This week's United Nations Climate Change Conference at Cancun, Mexico is a global forum in response to a global crisis. As well as considering cutting carbon emissions, the conference hopes among other issues to advance green technologies and fund safeguards to prevent further deforestation of the Amazon. Already there are fears that it will fail to deliver real agreements and that as a result, the planet will be condemned to an uncertain or precipitous future. But this evokes in me a central question: can we respond to the true nature of global climate change from just an economic or political perspective?
Our ecological imbalance and the resulting crisis of climate change are caused by our industrial culture, by its chemicals, toxins and particularly carbon emissions. At the root of our predicament is a deep disregard for both the environment and for the consequences of our actions until it is almost too late. How can we expect to solve this ecological imbalance without an awareness of these roots -- that part of the real cost of our materialistic way of life is our loss of a lived connection and reverence for the sacred that is in all of life? Surely we need to recognize that there is a direct relationship between our outer, physical, ecological predicament and our forgetfulness of the sacred in creation.
Spiritual Ecology is an exploration of the spiritual dimension of our present ecological crisis. At the core of Spiritual Ecology is an understanding that our present outer ecological crisis is a reflection of an inner spiritual crisis. Recently many people have been made aware that we are at the "eleventh hour," or even a few minutes before midnight, of a global ecological situation that could result in catastrophic climate change or other irreversible global situations. However we are less aware of the inner spiritual crisis that underlies this outer crisis -- that a lack of awareness of the sacred within ourselves and within all of life has created an inner wasteland as real as any outer landscape. The interconnection between the outer and inner is foundational to life, both our individual life and the life of all of creation, as has been understood by indigenous peoples since the very beginning; therefore we cannot address our outer ecological crisis without a real consciousness of the inner situation. We cannot redeem our physical environment without restoring our relationship to the sacred.
The first step is always to become aware of what is happening. The outer signs of our ecological crisis are only too visible in the pollution of our waters, the dying of species, the change in our climate. The inner changes are less understood, particularly as our Western culture has for centuries dismissed the inner worlds, claiming that only the physical world is real. For those of us who have directly experienced the inner world through dreams, visions or other experiences, we know its value. While those who hunger for the reality of the soul know the pain of dismissing this dimension. It is here within our hearts that the sacred is born. It is in the inner world of the soul that meaning comes into our lives. And here in the inner worlds there is a crisis as dangerous as what is happening in the physical world.
Our collective pursuit of materialism and our disregard for the sacred within all of life has had a devastating effect. We have dismissed our ancient role as guardians of the planet. As a result, the sacred fire that we were supposed to keep burning, the light of the sacred that nourishes all of creation, is slowly going out. We can see this in a culture that is increasingly soulless and fractured. We may feel it in an underlying collective anxiety that can easily become anger, projected onto outer situations. We may sense it within our own soul as if something is becoming lost. And we are responsible. We vitally need to become conscious of what is happening to this sacred light. We need to recognize this growing darkness which is a forgetfulness of the sacred within our own souls and within all of creation. Only when we are aware of what is happening can we begin to change our world.
We cannot respond to our outer ecological situation in isolation. We cannot heal the symptoms without knowing the cause. Indigenous peoples like the Kogi have warned about this present danger. And yet because our culture has dismissed the inner, it is difficult for us to perceive what is happening. We have even forgotten that the world also has a soul. The anima mundi, the world soul, is no longer part of our collective consciousness, even though for centuries it was understood as the root of everything sacred in creation.
Those of us who have been given a knowing of the sacred within ourselves and within the world have a responsibility at this time. We may ask ourselves, "What can I do?" but the inner world primarily requires consciousness rather than action. It is the lack of an awareness of the sacred that is at the root of this crisis. Therefore we first need to bring the light of our spiritual awareness into the present predicament. We need to recognize what is really happening within the inner world as much as the outer, within our own soul and within the soul of the world. Only then can we begin to redeem the sacred and open the door to any real change or transformation. Only then can we begin to heal the world and bring it back into balance.
For more on Spiritual Ecology, see http://www.workingwithoneness.org/spiritual-ecology.
Wes Isley: A Spiritual Response to the Gulf Oil Spill
Spiritual ecology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spiritual Ecology: A Universal Grounding : 13.7: Cosmos And ...
THAT IS THE SECRET OF ALL SECRETS"
from 'Talking with Angels' by Gitta Mallasz
Yesterday I wrote a post about an experience with nature. Later in the day I read the above quotation and realised that in that moment in nature, I experienced wonder because I completely forgot myself.
I've heard that: we hold a light in the darkness. why is it we are so afraid to wake up and learn and get educated? Is it possible that it's because we don't know what to do? There is way to live on the earth which we have transgressed upon. Every person, who does this work intentionally should go within every day and ask: how can I live here. Otherwise we perpetuate romanic fantasies. When a baby is born, we don't say, let's hold a light for the baby and not feed it. We need to become consious of what we each feed the earth otherwise our intentions are romantic fantasies.
Llewellyn writes that it is here within our hearts that the sacred is born. I have been holding this in my heart to truly understand what this means to me in my life. I have been asking myself to see how does my thought or what I do become sacred - and it feels like this morning that blackbird showed me.
I would also like to share something that keeps coming back to me since reading this article - its an experience I had several years ago. I was sharing a room with a friend, we were on a course together, and early in the morning I awoke with a song singing in my heart. It was called Faith of the Heart. It was the theme tune to a tv series that was on at the time. Later that day I learnt that my friend had been meditating and praying at that time and I had awoken into that energy. It was a most beautiful atmospere.
Long before, my friend had been given a vision - she was told that Faith is the Archetype of Humanity and remembering this now, I wonder if that was revealed to her because she was capable of living it in her life.
She is very ordinary - simple in her ways, has an almost childlike quality of innocence and in her 80s now. But for me she embodies the sacred. I feel nurtured just to be in her presence. She see the best in everybody. She trusts. No one is rejected. There is no cleverness in her - just an openness to the wonder and holiness of life. And Faith in the Divine.
'Remorse' comes from the Latin meaning to 'to bite again'. I know when I reflect on difficult experiences and have seen my lack of relating, and felt remorse at how I have behaved, a healing energy has come into my heart and I have found that the pain I have felt is transformed and eventually it is integrated in me.
But if I hold on to the hurt feelings and do not relate - don't see nor own the part I have played, nor take back the projections and see the situation from the other's perspective - that lack of relating,i.e.not coming from the feminine within me, that is when I can be hard and sometimes cruel - to myself as much as others.
The 'rejected feminine' within all of us, men and women, is the part that creates wars, breaks relationships; she is symbolised by the Furies, the archetype that seeks revenge because the feelings have been dismissed. Our feelings are an instinctual part of us - they are our humanness. They are connected to our heart and to the Divine. To acknowledge our feelings - the injuries, the pain, the wounds that are caused is the start of the healing process. To channel those feelings into creativity helps us towards forgiveness and that is how we are healed.
Overcome, a.s far as you can, any bitterness that may have come to you because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you. Like the Mother of the World who carries the pain of the World in her heart, each of us is part of her heart and therefore endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing in the totality of that pain. You are called upon to meet it with joy instead of self-pity. The secret is to offer your heart as a vehicle to transform cosmic suffering.
I had a dream in which I was told of a particular quailty of the goddess: remorse.
I've stayed with that word for quite a while now. I recently found a spiritual teacher on the internet speaking a great deal about remorse. He said it is a quality of sorrow that is not filled with emotion, self-pity or guilt, and an important step in healing. So maybe it is healthy to hold a certain sorrow for the world as long as it's not infused with other emotions. Maybe it's a certain sorrow that can be held in the heart. I am offering this for those of us who are suffering right now. A way to hold it, this goddess quality of being alive somewhere. And as a way to suffer for the world and with the world. without feeding our own emotional anguish into it.
Just an Interesting idea to share. Thank you.