> [!custom-soil-type]- Note Details > - Type: #lecture > - Topics: #ecology #imagination > - Source: [Youtube video series](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7C977927EEA7D72E) – By [[Joanna Macy]] Related: - [[Part 2 You Can Do This Work - The Work That Reconnects with Joanna Macy - YouTube 1]] - [[Inbox/Queue2/Part 9 Breathing Through - The Work That Reconnects with Joanna Macy - YouTube]] # The Spiral of the Work - **Ground ourselves in the joy of life** - That opens up our heart/mind - Gratitude > allows us to be fully present - Be scared and fearless - **Pause and honour our pain for the world** - Bodhisattva heart > essential to us waking up - Doorway to see the immensity of what we really are - Robots and consumers / our true nature - **Seeing with new eyes** - Open to the scientific and spiritual intersectual revolution of our time - Pulling down curtain, deathbed attendance on conscious life on this planet, midwifing a new birth - Requires loving intention and fearlessness - **Applying it / growing forth / going forth** # Open Sentences / Incomplete Sentences - workshop structure for spontanenous expression - take turns speaking to each other in a pairs # Gratitude as a Revolutionary Act - Earth wisdom traditions - This gift of life - Delicious and terrifying, what life seems to be - Systems theory, each part contains the whole - See things in a new way, that contradicts the dominant message of consumer society > you're not good enough, smart enough, you don't have enough which breeds profound dissatisfaction - Makes us feel inferior - Taking from people their birthright of people to be happy in their skin, to be doing what they're doing - Infecting with a virus of needing to acquire and put ourselves in bondage for things we don't need - Gratitude work as liberating and subversive # The Great Turning - The revolution that is taking place now, shift from industrial growth society to a life sustaining society - Context of our lives and adventure of our times - Three interdependent dimensions (?) - Naming and recognizing it allows us to realize it - A transformational moment in human history - First, agricultural revolution - Second, industrial revolution - Third, (now) regeneration revolution - the great turning - [[Moral imagination]] - Change has to happen much faster and be more thorough - Institution, technology, and mindset (who and what we are, in relation to the planet) - We are a living part of a living planet - What we are about, what we need, how we relate to each other - Incredible moment, tremendous privilege and excitement - From industrial growth to life-sustaining society - Self destructive trajectory - We don't need to focus on destroying post industrial growth economy, it's doing it to itself - Psycho-spiritual orientation - How do we help it collapse more gently ## The Milling - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKO0b9b3TCQ - People walking around and not talking - Facilitator speaks only - Sweetness of regard > appreciation (of each other) - Flow: - Right hands together with someone - Whole body presence - Standing in the presence of a person who has made the choice to come here ... and ... that's not easy to do, they have found the money, time, broken free of commitments, ... made it here, not for the sake for increasing their income generating capacities.... but taking part in the healing of our world. It is their love for this world that has brought them here. - Bow and take your leave in anyway that feels best to you both - And the milling goes on - ... they have lived with the knowledge of... they have not let it shut them down... gratitude for the spirit and the great heart of this person. - ... what you are holding is unique and its alive... flex it, notice it, # The Truth Mandala - Acknowledging and honouring our pain for the world - Despair work, our response to a world in crisis - Guilt, of our complicity with destructive forces - To learn to face, be unblocked by fear > force of liberation - This pain is universal, sense this radical uncertainty about whether life will go on - This anguish is unprecedented, our ancestors faced hardship but more or less there was the assumption that life would go on - That certainty is lost now, pivotal psychological reality of our time - We tend to block it, fear if we open up to the pain we feel it would sink us into dispair - Avoidance and suppression of pain in the world, suppression of the instinct for preservation of life. To surpress these strong emotions renders us obedient, passive, acquiescent - "what we most need to do is hear within ourselves the sound of the earth crying" - A silent scream / reframed / sound of the earth crying - Compassion > to suffer with - Reframe our pain as compassion - Springs from our interconnectedness with each other and all life - Grief is manifestation of our love / Fear demonstrates courage / Anger is an outcry of passion / Emptiness we feel is where the new can arise - Don't tell people what you think they should feel or what they feel - Don't judge by outer demeanour, you don't know what they're feeling - Don't distract people by overly comforting them, honour it, they will survive it - Love and pain we feel for the world is two sides of the same coin # Breathing Through - Stay open, remain present for the beings of our world - Alert yet relaxed, being with it - We're being breathed by life, outside our volition - Part of a vast living web - A heart that breaks open can hold the whole universe - Preparatory to action so that you can let your response wants the needs of the world flow not compulsively out of some need to be self-important or hyper busy but out of a natural response to shared grief. # The Ecological Self - Shift in our understanding of the spiritual journey, from perfection to wholeness # The Systems View of Life - The radical interrelatedness to all life - "seeing with new eyes" - Not enough to feel, you need to think. Feeling, hope and compassion will abandon you - This is a time of cognitive revolution - In our concept of power, metaphysical roots, based on how we see reality structured - Reality is made of flow vs made of things - Power-over: competition, scarcity, zero-sum game - Build armour so I won't be vulnerable - Become the unmoved mover - " I am so powerful that I won't change my mind" # Deep Time - Those that have come before us and will be here after us - Choices must go beyond a short term quarter, inherently destructive - Steady us in the present moment # Harvesting the Gifts of our Ancestors - Moving back through time - Music is very important, non-programatic music [[frees the imagination]] - Important to [[acknowledge the originators]] of our exercises and ideas - This process of dedication, of clarifying our intention - Don't sentimentalize the journey, no need to sugar coat - Let them be with it for awhile, in silence - To share what that journey through time meant to them - Remembering our ancestors journey is cultural specific # The Seventh Generation - Asked to use our [[moral imagination]] to journey to a point outside of time - Half people in exercise play 7 generation in future, half for present day, inside looking out and outside looking in - Start beforehand with explanation and discourse about the great turning - [[The future is within us]] - Ask question / Present day stay put, future move to right. [Instructions](https://youtu.be/B_h6JBpV36Q?feature=shared&t=329) - Speak to the assumptions, there are humans in 200 years, and they have knowledge of current time (cultural memory). Continuity of culture. - Self-sustaining communities. - May the intention, sincerity, and authenticity serve you [[Gaia]], serve the healing of our world and the welfare of all beings. - Om to go off to the point outside of time - Note - great story for 5min exercise linked in instructions that frames a "first question - what's it like for you to know and live with that" # Goals and Resources Exercise - [[Exercise]] in pairs - Q: Big picture thinking. If you were unblocked by fear and in direct contact with all the power that's there for you in the web of life, what would you do for the healing of our world? - Q: What would you like to actually do within the next year towards this overall goal? - Q: What resources do you already have to help you do this? - Interior resources: of character experiences knowledge information Inner Strength skills - Outer resources: contacts friends institutions money in the bank. Fearless inventory of all your assets. - Q: What resources do you still need to acquire? What do you need to learn or get your hands on in order to do this? - Q: What obstacles to doing this that you're likely to throw in the way of doing this, how might you stop yourself? - Q: What you can do over the course of the next 24hrs /or/ week to help you move towards this goal? - Read it back, "you want to..." / Listen as if you're finally getting your orders from the universe - # Epilogue - Study group -