodies that our Mother gave us?

Our collective Pain for the World is breaking free now so that we can prioritise and get our response armies trained and organised… Yet, can we feel the urgency in the ecological unravelling that we still perceive as intangible? Surely, yes! If we are able to feel pangs of solidarity in response to these recent crises, even at a distance, our fingers brushing our screens, we must be reviving the muscles of our natural response to danger, we must be noting that it is all connected. And when our fingers brush the leaves, our eyes sweep the horizon, our hearts will open to the realisation that we Knew, we always Knew, that this is why we are here. Close to eight billion individuals have a role to play, with two hundred thousand newcomers daily. We have been called to be a part of the Great Turning.

Let us pick up our weapons of compassion now.

©Artwork by Amanda Vela

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The Power of the Regenerative Movement

Joanna Tomkins

Focusing on regeneration in all aspects of life is a truly possible solution to the mess that we are in. From an economical perspective, in the Business as Usual set up, there are more companies who realise today that higher long term benefits will be reaped by investing in soils instead of pesticides, investing in community cohesion instead of privileged elites, investing in nutritious food and not in pharma, etc. On an individual scale, we are awakening to the reality that we can regenerate our mind and our gut, by respectively introducing awareness practices in our lives and by buying and growing alive foods.

Triggered by the mediatising of global, polarising medico-political debates, major ideological shifts are planting roots in our society in opposing directions. It seems that all Three Dimensions of the Great Turning are being accelerated. Although pharma is churning out more products and plastic masks are getting tangled in the feet of our already compromised wild birds, individuals are also realising that it is time to reclaim sovereignty over our lives.

For some – as for Vandana Shiva in the video added to this post – increased digitalisation has placed digital barons in a position of dictators, ready to their rules to control. For others, work online and the availability of educational material and live video material has allowed for new forms of expression. Part of the ongoing Shift in Consciousness is happening online through healing modalities, podcasts and blogs, but this does come at the cost of disconnecting us from the Earth and from a much needed, hands-on Regenerative Movement.

After such a long pause, we are all capitalising our hopes on these shifts, in one way or another, awaiting to see a clear picture of our future when the dust settles. But it’s important to act so that these shifts bring us closer to authentic connection to our community and our planet. Are we ready to represent Mother Earth above ourselves and as part of ourselves? Can we focus on deep time, thinking 7 generations back and 7 generations forward, like our indigenous ancestors knew?

We can regenerate dignified lifestyles, where we truly honour ourselves collectively as a society of sovereign beings and as organs of the Earth. Borrowing the terminology that Joanna Macy uses to determine the 3 dimensions of the Great Turning, we need to focus to help birth a radical Shift in Consciousness and like Vandana Shiva, we can also engage and support the Holding Actions that can buy us time to do so – all to varying degrees. And importantly, we can exponentially carve out time from our imposed work schedules to dedicate our lives to Sustainable Practices that are honouring of a self affirming Interconnectedness.

In this recent talk, Dr Vandana Shiva warns us about a Digital Dictatorship that threatens our sovereignty.