Eco Exercises for the Soul

The extent to which we live in our ego defenses and thought processes of judgment and duality, without awareness of what informs our choices in the realm of judgment and defense,, is the extent to which we are cut off from our experience in our body, needs and feelings. We live highly achieving adult lives, that are disconnected from early emotional struggles we experienced as children. But it is this suffering that informs all our adult ego defenses and beliefs. As we are cut off from our souls and natural lives, so too are we unaware, uncaring and lacking in relationship and responsibility to the natural world with devastating effects on our planet.

Our responsibility is to do the inner soul work to become aware of how our ego blocks and splits us from our suffering young souls as well as the worlds soul and realize how this condition is resulting in a life-denying situation in our lives and on our planet. If we all accepted doing the ego work that gets in the way of our creative souls, then the environment and ecology of the world would become interdependent, mutual, respectful and loving. I encourage you all to join me in the vision of shifting the consciousness of the world, by working through, what I call eco-exercises for the soul, to facilitate the inner and outer healing of our personal and world ecologies.

Splits in the psyche between the unaware motive (feelings, meanings, and needs) and the aware beliefs that lead to action are particularly harmful to ourselves, others, and the environment.

For example, if I feel shame because, when I made mistakes as a child, I was treated in a way that made the mistakes mean that I was worthless, stupid, and wrong, then I might believe that I must work very hard, never make a mistake, and be perfect, leading to a driven life of perfectionism and achievement, without any awareness of the driving impulse to do this.

Deprivation/Overindulgence Leading to Self-Entitlement and Misuse of Privilege

When our needs are not adequately met by our primary caretakers as small children, the result is an intolerable sense of shame, the feeling associated with the meaning we make of deprivation - usually that we are unlovable or worthless in some way. This feeling is so debilitating that we learn tactics to avoid it. Because we have avoided and denied the feeling with a tactic, all that is known to us in awareness is the tactic. Now consciousness is split into unconscious feelings and needs, and awareness of the tactics and beliefs we have about ourselves. There is a split between the feelings of deprivation, lack, shame, fear, hurt, and rage about not having our feelings matter or our needs met, and our awareness of, for instance, a belief system of demand, deserving, and entitlement. We might employ many tactics to ensure we “have,” in order to prove that we are not unworthy of “not having.” Materialism replaces connection; status is demanded as proof of not being worthless, and manipulation in relationships becomes the order of the day to ensure the other person meets your needs, does your bidding, and proves their love. The split becomes an internal one of feeling like a victim and actually being a perpetrator..

On the other hand, if your feelings and needs are indulged as a small child, you grow up believing in your superiority and specialness, feeling entitled to use your power and status to get what you want, demanding special treatment, acting spoiled, and throwing tantrums when you don’t get what you want because it worked when you were a child. If you do not get what you want, you believe it must mean you are unlovable and worthless, and you are filled with shame - the intolerable feeling you will do anything to avoid.

These are very common dynamics and reflect a stage of societal development. Can you find ways to recognize this dynamic in yourself? For some hints and examples:

Read here

Consider societal greed, self-entitlement, and environmental exploitation.

It can only happen if a society is made up of people who are living self-entitled lives in every small way, for these big and devastating tragedies to happen. You can do your part by raising awareness of your own self-entitlement, lived out in small ways, but motivated by deep inner wounding.

Lack of Empathy

"I have known for many years that the next step in our evolution [will] include a quality of cosmic consciousness, as humanity becomes aware of the deeper significance of its place not just within our solar system but within the greater cosmos. How this will unfold we do not know, except that there will be an inner and outer relationship between our planet and the cosmos. A time of isolation or separation within our own individual world will have come to an end.

Rather than projecting this transition into science fiction images of aliens or galactic travel, I would begin with the microcosmic understanding of what it means to us individually to step outside of the isolated sense we have of our own separate self, and instead embrace and live from a consciousness of oneness in which we KNOW how we are part of an interconnected whole." ~ Llewellyn Vaughn Lee

For me, eco-spirituality means waking up to the fact that there is no “Humanity” on the one hand and “Environment” on the other hand - we are the environment and the environment is the body of which we are a part. We are just one life-form expressing the infinite in form, made of the same elements as everything else in the universe.

Our language belies our separation and distance from nature....eg. “I love being in nature.” One cannot enjoy “being in nature,” when you are nature and part of nature. This statement reflects a perception of subject and object, is determined by a certain circumstance and is time limited. How wonderful it would be rather, to know one’s experience as one of joy, in unity with all, at all times. In the biggest sense then, eco-spirituality is a commitment to healing all the splits and divisions in our own perception and psyche, so that it can translate into the experience of wholeness and oneness within ourselves as an integral part of the universe. At the macro level, destroying and exploiting the larger body means destroying ourselves. At a microcosmic level - if we do not care for our own body - then it cannot serve as a vehicle for awakening - it becomes a prison of pain, sickness and immobility. In the same way, if we do not care for the larger body of the planet, it can no longer serve as a vehicle of awakening to awe and wonder, joy, peace and interdependence, but becomes an ugly prison of starvation, misery and destruction. For more …. click here

“For Teilhard de Chardin, Mary and the Feminine is the Eternal Feminine. His Hymn to Matter praises the stuff of matter which will one day be restored at the apocstastiasis: ‘Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations: you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards or measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God.’” ~Caitlin Matthews

This week, in Costa Rica, we visited a Leatherback Sea Turtle research project at Playa Grande. On the beach we were lucky enough to see a pail full of newly hatched baby sea turtles. The young people researching and working to save the leatherbacks from extinction were excited and happy to allow everyone to see them at work, making sure all the babies were out of the sea-sand burrow in which the eggs were laid and hatched. They carefully sifted through the sand, removing the leathery egg shells and examining them carefully, rescuing the weaker stragglers, and recording how many hatched out of the clutch. The turtles were to be released that night when the moon was full, to guide them to the sea. Releasing them at night also protects them in that there are fewer predators likely to get them. Nature is fecund and profusely prolific in creating, but very few live to complete the journey from conception to recreation. This is a truth for us too – most never complete the cycle of their own evolution in consciousness. The question becomes, how do we maximize the greatest survival rate and completion rate? Both for us in consciousness and in saving the natural world? The two are intimately linked….. For more, click here

“We now need to experiment with altering basic pa?erns of consciousness that have been set down in the primate line for seventy million years at least. As you lie on your back viewing the Milky Way, noFce that an implicit assumpFon framing the experience is that of “looking up at the stars.” This unconscious aItude is biologically rooted, for primates have had the up-down direcFon carefully coded into their organismic funcFoning. A chimpanzee awakening in the night in its nest in the trees needs to be instantly oriented by the up-down axis. Put another way, all the ancestral chimpanzees that needed more than a couple of seconds to figure out which way was up have long since met their demise by falling down. ~ Brian Swimme For more … Read here

Read Everything Brian Swimme has ever written - watch his youtube videos

Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every singles creature is full of God, and is a book about God. Every creature is a word of God. If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature - even a caterpillar, I would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God is every creature. ~Meister Eckhart

Ethan, my nine year old grandson, came with us on retreat to South Africa this year. His innocent, playful and authentic emotional presence was a gift to everyone. On the second day there, he witnessed a young woman on a scooter being hit by a car. She had a helmet on, but the impact with the windscreen of the car broke her neck and she lay convulsing on the road in her death throes. Within a minute her convulsions lessened unil her body lay lifeless on the road. Ethan witnessed this and although it was not the first time he had encountered death, it was the first time he saw a human die. He was very upset and frightened by the experience. He expressed his fears that night that his mommy could die. And what can one say? Yes, it can happen in the blink of an eye, and yes, it is very sad to see consciousness separate from matter in death. His mom validated his feelings and his perception but did not make false promises or offer meaningless platitudes. Instead she stayed present to her own feelings and his with empathy. For more … read here

This week an eleven year old child said to me, her serious little face filled with pain. “When I hold money in my hand, I hear the trees sobbing. I don’t know why people are so worried about money. Why are they not worried about the trees?” She went on to tell me, “...when we rip up the grass and the plants it is as if we are tearing the hair out of God’s head.”

What are we to tell our children about the legacy we are leaving them?

This eleven year old child knows that every act of destruction and war is an act of self mutilation - she feels it in her own body which is one with all that is. And she lives in the midst of people that are unaware and well defended against the consequences of their destructive acts... her awareness and knowledge leave her with no option but to feel the pain and suffering all around her. She does not need therapy - she is the only sane one in an insane world. For more … Read here

“As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become dehumanized. Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved with nature and has lost his emotional "unconscious identity" with natural phenomena.” ~Jung You yourself are a living symbol of the Universe. Everything that exists merely points to a deeper reality. Whether a dung beetle, elephant or human, all forms are different outer representations of Ultimate Reality involuted, informed and involved into physical manifestation. Everything created shares the same blueprint, the same basic genetic code with very slight variations. For instance a difference of 3.1% in genetic coding distinguishes the outer form of a human from the great apes. As Meister Eckhardt says, “Being is God’s circle and in this circle all creatures exist. Everything that is in God, is God.” For more … Read here

More than a billion people do not have access to safe water and well over 2 billion people live without adequate sanitation. At any given time, more than half of the developing world’s population is suffering from one or more of the main diseases associated with unsafe water and poor sanitation. For children, the chances of survival dwindle in the absence of these essentials. Every day, 6,000 children die of water-related diseases. Young children are the first to get sick and die from waterborne and sanitation-related illnesses—including diarrheal diseases and malaria. ~UNICEF

One of the quests of space travel is to discover where else in the universe there might be traces of water, because without it there can be no life. Just so, the human form has no life without a soul. The soul is the living water and the experience of life in form provides the soul with an infinite number of choices and possibilities in creating an individual identity. Individual identity is the sum total of these choices - some are made in an unaware state and some in a deliberate and aware state. As small children we unwittingly accept the attitudes, beliefs, values and opinions of others about ourselves, others and the world around us. Later on, we have more conscious choices about what to accept and what not to accept. For more … Read here

Everything exists so that something else can exist. Every time that you eat, whatever it is you ate gave its life so that you may have life. When we start understanding that this giving and receiving is symbolic of giving and receiving divine love (wine) and truth (bread) we can begin to understand the enormous responsibility of becoming a worthy sacrifice ourselves - may we be the bread of Truth and the wine of Love that feeds and gives life to others. And may we be eternally grateful to those that have been bread and wine for us and given us life. For more … Read here

When we start awakening to the big picture, integrating splits and seeing interconnection, it is important that we shift not just our thinking but our visual images. We have to use our imagination - a function of the Soul. The intellect’s knowledge must be subsumed under a greater wisdom and a bigger picture. Intellectual thought, discernment, facts, analysis are all important executive functions to be used and to be in service to the greater aspect of Universal Mind, which is Wisdom. We must be able to be aware of when we are using either intellect or wisdom and know the difference to be lovingly effective in our own inner world and so the outer world. Both the Big Picture, and the details are important. But the details are useless unless seen within the big picture.

Can you draw two symbolic pictures - of matter infused with God, instead of God as separate from His creation? Can you draw two symbolic pictures - of mutuality and reciprocity as opposed to hierarchy? Can you draw two symbolic pictures - of man as a part of ecology instead of as a separate individual? For more … Read here

How often I hear people espousing the idea that it is okay to hunt and kill if you eat what you kill. To me this seems to miss the point altogether. The focus needs to be on motive - not end result. I grew up on a continent of big game hunting. It always nauseated me - it felt like a violation to my being... but I also grew up to the exaggerated and swaggering tales of bravado and learnt to repress my natural knowing.

It took me a long time to see through all the rationalizations for killing that I heard. The event that resulted in my awareness was elephant culling when I was living in Malawi and a game ranger invited me with to go with him to do this loathsome job. He wanted support - he called this the most horrible part of his job. It is, however, essential in Africa now that the great migrations of animals are curtailed by borders and animals are confined to restricted areas called game parks. Elephants can quickly, under these circumstances decimate the bushveld and upset the balance of nature and so the numbers have to be “managed.” I was young, open for any adventure, taught to be tough and I went with. I never, ever want to experience this again... and I am forever grateful that I did. For more … Read here

One day in fall, my husband, Tom had just finished filling the bird feeder, when a flock of two or three hundred black birds descended into our garden. We watched for a few moments as they chased off other birds, and raucously scratched through and made short work of a few pounds of bird seed. I was lost in the beauty of the moment - the abundance, the feeding for their long winter trip, the black movement against the translucent red of the oak tree in the clear blue autumn sky. Lost in a reverie, I was startled by my gentle, loving husband’s comment, “Goddamn blackbirds - pity I still don’t have a gun.... just look at them - greedy, aggressive little crap birds!” I laughed at the obvious projection but also felt puzzled by his response. Not that I feel in any way self righteous about it .... I have said the same thing about mosquitoes and any number of other beasties that have somehow inconvenienced me ... I am guilty of anthropomorphizing, attributing human motivations to, wanting to destroy... just like everyone else. I got angry at Tom .... destruction is so catching. “What are you talking about? They are beautiful! I hate it when you talk like that!” It took me a while to recognize my projection.

For more … Read here

Black Elk

If you have dedicated yourself to speeding up the process of evolution in yourself through diligent spiritual practice then you are going to become aware of ways in which you were not aware and the ways in which you were destructive and hurtful to yourself and others along the way. Before evolution come involution. Before the return journey to Source was the journey away from Source. This is the way it works. It cannot be done any other way.

For more … Read here

We are the sum of our relationships. What makes a person a person is the dynamic interactions of the various relationships operating at any one time in the person’s life. These include relationships with significant others, with friends and colleagues at a whole range of levels, with the surrounding environment, with the world, and with the realm of spirit, which includes mind and psyche, but also a sense of transcendence that is partly conscious but, in the greater part, subconscious....

.... When I say that my personal identity is that of the sum of my relationships, I don’t simply mean relationships with other persons. I also mean a multi-dimensional sense of interconnection with the surrounding world in its planetary and cosmic dimensions; e.g., as carbon-based life-forms, we are connected to the distant world of stars and galaxies. It is more than a poetic quip to claim that we are the same stuff as stars.

Because of our amnesia, and the consequent betrayal of our true identity, we have become to ourselves, to each other, and to our world, a bunch of commodities, objectified, mechanistic entities that ferociously compete for the ever-depleting resources of our world, a world we have also excessively turned into yet another commodity to be exploited and consumerized - addictive alienation.

~Diarmuid O’Murchu

“All of us enjoy gazing out across large lakes and fields, and other expansive landscapes. The Expanding Circles activity will greatly enhance your “gazing,” by helping you focus attention more clearly on what you’re seeing. Whenever I do this activity, I experience the great, harmonious sea of life surrounding me.

Expanding Circles works best if you sit where you have a panoramic view, and also an interesting foreground. For example, sit where there are flowers and grasses and perhaps a shrub close by, trees a little farther away, and a mountain ridge in the distance.

For more … Read here

In examining the mythology of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic account of creation it is clear that the cultural understanding of the last 7000 years has reflected and resulted in deep splits in the human psyche that have resulted in tragic human suffering. The story has been seen as prescriptive, not descriptive and has informed and given permission for a hierarchy of power and control, domination and subjugation of the earth and women.

For more … Read here

Spirituality is the relational component of lived experience.

~Katherine Zappone

When I was a child I brought endless animals home that I found in the bush.... My Dad had a fenced-off half acre of land where I could keep them. It was my joy to “tame” them and keep them for pets. Very often I would find tortoises. A wild tortoise in its new home, would take off at a rapid tortoise pace if it saw me coming. However, when I got close it, it would retract its head and feet into its shell and try to wait me out. This is where I learnt patience. I learnt that tortoises adore strawberries - and so I would crouch down on my haunches and hold the strawberry in front of it’s shell where its head was hidden.

For more … Read here

Spiritual Ecology

I have known for many years that the next step in our evolution will include a quality of cosmic consciousness, as humanity becomes aware of the deeper significance of its place not just within our solar system but within the larger cosmos. How this will unfold, we do not know, except that there will be an inner and outer relationship between our planet and the cosmos. A time of isolation or separation within our own individual worlds will have come to an end. Rather than imagining this transition as science-fiction scenes of aliens or galactic travel, I would start with a microcosmic view of what it means for us personally to move beyond the isolated sense of our separate selves. Instead, we should embrace and live from a consciousness of oneness, in which we KNOW how we are part of an interconnected whole.

If we embrace the sacred within all life, we will discover that life speaks to us just as it did to our ancestors. A veil will be lifted, and this innate knowing will return. This is the ancient wisdom of the Earth itself, the Earth which has evolved and changed over millennia, whose wisdom we desperately need now to prevent an even greater ecological disaster.

~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee -DARKENING of the LIGHT: Witnessing the End of an Era. Available here: http://tinyurl.com/n3wlnuw

“It is doubtful if American society can move very far or very significantly without a major revolution in theological concepts .... Within the traditions, beliefs and customs of the American Indian people are the guidelines for human-kinds’s future.

There is a reason why shrines exist ... Mount Sinai, for example, has been a holy mountain for a considerable length of time, thus indicating that it has a religious existence over and above any temporary belief held by particular people. If this concept is true, then economics cannot and should not be the sole determinant of land use. Unless the sacred places are discovered and protected and used as religious places, there is no possibility of a nation ever coming to grips with the land itself. Without this basic relationship, national stability is impossible.

That a fundamental element of religion is an intimate relationship with the land on which the religion is practiced should be a major premise of future theology.

~Deloria, Vine. God is Red and We talk, You listen.

For more … Read here

Notice your feelings while reading this poem.

Do you feel despair, shame, guilt, overwhelm, or scared?

Do you want to move on, not think about it, tell yourself there is nothing you can do?

Instead, discipline your usual reaction and ask yourself which animal, plant, or insect in the world do you love? Now, make a plan to help save this one species every month for the rest of your life. How can you join a group? Contribute money, write, share your love in conversation, teach a child, or do marketing? Just one small act of devotion a month for one species.

Now do a silent meditation, imagining this being done by 10 people, then 100, then 1000, then in every school and institution in the world. Just one life form, just one, that you love.

“From the viewpoint of absolute truth, what we feel and experience in our ordinary daily life is all delusion. Of all the various delusions, the sense of discrimination between oneself and others is the worst form, as it creates nothing but unpleasant.” Dalai Lama

I had one lonely guppy left in my fish tank. He was clearly a survivor.

I had put some lettuce leaves on the surface of the tank because the guppies loved to eat them but this time, a few hours after putting them in the tank, all the fish died... there was only one hardy little fish left. He had a beautiful, bright yellow tail and fins. For more … Read here

Trees are the lungs of our planet. The more trees we plant, the cleaner our air will be for generations to come. Instead of cutting down trees to make way for more cemeteries and burying our loved ones with poisonous embalming fluid, a growing number of people with environmental concerns are choosing green burials, which can increase tree numbers and fertilize the land. As a general rule, green burials avoid the use of embalming fluid and cement burial vaults, and can be considerably less costly than traditional burials, ensuring that grieving loved ones are not pressured into high-priced caskets they can’t afford. Let’s Start Converting Cemeteries Into Forests. A nonprofit organization in Toronto, Canada (PreventDisease.com) is now offering the Bios Urn, a funerary urn that will turn you into a tree after you die. Inside the urn, there is a pine seed – or a maple, or oak, or ash – that will grow into a memorial tree to commemorate your loved one. Bios Urns use the natural cycle of life to transform death into growth. The Heart of the Bios Urn. The top part of the Bios Urn is especially designed to allow the seed to sprout. Before you bury the urn, you will need to mix the components with some dirt from where you want your tree to grow. The components will naturally facilitate seed germination when mixed with soil. The urn’s structure keeps the seed separate from the ashes until the urn itself begins to degrade. The lower capsule is where you store the ashes, while the tree grows in the upper compartment. The entire urn becomes part of the sub-soil and a fertilizer for the tree. The upper capsule is a sealed unit that ensures the seed remains in good condition until it begins to sprout. There is no expiration date as long as it is kept in a cool, dry place. PreventDisease.com offers a choice of Pine, Ginkgo, Maple, Oak, Ash, Beech, or Cypress for both North America and Europe. “Sales have been ongoing for a year and going very well,” says Susan McHilley of the non-profit PreventDisease.com, which is selling the green urns.

For more information and to purchase, visit preventdisease.com. Reprinted with permission – photos from preventdisease.com http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/biodegradable-urns-will-turn-tree-die/

She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not... We start playing this game in childhood, plucking one petal from a daisy, then the next, until we are left with nothing but the center and the answer. We continue playing this game long past childhood, trying to choose between this and that, deciding between good and evil, right and wrong. Trying to decide whether we are good or bad, lovable or unlovable, and confused about whom to blame, ourselves, others, or God. The duality of our own minds plays ping-pong with us.

For more - Read here

I grew up knowing this plant as “Mother-in-law’s tongue.” It is common in Africa and is native to West Africa, Madagascar, and southern Asia. It grows easily and is not highly valued in South Africa, where it is considered more of a weed than a desirable garden plant. I would not have given it a second thought unless I had seen the TED Talk and learned about its remarkable air-cleaning properties. NASA identified it as one of the best plants for improving indoor air quality by passively absorbing toxins such as nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, xylene, toluene, and benzene. Mother-in-law’s tongue is known as "the bedroom plant." While most plants take in oxygen at night, this one releases it.

For more - Read here