Iceland 2023
The teachings for this pilgrimage supplement the teachings in the book, “A More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible,” by Charles Eisenstein.
The headings at the start of each teaching will conincide with the same word in the Chapter of the book.
The themes of this pilgrimage are interbeing, interconnectedness and interdependence in our inner relationship with ourselves and our outer relationships with others, and all creatures and plants of the planet, all dependent on your inner connection to Consciousness (Love and Truth or if you like, God within)
We believe that until this inner relationship is made whole, our outer world will reflect the inner brokenness and splits of the human psyche and that to be of sacred service to the world, this inner work is imperative for each of us.
Chapter 1 - Why do we call these trips we take, Pilgrimages?
“You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.”
~John O'Donohue
“There is no more sagacious animal than the Icelandic horse. He is stopped by neither snow, nor storm, nor impassable roads, nor rocks, glaciers, or anything. He is courageous, sober, and surefooted. He never makes a false step, never shies. If there is a river or fjord to cross (and we shall meet with many) you will see him plunge in at once, just as if he were amphibious, and gain the opposite bank.”
~Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth
Icelandic Horses - research everything you can about these beautiful creatures and how they came to be on the island - apply the John O’Donohue poem to the ponies. What can they teach you? How do they calm you? How are they you?
Dig deep within to discover the many layers and structures that were formed by the forces of fire and earthquakes, volcanoes, wind and floods of your life and see how they have hardened into ego. This is the work of excavation and discovery.
Chapter 2 -The Story of Separation – Up and Out instead of IN and DOWN
Direct your eye right inward, and you’ll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them and be
Expert in home-cosmography.
~Thoreau, Walden
What awakens your Soul, what triggers your ego? Start noticing how you reject and accept what triggers you
Chapter Three – Function (Ego) vs. Being of Soul
Don’t go outside your house to see the flowers.
My friend don’t bother with that excursion.
Inside your body there are flowers.
One flower has a thousand petals.
That will do for a place to sit.
Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty
inside the body and out of it,
before gardens and after gardens.
~Kabir
From this bleak landscape, from the beginning of time 64 billion years ago, to humans who can build benches and observe both their outer and inner environment with awareness
Chapter Four – Evolution to an Awakened Heart
“From my vantage point, the basic premises of this story (separation), seemed unquestionable. My education, the media, and most of all the normality of the routines around me conspired to say, “Everything is fine.” Today it is increasingly obvious that this was a bubble world built atop massive human suffering and environmental degradation, but at the time one could live within that bubble without need of much self-deception. The story that surrounded us was robust. It easily kept anomalous data points on the margins.”
~ Eisenstein
Land and soil erosion are one of Iceland’s chief environmental problems. It is believed that more than 95% of the country’s forests and over half of its contiguous soil cover have been lost since the time the island was settled by the Vikings in the 9th century.
Chapter 5 -Breakdown of the Old Story, Birth of the New Story
“The breakdown of the old story is kind of a healing process that uncovers the old wounds hidden under its fabric and exposes them to the healing light of awareness.” ~Eisenstein
Thousands of Arctic Terns nest on the ground in the spring in Iceland. The locals steal their eggs, as do fox and sheep, despite their fierce attempt to dive bomb them and protect themselves. They migrate further than any other bird - from the Arctic to the Antarctic. What will happen when there are no more terns and no more eggs…? They are rapidly declining and in many areas there are none left.
Chapter 6 - The New Story of Interbeing – Principles
“We are not just a skin-encapsulated ego, a soul encased in flesh. We are each other and we are the world.”
~Charles Eisenstein
Puffins are seriously endangered in Iceland due to over hunting. do you love them? What could you do out of that place of Love? If you don’t know, could you research this?
Chapter 7 - Cynicism and Insanity
“ … when you encounter a harsh, cynical critic (whether inside yourself or outside), remember that the cynicism comes from a wound. Then you might be able to respond in a way that addresses that wound. I can’t tell you in advance exactly how to respond. That wisdom comes directly from hearing with compassionate ears and being present to the hurting… the derision of the cynic comes from a wound of crushed idealism and betrayed hopes.” ~ Charles Eisenstein
The protective use of force is sometimes warranted - but mostly people are just trying to protect their sense of value because they believe they have none.
Chapter 8 - Force – Power and Control
“The process of dissociation (and any other defense) is an elegant mechanism built into the human psychological system as a form of escape from (sometimes literally) going crazy. The problem with checking out so thoroughly is that it can leave us feeling dead inside, with little or no ability to feel our feelings in our bodies. The process of repair demands a re-association with the body, a commitment to dive into the body and feel today what we couldn’t feel yesterday because it was too dangerous.”~ Alexandra Katehaki
Let’s teach our children by example how to be responsive and relational
Chapter 9 - A New Science – Creating a new Culture of Responsiveness
“The new does not negate the old, but contains and supersedes it.”
~Eisenstein
- and in reindeer grazing in the sun
Chapter 10 – What is Sacred? What is Truth?
“Where then, do we find the Truth? We find it in the body, in the wood, in the water, in the soil. We find it in music and dance and sometimes, poetry. We find it in a baby’s face and in the adults face behind the mask. We find it in each others eyes, when we look. We find it in an embrace, which is, when we feel into it an increbily intimate act. We find it in laughter and sobs, and we find it in the voice behind the spoken word. We find it in fairy tales and myths, and the tales we tell, even if fictional. Sometimes embroidering a tale enlarges it as a vehicle for truth. We find it in stillness and silence. We find it in pain and loss. We find it in birth and death.”
~Eisenstein
Despite all the positive things that hydropower brings, there's also the price to pay for sustainable energy. 400 acres of unspoiled Highland territory have been completely flooded in order to build the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant in East Iceland, meaning that the beautiful landscape was inevitably lost.
Chapter 11 - Climate, Despair and Hope
“The issue of climate change is coming from an important realization that is relatively new for our civilization: that we are not separate from nature; that what we do to the world, we do to ourselves; that we are a part of the dynamic balance of Gaia and must act as responsible members of the community of all life on Earth. In the
Story of Interbeing, we should expect that any imbalance in our own society and collective psychology would be mirrored in analogous imbalances in Gaian processes. “
~ Eisenstein
Chapter 12 - Naivete and Reality
“People create barriers between each other by their fragmentary thought. Each one operates separately. When these barriers have dissolved, then there arises one mind, where they are all one unit, but each person also retains his or her own individual awareness. That one mind will still exist even when they separate, and when they come together, it will be as if they hadn’t separated. It’s actually a single intelligence that works with people who are moving in relationship with one another. Cues that pass from one to the other are being picked up with the same awareness. Therefore, these people are really all one. That separation between them is not blocking. They are all pulling together. If you had a number of people who really pulled together and worked together in this way, it would be remarkable.” ~Eisenstein
Just rest in the breath and relax
Chapter 13 - Spirit and Evil
“Evil is a response to the perception of separation.” ~Eisenstein
“What kind of people take refuge in sprawling suburbs? What kind of people work at jobs that satisfy no desire, but the desire for security? What kind of people stand passively by while their nation prosecutes one unjust war after another? The answer is: fearful people. Alienated people. Wounded people. That’s why spiritual work is political if it spreads love, connection, forgiveness, acceptance, and healing.” ~Eisenstein
Chapter 14 – Lichen, Attention and Mindfulness
“Because of this delicate interconnectedness of life across time, space, and being, any littlest fragment of the universe can become a lens on the miraculous whole. Sometimes, it is the humblest life-forms that best intimate the majesty of life itself.” ~ Maria Popova
Beds of Lichen - start watching for what you are not seeing
All the lobster in the world cannot meet your needs, but enjoy the great pleasure anyway! With gratitude.
Chapter 15 – Pain, Pleasure, and Hedonism
“Awaken! Awaken! Do not waste this precious life!”
Dogen-Zenji
“An unmet need hurts, and fulfilling a need feels good. Here lies the connection between need, pleasure, and desire (want). The deeper the unmet need, the greater the pain we feel, the stronger the desire it generates, and the greater the pleasure in meeting it. Pain and pleasure are the doorways through which we discover what we really want and really need.” ~ Eisenstein
Chapter 16 – Doing and Not Doing
“Doing nothing is not a universal suggestion; it is specific to the time when a story is ending, and we enter the space between stories. I am drawing here from the Taoist principle of wu-wei. Sometimes translated as “non-doing,” a better translation might be “non-contrivance” or “nonforcing.” It means freedom from reflexive doing: acting when it is time to act, not acting when it is not time to act. Action is thus aligned with the natural movement of things, in service to that which wants to be born.” ~Eisenstein
Practice seeing the space instead of the object
Chapter 17 – Story and Disruption
“The more firmly we stand in a larger Story of Self, a Story of Interbeing, the more powerful we become in disrupting the old Story of Separation. I think questions of violence and non-violence, ethics, and principles, right and wrong, lead us into a conceptual maze…. Every evil deed and every cowardly inaction that has ever been perpetrated on this earth has been justified by principle – the logic of the story. As we sober up from our long intoxication with the story of Separation, we have the chance to enter a 'more comprehensive mode of consciousness' – the consciousness of story. If it, we ask ourselves, “What story shall I stand in?”
~ Charles Eisenstein
Chapter 18 – Judgement and Initiation
~Nicholas Roerich
This last weekend we were in New York doing a Sacred Hymn workshop and visiting Clive. What a whirlwind of intensity and stimulation. One of the museums to which Clive took us, was the Nicholas Roerich museum which houses a small collection of his over 7000 paintings distributed at various museums in Russia, Germany and India as well as other locations. Nicholas Roerich was a mystic who was prolific, not only in his art work, but his writing too.
Chapter 19 – Hate, Psychopathy and Evil
“It is a mistake to blame psychopaths for our present condition: they are the result, not the cause….. Under what circumstance do you become a cold, unfeeling person? Under what circumstances do you shut off your empathy? When do you manipulate others for your own advantage? When I notice myself doing it, usually it is when I am feeling insecure.” ~Eisenstein
I am hoping that as you are all preparing for your trip and thinking about your contribution in making this a deeply loving, meaningful, and interconnected experience for the whole group, you are all considering how you are living in a reality of separation, distance, fears, superiority, inferiority, power, and control and external focus, seeking to get your needs met through being good, right, and perfect…. And on and on. I hope the focus is on noticing the movement between remembering yourself as the witness and the times you collapse into the well-worn paths of unaware reactivity.
It is your humble awareness of how separate you are internally and externally that wins merit in the spiritual realm.
What is hatred? What is Psychopathy? What is Evil?
Chapter 20 - Miracle, Consciousness and Destiny
“Working on the level of story has two dimensions. First is to disrupt the old, which says, “What you thought was real is just an illusion.” Second is to offer the new, which says, “The possible, and the real, are much grander than you knew.” The first, we experience as crisis and breakdown. The second, we experience as miraculous. That’s what a miracle is: not the intercession of an external divinity in worldly affairs that violates the laws of physics, but something that is impossible from within an old Story of the World and possible from a new one.” ~ Eisenstein
What is the miracle of our times? What is our destiny?
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