.JPG "Earthen Spirituality")
Living within a living, loving planet
*Pagan Ethics
Time to Speak out
Apr 23rd
Time to Speak Out
“During those same 50 years, populations of vertebrates (animals with backbones) declined by 60 percent on average. It’s been estimated that humans—along with our cattle, pigs, and other domesticates—now make up 96 percent of all terrestrial vertebrate biomass. The other four percent include all the songbirds, deer, foxes, elephants and on and on—all the world’s remaining wild land animals. We inherited a planet of astounding beauty, which we share with millions of amazing creatures—and, one by one, we’re crowding them out.” Richard Heinberg Post Carbon Institute
<newsletter@postcarbon.org> 22 April, 2020
We don’t actually have a resource shortage. We have a population problem. With other living things, when they eat out their environment, many die until balance is achieved. But no, not homo sapiens sapiens. We have become the most voracious and dangerous predator Earth has ever encountered. We maintain our over population by enslaving other animals, penning them up in miserable conditions and chopping them up for Sunday lunch.
Who gave us the right to breed in such an out-of-control manner? I cannot imagine a deity that would condone our actions. Certainly not a God of love such as many of us have been taught.
For those of us who don’t do sky Gods, we realize that we don’t have the wisdom to manage a planet so must watch, study and learn to work in cooperation with Nature. Why?
Because the Earth is not out there; we ARE the Earth. We live in an Earth provided body. It is not OUR body to do as we choose with which goes for every other living body large or small.
Our hubris has dropped us presently into a cultural and economic decline, albiet one of many in our short history on the planet.
Now, every day must be an Earth day for our days are numbered.
We must “ring the bell that still can ring” and look for the “crack in everything.”
Hallowed Ground
Apr 28th
Hallowed Ground
by Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder
“Yews are the oldest living things in Britain, considered ancient only when they reach the age of nine hundred. Some are believed to be at least five thousand years old.”
“The roots of religious belief and the sacredness of nature were once closely entwined. Traces of this ancient relationship remain today: thousand-year-old yews grow in churchyards; the forest monks of Thailand have long followed the Buddha’s example of revering trees. In this essay, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder profiles theologian Martin Palmer and his work to engage faith-based communities in recovering stories of love and care for local ecologies.”
“The yew, Taxus baccata of the family Taxaceae, is a conifer native to the United Kingdom. Growing up to twenty meters (sixty-six feet) tall, and sometimes taller, with peeling auburn bark and small, straight needles that grow in two dark-green rows, yews provide habitat for the goldcrest and other small birds. Every part of the yew is poisonous, with the exception of the bright-red, fleshy arils that encase the seeds, food for the blackbird and the mistle thrush. Yews are the oldest living things in Britain, considered ancient only when they reach the age of nine hundred. Some are believed to be at least five thousand years old. Yews carry an air of the secretive, and their age is notoriously difficult to determine because of their ability to withstand extraordinarily long periods of dormancy and then mysteriously decide that the time is right for new growth. Some of Britain’s oldest yews have witnessed Roman expeditions led by Julius Caesar, ancient Celtic ceremonies, Anglo-Saxon conquest, and the Black Death.”
“The National Geographic wrote that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is this high ‘for the first time in 55 years of measurement—and probably more than 3 million years of Earth history.’ The current concentration may be the highest in the last 20 million years.”
“At the beginning of each interglacial period as the ice receded from the land, vast numbers of trees spread north and performed a carbon sequestering service. They also released water vapour which stimulated cloud cover that increased the albedo effectively taking the place, as far as reflectivity is concerned, of the miles and miles of ice that had melted. With that negative feedback firmly in place and the orbital forcing factors favouring cooling, the downward cycle of Gaia’s temperature was assured and triggered the end of the interglacial period.
Unfortunately for all, these natural feedback factors been destroyed by humans. Millions of trees over thousands of years have been chopped to build armadas and commercial shipping, other war implements, and shelter for humans as if the trees’ only function to serve the greed of humans.
“Apart from the profligate burning of fossil fuels and releasing the earth’s long-term carbon and energy storage depot that has taken millions of years to lay down, deforestation has been the main contributor to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that has resulted in global warming.” Sky McCain, Unpublished
See: http://www.earthenspirituality.com/global-warming/
https://emergencemagazine.org/story/hallowed-ground/
“You take out sacred things at your peril,” Martin says. “You’re changing the map of where you live.”
We came, we saw and we conquered.
May 17th
We look down upon our hands and they are covered in blood. And then we remember being told that we have been made in the image of God.
Genesis 1:28
“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
Reason and Purpose
Mar 12th
This Category, *Pagan Ethics, contains a series of posts that are a commentary on a book – Living with Honour – written by Emma Restall Orr. My interest in Pagan ethics emerges out of a need to capture in words the attitudes and behaviour that might manifest out of a person’s love of Gaia and dedication to an Earthen Spirituality. Emma’s beautiful book, which I at first eagerly skimmed, then read slowly and carefully and now enjoy re-reading has stimulated my thinking and inspired the comments in these posts. I obviously highly recommend the book and hope that my commentary serves the spirit of *Pagan Ethics and challenges the reader to examine their attitudes and world view toward a greater reverence for our place within and among the life of Gaia. As my one-time friend Wolf says, may Gaia bless.
Reason and Purpose
Religion teaches that their exists an ultimate purpose and meaning to life. When a person authorised by the religion claims to know what’s on God’s mind and dictates the details, then by definition we have a human construct. If a person needs to adopt an ultimate purpose and meaning to “life”, then they might as well supply it themselves. That way, they can “own” their truth and nurture it as it develops along with their wisdom
Thinking Like a Planet
Mar 1st
This Category, *Pagan Ethics, contains a series of posts that are a commentary on a book – Living with Honour – written by Emma Restall Orr. My interest in Pagan ethics emerges out of a need to capture in words the attitudes and behaviour that might manifest out of a person’s love of Gaia and dedication to an Earthen Spirituality. Emma’s beautiful book, which I at first eagerly skimmed, then read slowly and carefully and now enjoy re-reading has stimulated my thinking and inspired the comments in these posts. I obviously highly recommend the book and hope that my commentary serves the spirit of *Pagan Ethics and challenges the reader to examine their attitudes and world view toward a greater reverence for our place within and among the life of Gaia. As my one-time friend Wolf says, may Gaia bless.
Thinking Like a Planet
“I think we tap a tremendous reservoir of power and strength when we allow that we’re entirely born of this breathing planet and that we really are nothing other than parts of Earth. That our real flesh is this immense spherical metabolism that envelopes us, that the deep, dense energy of the Earth is pulsing into us all the time. When we think of ourselves as not just earthly beings, but as Earth then we have all that wildness and all that power surging through us to meet whatever challenges come up. It doesn’t make it easy by any means. But it alters the way we feel.”
David Abram
Last post, [Post5] I talked about fear; fear of the unknown and the fear kindled by some religions over who does and who does not get to go to heaven. In addition to fear, there seems to have been a general discontent that’s settled over the western world. Many would ascribe it to a separation and alienation from Nature. There is a lot of evidence that in the Neolithic period [in the Eastern Mediterranean, from about 10,000 to 3300 B.C.] the Goddess religion was most prevalent. At first glance, one might just assume that people worshipped a female rather than a male God such as Ahura Mazda the lord of light and wisdom in Zoroasterism from Persia. However, the Goddess may have been an expression of Earth energy. Thankfully, the Goddess beliefs have survived. As Starhawk says:
“Goddess religion is not based on belief, in history, in archaeology, in any Great Goddess past or present. Our spirituality is based on experience, on a direct relationship with the cycles of birth, growth, death and regeneration in nature and in human lives. We see the complex interwoven web of life as sacred, which is to say, real and important, worth protecting, worth taking a stand for. At a time when every major ecosystem on the planet is under assault, calling nature sacred is a radical act because it threatens the overriding value of profit that allows us to despoil the basic life support systems of the earth. And at a time when women still live with the daily threat of violence and the realities of inequality and abuse, it is an equally radical act to envision deity as female and assert the sacred nature of female (and male) sexuality and bodies.”
http://www.starhawk.org/pagan/religion-from-nature.html
Moving on to my point, sky god religions over the last 5,000 years have all preached love; love of the God firstly, [remember the 1st commandment] then love of others. They have failed. They have failed to provide a story that [1] Provides an inalienable, experiential, bonding to our undeniable source, the living Earth. [2] It is the Earth, as mother, that binds humans and all living things to her bosom. Now, this may sound too far out for many. But please, hold on a second. It sounds farfetched mainly because even though our recent scientific discoveries allow us to appreciate the creative genius of Earth, our traditional, culturally blessed world view is anchored in reductionism and materialism. Many of us feel the love of the earth, but that spirit has been attributed as coming from out there somewhere and being intangible, out there somewhere becomes a concept. Somehow many people accept this story without evidence allowing their wishful thinking to be known as faith. Our major religious educators are well aware of the effects of early childhood conditioning plus have become adept at preying on the inner fears of people estranged from Earth energy.
As David Abram and others attest, we are the Earth and are sustained by Earth energy. We can experience this in many ways. For instance, look at what we call beauty. The beauty of sunrise and sunset, mountains, forest, the seas and the manifest fecundity of thousands of beautiful plants, animals and insects. Gaia has a vast, sustaining circulation system which transports warmth and food through the oceans, moisture through winds, cycles such as the carbon cycle that over time sequesters carbon from airborne CO2. Also, as Gaia Theory reveals, Gaia maintains a stable, until lately, average temperature of 12C that sustains life. Vast numbers of people love Nature and many can convincingly describe how these loving feelings came about as they describe their experience of Nature. Tragically, many, especially those encapsulated in huge monstrous cities where Earth energy is diminished by concrete, bitumen and smog, are unable to sense beauty I speak of. I must look to others to speak where I do not have the talent. We have among us today those who can and do speak poetically and lovingly of the Earth.
In the words of a native Sioux, Ohiyesa:
“There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky! He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun kindles his evening camp-fire, He who rides upon the rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas – He needs no lesser cathedral!”
Paula Gunn Allen speaks profoundly:
“We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life; the land (Mother) and the people (mothers) are the same. As Luther Standing Bear has said of his Lakota people, “We are of the soil and the soil is of us.” The Earth is the source and being of the people and we are equally the being of the Earth. The land is not really a place separate from ourselves, where we act out the drama of our isolate destinies… The Earth is not merely a source of survival, distant from the creatures it nourishes and from the spirit that breathes in us, nor is it to be considered an inert resource on which we draw in order to keep our ideological self-functioning… Rather for the American Indians… the Earth is being, as all creatures are also being: aware, palpable, intelligent, and alive… Many non-Indians believe that human beings possess the only form of intelligence in phenomenal existence (often in any form of existence). The more abstractionist and less intellectually vain Indian sees human intelligence as rising out of the very nature of being, which is of necessity intelligent in and of itself.”
“The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth. They live in the four directions, north, east, south, and west.
Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them.
To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.
All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can insure balance: only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call Spirit flourish in its full diversity.
To honour the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honour the sacred is to make love possible.
To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives.”
From: Starhawk. The Fifth Sacred Thing (Bantam, 1993)
We can only begin to understand who we are and our purpose in life from the perspective of our place within the earth. When we see ourselves, as David Abram says – “When we think of ourselves as not just earthly beings, but as Earth then we have all that wildness and all that power surging through us to meet whatever challenges come up.” – we will find the immense joy of being. We must learn to think like a planet.
Craving for Certainty
Feb 24th
This Category, *Pagan Ethics, contains a series of posts that are a commentary on a book – Living with Honour – written by Emma Restall Orr. My interest in Pagan ethics emerges out of a need to capture in words the attitudes and behaviour that might manifest out of a person’s love of Gaia and dedication to an Earthen Spirituality. Emma’s beautiful book, which I at first eagerly skimmed, then read slowly and carefully and now enjoy re-reading has stimulated my thinking and inspired the comments in these posts. I obviously highly recommend the book and hope that my commentary serves the spirit of *Pagan Ethics and challenges the reader to examine their attitudes and world view toward a greater reverence for our place within and among the life of Gaia. As my one-time friend Wolf says, may Gaia bless.
Divine Intent and the Craving for Certainty
Emma Orr suggests that divine intent – following God’s law – is “no more than the craving for certainty.” I fully agree, to the extent that I propose that for most people, resulting from this lack of certainty lays the foundation for their interest in an other-worldly worldview. The extent of this fear of the unknown – shockingly, most of us don’t remember signing any agreements to get into this life and have little idea what will happen when our organic life ends – leaves most people with this bottom-line prayer: “Oh, God, please tell me what to do!” Having been brought-up in a Protestant, nearly fundamentalist setting, I can remember the excruciating search for “the right way to live.” For about five years it dominated my behaviour dominating my interest in life and allowing me no peace or rest.
I just couldn’t find a satisfying, coherent path. The biggest stumbling block was the image of over ¾ of the human population damned to hell because they were unwilling or unable to say just the right words concerning Jesus Christ. My second stumbling block was the memory of my church experience as I remembered that only the well-heeled, suited, business and society men who took up the collection whilst the small farmer’s wives lesser well off folks did the cooking, cleaning, and child minding. I was so, naive. I thought that if I became a preacher, I could work in the fields during the week and visit the sick and preach on Sunday. Also, I would visit the bars and befriend those who might at some time open-up to having a chat on the subject of righteousness. After all, didn’t the Lord come down to earth to save the sinner? Well, that’s what the bible said. I desperately needed an answer to these paradoxes, I needed certainty because I thought it was my primary mission in life to find them; maybe I was seeking truth. Whatever, I found myself lonely and miserable; finding nothing else important enough to attend to. Finally, I gave up. I somehow was able to unchain myself from the agony of finding no suitable answer to the meaning of life through my narrow, Christian avenue of possibilities. At the age of 19, I found myself exhausted from the search and just decided to launch myself alone armed with only my limited experience and what seemed at the time, limited access to guidance from within. I remember standing on Central Avenue, Albuquerque, New Mexico saying something like: “Do what you will. I’m tired of seeking for the “right” way to live. I’ll go it alone. I’ve never looked back. I became free.
There are no mistakes, just outcomes and learning experiences. We are free to be who we are in any moment as long as we are willing to take the consequences of our actions. This is true freedom and it makes the world my oyster. Guidance comes from what I described in my previous blog post #4: reasoning and Knowing. Given my attitude expressed above; is the answer to Godlessness science and materialism? Certainly not, for they have become substitutes for traditional religion. Traditional science, reductionism and materialism have become our society’s chosen triune God. Those who don’t believe and thus do not fit gather meagre scraps from the table laden with the commodity market of world trade. Democracy is now spelled oligarchy. Sorry, I am no longer that desperate for answers.
Emma continues* [pg. 194] by citing how various prominent, deep thinkers: among them, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sartre, Heidegger and John Stuart Mill weave their stories. Although this is fascinating reading – and I am in no way criticising Emma Orr, it is just that adopting somebody else’s meaning of life will not sustain you. Actually, I’m sure Emma fully agrees. After 100 years of research, and asking 1000 questions of sensitive thinkers and gurus, you will still be faced with the question: But how do I feel about this? The questions: Who am I? – And how shall I be in the world? – Can never be answered by anyone else but you. Don’t be too surprised if you don’t find at the end of this road that the answer is that there is no answer!
Why? One, you will never discover yourself “out there” because “you” are the looker. “You” are not an object that can be known. This is non-dualism. I’ll not offer further explanation at this time. I’ve explained it in my book Planet as Self. Better, see Ken Wilber in No Boundaries, Ramana Maharshi, or Jean Klein who do explain it far better and with deeper understanding than I.
Two, if you want answers, you will have to supply them yourself. The trouble is, most of us simply don’t trust our ability to know at that level. We have been conditioned to a life of dependency on divine authority even though we know that all religious leaders are persons speaking on behalf of God. So be it. As one of my favourite songs tells it: “Everything is beautiful in its own way.” I’m reminded of Vadim Zeland’s words: “The world is the mirror of your attitude towards it.”
Because of what I said in paragraph One above, I suggest that we will never be satisfied with “meaning of life” from the perspective of the prevalent world view consisting of the belief that we are separate entities looking out on a world “out there” and a planet that we happen to be “on.” Perhaps a more fulfilling framework, a position where our presence is integrated into a vast wholeness that we share, is a worldview that posits us as beings in a holarchy. We are the holons with our major systems, limbic, respiratory autonomous nervous system, etc. below us and Gaia, the living, loving Earth above us.
Thinking like a planet will be the subject of my next post #6
*Living with Honour, A Pagan Ethics, Emma Restall Orr, O-Books, 2007
Reasoning and Knowing
Feb 19th
This Category, *Pagan Ethics, contains a series of posts that are a commentary on a book – Living with Honour – written by Emma Restall Orr. My interest in Pagan ethics emerges out of a need to capture in words the attitudes and behaviour that might manifest out of a person’s love of Gaia and dedication to an Earthen Spirituality. Emma’s beautiful book, which I at first eagerly skimmed, then read slowly and carefully and now enjoy re-reading has stimulated my thinking and inspired the comments in these posts. I obviously highly recommend the book and hope that my commentary serves the spirit of *Pagan Ethics and challenges the reader to examine their attitudes and world view toward a greater reverence for our place within and among the life of Gaia. As my one-time friend Wolf says, may Gaia bless.
Ways of knowing
Reasoning and Knowing
Emma found that the most common basis for decision-making is reason.
Well, yes and no. It depends on the situation. Reason can get out of hand. Too often, people ignore what they prefer or would really like to do and choose a course of action that is the most reasonable. They seldom honour their feelings and most often pick the “sensible” rather than the “this is what I wasn’t for myself” as if they felt that there was something “wrong” in going for their desires over what they think others would agree with them as sensible. Why is this? Perhaps it is partly a residue from parentage. Parents often deny their children their right to have their own preferences and force them to behave, choose and value what they, the parents think is “right” rather than letting the child’s individual selfhood develop. And then there is the influence from the Christian religion. I’m not picking on Christianity but just using Christianity as an example because I know about it. Organised religion, as opposed to spirituality, kills a child’s sense of self confidence and internal moral development by conditioning them to a live of dependency on the priesthood’s opinion as to how they should view the world and feel about the power of the church’s edicts on their behaviour. The word is control, control based on fear and fear based on the priesthood’s ability to convince people that they have the power to separate people from the love and nourishment of Spirit. I+ won’t elaborate here. Perhaps this is a subject for future development.
I posit that we have an inner “knowing” that we can trust. Over the years, I have been and still am fascinated with the subject of other ways of knowing. If I may use my own experience as an example, I will attempt to explain. Inner knowing, as I will call it, is more than intuition.
Actually, we lack the words to convey what I want to explain because the establishment – scientific establishment – that our society has largely granted the arbiter of what’s valid and what is not valid, loads and biases the accepted language to suit a reductionist, materialistic point of view. So, what I am trying to explain must, by default sound vague and indeterminate. However, I will proceed to them best of my ability.
Often, but not always, when a decision point arises an image forms of an action, an inner knowing that this action is what should be followed. Immediately following is a contradictory thought, a thought I recognise emerging out of my thinking function or what many call reasoning power. Every time I follow the first impulse and I find myself evaluating the two possibilities, I am glad that I acted on the first alternative. Most of the time I don’t consciously ask for guidance, it just pops up. However, I have had results when I have consciously asked – asked whom? You may say – just ask that you be able to understand whatever the mystery is that you desire to know about. Invariably, I get an answer that I accept. I trust that it is right for me.
I enjoy playing cards, especially a game with four people called Euchre. This game combines chance with actions based on experience of having noticed past success. One gets a feel for the probabilities of one action as opposed to another and gradually builds up a set of habits using the action with the greatest probability of success. From time to time, however, one suddenly feels that “ping” to do something different.
Many times I have ignored it as a result of listening to my thinking function and regretted my decision. Had I followed this “knowing” the outcome would have been more favourable. This inner knowing has never let me down and has never caused me to carry out an action that was harmful to me or another being. I trust it completely. Mind you, I am not claiming that I hear voices, commands – no nothing like that.
I recall fragment from the Hsin Hsin Ming by Sengstan, the third Chang Patriarch.
“Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and
passivity, assertion and denial. To deny the reality of things
is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things
is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it,
the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.”
So here we are introduced to a way of knowing without talking or thinking. How does this work? I don’t think I can adequately explain it but I’ll try. It seems to me that if one stays mindful and present in every moment, every call for a decision results in an inner knowing or inner choice. Perhaps it is the mind working at a deeper level than cognitive reasoning. The decision seems to come up before the thinking function comes out with its answer. It is like that we have an inner guide. I’m sure some people attribute this “guide” as an animal guide or an angel watching over them. Whatever works as each of us chooses or has accumulated their own worldview either adopted from their culture or modified from their experience. I attribute it as being the natural consequence of being a part of Gaia. The total wisdom gained from experience and held by Gaia is available because what I call “my body” is the body of Gaia. And what some call “my mind – the me” is also Gaia. There is no separate “me” in here looking out on a separate world. So, can you begin to see how we may be guided? We being from the “my body and my mind” point of view.
“If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.” The Hsin Hsin Ming
Ethics and Morality
Feb 14th
This Category, *Pagan Ethics, contains a series of posts that are a commentary on a book – Living with Honour – written by Emma Restall Orr. My interest in Pagan ethics emerges out of a need to capture in words the attitudes and behaviour that might manifest out of a person’s love of Gaia and dedication to an Earthen Spirituality. Emma’s beautiful book, which I at first eagerly skimmed, then read slowly and carefully and now enjoy re-reading has stimulated my thinking and inspired the comments in these posts. I obviously highly recommend the book and hope that my commentary serves the spirit of *Pagan Ethics and challenges the reader to examine their attitudes and world view toward a greater reverence for our place within and among the life of Gaia. As my one-time friend Wolf says, may Gaia bless.
Ethics and Morality
Those who become dissatisfied with the other-worldly basis of religious ethics often come to realise that a bottom-line question is: How shall I live? How shall I live? Not how do I feel or what do I think about living, but what direct actions shall I take in the process. What underpins our ability to face waking each morning and getting on with our being in the world.
What does Emma Orr have to say about this? First, a short definition, ethics: “the line we draw that articulates what is acceptable in terms of behaviour, and what is not, from a profoundly personal and individual standpoint.” A further elaboration follows:
“Our ethics describe how we feel others should conduct their lives and how we sense we too ought to behave. Based entirely on the patterns of our own minds, they reflect how we perceive the world, both in terms of the facts we assume are reality, and the emotionally defended attitudes that we believe and often need to be true. Just as these beliefs shape how we respond to the world, so do they create the ethical framework of standards and expectations that we use to judge ourselves and others: the line of what is acceptable, what is forgivable. As such, our ethics provoke guilt and anger, shame gratitude and humility, compassion and lack of mercy, a sense of injustice and righteousness. Where the line is crossed, we find fear and grief. Where we hold it inflexibly it becomes a cloak that keeps us comforted, armour that keeps us safe, clear air that keeps us healthy. Here is the framework within we think. As Hegel said, our ethics shape our identities.”
What about morality? “The word morality implies an imposed ethics.”
Morality is constructive by agreement. A moral code is a guide accepted by the tribe. It maintains standards of behaviour and agrees the consequences of misbehaviour. So morality is based on the tribe’s agreed upon ethics.
What may be a surprise to many and in my mind of the utmost importance is the notion that ethics are our own personal and individual responsibility. Taking responsibility not only for our actions but for the difficult job of working out our underlying worldview is indicative of a *Pagan ethical framework. Too often, we fail because we have not fully owned our ethical position. Our viewpoint was either handed down unquestioned or accepted out of fear or lack of care for the process. We falter when we don’t live out of our heartfelt knowing and expect of others what we don’t fully accept within ourselves. Even though Shakespeare’s advice from Polonius was rather more self-serving, taken purely it supports my point: “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
As Vadim Zeland might say, make sure you are not following along somebody else’s path rather than your own.
Death and Consciousness
Feb 10th
This Category, *Pagan Ethics, contains a series of posts that are a commentary on a book – Living with Honour – written by Emma Restall Orr. My interest in Pagan ethics emerges out of a need to capture in words the attitudes and behaviour that might manifest out of a person’s love of Gaia and dedication to an Earthen Spirituality. Emma’s beautiful book, which I at first eagerly skimmed, then read slowly and carefully and now enjoy re-reading has stimulated my thinking and inspired the comments in these posts. I obviously highly recommend the book and hope that my commentary serves the spirit of *Pagan Ethics and challenges the reader to examine their attitudes and world view toward a greater reverence for our place within and among the life of Gaia. As my one-time friend Wolf says, may Gaia bless.
Death, Dualism, Consciousness and Panexperientialism
Why the long word panexperientialism? Probably because narrowing down aspects of a previous long word often results in even longer words. This one is a refinement of panpsychism, a view that all matter has a mental aspect. I suspect a lot of Pagans would agree with this proposition and it may be closely related to what Emma has in mind when she says: “*Paganism is non-dual.” “Panexperientialism, as espoused by Alfred North Whitehead, is a less bold variation, which credits all entities with phenomenal consciousness but not with cognition, and therefore not necessarily with full-fledged minds.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism
Now, I don’t have the faintest idea of what a less than full-fledged mind looks like. However, I do have vast respect and stand in awe of Alfred North Whitehead. An aside, I’ll probably never forget a moment the first or second time I sat in the Depauw University library at the tender and seriously ignorant age of 18 and picked up a book by Whitehead. I couldn’t get through the first page! I thought, holy smoke, what have I got myself into here. Then a couple of three years ago I tried again and managed a few pages but oh my, what a mind.
I’ve introduced the subject of death in my first blog and promised to follow up with the next one. But first, let me talk a little about dualism. The *Pagan attitude towards dualism colours attitudes about death. The subjects dualism and consciousness have been analysed, rationalised and categorised such to make all but the most experienced philosophers swoon with a splitting headache. Simply and historically, dualism depicts reality as divided into two separate, fundamental aspects – mind and physicality or spirit and matter. *Paganism is non-dual. In a non-dual world there are only manifestations of energy, spirit, song or essence; whatever or however one chooses to name it. *Pagans don’t hold that a separate spirit leaves the body after death. To me, death is the start of a change of path and identity for all bodily materiality. Consciousness channelled by the organism stops coordinating a coherence of multiple parts the manifestation of which we term life. Transfiguration and changes that we call decay set in and materiality breaks down often into its constituent parts. Dust to dust so to speak.
Considered from a distance, so to speak, Earthly life is cyclical, tremendously diverse and the material constituents constantly recycled from organism to organism. Assuming, for a moment, that all life-forms are actually limbs and sensory faculties of Gaia expressing according to their ability Gaia’s consciousness, again I ask, who dies? Now, from a human being perspective, which is the only embodied perspective open to us, the above only makes sense is when we realise that we ARE the planet. Jean Klein, speaking from a Hindu Advaita Vedanta, non-dualistic viewpoint, might say that we can never observe our consciousness because we are what we are looking for. Our consciousness is not a separate object that we can perceive. One might as well expect the eye to be able to see itself seeing. Further, there is no separate “me” in here seeing something, there is only the seeing.
Let me follow on at this point with a perspective that is gaining acceptance. Our dualistic science and scientific method tends to trap us into an either/or research outcome. I expect many scientists continue to ignore the results of the famous Schrodinger’s cat thought paradox. The results of the experiment contradicts common sense. In case you are not familiar with it, “A cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger’s_cat
Situations such as the one above lead us to amend our either/or expectations to the realisation that many situations are actually both/ and. Now of course, in our everyday reality, a cat cannot be both dead and alive according to the instrument{s} observing reality at the time. However, at another level of consciousness and another type of observing instrument at an extremely smaller or larger physical size, such might be the case.
A carbon element, for example, has 6 electrons, 2 electrons in its inner shell and 4 in its outer shell. Carbon is very brittle, and cannot be rolled into wires or pounded into sheets. Yet, at nanometer sizes and a cylindrical shape, they become 10 times the tensil strength of graphite or coal. They also exhibit high conductivity and heat conductance properties. I cite this example of carbon to illustrate that carbon has both high and low tensil strength according to its size and shape. More and more we are finding that our differences of opinion and belief are subject to a both/and result due to different world views and levels of consciousness held by the contending parties. Further, concepts such as ultimate reality, absolute truth and perfect repeatability may be unobtainable when considering a living planet and a living Universe. The problem of convincing argumentation as to the anthropogenic responsibility for global warming is largely due to the limitations of the worldview of a majority of people. Instrumentation designed for machines just are NOT VALID for measuring the behaviour of a huge, intelligent, living being. I leave you with these quotes:
“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.” Albert Einstein
“The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there” Roshi, Yasutani
Introduction to Pagan Ethics
Feb 9th
This Category, *Pagan Ethics, contains a series of posts that are a commentary on a book – Living with Honour – written by Emma Restall Orr. My interest in Pagan ethics emerges out of a need to capture in words the attitudes and behaviour that might manifest out of a person’s love of Gaia and dedication to an Earthen Spirituality. Emma’s beautiful book, which I at first eagerly skimmed, then read slowly and carefully and now enjoy re-reading has stimulated my thinking and inspired the comments in these posts. I obviously highly recommend the book and hope that my commentary serves the spirit of *Pagan Ethics and challenges the reader to examine their attitudes and world view toward a greater reverence for our place within and among the life of Gaia. As my one-time friend Wolf says, may Gaia bless.
Introduction to Pagan Ethics
One word sums it up – Honour. Pagan ethics are based on reverence for Nature. The practice involves all our interactions with nature. Pagans have no belief in a supernatural Deity nor a God or Gods that exist outside of Nature. Emma does not wish to speak for all Pagans, thus in her book “Living with Honour” she refers to *Paganism – the Paganism she is describing as she sees it.
Starting with an umbrella concept: The word Honour has been chosen as the best representation of the foundation cornerstone. Honour can then be explicated with three supporting stones forming a balanced triangle: a strong, stable and self-supporting structure consisting of Courage, Generosity and Loyalty.
| Loyalty |
| Courage | Generosity |
| Honour |
Ancient
All remaining aspects and details of *Pagan ethics rest on this platform.
Emma translates the three upper layer words into alternatives that hold the essence of our 21st Century culture. They are: Honesty, Respect and Responsibility.
| Responsibility |
| Honesty | Respect |
| Honour |
21st Century
Evil
Thoughts of evil spirits, evil acts, the devil’s work do not exist in *Pagan ethics. There is no force of Nature that is evil. There is no fear in *Paganism of satanic or supernatural beings for “nothing exists beyond the natural.”
I am in full agreement with the *Pagan attitude toward evil. Without a God up there to judge us, we have to hold ourselves responsible for our actions. We do what is right because it feels right and feels good to do what’s right; we do what is right because of respect for ourselves and others, not to keep ourselves out of Hell down below somewhere. We do have the ability to sense the rightness and wrongness of alternatives. Of course, right and wrong are culturally derived and this must be kept in mind. However, I would like to speak to the belief that nothing exists beyond the natural in a later post.
Free Will
Emma explains that we are free to make our choices and reminds us that we are all connected.
I like to think that we are connected through the body of the Earth – we and every being are all Earthlings.
Attitude towards Death
“Death then, to the *Pagan, is a gateway of release, exquisitely transformative, yet also simply just another step or two along a much longer road. I offer the question: Who dies? More on this subject in the next post.