STARSStars blanket the mid-pacific sky in quiet intensity, testifying to the immanence and abundance of light that makes up the fabric of our universe.
I raise my head to the night. Breathe.
Give thanks.
Stars birth. Stars die. Stars fall.
Stars implode into black holes and dissolve into other universes.
Without fear.
Yes. I am invested in the falling.
I am invested in the sparkle.
In my own way, I am a star.
My life work is to embrace and grow through my fear.
An you?
~s.s.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged universe, falling, stars | Leave a Comment »
Soul-vival: Everything, every-Thing is real.
Love.
Thing.
No thing.
I am real,
and no
long-er
dreaming
that there
is anything other
than
re-ALL-ity.
- s.s.
“The entire Universe is condensed in the body, and the entire body in the Heart. Thus the Heart is the nucleus of the Whole Universe.”
-Sri Ramana Maharshi
Once upon a thought, long, long ago, the universe was born in the breath and flurry of God understanding herself. Long, long ago in a meta-verse not unlike your own heart, conscious life began, coursing with the life-blood of light and energy, beating the rhymes of time, condensing through the forces of love and gravity. Once upon a desire, spirit birthed soul and was found in the arms of her own creation.
This creation expanded and grew. It formed and furrowed. It danced and wiggled and learned about spirals. It seeded and sprouted and grew flowers that became fruit that fell to the ground and became seed again. It composted. And one fine, star-filled day, it listened. It opened its innate sensitivity to receive itself and began to understand it’s own heart. It reflected on its own music, and on that sweet day, consciousness became aware of itself.
Eons later, on a crisp, late autumn day in the Earth Year 2009, somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, an activist, a mystic, a scientist and a social entrepreneur sit down to counsel. Each from their own angle is deeply engaged in the hard and heartful work of Climate Leadership. Each has lived enough life and looked far enough into and out of themselves to see the integral confluences between their individual work and worldviews and those of their colleagues. They agree that they all share one fundamental reality: “Everything now is at stake and everything is possible.”[1]
From this foundation, they begin to ask questions. “What is a conscious life? How does one live it? What is soul and what does it have to do with the evolution of consciousness? What is pain, and how does it motivate evolution? What is the connection between our capacity to survive and our capacity to thrive?” They settle into their chairs a bit deeper. “How are survival and soul entwined in the process of planetary emergence? Could soul be a key to surviving the fires of Global Warming, Economic Collapse, Species Decimation and Overpopulation? What motivates a whole and soul-filled approach to being, becoming and participating in a world on fire?” Falling silent for a moment, they arrive at one final question: “What ignites compassionate action?”
“Perhaps,” says the activist, “it is the sheer compression of suffering.” “You could say that it is the quantum increase in turbulence is revealing new capacities for resonance and synergy,” says the scientist.[2] “Yes,” says the activist, “But that compassionate ignition comes through something mysterious, something bigger than movements or parties or creeds. It comes through some deep response to the world, to humanity, to the planet. It descends like grace and flows like water. I don’t understand it, but I see it everywhere, particularly in the youth. It’s a force for collaboration and innovation bigger than anything you can wrap your mind around.” “It could be that we are learning how to listen, and that what we are responding to is the calling of the World Soul to the hearts and minds of individuals,” chimes the mystic.
“This pressure cooker we are in is the greatest opportunity ever to choose to love what is. That’s the beauty of it; it’s not easy so we are confronted with the choice to suffer or embrace, to resist or to co-create with material reality as it is. No one has ever done this before. All our previous models were based on what seemed expedient and profitable at the time, leading to dominance and expansion at the expense of people and planet. Now we are learning how to work and play soulfully, how to include people and planet in our value systems and bottom-line equations and thus transform what is from a greater space of inter-relatedness. We are learning how to do this by working within – not separate from – broader ecological, social and structural contexts and exercising our capacity to choose sensitively,” says the social entrepreneur. Taking a breath and looking around the circle, the mystic offers, “We are learning to collaborate with everything.[3] In the emergent context, the motive for living with soul meshes with the innate desire of life to seek conditions favorable to life.”[4]
“Yeah, I love to quote Janine Benyus on this one,” says the scientist. “’The answers to the questions are everywhere… The important thing is that these are solutions solved in context, and that context is the earth – the same context in which we are trying to find solutions.’[5]”
“Let’s back up. What is soul, anyway?” says the activist.
“Recently, in my work, I have been exploring the mathematic reality of the singularity contained within every atom. This singularity is a mini-black hole within the nuclei of every atom in the universe. The same is true for the heart of every sun, and for your own human heart. It’s unbelievably beautiful. I believe it proves the existence of soul.[6]” “It’s what Celtic wisdom teacher John O’Donohue calls ‘the point of absolute non-connectivity with everything else’”, says the mystic. “But, what’s so cool,” replies the scientist, “is that each and every one of these points is connected to each and every other point in the fabric of space and time. That means that everything is both completely distinct and interdependently linked with everything else.” “Exactly. Dependent co-arising.”
The activist pipes in, “So, that’s what Lovelock was talking about in earth terms when he published the Gaia Hypothesis?” “Sort of, yes. His work described, a profound inter-related intelligence that manifests through the biologic cycles and systems of the Earth,” says the mystic. “This interdependent intelligence is what ecologists, biomimics and neurobiologist know intuitively, and it is what the eco-psychologist Bill Plotkin writes of in Soul Craft and Nature and the Human Soul. For him, and for most indigenous peoples, soul is a category inseparable from All of Our Relations. It is both a suchness unique to each and every created thing and a divine field of intelligence arising through the interconnectivity and intersubjectivity of all things. It is real, and it is in, and runs through, everything – not transcendent or ephemeral, but actual and profoundly manifest. It can be contacted through the senses, through the body and through the heart. One cannot find it through thought alone. One must find it through dedicated engagement in the World and the More Than Human World.”
“Have you done this?” asks the activist.
“Well… yes. And you?”
The circle takes a collective pause, a breath, and another breath. All at once, all four people realize that each of them has passed through the valley of fire more than once and come to the other side more loving, compassionate and committed than before. All at once, a kinship is born that can move mountains.
All four hearts start to “think” together. The social entrepreneur softly offers, “When I live in accord with my soul, when I listen to the world as the greater Field of Soul, then everything I see and experience, everything I sense and feel, becomes a living foundation for my responsivity and action. Everything speaks to me of its rich capacity to collaborate and share value. What I do as a businessperson is not separate from what I do with and for the earth, with and for my daughter, with and for my community, with and for the Divine. When I, and thousands of others like me, start to aggregate this kind of thinking and action, markets become a function of natural limits and intelligent flows of energy. This is how I apply my passion. This is how I want to work and play with each of you. I experience it both as my joy and as my duty.”
“So, here is hope,” says the activist. “The soul is the key motive, the deep voice within and through all things, that can empower our survival and our eventual thrival in the next evolutionary spiral for humanity. Conscious living is the outcome of an ongoing practice of sacred activism arising from this felt sense of compassionate connectivity with all that is.”
Talking late into the night, they coin a new word: Soulvival – survival and thrival emergent through a deep and engaging relationship to the animate soul within all things. Soulvival means the capacity to survive and to thrive through the continuous practice of living in accord with soul. Soulvival means engaging life through the fierce grace of loving what is and choosing to act as a force for regeneration, beauty and justice. Soulvival means asking the hard questions, doing the home work and the due diligence, and then collaborating with other humans, with nature, and with everything, to create a life engaged in a net-positive, creative, cogeneration of the evolving world. It is the ultimate prayer – a non-secular invitation to engage every aspect of life as sacred. It is an invitation for us to reconnect with that far off (and near) impulse of the universe to listen to itself and so become conscious. It is us becoming the universe evolving as it listens to and co-generates itself.
Words Fall
In oneness, through me.
Words fall on my side of the cosmic divide between this “one”
and “everything else.”
It is for me to hear through my soul channel,
As it is for you to hear through yours.
We are not alone in the hearing
Because the listening itself is a fabric,
a connective
act,
a verb that is a tissue,
a structure,
a promise
of gossamer connectivity between all things
In all time
In now.
I no longer forget.
I no longer remember.
I act or be
Be and act.
Noun into verb,
Verb into noun
All object.
All subject.
All subject to the rulership of divine harmony,
divine
chaos.
All in service to the sweet channel… of love.
And, in this, I have chosen.
I choose to dance the violet pentacle at the center of the flame,
At the center, where all hands grasp through the fire,
I choose a creativity
Which is uniquely peace.
I chose embodiment that is universally peace.
That is what is.
No more.
No less.
We are bowls of water.
Always full
Always empty.
Half and half is for beginners.
Take it all and leave it all.
And, still…
Don’t forget skillful maybe -
the open portal to what is beyond imagining.
But,
leave ambivalence at the door.
In this fierce storm of yes,
this sweet autumn of wind,
this quiet knowing of the path:
Begin in the Body.
Let it live.
Let it breath.
Let it feed.
Let it be soft, animal, instinctive and
Unavoidable.
Begin in the body, and connect.
This is where peace lives.
Peace becomes.
Peace acts, one gesture at a time.
Begin in the body.
Live in the heart.
This is not a choice.
This is a fact.
ACT from this fact.
And through this align in and beyond – space and time.
~s.s.
Bibliography
Benyus, Janine. “Janine Benyus Shares Natures Designs.” TED, filmed February 2005, Posted April 2007, http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/janine_benyus_shares_nature_s_designs.html (accessed November 24, 2009).
Casey, Caroline. Making the Gods Work for You: The Astrological Language of the Psyche. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998.
Gore, Al. Our Choice: A Plan To Solve the Climate Crisis. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, Inc., 2009.
Harvey, Andrew. The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism. Carlsbad, California: Hay House, 2009.
Hawken, Paul. Blessed Unrest. New York: Penguin Books, 2007.
Haramein, Nassim. “The Schwarzschild Proton,” Paper presented at the Mystic Garden Party, July 27, 2009.
O’Donohue, John. Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997.
[2] This thought is echoed throughout the work quantum theorist Nassim Haramein. http://www.theresonanceproject.org/ (accessed frequently, most recently November 28, 2009).
[3] Visionary Astrologer and Jungian Scholar Carolyn Casey speaks with great consistency of the mystical, shamanic choice to “partner or collaborate with EVERYTHING.” I have been to over 10 of her talks over the last fifteen years at Bioneers, Greenfest, Harmony Fest, in bookstores and at community performances, and this is one of her most consistent messages.
[4] An often shared quote from Janine Benyus, founder of Biomimicry
[5] Janine Benyus, “Janine Benyus Shares Natures Designs” TED, filmed February 2005, Posted April 2007. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/janine_benyus_shares_nature_s_designs.html (accessed November 24, 2009).
[6] Nassim Haramein, “The Schwarzschild Proton,” a peer reviewed and award winning paper presented at the Mystic Garden Party in Ashland, July 27, 2009. Here I paraphrase both the basic thesis of the paper, that there is a mini-black hole within each atom, but also Nassim’s larger theory on the implications of this for how we understand soul and resonance.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged biomimicry, collaboration, dependent co-arising, Gaia Hypothesis, interdependence, Lovelock, Paul Hawken, prayer, quantum physics, Soulvival, spirals, thrive | Leave a Comment »
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Words Fall i
n oneness, through me.
Words fall on my side of the cosmic divide between this “one”
and “everything else.”
It is for me to hear through my soul channel,
As it is for you to hear through yours.
We are not alone in the hearing
Because the listening itself is a fabric,
a connective
act,
a verb that is a tissue,
a structure,
a promise
of gossamer connectivity between all things
In all time
In now.
I no longer forget.
I no longer remember.
I act or be
Be and act.
Noun into verb,
Verb into noun
All object.
All subject.
All subject to the rulership of divine harmony,
divine
chaos.
All in service to the sweet channel… of love.
And, in this, I have chosen.
I choose to dance the violet pentacle at the center of the flame,
At the center, where all hands grasp through the fire,
I choose a creativity
Which is uniquely peace.
I chose embodiment that is universally peace.
That is what is.
No more.
No less.
We are bowls of water.
Always full
Always empty.
Half and half is for beginners.
Take it all and leave it all.
And, still…
Don’t forget skillful maybe -
the open portal to what is beyond imagining.
But,
leave ambivalence at the door.
In this fierce storm of yes,
this sweet autumn of wind,
this quiet knowing of the path:
Begin in the Body.
Let it live.
Let it breath.
Let it feed.
Let it be soft, animal, instinctive and
Unavoidable.
Begin in the body, and connect.
This is where peace lives.
Peace becomes.
Peace acts, one gesture at a time.
Begin in the body.
Live in the heart.
This is not a choice.
This is a fact.
ACT from this fact.
And through this align in and beyond – space and time.
~ s.s.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged action, body, breath, choice, falling, fire, heart, oneness, passion, peace, poetry, sacred activism | 4 Comments »
We have far more power, more knowledge, more capacity and more beauty available to us than we give ourselves credit for. Today, of all days, BLACK FRIDAY, let’s contemplate and ACTIVATE our true potential as PARTICIPANTS in emergence. The market is merely a reflection of our chosen reality. Through our buying choices, we co-generate change, we co-create emergence, we “altar” reality. I embrace and invite fully conscious choice and participation… YOU IN??? Let’s be conscious consumers, conscious growers, conscious weavers, conscious dancers, conscious consumers. Above all, let’s be conscious co-creators of a new world! Love ~s
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Black Friday, choice, consumer, courage, food, foodinc., grace, heart, market, New World, organic, peace, power | Leave a Comment »
No Fear Is Stronger Than Our Love.
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1.) Divinity – a connection to “Source,” “Universe,” “God” or “the Absolute” that is personal and known through experience.
2.) Intimacy – a felt sense of dependent co-arising or co-creative contactfullness with the human and more than human world verging into active interdependency, trusting and feeling how we are collaborating with everything as everything is collaborating with us simultaneously.[7] In this intimacy with the life impulse, we simultaneously live in accord with Joseph Campbell’s famous dictum to “follow your bliss” while responding to the calling of the world to us to share our gifts and energy in a unique service to the whole.
3.) Love – contexting ourselves within a co-creative fabric of beauty celebrating itself. Eros was the child of Resource and Need. We are children of Resource and Need. So, let us become the living spirit of Eros. We are called to resourcefully birth beauty out of the need expressed through our common plight. Love then becomes the experience and expression of our own capacity to embrace what is and to harmonize the seemingly irreparable. We have this capacity, so let us create as love.
4.) Ecologically Integral Values – opening to a more complex, multi-valent and inter-related way of seeing the world than any generation before us. We practice and flower through a values structure that aligns with the interconnectivity of individuals, families, communities, countries, biospheres, the planet and spirit. Interdependence trumps individuality. Harmony and Beauty supercede progression. Truth is experienced universally as a generator of authentic expression, deep collaboration and peaceful interactions. Markets contract as relationships expand. We learn how to deal with and transcend our aloneness. While the dominant spirituality of the last 2000 years has taught us that we are radically alone, the emergent values system begins with the fact that we are radically together. Responsibility and action emerge from our felt sense of the dependent co-arising of all that is. We are emerging from a fog of isolation, and finding that we are interdependent. This is true at every level of our experience, from the most mundane to the most sublime. As Julia Butterfly Hill says, “When you throw something away, where is away?” Available working models include Ken Wilbur’s integral model, Louise L. Diamond’s Global Systems Initiative, Lawrence Ellis’ model for co-creating a culture of Peace, The Biomimicry Institute’s Design Spiral Process, and many, many more.
5.) Co-Creativity or Alchemy in Action – embracing death, preservation and birth as initiatory opportunities for maturation of the soul and spirit, we embody a fundamentally life-centric world view that rejects nothing and embraces everything. We become co-creators, living as the “I am that I am.” We embody the principle “as above so below, as below so above” by recognizing that the living god moves in us and through us as we act in accord with our interconnectivity with all that is. This, in turn, moves us towards community and embrace of the constant change and non-fixity implied by showing up in deep relationship.
History abounds with apocalyptic narratives. “The end of the world” is not a new story. It is a recapitulating theme in human experience, emerging in cycles of decimation and resilience that have shaped the givens of our world-view and the ways in which we imagine and experience meaning in our lives. The Western, feminine concept of wisdom arose through the crucible of annihilating experience. It appears throughout the weave of history to sustain and uplift the spirits of people surviving against all odds, to explain the greater workings of worlds in tumult and recreation, and to anchor hope and beauty in the face of death. In these contexts, Wisdom is a redemptive force operating in opposition to the degenerative and destructive forces of fear, greed, ignorance, illusion and habituation. Wisdom becomes a goddess/healer who weaves the fabric of meaning behind and through the seemingly irredeemable. But, is this all that she is? What is wisdom, really? How do redemption and gnosis fit together? And might there be a progression from redemption to gnosis to sustained empowerment? I choose to ask this question both in the context of history and in the context of our unfolding future.
In a world where we have actually reached the edge of our planet’s capacity to support life, can we afford to believe in a mythos that presupposes apocalypse? Can we find the answers we need in the halls of history? Can we rest in a past voice of wisdom that has emerged from constant cycles of war, strife and dominion and expect that voice to define a future that requires a new evolutionary leap, a pragmatic leap that is utterly necessary if we are to survive? In this time, the question, “what is wisdom as a way of life?” has particular urgency. The question begs another question: “what is a sustainable way of life?” “What is a sustainable person?” And, “how can wisdom birth and support a sustainable human existence in an ongoing future?”
I believe we must look to a yet unimagined, unproven future, as well as to the past, as we seek to understand wisdom as a way of life. Whispers of another possibility abound in Prophecy, New Age spirituality and the discourses of empowerment and ecological leaders around the planet. What they are all saying is the same: life celebrates life when it aligns with life. It is not enough to redeem ourselves from catastrophe and death. Yes, we need this. But we need something more, something so compelling and actual that we act BEFORE we fall, or regardless of the cycles of rising and falling. We need to somehow heal or transcend our trajectory towards destruction. We need a mythos of sustained resilience, empowering the possibility that beauty, creativity and harmony might actually prevail within the imagination, emotion and action of individuals and the collective. We need a mythos that aligns us with our divine co-creativity within the fabric of reality. We need gnosis without the hubris of destruction and empowerment that focuses us in the continuous process of “whole-ing” the world.
In this new, co-creative paradigm, we are called to feel and act on the fullness of our capacity to respond to change, challenge and crisis from a place of self-empowered choice – not denying the conditions of reality, but not being disempowered by the sheer weight of bad news. There is a vast opportunity to “get bigger,” to expand to hold all of experience. Not just some people, but every person is called to be a leader – self-reliant, sovereign and self-motivating. To maintain this requires a deep and personal connection to the divine. Whether we can do this in a sustained way is entirely a matter of attention, of choice and perspective – so where we look for guidance really matters. We can look to a movement that is already happening, in the cracks, in the crevices, in just about every place we look, if you are willing to hear the voices and see the actions of people and organizations in every sector of society coming together to help people and to heal the earth.
In Paul Hawken’s words: “If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”[1] We can look to the grassroots, to a movement more vast, self-less and diverse than any ever known in the history on this planet, to see Wisdom at work. The World Spirit is speaking through millions of every day people around the planet, and her message is clear: “You are the ones you have been waiting for. Let that gnosis IN, and choose life. Align with the intelligence of ecology, biology, beauty and co-operation. Go on, it’s up to YOU. Get busy with the Great Work of compassionate co-creation.”
We are witnessing the emergence of a new, forward looking wisdom view that demands a focus on creativity above crisis. It embodies a collective maturation in the human psyche, a new loop on the spiral. It is a movement integrating a concept of self that can embrace death while choosing life, that can serve others while embodying self love, and that can dissolve fear while holding space for trauma and transition. It posits the possibility of peace, ecological harmony, spiritual fulfillment and abundance for all beings, and invites a constancy and harmony for human civilization and relations unknown within the scope of our written history.
“The next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha will take the form of a community; a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the Earth.” -Thich Nhat Hanh
As we reach the “end of the world” in a truly collective and physically absolute sense, we arrive in a unique context that bridges the boundaries of time, space, culture, race, creed, language and nation. Quite beyond ourselves, we have architected a situation so extreme that a new paradigm MUST emerge. In the face of global warming, systemic economic collapse, species extinction and cultural leveling, we are revealed to ourselves as an interdependent, global family and community. While previous ages and wisdom teachers have posited and taught this interconnectivity, the human race has never before been unified by conditions that confront every single person with this interdependence as an ultimate, material reality. For any person who is at all contemplative, this revelation invites the release of convenient illusions about separate markets, separate bio-regions, separate peoples, and separate paths to survival, justice and wholeness. As my friend Carolyn Shafer, who founded the Santa Cruz County Sustainability Coalition here in my hometown of Patagonia, says, “You don’t have to think about the issues for very long before you realize personal survival is really meaningless, here.” Acting on this perspective, we begin to orient towards a collective process in which we are co-creators rather than consumers. We are all together in one small boat. It’s up to all of us to take care that we don’t capsize.
This care is welling up, as a great tide, through the largest social, political and spiritual movement in history. This movement, I believe, is the evolution of wisdom. It IS the world spirit embodied in millions of individuals, the voice of Gaia and of Sophia together, expressing through the sovereign will, brilliance, excellence and purpose of hundreds of millions of people simultaneously. Each and every independent actor listening, contributing to, and collaborating with something much bigger than the individual self, yet moving through a coherent sense of self-taking-responsibility for the creative role each of us plays in co-creating our collectively experienced universe. It is a deeply responsible position, a marked maturation in the expression of humanity, where we emerge from a long phase of wandering and take ownership of our place in the greater family of being.[2] Wisdom becomes both the goddess/healer and the living response embodied in each and every person’s actions woven within the context of a greater whole. The context is the intelligence of earth herself and of the Human Spirit, separate from and greater than any religion or the experience of any particular people.
In his sociological research and book, Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken documents “the first time in history that a powerful non-ideological movement has arisen.” In a 2006 speech at the Bioneers Conference in Marin County, he shares:
“The origins of this movement are in indigenous cultural, environmental work and social justice. There are over 130,000 groups involved – minimum! There is no precedent, no center, no spokesperson… This is where our salvation will be found. It is found in diversity. We know that as biologists. We know that as community organizers. We know that as ecologists. This movement is humanity’s immune response to resist and heal political disease, economic infection and ecological corruption caused by ideologies. So, it is up to us to decide: how we will be? who we will be? This is what we are building – the capacity to respond. It is about possibilities and solutions. Human kind knows what to do.”[3]
“Knowing what to do” and acting on it requires a mature spiritual and emotional approach to life, an “intelligent optimism” that nests within a basic trust of our creative and co-creative capacities within the greater web of life. It requires a deep toleration for difference to support unity in diversity, and a focus on where energy wants to move in accord with life, not against it. Being a sustainable person is all about possibilities and solutions. When we think in a deep ecological way, we see all the parts of the puzzle relationally. We thenn explore how we can harmonize the whole from our unique place in consciousness. Nature creates no dross, no waste, no ultimate disharmony. It is time for us to live in accord with this wisdom, so abundantly present all around us, and ignored for the last 2,000 years in favor of the gods of expansion and dominion. That said, I am not advocating some romantic return to a time before agriculture and technology. Rather, the invitation is to a Gaia-centric integration of technology, knowledge, industry, economy, culture, local and non-local networks, planetary consciousness, and an emergent spiritual intelligence that can hold all of it in luminous compassion.
How we think about “problems” is literally shifting. We are beginning to see every challenge as an opportunity. We are beginning to look mindfully at individual issues in the context of the total picture and recognize that right action emerges out of compassionate embrace, harmonic response, systems based analysis and trust. Though “some problems can not be solved,” the new wisdom spirit is not concerned with insolubility. Rather, its focus is the creative capacity of the world to heal itself through the brilliance of individuals and communities.
A problem is a question.
A question is a solution.
A solution is an action.
Action is a way of life.[4]
This is the way of life of the “sustainable person.”
All of this is happening concordant with the turning of a great 26,000 year-long astrological cycle. The end of this cycle represents a decisive window of opportunity for our evolution, the scope of which is far greater than our written history. We are leaving the age of Pisces, defined by the rise of the Christian Church and doctrine in general, in which the dominant archetype is the leader and the led. We are entering the Age of Aquarius, in which the dominant archetype is the self-reliant co-creator, in which mind is capable of moving and transcending matter through the harmonization of technology and love. This converges with the ending of the Kali Yuga, or “age of vice,” of the Hindu calendar. At the end of the Kali Yuga, it is said that the window of opportunity for individuals to become enlightened is vastly expanded simply because things are so bad. In other words, wisdom is easier to access and embody when the squeeze is on.
This also coincides with the ending of time according to the Maya. Using immensely refined skills of observation and shamanic interpretation, the Maya predicted “the end of time” precisely at the Winter Solstice of 2012, when we will see the death of the Old World and the birth of a New World. Similarly, the Hopi prophesied the “Dawning of the Fifth Age” at this same time. Other indigenous cultures speak with reverence and awe of this same portal. It can be no accident that within many indigenous cultures and almost every mystery school lineage across the planet, we find reference to this time as a massive window of opportunity. With certainty, we know that our planet will enter alignment with the “dark rift” at the center of our Galaxy in December of 2012. Christine R, Page, M.D., intuitive and healer, states, “This road leads directly to the Galactic Center, or heart of the Great Mother, and it is through this portal that we will gain access to the eternal source of all existence, the Mother herself.”[5] Whether this is true or not, we can be fairly certain that, if we pay attention, we will experience “something significant” as we ride through this mysterious point of heightened possibility. Prophecy says those who are prepared to align their hearts and minds with the alchemical process of graceful death and blissful birth will experience the dissolution of duality, separation, fear consciousness and density.
The archetypal pattern of wisdom that emerges is a ‘”future memory.” For those of us who work with visionary and shamanic states, it is know through its shape, feeling and telepathic resonance throughout time-space, and is felt as a destination we are moving towards that is utterly different from the place where we currently find ourselves. Its patterns are gridded into the historical wisdom lineages of the world. They have been worked at, seeded, taught and shared by masters known and unknown. They have been handed down by Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu. Yet, their potential was but latent – until now. The blossoming pattern can be called collective avatar, or Maitreya – the Buddha that is mindful community. It is represented by leaders like Obama, but more importantly, it is an essentially “leaderless” movement that is being stewarded by uncounted numbers of self-elected change agents.
As the stability of human existence on planet earth gets shakier, something is happening that is allowing for each and every person to “see” for his or herself without mediation or intersession, the truth, beauty and potential of mature service to the whole – and to choose to be empowered in that service through action. The very word wisdom comes from the Sanskrit root vis: to see or to know, also to be wise. It is the same root as for the words vision, visual and advise, the same root as see-er or vizier. What are we being called to see in this time?
The turn on, or tune in, happens in ways as varied as there are people. Imaging the Silicon Valley CEO whose daughter’s ultimatum over a company dinner calls to his very soul to do something about climate change. See Dune Lankard, an Iyak Indian native to the Alaskan Copper River Basin, who was named by Time Magazine as a “Hero of the Planet” for his work restoring Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdeze Spill and his ongoing work to turn conservation into economic and political opportunity, whose moment of realization came when his sister called him to “come home and take care of our people’s fishing grounds.” Vision Muhammad Yunus in the process of conceiving micro-credit and the Grameen Bank, which to date has served a total number of 7.87 million borrower/owners, 97 per cent of them women.[6] Picture the single mother who loses her mortgage and decides to begin a sustainable community housing project, the un-named people hard at work building permaculture farms and communities in bioregions across the globe, scientist researching planetary outcomes that need to be known and understood (despite the difficulty the public, industry or governments might have in receiving the information), bloggers writing into the wee hours to avert election fraud, the countless hundreds of thousands of social, political, ecological, cultural and spiritual organizations engaged in all sectors of society in a singular process of healing and whole-ing an interconnected human species and planet. The ah-ha is the beginning, and countless factors are contributing to this happening. Sustainability arises as “an inside job” that is then expressed on the outer as the service, selflessness and brilliant collaboration of ordinary humans.
So, how does “human kind know what to do?” After all, it is only the exceptional individual who has already chosen to act. How can we amplify the archetypal voice of the interconnected world in such a way that more and more people hear and respond? On one level, the Collective Consciousness and the energies of the cosmos are doing the work for us. On another level, the lesson we are being presented with, is that each and every one of us needs to take responsibility as we birth into a feminine way of sharing power that allows for exponential empowerment. As individuals translate this gnosis into action, and SHARE it with others, we grow together into “the next Buddha of community”. Together, we can cultivate a sustainability of personhood that is held in the arms of practice and pragmatic action.
What are the foundations of practice and worldview that can sustain an ongoing wisdom process of empowered and wise action?
• • •
The Five Foundations:
1.) Divinity – a connection to “Source,” “Universe,” “God” or “the Absolute” that is personal and known through experience.
2.) Intimacy – a felt sense of dependent co-arising or co-creative contactfullness with the human and more than human world verging into active interdependency, trusting and feeling how we are collaborating with everything as everything is collaborating with us simultaneously.[7] In this intimacy with the life impulse, we simultaneously live in accord with Joseph Campbell’s famous dictum to “follow your bliss” while responding to the calling of the world to us to share our gifts and energy in a unique service to the whole.
3.) Love – contexting ourselves within a co-creative fabric of beauty celebrating itself. Eros was the child of Resource and Need. We are children of Resource and Need. So, let us become the living spirit of Eros. We are called to resourcefully birth beauty out of the need expressed through our common plight. Love then becomes the experience and expression of our own capacity to embrace what is and to harmonize the seemingly irreparable. We have this capacity, so let us create as love.
4.) Ecologically Integral Values – opening to a more complex, multi-valent and inter-related way of seeing the world than any generation before us. We practice and flower through a values structure that aligns with the interconnectivity of individuals, families, communities, countries, biospheres, the planet and spirit. Interdependence trumps individuality. Harmony and Beauty supercede progression. Truth is experienced universally as a generator of authentic expression, deep collaboration and peaceful interactions. Markets contract as relationships expand. We learn how to deal with and transcend our aloneness. While the dominant spirituality of the last 2000 years has taught us that we are radically alone, the emergent values system begins with the fact that we are radically together. Responsibility and action emerge from our felt sense of the dependent co-arising of all that is. We are emerging from a fog of isolation, and finding that we are interdependent. This is true at every level of our experience, from the most mundane to the most sublime. As Julia Butterfly Hill says, “When you throw something away, where is away?” Available working models include Ken Wilbur’s integral model, Louise L. Diamond’s Global Systems Initiative, Lawrence Ellis’ model for co-creating a culture of Peace, The Biomimicry Institute’s Design Spiral Process, and many, many more.
5.) Co-Creativity or Alchemy in Action – embracing death, preservation and birth as initiatory opportunities for maturation of the soul and spirit, we embody a fundamentally life-centric world view that rejects nothing and embraces everything. We become co-creators, living as the “I am that I am.” We embody the principle “as above so below, as below so above” by recognizing that the living god moves in us and through us as we act in accord with our interconnectivity with all that is. This, in turn, moves us towards community and embrace of the constant change and non-fixity implied by showing up in deep relationship.
• • •
The final frontier is our stamina on the journey. This will be the ultimate measure of our success as “sustainable people.” Here, we can lean on an ongoing theme in the crisis and creation cycles of history. “Resilience arises as a result of the collapse of orthodoxy and normative cultural structures… The way to endure this dark night is to align with the ordering principle of creation itself.”[8] As we align with the ordering principles of creation as we are uniquely experiencing them in this time, we are seeing a shift from what eco-psychologist and cultural visionary Bill Plotkin calls an ego-centric developmental progression to a soul-centric progression. In this progression, we move beyond the Wanderer phase, where we strive for identity, ego definition and resolution of our shadow, and into the truly adult phases of our own creative capacity: The Apprentice, the Artisan, The Master and the Sage. The key qualities embodied in each of these phases respectively are visionary inspiration and action, seeds of cultural renaissance, wholeness, and grace. Their “tasks” respectively are learning delivery systems for embodying soul in culture, manifesting innovative delivery systems for soul work, caring for the soul of the more than human world, and tending the universe.[9] These are the tasks we need served and fulfilled in the ongoing creation of a sustainable culture. To consistently embody these stages of human development, and initiate through them, requires loving kindness, deep practice, and embrace of whatever stage one is already in. Earth herself, and our blossoming awakened communities, are showing us the way into these initiations.
Ultimately, a sustainable person is a being capable of this level of maturation of the psyche and this level of service to the whole in a continuous, self-evolving way. A sustainable person embodies a deep connectivity to soul, earth and spirit that is manifested through an infinite variety of works. Never before has such an invitation been offered to every person on the planet in one single wave of consciousness, nor have the conditions been so ripe for a collective process of gnosis, choice, empowerment and co-operative action. Never in history has the entire human race experienced such a radical collision of catastrophic conditions with such powerful alignments of spiritual energy and cosmic opportunity. We actually do not “know what to do,” yet we are called. And, we are massively capable of responding to the spirit that is moving through us. We are here, at the gateway. Let us choose to enter in grace. Let us continuously choose to harmonize with the co-creative potential that we are, building from the inner to the outer, the outer to the inner, from the bottom up, and from the top down,[10] a world that matches our dreams of peace, justice and spiritual fulfillment for all.
Bibliography
Beckwith, Michael. Speech presented at the Humanity Unites Brilliance, Actioning Your Brilliance, June 19, 2009.
Bloom, Alan. The Republic of Plato. New York, Basic Books, 1968.
Biomimicry Institute. “Home Page.” http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/about-us/biomimicry-a-tool-for-innovation.html (Accessed June 23, 2009).
Casey, Carolyn R. Making the Gods Work For You: The Astrological Language of the Psyche. New York, Random House, 1998.
Ellis, Lawrence. “The Mechanics of a Culture of Peace.” Speech presented as a part of the launch of the Cities of Peace Initiative, San Francisco, June 10, 2009.
Grameen Bank Official Website. “At a Glance.” http://www.grameen-info.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=175 (Accessed June 23, 2009).
Hadot, Pierre. What is Ancient Philosophy? Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2002.
Hawken, Paul. “Blessed Unrest.” Speech presented at the Annual Bioneers conference, October 14, 2006.
Hawken, Paul. “Healing or Stealing.” Speech given for the commencement address to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3, 2009.
Hawkins, David R. Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior. Sedona, Arizona: Veritas Pub., 1995.
Page, Christine R. 2012 and the Galactic Center: The Return of the Great Mother. Rochester, New York, 2008.
Plato. Euthyphro, Apology, Crito. Translated by F.J. Church. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: The Library of Liberal Arts, 1948.
Plotkin, Bill. Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World. Novato, California: New World Library, 2008.
Pinchbeck, Daniel. 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. New York: Penguin Group, 2006.
Wickipedia. “Kali Yuga.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga (Accessed June 23, 2009).
[2] Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (Novato, California: New World Library, 2008), 25.
[3] Paul Hawken, “Blessed Unrest” (speech presentation at the Annual Bioneers conference, October 14, 2006).
[4] Reverend Michael Beckwith (speech presented at the Humanity Unites Brilliance, Actioning Your Brilliance, June 19, 2009).
[5] Christine R. Page, 2012 and the Galactic Center: The Return of the Great Mother. (Rochester, New York, 2008), 2-3.
[6] Grameen Bank Official Website. “At a Glance.” http://www.grameen-info.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=175 (Accessed June 23, 2009).
[7] Caroline R. Casey, Making the Gods Work for You: The Astrological Language of the Psyche (New York: Random House, 1998), 15-16.
[8] Jim Garrison, “Wisdom As a Way of Life” (Lecture presented for course of the same title in New York, March 23, 2009).
[9] Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (Novato, California: New World Library, 2008), 60-61.
[10] Lewis Ellis, “The Mechanics of a Culture of Peace” (speech presented as a part of the launch of the Cities of Peace Initiative, San Francisco, June 10, 2009).
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Fulfilling the holographic potential of our true intelligence. Aligning the harmonies we co-create through crystalline coherency. Meeting fear directly as opportunity to grow. Noticing when we are playing out fear based stories and choosing, consciously, to re-write them with empowerment and grace.
On this Equinox day, a gateway of balance between the expansion of Summer and the decent of Winter, I am harvesting the fruits of an extraordinarily full season. I am contemplating the nature of this unique turning moment in the history of the human race, and listening to the question: WHAT IS IN WISDOM?
My thoughts center around the twin forces of Awakening and Planetary Crisis.
Emergence and global warming pose THE essential spiritual and existential questions of our time. These twin factors define the “ecology of consciousness” we think, live and love within. We are not unique or special in hearing the calling of Wisdom. Anyone who is remotely conscious is called, on some level, to engage the systemic challenges before us as individuals, as communities, as a species, as members of an interdependent planetary ecology, and as dependently co-arising beings within the Cosmic Mind. What distinguishes any one of us as a unique being is how each of us “chooses to live the questions.” How do you live the questions? How do we? I would like to frame this writing as an invitation to examine our capacity as a community to SHOW UP and to be and act as wisdom in these extraordinary times.
• Sustainability is not enough. While I am 144% certain that our survival is at stake, I am also certain that we must think and feel beyond the box of survival to make it through the eye of this needle. I am interested in resilience, regenesis and thrival – in how we build our capacity to think, live, feel and love from these memes.
• Resilience, regenesis and thrival require total embrace of death. To be a Climate Leader is to live the meditatation on the luminosity of death and the rich compost of life – to walk through death, shadow and fear with open eyes, awake mind and courageous heart.
• Wisdom emerges through the depth lineages of the past AND from our projected vision of a regenerative future (in depth relationship to Gaia). I have taken to the MYSTICAL PATH OF FUTURE MEMORY, and am applying it daily to my work, relationships and vibrational field. The “possible human” is one such vision. There are many, from many lineages, and source-able through one’s own visionary capacity. Part of wisdom NOW is to source from the braiding of Ancient, Future and personal gnosis.
• Most “consciousness” institutions (Like Wisdom University & IONS) are primarily places for the Static Feminine and Static Masculine aspects of consciousness to blossom. Whereas, activist, political and business organizations are primarily a places for the Active Masculine & Feminine with doses of the two other quadrants thrown in. How might we more actively bridge these two poles? Do we want to?
• Mastery is the outcome of our ability to travel gracefully within apparent polarity and antinomy. PRACTICE is ever at the heart of the wise path. An excellent contemplation for this day of Equinox: inner and outer, masculine and feminine, root and branch, heart and head, top down/bottom up, inside out/outside in. How can we as a community continue to bring our integral wisdom to Climate Leadership?
• Restraint, Excellence, Hubris: If we are really going to make it through this portal, we are genuinely being called to own that WE ARE CREATORS – god-selves able to recreate the world. However, we cannot do it “in our own image”. We must own this with ultimate humility, feeling it not through ego, but through the interconnectivity of ecological/holographic consciousness, through the contemplation on dependent co-arising. We must do this, as the Greeks did, with loving, disciplined restraint and studied excellence, or we will fall into hubris. And… we will need a lot of stamina, persistence and perseverance. There are no silver bullets, except, perhaps, the pure heart.
• Emergence: This is not something that is happening uniquely to us as “a wisdom community,” but for the entire human family all at once. Nor do I believe that we are particularly “ahead” because of the work we are doing. Rather, I see us as a part of an unknowably vast wave of emergence that is happening through an archetypal logic far greater than any one of us. Two biologic metaphors best describe this emergence: the mycelium and the butterfly. The mycelium is everywhere and totally invisible. It sprouts mushrooms whenever the conditions are ripe to support fruit. (We do not control this.) The butterfly is the force of beauty. (We choose beauty through resonance.) By being early responders within the chrysalis soup, we play the role of “imaginal cells” for greater whole. Thus, we play a part in the reconfiguration of the DNA of the caterpillar becoming butterfly (the emergence of regenerative culture).
• Intelligent Optimism: In Paul Hawken’s words: “If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”
We are the pulse. Thank you for reading. I look forward to continuing in mind, heart and hands – together.
In love and respect,
Samantha Sweetwater
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Infolding - photo by Wes Carson - Dancer: Me
I am not a teacher.
I have nothing to say.
What I know is stillness And motion.
What I know is that they are one and the same.
I am universe dancing.
I offer the love that I am.
God speaks or is silent from this. This being of freedom IS the Prayer.
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“Imagine then a dancer who… has attained such a degree of understanding that his body is simply the luminous manifestation of his soul; whose body dances in accordance with a music heard inwardly, in an expression of something out of another, profounder world. This is the truly creative dancer; natural but not imitative, speaking in movement out of himself and out of something greater than all selves.”
Isadora Duncan – The Philosopher’s Stone of Dancing, 1920
Photo by Wes Carson
Creation Dances. The universe dances. When existence was born out of the great, undifferentiated field of the One, the dance was born. Since the beginning of time and the beginning of existence, being has been dancing with essence. Our souls are dancing the space where our spirit and our bodies meet.
The dance is the great unifier. Dance invites us into union with the masculine and feminine, seen and unseen, being and doing, spiritual and physical aspects of ourselves. Gently, fiercely moving us in the tides of our own bodies and emotions, it brings us right to the center of soul. To dance is to celebrate being human – being a spirit in the body living on this miraculous planet called Gaia.
Dancing Freedom is my spiritual practice. It is not a religion. It has no dogmas, no boundaries. It welcomes all bodies, all gestures, all gods. It invites diversity, and through embrace of the wild multiplicity of expression, teaches the truths of Unity. Dancing is spiritual because it is a way of joy. Joy means saying a divine yes to life – to the movement that IS life – all of IT – and, to our divine creatorship. When we move and just keep moving, we become one with all parts of ourselves and with the great cosmic dance.
I believe the dance can set us free. Freedom means that we are at home in our bodies and in our spirits. It means that we have fluidity between our inner connectivity and outer expressivity. When these two parts of ourselves are in dynamic flow, we live with soul. WE dance in the fire of love that is at the center of hearts. Freedom means embracing that fire – being ok with the full spectrum of our experience, at home in all of our stuff AND in our exaltation. I call this divine OK-ness. It is a place where there is no separation between the sacred and the mundane – a place where we KNOW that THIS is the true essence of sacredness. When we live here, we are free. Incredible magic happens. The world opens before us as a place of wonder, color, authenticity and beauty. Our instinctive, intuitive and worldly aspects reconnect. We stop going through the motions of life, and instead really feel the vibrancy and joy of existence pulsing through us.
No true freedom can emerge from resistance. What we resist persists. We are learning how to really love what is, how to embrace. The path of liberation asks us to surrender everything while we simultaneously hold the mother wisdom of creating safe space. What does this look like in the dance? It looks like working within a clear container of practice where we can really let go to explore. It means developing the clarity of our own sense of yes and no. It means exploring how our physical and emotional experiences are holographic reflections of all dimensions of our experience. Our skin is a sacred boundary. Our hearts have boundaries and borders that can be contained, entered, held, opened, surrendered. It is through naked dialogue with the bounded aspect of experience that we come to the blissful experience of boundlessness. It is through the existence of a contained self and a distinct other that we give and receive. When the flow is open in both directions, we can open to the infinity loop of creation.
Freedom does not mean being without boundaries. It means choosing boundaries, keeping agreements with our self and other and communicating clearly and cleanly. It means giving and receiving. It means knowing that we create our realities through choice. The dance teaches the total creativity of the moment. We be, do and act from an inner creative impulse that is always our own, always available for us to claim. It teaches us ownership of this creative impulse, and how to share that impulse without giving away all our energy. The dance teaches us healthy, heart-full ways to be authentic. This is freedom.
Dancing takes me home. This is my practice. My cells speak many languages: jazz, rock, samba, techno, dub, trance, silence. My body knows many paths in time and space: slow, fast, chaotic, graceful, high, low, lazy, energized, linear, circular, sweeping. I connect to the filaments of consciousness that flow through all things, all time and space. And, I surf the textures of dimensions far greater than this one. I ignite in the downward spiral of Love, Light and Energy: the core frequencies of embodiment. I release into the upward spiral of Love, wisdom and power – in action and in essence. Immanence and Transcendence. I return, again and again, to stillness.
I have seven sacred agreements I keep with myself:
1.) I will show up.
2.) I will pay attention.
3.) I will love.
4.) I will be myself.
5.) I will breathe.
6.) I take responsibility.
7.) I honor my body, my emotions, my mind and my spirit.
I keep these agreements …ask others to keep these agreements with me as we re-birth a culture of spirit in the body. As we return to these fundamental ground rules for spiritual practice, we create a powerful field for transformation and a safe space for all souls to dance.
Open Heart Empowerment Ceremony, Mount Shasta
So. You say you don’t dance…. It is a gift of life and right of passage to dance. Once upon a time, everyone danced. The world was born dancing. Mother god seduced father god with her great beauty, and thus, the universe was born. Original peoples everywhere on the planet have danced communion since the beginning of time. It is in your blood. We have danced the cycles of the seasons, the hunt, the harvests, the birth, marriage and death portals of life. We have danced to recognize the girl becoming the woman and the boy becoming man. We have danced for praise, gratitude, forgiveness, harmonization, re-genesis, and transformation. We have danced to become one with the elements, the directions and the devas. The Sufis swirl, the Quakers shake, the bushmen of the Kalahari jump, the Hawaiians hula. South Indian Kathak dancers tell the great Hindu epics in the exquisite detailing of fingers and eyes, while aboriginals, Tibetan Buddhists and Cuban Santeros invite divine energies to take over the body in states of trance.
Our dances reflect our connection to the earth, our beliefs, and the ways in which we relate with each other. They are the backbone of culture.
In this now time, we are coming together to dance a revolution of dancing evolution. We are bridging the mind and the body to create a culture of heart. Dancing is a path of truth. We come to truth through authentic connection and expression. We are not here to seek the truth, we are here to live it. We remember how to do this when we dance. If you feel this call, Dancing Freedom is your tradition. Certainly, it is my tradition. It is a choice. It is my choice. It is a re-birthing of cultural backbone and a celebration of peace. We create Oneness as we dance. WE re-weave the wholeness of the world and the coherence of community. We remember that being human is ok, and that, in this humanness, we can be ONE.
We are luminous bodies. We are light. We know this mentally as a truth of Quantum Mechanics. But, let us dance it – as Truth. Let us touch the knowing that true stillness is moving and that true movement holds all stillness. Let us dance to know our selves, and that which is greater than the self. Let us dance and come home. Let us dance and be Freedom.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged connection, culture, Dancing Freedom, expression, freedom, heart, joy, luminosity, practice, quantum, soul, spirit, sustainable | 1 Comment »
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