The Common Visionary; The Miracle of You

During my ongoing process of trying to understand how we, as intelligent humans, could have possibly brought ourselves, along with countless other life forms, to the brink of destruction, I have, in darker moments, found myself thinking thoughts of how awful humans are. I have seen this also reflected in other writings I have read, and in conversations with others, where words like “ parasitic”, and “idiotic”, and so on, have been used.. For a time I found it hard to see what good we were doing here on earth. This, of course, is in direct opposition to the dominant cultural story that humans are the best and most entitled creatures on the planet, that somehow we are”better” than other life forms. I have found that neither belief–that we are the ultimate expression of life, or that we are the worst of life forms– facilitates my goal of serving the continuation of life on earth and helping to navigate us through this time of the Great Turning. What does serve me in finding my way in this journey is the idea that we each contain within us great power. Humans are amazing creatures, of that there is no doubt. We are gifted with so many talents. It is how we use what we are given that makes the difference.

   Humans have a history of stifling our potential. When we tread only along the well worn path of those who have come before us, we give away our power, and with it our ability to make a better life for ourselves and our planet. If we act out of someone else’s idea of how we ought to be, if we submit to the authority of our old stories, and those of the dominant culture, we limit our potential to be a gift to the world, and become, instead a groaning burden. But the truth is, we are still species in evolution. Hope lies in the fact that we are still in the process of becoming. If it is true that we use only ten percent of our brain, then what of the other ninety percent? There is an idea floating around out there that humans are shifting from Homo Sapiens to Homo Imaginens (Homo, Human and Humus all sharing the same root–Earth, and so Homo Imaginens translates as the “imagining human or the “imagining earth”), a term coined by Geneen Marie Haugen. Of all our gifts, humans are most blessed by our ability to envision, and imagine and then to create. It is our consciousness and our bountiful imaginations that make us so different from other creatures on earth. As Haugen writes: “ Imagination may be the most essential, uniquely human capacity– creating both the dead-end crises of our time and the doorway through them.” ( from Cultivating a Planetary Imagination”). In looking at the history of the universe it is true that the greatest crises engendered the greatest opportunities. As Bill Plotkin writes, “ If ever Earth, in its fecund generativity, were to bring forth a new human species, now would be the time.” (Nature and the Human Soul, pg. 19) One of the keys to this great shift we are undergoing, continues Plotkin, is “universal visionary capacity. For most of human history , the highest development of visionary skill was limited to a few exceptional individuals in each community (shamans, prophets,visionaries and so on). Now this capacity for deep imagination must be cultivated by all adults if we are to create sustainable cultures.” (Pg 19) This capacity is part of our very birthright.

     The trick lies in following and believing in our own unique way of imagining and creating. It is difficult, amidst all the messages we are bombarded with each day from the voices of the dominant culture, to see your own true path and to hear your own true voice, and harder still to create something from it. But if I neglect my heart’s call, if I let my imagination wilt, I lose the unique beauty of my seed’s potential flower. My unique Hannah-shaped space in the universe won’t be fully inhabited. As Martha Graham said, “There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.” Perhaps the universe works through us, each original one of us, to bring forth ever-new creations, relationships, ways, solutions, expressions on its endless search for harmony.. We each have unique roles to play in the unfolding of the universe. What if we thwart that? How can we allow and cultivate this true and uniquely personal role of ours, for our own benefit and for the future of Earth?

   Of course, there are millions of books and teachers out there to guide us on our quest for finding our own true calling, or perfect place in the cosmos. I find help from the writers who inspire me, by music that beckons me, in friends who listen to me and ask important questions, through people who touch me with their presence, through dance and art and walking in nature. And so muchmore. But even with all this help, the work of finding and following and stretching and growing is ultimately up to you or me. As I look back at my own life path up until now I see that I have been quite adamant about finding that unique place for me. I have followed my heart, for better or worse. For worse because I am not always perfectly happy. And my path has been, thus far, winding and confusing. It is so hard to see through the haze of what my culture expects of me.But I find I cannot live my life in an unauthentic way, following anyone else’s ideas of what is right for me. Even if I end up sacrificing ease, comfort, fun. I have a hard time following the “rules” because my emotions rebel against them if they don’t feel right. I have been blessed and cursed with being born this way, and with parents who encouraged me to do what I wanted, to follow my heart’s lead.I’ve been privileged with an education an alternative high school and art school for college) that taught me to look–really look at life, to question and to see in new ways. Maybe this is part of my unique path and gift to the world .The results haven’t yet panned out quite as I hope they will someday. I struggle through many a day with my two little boys (who I wanted in my life); with our tight finances so I don’t end up in a survival job with my children being cared for by other adults; with the never ending construction of my strawbale house ( which I dreamed of for years); with balancing time with my family and my burning desire to create, and to reach the world, and to touch the world, and to change the world. In some ways I feel tethered to following my dreams, visions, ideals. But I believe in it–this voice deep within me, urging me on. I believe it is the key to creating a sustainable culture.

Albert Einstein said,“ No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”. Our seeming dead-end of planetary crises– which has arisen out of an old consciousness that is rapidly changing, one person at a time– can only be transformed through a change in vision and value. Right now we need visionaries. Right now our species, our planet, and you personally need to follow your own inner visions and dreams of who you can and want to be, unedited by the dominant mainstream culture you live in. We are all visionaries, but we will only manifest this part of ourselves if we believe in our dreams.

       “ At this critical hour any dream worth it’s salt ought to seem impossible to mainstream society and to the mainstream elements of our own minds. . . But. . . look at the fact of miracles – moments of grace– throughout the know history of the universe. . .Given that we cannot rule out moments of grace acting through us in this century, we have no alternative but to proceed as if we ourselves can make the difference. . . it is vital that we each believe in and perform our impossible dreams. . .In the end, I am quite certain, we will not be rescued by anything other than ourselves.” (Plotkin, pg 457)



One person does make a difference. Not just because you can change the light bulbs in your house. Rather, you make the biggest difference by following your “wild want”, as inspirational writer Tama Kieves puts it, or your “impossible dream” , and by imagining and following the imperfect, frightening, and most joyful path of engendering your own unique expression of your Self.  One miracle is that your way of living and being in the world radiates outward, from you to your neighbors, to your town, your country, and your world. Far from being a burden on this planet, you have the potential to be the harbinger of a more natural and harmonious way of being part of this earth and a more perfect expression of the universe.

Pain as Call of the Earth

One of my own life’s guiding myths has been that “ Humans are meant to feel happy most of the time.” I’m sure this perception was encouraged by the culture I was raised in. Our country was founded on the idea of freedom and finding a better, happier life, and to this day we find this idea perpetuated all around us, especially in magazines and television. We chase this mythic happiness in many ways, and it often is very allusive. Especially when we see around us so much suffering, and often feel it in ourselves. When we suffer in pain, we can feel that we shouldn’t– that we should quickly figure out how to feel better, and get on with our “happy” lives. But when we deny our emotional pain, we deny our very selves. And we lose any real chance at truly knowing joy.

When trying to understand something better, I like to ask “ how does this serve me?” So, how does pain and emotional suffering serve us? What does it do for us? Pain ( grief, despair, anger, sadness, frustration) makes us aware that something in our life isn’t right. It’s like a radar for trouble, alerting us that we are heading the wrong way, and that new ways are needed. It is a tool for making us more aware of ourselves. Through sensation it shows us when some way we are doing things needs to die. Pain serves us like Pele does, leading us into death so that new life can emerge. Like Kali, like Shiva, pain destroys and creates anew. Our own body is metaphor: billions of cells dying each day to make room for new ones, each so full of life. Our larger body, Earth, does this, too– composts old giving birth to new life. And so it is with pain, when we allow it to serve it’s evolutionary purpose of making us aware that it is time to let go of old ways, so that new seeds can be planted in us to grow vigorously into fresh life. An egg and a seed are both broken, their old forms shed, to move into their new life- forms, into bird and flower. And so it us with us: we each need to look into our own painful breaking apart, so that collectively our species can blossom into a more beautiful and loving way of living in this biosphere.

When we look, we discover. We can find treasure hidden in places we were afraid to look. When we feel sadness or anger, or any emotional pain, we can first allow it, examine it, notice it like someone sitting in meditation notices breath. Breath into it. Head into it. It will often bring you to grief. “ Should you encounter grief. . .please recognize and embrace it as the very doorway you need” ( Bill Plotkin) Don’t hide from it. Head right into it, feel it, follow it. It will diffuse, release. It will, eventually, leave you fresh, refreshed, healed, with new discoveries and new energy. This is like going into your “dark night of the soul”, a time of hardship and deep looking which leaves you with new direction, purpose, self.



Around the time of the birth of my first child, I was filled with an immense sadness, a true grief for life on earth. I had never before felt this. In fact, I remember one of my best friend’s in high school so well–her gift of empathy for all the human tragedies she read about and how she was energized and made wiser through her compassion. But I didn’t have that. Not until George W. Bush was re-elected. And then it all came crashing open for me: the understanding that life was disappering from our planet home, and that we were causing it. I just felt all the possible sadness flow through me then, not for me, so much as for everything and everyone. For the birds, for the moss, for elephants and goldfish, for grass and  snails, for my friends and for my new baby. For all the new babies. For their future babies. . . Looking back I see that it was a gift; I couldn’t block it or hide from it because I was too open emotionally, being so pregnant and later being a brand new mother. Somehow this provided an opening through which came the grief, and with it a deeper connection to all life and a better understanding of who I am, and my reason for being alive. It has energized my path.

This “ pain for the world”, as Joanna Macy calls it, is like a collective awakening.This pain's “source lies less in concerns for the personal self than in apprehensions of collective suffering– of what happens to our own and other species, to the legacy of our ancestors, to unborn generations, and to the living body of Earth.” (Macy and Brown, Coming back to Life, pg 27) More and more people are feeling this consciously, are “ uncovering an immense and implacable sadness within themselves and recognizing that this is not a pathology but, to the contrary, a healthy and necessary response of our animal selves to the destruction of our world. . . [And, as Joanna feels,] this wave of awakenings might be Earth coming to it’s own defense in the form of maturing humans.” ( Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul, pg 229-230) Our grief is the earth speaking and acting through us. We must honor this call. With the energy unleashed by facing our pain, we can move mountains. Or save them...

I feel lucky to have stumbled upon Joanna Macy’s work. It shed light on my own experience, and helped me ( an continues to) work through my own pain for the world. ( Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown ( also one of my teachers who has guided me with this) have a beautiful and very apt book which delves deeply into this topic, called Coming Back to Life. Within it are many exercises to help catalyze you own pain for the world. )

Many people are numbed or afraid of opening to their pain. We humans tend to avoid feeling our pain. It is uncomfortable, unpleasant. Maybe we fear the upheaval of our lives, the acknowledgment, the change, the guilt that may arise. But what happens when we don’t heed the message of our pain? We need only look around now at our world. We see apathy, distraction, depression, addiction, stagnation, cultural and environmental destruction. Energy lost and stuck. Our bodies, too, suffer from stuffing our grief and anger, become diseased; our larger body of earth becomes ravaged. But “ that pain is the price of consciousness in a threatened and suffering world. It is not only natural, it is an absolutely necessary component of our collective healing. . . The problem lies, therefore, not with our pain for the world, but in our repression of it.” (Macy and Brown, pg. 27)

It helps to remember, when we are tempted to avoid feeling our pain that love is the other face of pain. Love and pain are two sides of one coin. They are bound one to another. There can be no loss, no grief, without love. It is for love that we feel pain. They are both part of our very nature. When we each look inside at this painful part of our humanness we will find our own self there. We do not suffer alone, we suffer with the world.When we open to it, acknowledge that it is part of who we are as beings walking this earth, and allow it to flow through us, we will find that we are also connected by it to one another: brother, sister, friend, tree, sea, fish and bird. If we can honor it as the Earth working through us to guide us into a better world, than it will not have been suffering in vain, but, rather, for the sake of the continuation of life and the evolution of our species.

Re-conceiving our Self, Re-creating our World

 “ Who am I?” This is one of the ultimate questions, one which we humans love to ponder. It is a question that can lead us down many winding paths, into many different costumes and roles, onto many different answers. I think of myself and my peers as teenagers, trying out new looks, new words, new attitudes, to find one that feels like it fits. Our sense of self can limit us immensely, or set us free to fly high and joyfully far. The human tendency to ask the question “ who am I ?” has, over the past few decades, fueled our media driven consumer society, pushed us down the path of hyper-individuality, and in turn consumed us and blinded us to more pressing matters (such as our ability to survive on this planet). This is one of those distracting cultural stories I spoke of earlier, in a recent post.We have become enraptured by all the answers given to us by consumer society, and we often forget to seek a deeper answer. When we ask the question “who am I?” truly of ourselves, and refuse to take someone else’s answer as truth, we may find powers available to us that we didn’t know we had. How we answer this question can determine our actions, and how we treat the world we live in. So clearly this question of identity can help us on our quest of creating a better world for ourselves.

What is your identity? Who are you? What part of you is the “ you”? We can look to answer this question via culture, biology, religion, spirituality, psychology, quantum physics, philosophy, and so on. One answer may actually be that we are many selves. We are our careers.We are our bodies, our finger nails, our eyes, our smile.We are the personality– the “small s” self– and also the “Higher Self” We are atoms. We are light. But are we only these things? Where do we end? This is a concept that stirs me. Where do we define our limits? Do I stop at the water I just drank? If the water is now me, is the well also me? Is my skin my boundary, or do I draw the boundary to include the food I eat, the air I breath, the land that harbors me, the hand that holds mine, the mother that birthed me, the child I birthed in turn? Buddhists recognize the concept of self as a human construct-they just see through it. It is a metaphor.We can put lines around our “self” and say that “ I end here”, but where we start and end is just a concept for us to understand ourselves by; it is a tool of perception. “ We can define it however we want, the definitions are arbitrary.” (Macy) If we want to live in a better world we need to look beyond the answer to the question of identity given to us by our culture.We need to find deeper answers. We need to re-conceive our “self”. We can do so with our very own eyes and minds and hearts, and the help of a couple of concepts.



“We are our relationships.”
You are your relationships. You are nothing without relationships. Literally. Everything about you is in relationship to something or someone else. Your atoms cannot make up your cells alone. They need friends. And your cells cannot make up your muscles without other cells. You would not be you without your mother or father. That relationship, or lack of it, created who you are today. Same with your friends. Everything you have come in to contact with–had relationship with on any level, however small– shaped you. You cannot separate yourself from your relationships. And thus, “ As you do unto others, so you therefore, do unto yourself. ( Thank you to Charles Eisenstein for smoothly articulating this resonant concept!)



The Ecological self
Growing up, I never really got the whole “we are One” stuff. Not only did it seem a little hokey to my adolescent self, I also just really couldn’t understand it. No small momentary glimpses of understanding penetrated, not through studying Buddhism and Hinduism in college, nor later meditating in groups or solo.The idea sounded good, but I just felt like me. I didn’t feel like I was everyone else, everything else outside my skin. But it began to click in when I truly comprehended the direness of our planet’s ecological state. It wasn’t a dramatic moment, rather a slow revealing from the world, and a growing willingness to look on my part. It was when I really allowed myself to understand the truth of our predicament– only then was I able to begin to feel that I was truly one with all life. Because when the earth that feeds me flounders and fails, than I , undoubtably, flounder and fail. There is no way around it. I’m in the earth and the earth’s in me. I am the earth and the earth is me. I know this not as some hypothetical woo-woo idea. It is more literal than most anything I can think of. Arne Naess, the father of the Deep Ecology movement, coined the term “ecological self” for this very knowing. My own self-interest lead me to understand, in my bones, that I am not just me. There is a larger me, a whole world of me–a whole universe, even, of me. Talk about Deep ( or broad).When you draw the boundaries of your identity to include the planet that is your very life, that is your “ecological self”. And it really is your “self” I am talking about here. It is in your self-interest that there is clean air to breath and clean water to drink. Naess talked about a natural process of maturation leading to wider and wider circles of identification, from ego to social self, metaphysical self, and ecological self. This is what I began to feel, and have continued to deepen into, as I grow to understand– both intellectually and emotionally/spiritually– the fragility and magic of life.This is a deepening process, and a broadening one. John Seed, an Australian activist, writes about this shift in sense of self as a spiritual one: “ ‘I am protecting the rainforest’ develops into ‘I am part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking.” (Thinking Like a Mountain, pg 36)

The above concepts are myth-busters for the powerful paralyzing western cultural assumption of “We are separate.” As Derrick Jensen says," We identify more readily as ' civilized' than we do as ' living being'. " This is a misunderstanding that prevents us from knowing our true selves, and keeps us from creating a better world.  But when we begin to grasp the ideas and feelings of “ I am my relationships” and the “ ecological self” healing and empowerment occurs. As John Seed writes: “Alienation subsides. The human is no longer a stranger, apart. Your humanness is recognized as merely the most recent stage of your existence. . .As the fog of amnesia disperses, there is a transformation in your relationship to other species, and your commitment to them.” (Beyond Anthropocentrism,TLM, pg 35-36) Out of this comes more joy, more meaning. I know this to be true. My desire to be of service to the world grew tenfold, or more, as these concepts penetrated and worked their magic on my consciousness. As Arne Naess put it:



“ What humankind is capable of loving from mere moral duty or moral exhortation is, unfortunately, very limited. . . The extensive moralizing within the ecological movement has given the public the false impression that they are primarily asked to sacrifice, to show more responsibility, more concern, and better morals....[But] the requisite care flows naturally if the self is widened and deepened so that protection of free nature is felt and conceived of as protection of our very selves.” (Coming back to Life, Macy and Brown, pg 47)

Not only are we more motivated and energized to work for the benefit of life on earth, but we also enjoy a depth to our love of life that is surprising. No longer are we easily blinded and distracted by the hyper-individualistic desire to buy more, preen more, and waste our energy on the impossible striving for perfection. For we sense we are perfect already, as nature is perfect and awe-inspiring and miraculously powerful. And we realize, as our larger self is able, our own ability to weave life into new and more suitable forms.

Gratitude with Attitude: the Radical Act of Being Thankful

These early October days I keep looking around me at the colors, the vividness of life just out my doorstep. I wake up each day to color, to green, red, orange, yellow. To swaying limb and sailing cloud. To sunrise, and blue jay call. I see it all, and for a brief moment I am alive with the feeling of joy and thankfulness for all that I am and see and feel. And then, from downstairs, I hear my 4 year old yell, my toddler cry, my husband saying, “Stop!” in a loud voice. And I am brought back to the rigors of my day. My gratitude is replaced by more mundane or difficult feelings. And life goes on.But I am better for that moment of thanks, for it sustains me, helps me move a little more fluidly through the whining, the spills, the chaos of life as the mother of two young, loud boys.


I have been working to include a feeling of thanks into every day. Though it doesn’t necessarily last throughout the rest of the day, I try to notice what I am grateful for each morning. Gratitude works like a strong medicine. It is like firm ground. The energy that it brings with it can carry us through our more challenging days. Immediately, when I consciously evoke it, or it spontaneously arises, it brings me present, into this moment on this spot on earth. It shows me what I have, not what I am missing. It is so easy to focus on what it is we lack–money, quiet, time, a big house, a healthy planet. But doing so can lead us into despair, can regurgitate anger and inertia. When we recognize what we do have– beauty around us, quiet evenings, good friends, playful children– we feel a surge of joy (however small a surge in the more difficult times, but a surge nonetheless).

But feeling gratitude can do more for us than help us to have a better day. To harbor gratitude in a culture of “not enough” can be a radical act of empowerment: a rejection of the values that lead us in to destruction , and an affirmation of our very right to be alive. Entranced by the ideas of “more” and “better”, we tend to forget the basic miracle of our very lives. We are alive! We have the gift of life.We are humans, with hard bone, flexing and flexible muscle, blood like water, eyes that see, and see ourselves, voices that come out of our bodies and create meaning, and ears that hear and interpret, with minds that can make choices, and hearts that can love. In my best moments I feel that miracle, am amazed by just being alive. As Joanna Macy says, gratitude is revolutionary: it “contradicts the predominant message of the consumer society, which is ‘you’re not enough’. One of the cruelest aspects [of this society] is that it breeds profound dissatisfaction...taking from people their very birthright–to be happy in their skin...Gratitude work is liberating and subversive.”

In this time, especially, it seems hard to remember what we have, how blessed we are. We see life growing harder, we see it slipping away, and everything can feel so difficult. But when we take the time to look, to remember what we are made of and to notice the beauty that still thrives around us– be it trees, a kind gesture, a mural on a building, grass in the sidewalk crack, or the miracle of our own fingernail (thin, ridged, hard, flexible, composed of millions of cells) we feel the preciousness again, and we therefore want to fight for it. I want to fight for my fingernails’ right to live, for my babies fingernails’ right to live; I want to fight for the continued experience of hearing the sound of a violin, for the vision of a sunset, for taste of an apple. . . Gratitude reminds us that we can choose, as we are blessed with consciousness and will, to continue on this journey of life. Because of my gratitude I can say, “ I love this, I choose to keep this in my life”. Most times this choice will take work, but the gratitude, the love, will give the continued energy necessary. Gratitude empowers us once again.

There are many simple ways of cultivating gratitude. In our house we practice being grateful each evening. As we sit for dinner, my four year old will ask us what we are each “grateful for”. I must have started him on this, but he has done this since he was two and he loves doing it. Children are naturals at loving what is. . . We also take time once a week to go around and individually say what we appreciate about each other. This is grounding and healing and reminds us of what is important. It isn’t too hard to incorporate a practice of gratitude into your life–remembering to do it is often the hardest part. I used to wake up each morning and count ten things I was thankful for that day. Some days were harder than others, but it helped set my day off on the right note. Being the foundation, or wellspring, of all religions and spiritual disciplines, it is not hard to find other examples of practices. Experiencing gratitude is the first step in the “spiral” in Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects (work that I am deeply inspired by and that is dedicated to the healing of our world). Here is one of the exercises she provides for fostering gratitude and seeing the good in other and the world. “This practice is adapted from the Meditation of Jubilation and Transformation, taught in a Buddhist text written two thousand years ago at the outset of the Mahayana tradition. You can find the original version in chapter six of the Perfection of Wisdom in 8000 Lines.

Relax and close your eyes. Open your awareness to the fellow beings who share with you this planet-time...in this town...in this country...and in other lands......See their multitudes in your mind's eye......Now let your awareness open wider yet, to encompass all beings who ever lived...of all races and creeds and walks of life, rich, poor, kings and beggars, saints and sinners...see the vast vistas of these fellow beings stretching into the distance, like successive mountain ranges......Now consider the fact that in each of these innumerable lives some act of merit was performed. No matter how stunted or deprived the life, there was a gesture of generosity, a gift of love, an act of valor or self-sacrifice... on the battlefield or workplace, hospital or home...From these beings in their endless multitudes arose actions of courage, kindness, of teaching and healing. Let yourself see these manifold and immeasurable acts of merit......


Now imagine you can sweep together these acts of merit...sweep them into a pile in front of you...use your hands...pile them up...pile them into a heap viewing it with gladness and gratitude...Now pat them into a ball. It is the Great Ball of Merit...hold it now and weigh it in your hands...rejoice in it, knowing that no act of goodness is ever lost. It remains ever and always a present resource...a means for the transformation of life...So now, with jubilation and gratitude, you turn that great ball...turn it over...over...into the healing of our world.



I have been trying to see, with some great success recently, that it is a privilege to be alive right now, in this most tumultuous time, because humans are waking up to who they are: conscious beings in a beautiful, alive and unfolding universe. We are creating our own path. Gratitude allows us to recognize all that we do have already– this gift of life, and this gift of conscious life (our own and the many others here with us)– so that we are able to create the world we want. I am so grateful for gratitude. At the least, it helps us through a hard day; at it’s best, it is the foundation for transforming our world into a place of joyful co-existence with all life.

Cultural Stories

The way that we see the world, and, thus, the way we move through it, is in part handed to us on the day we are born. We enter into the lives of our parents, our community, and the people of our country and are quickly sculpted by their ways. This is culture at work. For better or for worse, we can’t escape culture, nor the ways it molds us into the human beings we become. It is very hard to strip away the beliefs and customs that we grew up with, for they have helped to create who we are today. So thick is the veil of culture that even people who make it their work to understand people of other cultures may not be able to do so entirely and deeply, for they go there not with a clean slate, but one full of their own ways of seeing, thinking, and moving their bodies, which may differ essentially from the culture they yearn to know. Culture holds us, contains us, gives some explanations to the madness, provides us with a boat to travel through dark waters. Maybe it is a beautiful and sturdy sailboat at times, sails billowed in a steady wind. But at other times it is an oil tanker headed for an iceberg. It takes you down into those dark waters, along with all the other life of the sea.

There are so many assumptions given to us by our culture that are not serving us. Most of us in the West operate out of some or most of these assumptions with tacit agreement. They are carried in us like muscle cells so that we don’t even notice they are there. But they are. And they are steering us into deep trouble. As Tim Bennet says, " It hasn’t been working out the way we’ve been taught to think it will." I believe it is not truly anyone’s fault– not yours, not mine--that we move through the world destructively and disrespectful of life (even if we are seemingly very polite to our friends and fellow humans); we have been taught no other way. " We’ve been growing and expanding and building cities and accumulating wealth for so long now," Bennet says, " that it just feels like this is how things are supposed to be. But how can a way of life that is destroying our support systems be considered ‘ the way it is supposed to be’?" This is the vice of culture: we are blinded by it. We cannot see through it even when, because of it, we are killing ourselves and our planet. But we must if we want a fighting chance of survival. We must really look at the cultural stories that shape our actions, so that we can change those actions that don’t serve us. If we look beneath the dark blinding surface we may find fresh waters, renewing waters of life.

Our culture has provided us with the following cultural assumptions, and they are the backbone of our planet’s peril. This list comes in part from Tim Bennet’s film " What a Way to Go; Life at the End of Empire" (it’s only a partial list, know that there are many more to add to it– you may have some to add...). Some may seem to you like they are not problematic assumptions. Remember that they are thoroughly ingrained in you, these stories, and know that each of them can, with some thought, be linked to major destruction and unraveling of ecosystems, our own life-support.

Growth is good

More is better

We can solve anything

We own it

Human have rights (nothing else does)

Humans have dominion over earth

This is the best humans could ever hope for, any alternative is worse

This culture is humanity- no other culture is

This is how humans were meant to live

We are superior to other creatures and our lives are independent of theirs

Some of my own assumptions that I will add to this list ( oh-so-American cultural stories that have governed my life in many ways), which I’ve been seeing through recently with both sadness and joy:

Life should be easy.

Life is meant to be happy.

Instant gratification is the best.

Individuality is of the utmost importance.

Seeing is freeing. I feel loosed and set on wings when I realize that the perceptions that I’ve been steering by are only assumptions, myths. My life does not need to be ruled by them.When this happens I do feel a little uneasy, too, without the boundaries of the beliefs to carry me. But now I can choose to believe something more true to my actual experience as a living being, more true to my real desires. Instead of " Life should be easy—why is it always so hard?...what can I buy to make it better?... where can I drive to make it more fun?", I can say," Life is not easy–it is full of challenges which make for rich opportunities for learning and growth. Right now, right here, this is what it’s about. This is okay. This is good."

We have built our modern industrial empirical world on cultural stories handed down through the last six or seven generations (though of course generations before them shaped their kins views, too). The amazing thing is that they are just that–stories. They are simply beliefs, not necessarily truths , which have manifested this world that we now live in. When we consciously decide to, we can see them as mere stories, and realize that we can choose to be governed by different stories, ones that are more in service to the lives we want to live. Joanna Macy writes, "The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world-we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves, and to each other."

When we are ready to look beyond our old perceptions, we will find that there is a new paradigm waiting to fill us with life-affirming perceptions. As an example, when I first came across the time lines, which I included in my earlier writings, the new stories that they offered me helped to shift my thinking about my own life in this present day; they have been part of the map that has given me a new awareness, and, therefore, a new way of being in the world. The perspective of seeing my life nestled into the vastness of time has lead to new perceptions about human life: how small we each are, like specks of dust, like flecks of yellow pollen, like one flake of snow in one blizzard out of many years worth of blizzards. How briefly we as a species have been blessed with life. How short is our story of industry and technology. From the time line perspective I can see how short the distance really is from co-existence to destruction. But I can also see how small the distance from destruction back to co-existence. Seeing from this perspective can help you perceive that you are a part of something much larger than your individual self. You are an integral part of the universe, of the history, the present, and the unfolding future. When I look at life this way, I feel small, humble like a snowflake (and yet no less unique), but also like an important part of the flowing and spiraling and creating and building of newness.

Our current emerging consciousness as a species is a convergence of old and new, of indigenous wisdom and scientific understandings. It stems from a stronger sense of our interconnection, with each other and our fellow earthlings, and from a deeper understanding of our place in the universe. From these new stories we can create the world we want.

We humans have continually, over time, changed our ways of looking at the world in order to meet new circumstances . Let’s wake up from our culturally induced slumber, look around us, see what is happening now in this time, and choose to create stories that support our lives as well as all the other lives on this planet Earth. We are so lucky to be living in a time when we have the consciousness to do this. Let’s.

I plan to explore more specific cultural stories and help create some new ones in my upcoming posts. In the mean time, try to sense how some of the above cultural assumptions influence you in the decisions you make and the things you do.

Uncaging Our Voices

Over the last few days I’ve been trying to write about perception and how culture influences our ways of seeing things, thereby determining many of the actions we take, both individually and collectively. While writing, I keep finding myself hitting the delete button, over and over. So much of what I want to say seems to be at odds with what feels "acceptable" to say. In other words, I’m afraid of getting into trouble with you, afraid of saying something offensive. And this leads me to want to write, instead, about the taboo of speaking about the recklessness of our industrial growth society, and about how that silence leads to helplessness and facilitates continued destruction. Sitting here writing words on my computer, I imagine a person reading them, I imagine their shock when I say something about how lawns might not be the best use of our land, or some such idea. And there is this part of me that wants to hide, to delete all my words, to take them back. When I say to you that our human species is in danger, when I say that I feel pain about our world, when I say that the dominant culture we have created is leading us down a path that does not serve our best interests and is actually killing our life-support system, I feel nervous of how these words will be received. I imagine that some people will deny the truth in these words, will call me crazy or unpatriotic or even dangerous.

I notice that in our daily interactions we do not talk too much about the state of our world. Sure, we may talk about events in the news, or remark on how the weather patterns seem to be changing. We certainly talk about wars and climate change and other difficult subjects. But how often do we admit to each other (and even to ourselves) how we feel about how severe our situation is, how precariously we are holding onto life ? How often do we say to a friend, " I feel so confused about the state of the world", or "I feel really sad that I don’t know how to live in a way that is sustainable," or " I carry around so much pain about the world." When in conversation, I often notice myself avoiding how much I am affected by the state of things. Even me, who has been making confronting all this part of my life’s work– even I deny it daily in my interactions. We don’t talk about this stuff because it is so hard to speak about. Because others’ may judge us for it. Because we may appear wacky. Because it is not culturally acceptable (we are good happy Americans, after all). We don’t speak of this because it means we have to face it, to feel the feelings that come along with it. There are a whole host of reasons why we do not include words about the direness of the human situation ( or life's situation) on earth in our daily dialogues.

But when we do not speak what is in our hearts, when we hold back for fear of condemnation or alienation, or for fear of facing what is so hard to face, we give away our power to create a better world. David Korten writes in his book The Great Turning" Many of us have serious doubts about the validity and values of the prevailing imperial stories. Yet because we rarely hear them challenged by credible voices, we fear ridicule if we give voice to our doubts. Truth silenced becomes truth denied." (page 355). Last fall, after some reflection about my feelings on the terrible state of our food system, I put out a note to a few local friends about it. I never would have predicted the amazing response. Because of this one email, my community and I started a community group based on the idea of supporting our local farmers as well as each other. My sense of connection has grown immensely and in many ways because of this. And it would not have happened if I had not spoken up. I have decided I don’t want to give up on the dream of a better world for the sake of appearance. I cannot let my fear of alienation, my consideration for anyone else’s response, stop me from speaking my truth. If I don’t share– and if you don’t share– what we feel harm from in this crazy culture, how will we ever find out how to move beyond it? I don’t suggest wallowing in ickyness, or regurgitating pain. But I also am sure it doesn’t serve us to turn our eyes away from the destruction and remain polite and superficially happy just to placate what you imagine someone else believes. Claiming our feelings about this, claiming our responsibility in it, is a first step to healing.

Having said that, I do find it incredibly important to try our best not judge others, not to condemn them for what they are feeling or how they are going about their lives. Hiding our truths is one thing, judging others is entirely another. I aspire here, in my writings, to include you, not to judge you. If I say something strong and intense it is with the best of intentions, and "with fierce determination to continue the billion year dance"( as John Seed writes in his Invocation). I believe we all try our best with the resources (physical and emotional and spiritual) that we perceive to have available to us. I want to uncage my voice, to let my love for the world out, and my pain for it, too, without hesitation; I want to let it flow out of my heart, past my caging ribs, up through my constricting throat, to soar through the cave of my mouth and the twisting of my tongue, so that it may flow into the curve of your ear, and you may hear me. And I want to hear you, too. In this time it may seem an uphill battle for most of us. But we are in this together. And our very best resources are each other, our power of connection, and the truth that pours from our miraculous tongues.
　
I encourage you to share what you feel about the chaos of the world with a friend or a stranger the very next time you can. You may be surprised by the response.

New Perspectives

Like many humans alive right now, I feel fear and sadness over the state of the world often. When I listen to the news-- flavored as it is with negativity-- it delivers a blow to my gut and a constriction to my lungs, pain in the places I feel fear or grief. As you know, the main stream and alternative media are awash with bad news for our planet. You know the list...Countries at war, car bombs, climate change, peak oil, pandemic, floods, unemployment, corporate greed, agri-business monopoly, food contamination, nuclear testing, drought, disease, polluted waterways (life-blood poisoned), forests clear cut ( lungs asphyxiated ), mountains mined down (body broken), and on and on... I often think maybe I shouldn’t listen to the news, or read the news, or read at all....It is hard to take in, all this stuff. Like others, I really don’t want to feel this fear, this pain. I look at my two beautiful sons, and I wonder how I dared to bring them into this life at this crazy time. What is in store for them? What quality of life will they have? What quality of life will I have in five, ten years? I could just sink deep down into depression, knowing all that I know. Sometimes I do. How could you not, looking around you, hearing what you hear about life here and now? It’s a hard, hard time, and most say it will be getting worse. . .

Deep breath. Deep breath. Deep breath. I won’t be numbed. I won’t be paralyzed by all this. I am not hopeless. Like you, I am not helpless in the face of all this. I don't think that looking away from it all, averting our eyes and hearts, is the answer. We, as humans, are blessed by the power of consciousness. We can make choices based on what we notice and see and learn. When we notice we are afraid, we can take that as a signal that something needs to change. I can choose for myself, right now, light in place of darkenss.

This crazy destruction-filled world isn’t how it has to be. . . It isn’t how it has always been or will always be, either. Especially if we are willing to look. . . This is the first step towards choosing life.　
　
Putting Us into Context

Although it is all most of us have known of life, our industrial, technological era is but a blink in time. A flicker. Allowing a glimpse of this truth to penetrate our consciousness may offer some much needed perspective when we have fallen into despair. Seeing our culture from a distance, as though it is not the Only Way, can give a glimmer of hope, a vision of another way. I remember having a hard week one time in college. That weekend I took an airplane to see a friend. Flying high up above the world, which held me a bit hostage in my daily life, I was able to understand that my daily life wasn’t all that there is; that life is so much bigger than my personal troubles. The tiny roads below my window, the blocks of green fields, the tilt of the horizon, all of these things offered me widened perspective, a chance to see things differently.

I have recently been collecting some new forms of perspective. Below I offer you some timelines. These are metaphors collected from various thinkers. One may resonate with you more than another, therefore I provide a few. Take the time to read through them, allowing the imagery to surround you. Let them show you a glimmer of life only partly forgotten that still, somehwere in you, resides. . .

Timelines of Earth’s Life:

– Imagine that the Earth’s 4.6 billion year history is the former 108-story World Trade Center in New York. The bottom floor is the beginning of Earth. At floor 20 the first life appears (3.5 billion years ago). Halfway up oxygen breathing bacteria appear (2 billion years ago). Fish arrive at floor 98. Dinosaurs are on floor 104-107. Mammals show up on the top floor. Humans walk on two legs 3 inches from the top of the building. The Renaissance is in the top one- thousandth of an inch, less than even the last layer of paint. We can’t even see history since then.
( Thanks to Michael Shapiro of Ode Magazine, and to Peter Russell, author of Waking up in Time, who created this one.)

– Imagine that Earth’s life is condensed into one day– 24 hours. Earth birth is at midnight. At 5 pm the next day, comes organic life (until then having been purely geological). Mammals appear at 11:30 pm. Humans only appear at one second to midnight!
(Gratitude to Joanna Macy, Co-author of Thinking like a Mountain, among others.)

Timelines of Human Life on Earth.

– Condense all of the human story on earth into 24 hours. " Beginning at midnight until two O’clock in the afternoon, we live in small groups in Africa. We feel pretty vulnerable. We haven’t the strength of other creatures. But we have our remarkable hands... grunts and shouts...our capacity for language... Those days and nights on the verge of the forests, as we weave baskets and stories around our fires, represent the biggest hunk of our human experience. Then ....we move across the face of [the earth]. . . When we settle into agriculture...begin domesticating animals and fencing off our croplands and deciding that they could be owned as private property, when we build great cities with granaries and temples and observatories to chart the stars, the time is eleven fifty-eight. . . At six seconds to midnight comes a man called Buddha, and [then] Jesus. . . What now shapes our world – our industrial society with it’s bombs and bulldozers– has taken place in the last few seconds of the day we have known as humans." (Joanna Macy, pg 62-63, Thinking like a Mountain)

– "Visualize a distance of 100 feet; the length of a basketball court, plus 6 feet more. Imagine that this distance represents the last 1 million years of existence of the creatures who have become Homo sapiens. . . the last one-fifth of an inch of this hundred feet represents the length of time that we have lived in mass technological civilization, with the assumptions about life that and reality that you and I are taught to assume as ‘normal’. Not very long, and conceivably, not very normal."

– "Over the course of 1 million years the human lineage has passed through some thirty-five thousand generations. The Industrial Revolution began just six generations ago."
( Last two, thanks to Chellis Glendinning. Found in her book "My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization" pgs 13-14)

New Perspectives

It seems to me we’re kind of new to this industrial technological stuff. We’re new to this desecration of our life source, to this isolation and furious pace. No wonder it feels so frightening, so traumatizing sometimes. I fervently hope we as a species can make it through these times alive. I don’t know if we will. When I fall into media-driven fear, I feel doubtful. But at other times, more and more often these days, when I remind myself of the sweep of our history and the magnificence of our bodies and our minds and our spirits, I see something more intriguing and hopeful: I see we have the choice, collectively, to survive this time. We need to find new perspectives, new perceptions, and new stories to live by, to thrive by. We carry the wisdom to do so, passed down to us through thirty thousand generations of humans, in our very bones.