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Living within a living, loving planet
Posts tagged living universe
No Protections for National Parks
Jun 11th
Romney Energy Plan Includes Drilling ‘Virtually Every Part’ of U.S., No Protections for National Parks
By Jessica Goad
Nation of Change
This has been my fear all along and much more than really sad. Our National, State, County and city parks are the heart and soul of our country. They stand in testimony of what we respect and hold dear, hold as our treasure. They are that part of ourselves that we admire and hold dear. They must be protected. That’s why they are “public” lands.
“This morning’s Washington Post sheds more light on Romney’s energy plan, including the fact that he would open up “virtually every part ofU.S.lands and waters” to drilling regardless of whether they are national parks, national monuments, or protected in some other way. As the Post reports:
Asked whether any place would be off limits for oil drilling, campaign spokesman Andrea Saul said, “Governor Romney will permit drilling wherever it can be done safely, taking into account local concerns.”
Current law sets some public lands and waters off limits to drilling, including national parks, national monuments, and wilderness areas. These places are protected for other uses like hunting, fishing, sightseeing, and recreation.”
“Saul’s caveat that Romney would promote drilling if it could be done safely makes little sense considering that safe drilling has thus far eluded oil and gas companies. Most oil drilling involves the use of “drilling muds” that can include toxic chemicals. Hydraulic fracturing for natural gas involves pumping thousands of gallons of chemicals underground to stimulate wells. And all drilling produces contaminated water as a byproduct that must be disposed of. Additionally, oil spill are not uncommon—for example, a report from USA Today found an average of 22 large spills offshore every year between 2005 and 2009.”
A Political Process fit for Purpose
Apr 25th
“The growth of emissions can be slowed, relative to the growth rate of the economy. However, emissions cannot conceivably be stalled or reversed while the economy continues to expand, however great the carbon-saving technologies of the coming years.
If our political processes cannot conceive of a non-growth future, and yet a fundamental rethink of growth is the only honest starting point for the fight against climate change, then those political processes are clearly not fit for purpose.”
Oliver De Schutter at the Guardian. Tuesday 24 April 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/24/climate-change-human-rights-issue?INTCMP=SRCH
There are two points that I would like to make about the quote above.
[1]
Fighting against climate change is ridiculous. Just a slight glance at a graphic of temperature variations over a few hundred thousand years reveal that it is always changing. There is no or practically no long period of stability. Over the last million years, at least, we have been going from quick zips of warming squeezed into long periods of increased glaciation and decreased glaciation. Talk about fighting climate change just understandably fuels the skeptics and “deniers.”
I read a lot about the climbing anthropogenic CO2 and steadily rising temperature. The level of CO2 in the air is unquestionably higher than any of the last 4 interglacial periods. Since we as humans had no modern recording and measurement devices, we just don’t know how the CO2 will affect climate. The best we can do is run computer models and simulations. These help us to see into the future but just don’t impress a large segment of our population. Ironically, to make a side step, these same people don’t seem to mind listening to the results of simulations so long as they reveal a story that they agree with.
I’ve said before and continue to claim that we are barking up the wrong tree. Our scientists, driven of course by what governments and multinationals want to hear, focus on why we are still experiencing increasing temperatures, when after around 12,000 years of interglacial warming, compared to the last 4 periods, we should be into a downward dip.
I suggest that we should be concerned and be trying to discover what brought the temperature (and CO2) down in the past. We need to do this as precisely as possible and then when we understand which of the factors discovered are now missing, for instance, millions of trees and immense grasslands and savannah, and then how we can either get around the situation or if not, how we had best prepare for the unknown. Scientists do agree that there are triggers, tipping points, that appear to spearhead the change up and down. I suggest that we have a lot of adequate information about the causes of the upward climb of temperature and emergence into an interglacial period. Whether CO2 climbed first or temperature climbed first is a side issue – important but a mystery that we can live with – while we deal with the known. As I have just said, we spend little time and effort revealing and I argue, explaining to the public that we will most likely skip a whole glacial- interglacial cycle. [An Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead?
A. Berger and M. F. Loutre in 23 AUGUST 2002 VOL 297 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org]
Another issue that bothers me is that of our worldview or how we look at our planet. As I’ve tried to suggest and support in my book, Planet as Self, we don’t understand how our planet “works” primarily because we see it as a large and intricate machine. We use the limited views within a pragmatic, physicalist, mindset, with instruments designed to measure machines, to understand a living being. We are IN a planet not on it. We have studied and know that a star, our sun, has a birth and death cycle of increasing heat output on its way to becoming a red giant then a white dwarf and finally a black dwarf. Gaia Theory explains how living beings on the outer skin, so to speak of Gaia, actually work together to counteract this heat increase and maintain Earth’s temperature to the benefit of said life-forms. That’s why we need to work with nature and honour the wisdom inherent in the life of Gaia. After all, we are all first and foremost Earthlings.
[2] Looking again at the quote above, I am extremely pleased to read a critique of the idea of unlimited growth. Out of control growth is known as cancer. Surely it is common sense to agree that a planet with finite resources cannot support unlimited growth. As the author points out, we need to adapt a political (economic) process that is fit for purpose. That purpose being, as a famous American document proposed, the purpose of maintaining a government of the people, by the people and for the people and not just the 1%.
Growing Up, Falling in Love
Apr 20th
Growing Up, Falling in Love
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-koehler/growing-up-falling-in-lov_b_1438584.html
“We must fall in love with the Earth — the living, sacred planet, this “dynamic system,” in the words of the Bolivian legislation acknowledging its rights, ‘made up of the undivided community of all living beings, who are all interconnected, interdependent and complementary, sharing a common destiny.’”
This is the future — the only future we have.
Robert Koehler
Syndicated writer
Examining just why we do not love the Earth is a major theme of my book.
A lovely Tribute to my Book
Feb 24th
Its been a couple of years since I’ve come across a book I wish I’d written myself, and interestingly this one is by the husband of the last author /editor I raved about (that was + is GreenSpirit Marian Van Eyk McCain) And this is written better than I could do. Sky has a lovely way with words, easy to read. I can imagine a twinkle in his eyes when he speaks of the Earth, and his love radiates out of the pages. For a very long time I have been looking for ways to convey the sense of I am Earth, her food my body, her water my blood, and I share the molecules from the stars with every other creature and plant. This isn’t just a fanciful worldview, it is a most fundamental fact and such understanding is vital for our survival. Sky takes it further: my mind is Earth’s mind, Earth as perceivable manifestation of God. It has been told in a style of someone speaking to me.
In this book is the first time outside of science fiction I have heard us referred to as “Earthlings.” Yes! And he puts into graspable practicality what Peter Russell (among others) has been helping me to understand since my aha! days in the early 1980s. This read is more to me than preaching to the converted: it is speaking for me, taking me further into life and builds my store of how. It is available as hard copy and e-book.
Cynthia Alves February 2012
“In The Global Brain Awakens Peter Russell shows that humanity has reached a crossroads in its evolutionary path. [Our expanding communications] technology, combined with a the rapidly growing human potential movement, is helping to create a collective consciousness that is humanity’s only hope of saving it from itself. However, Russell warns if we continue on our current path of greed and destruction, humanity will serve only as a planetary cancer.” http://www.lifepower.org.uk/
A Lovely Tribute to my Book
Feb 24th
Its been a couple of years since I’ve come across a book I wish I’d written myself, and interestingly this one is by the husband of the last author /editor I raved about (that was + is GreenSpirit Marian Van Eyk McCain) And this is written better than I could do. Sky has a lovely way with words, easy to read. I can imagine a twinkle in his eyes when he speaks of the Earth, and his love radiates out of the pages. For a very long time I have been looking for ways to convey the sense of I am Earth, her food my body, her water my blood, and I share the molecules from the stars with every other creature and plant. This isn’t just a fanciful worldview, it is a most fundamental fact and such understanding is vital for our survival. Sky takes it further: my mind is Earth’s mind, Earth as perceivable manifestation of God. It has been told in a style of someone speaking to me.
In this book is the first time outside of science fiction I have heard us referred to as “Earthlings.” Yes! And he puts into graspable practicality what Peter Russell (among others) has been helping me to understand since my aha! days in the early 1980s. This read is more to me than preaching to the converted: it is speaking for me, taking me further into life and builds my store of how. It is available as hard copy and e-book.
Cynthia Alves February 2012
“In The Global Brain Awakens Peter Russell shows that humanity has reached a crossroads in its evolutionary path. [Our expanding communications] technology, combined with a the rapidly growing human potential movement, is helping to create a collective consciousness that is humanity’s only hope of saving it from itself. However, Russell warns if we continue on our current path of greed and destruction, humanity will serve only as a planetary cancer.” http://www.lifepower.org.uk/
Received the first copy of my book from the printer
Dec 23rd
Thursday, 22 December,
If you stop and think about it, shouldn’t 22 December be the first day of the Year? Surely there is no better beginning than the first day after the shortest day of the year when daylight begins to expand.
I must admit that it really is an ego trip to see your name on a book, especially when it contains just what you would like to tell people. When it contains words about one of your primary concerns of a lifetime.
What is it all about? Can I answer this in a sentence? Perhaps. However, if what I am on about can be condensed to a sentence, then why a 100 page book? No I can’t say it all in a sentence. Of course, most books are far larger than 100 pages. My idea when it comes to writing is that I want to get in, say what I want to say shortly and sweetly and then get out.
Oh well, I must say more about the book in this first post. We desecrate what we think is something outside of ourselves. We have been conditioned by our religious beliefs to see ourselves as having been somehow magically wafted down here from outside somewhere. Then, when we have suffered a lifetime, we – those who are somehow “saved” – are magically wafted off again out there somewhere. So, is it any wonder that many or maybe even most people don’t love the Earth? I wish to challenge others to think a bit more about some facts in physical reality.
We are earthlings. We are thus both physically and spiritually living IN a planet. Appreciating the miracle of life we may just begin to realize that we are the planet. What we are the planet? Of course, are the leaves the tree? Are the roots the tree? Are the limbs the tree? It is all the tree is it not? In the book Planet as Self, I try to justify what I have just said. I try to fully explain it, give examples. I ask only that the reader just consider that my story is really not any more improbable than the generally accepted story. My story appears improbable mainly because we are not taught that Gaia is a living, loving and lovable entity – being so to speak. In the book, I try to explain that also.
My ideas are not at all unique. I didn’t discover these ideas. I just don’t have a reputation to protect and can thus put the ideas out there. I believe I go further than most are willing – perhaps because they worry that they will be thought too far out. All of us can follow our intuitive knowing and develop a life story, a worldview that works for us. We don’t need anyone’s approval. Why should anyone give their intellectual and intuitive power to someone else?
A cat can look at a Queen!
We are NOT the most important beings in this planet
Nov 25th
“I’ve been severely criticized for saying worms are more important than people… I made that statement intentionally. Why? Because it’s true. Worms are more important than people because they can live on the earth without us. We cannot live without them. Bees are more important than we are. We can’t live without them. They can live without us. That’s what we have to realize and understand. That if we’re going to survive on this planet, we have to respect the rights of all of those species to survive. Because we need them more than they need us.”
– Captain Paul Watson
Attributed to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society:
Gaia Eros
Nov 7th
GreenSpirit, Summer 2005
Jesse Wolf Hardin
GAIA EROS:Reconnecting to the Magic and Spirit of Nature
The Career Press, Franklin Lakes NJ (USA) 2004.
ISBN 1–56414–729–0 (pbk)
Jesse Wolf Hardin’s new book bears an accurately descriptive title. Gaia, the living, conscious, inspirited Earth, and eros, the love of the Earth. Gaia Eros – Earth love. Its thirty-eight small chapters felt to me more like a collection of love poems than a series of essays. Unconnected by a logical, progressive unfolding of ideas, each is complete in itself like musical variations on a theme – the theme of Earthly love.
In much the same vein as John Muir, Robinson Jeffers, Annie Dillard and Henry David Thoreau, Wolf writes and talks from out of his personal experience, revealing his love affair with the larger domain of himself. Love for others, and for all of Nature, must be grounded in love of self. Not so much the egoic, personal self, but more the larger Self fully embodied in the sacred skin of the living Earth. ‘Earthen Spirituality’ or ‘New Nature Spirituality’ is what Wolf likes to call it.
All his chapters – or poetic vignettes – are like expressions of the lover speaking from a heart saturated with over twenty-five years spent in the sensual, erotic bower of his beloved canyon. It is a place of cool breezes and laughing waters, thick and luxuriant with a backdrop of forest and stately cliffs rising to lofty crags and pinnacles. Cool boulders of bold design dotted with hardy cacti lie among fallen limbs in and among sand washed down with Autumn thundershowers. “I’m excited,” says Wolf. And having walked the sacred canyon myself, I understand and share that excitement.
Of course, the American Southwest has no monopoly on beauty. Equally, there may be the loveliness of a potted plant, hedgerows of campions interspersed with the withering bluebell blossoms past their prime and forming seed. The joyfully sounding song of the robin shortly before his summer silence or the melodious notes of the blackbird taking a short break from the relentless task of feeding her young; all are equal parts of Gaia. As Wolf puts it, “the interpenetration and interrelationship of all her sacred parts.”
Interwoven with the affirmations of joyful communion with Gaia are several invigorating themes. I’ll just touch on a few. Earthen Spirituality promises no transcendent answer or creed. Where is it that we think we might go? The Tao is within, not out there somewhere. There is no need to look further than our Earthly home for sustenance. In my own words: let us wholly immerse ourselves in the love and beauty of Gaia and let Gaia, who is better equipped, deal with cosmic consciousness. Our connection to the cosmos must come through Gaia. We, as earthling animals, simply don’t have the sensors to deal directly with galactic spirit.
And why should we be concerned? Can we not be satisfied with being Earthlings?
Wolf says-“Earth is a spirit-embodied being, sexually charged and reproductive, but also sensitive and vulnerable. In this way our playmate, partner, and lover.”
In Chapter 11, there is a fairly detailed ‘Anatomy of a Quest’ as guided by the residents of the Earthen Spirituality Project in the magical Gila Mountains of New Mexico, USA, once the abode of the Mogollon (‘Sweet Medicine’) people.
A major part of the New Nature Spirituality involves “recreating a practice that is true to our mixed heritage and found homes, true to the current needs of self and earth in these contemporary times.” Avoiding ‘cultural appropriation’, we need authentic rituals that reflect our new understanding of Gaia, (what I call ‘rituals of uncertainty’). These must be pulled from the heart and shared. Early on, in Chapter 2, there is a ‘sweet medicine query,’ a preparatory rite of passage into the book. This mental preparation seems to parallel the two mile walk into the canyon, where the visitor must cross the usually calf deep river seven times.
Some other charming chapters feature such things as ‘Mulberry Truths’ – a collection of affirmations and truths from Nature’s storehouse, and ‘Lessons of the Furry Buddhas’ – things the author has learned from bobcats, such as: “Anytime you’re not actively being pursued, don’t bother being afraid”. Then there is Wolf’s ‘Ode to Wilderness’, an impassioned testimony rather than reasoned argument. In Gaia Eros one also finds a detailed example of restoring and resacramenting land, beautiful suggestions for reclaiming the ever present ‘now’ and several interviews which help the reader to be come better acquainted with the author. These and others are all illustrated with Wolf’s art.
In a culture that is currently threatening to bring about “the end of Nature”, Gaia Eros is a Song of Songs, an inspirited beacon piercing through the darkness.
Sky McCain
Inside the mind of the octopus
Nov 3rd
This is a truly wonderful article. I am envious. It reminds me of my experience with the dolphins at Monkey Mia, north ofPerth,Australia. They swim at your feet, rool over a bit and look at you.
I believe that there is just one consciousness, that of our higher self, Gaia. We are the planet. We are in a sense being lived rather than living “on” a planet.
Each material object expresses Gaia’s consciousness to the extent of its development. Gaia loves and cares for all parts of herself.
Deep Intellect
Inside the mind of the octopus
by Sy Montgomery
Published in the November/December 2011 issue of Orion magazine
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6474
Humanity’s Second Spiritual Age
Jun 12th
Humanity’s Second Spiritual Age
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/duane-elgin/coming-together_b_870538.html
In this new post, Duane Elgin speaks eloquently and forcefully for the ideals of the living universe. For those who wish to read further, they might find his 2009 book, “The Living Universe” helpful.
Although I am aware and appreciate the high ideals and emphasis on love of neighbour within the major religions, I can’t ignore that the two largest major religions have manifested almost continuous warfare and contention. In a little over 300 years after the death of the Christ, King Constantine made the Christian God a God of war; even placing the sign of the cross on his war banners.
Only 10 years after the founding of Islam and the Hijera in 622, Muhammad’s successors began their campaign against neighbouring empires. By 732, they had threatened Europe as far north as Poitiers and were stopped by Charles Martel just south of Tours, France. Islam’s last thrust into Europe occurred at the second Siege of Vienna in 1683 which lasted over two months.
Love of others has always been and still is trumped by politics and economics. There are even state churches like the Anglican church and the church of Sweden. One of the goals of the English settlements in the New World was the separation of church and state and resulting religious freedom.
Although I honour the effort of all major religions, what I am saying is that the “the need to put compassion at the forefront” as Duane has stated has not brought peace on Earth.
Will knowledge that we are not separate from the living universe be enough to bring us to peaceful intents and the end of our raging ecocide? Will this knowledge really bring us to “communion with the living universe,” and an “experience of unity and intimacy within the universe”?
I find Duane’s writing inspiring, especially the paragraph quoted below and find myself wanting desperately to believe that it can happen, but I have grave and serious doubts. “When our aliveness consciously connects with the aliveness of the universe, a current of aliveness flows through us. At that moment — when life meets life — a direct connection between the living universe and ourselves is realized and we have an awakening experience. We no longer see ourselves in the universe, we experience that we are the universe.”
Our aliveness is and has always been connected and has always flowed through us. A current of aliveness is and always has flowed through us. My question is: Will just reading about this or being told this “cause” an awakening experience? Perhaps the trouble with me is that when I look out onto the Milky Way or think about star systems and galaxies, I don’t receive a “direct experience” of the aliveness of that part of me. I cannot develop a closeness with a group of stars or even Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation Orion and the sixth brightest star in the sky. It is too big, too distant, too remote for me to form a loving relationship with.
What I can and do feel and enjoy is that part of me that is the Earth, Gaia. So, for me, the love of the Earth is the direct experience that has been the awakening experience of my life.