Well, spending two days with Joanna and participating in the exercises she lead was wonderful. I loved being around all the people, getting to know some of them and generally doing more crying, hugging and looking at people in a deeply engaged and appreciative way. The permission to really connect with each other was, for me, a wonderful tonic. I love people and am rarely in a situation where I can connect deeply, what a great experience. Joanna took us through the four stages of the work that reconnects, coming from gratitude, honoring our pain in the world, seeing with new eyes, and going forth. The people were so interesting and intense, we are all part of the Great Turning, the early adopters and change agents of the edge of a wave of the planet’s push toward preserving it’s living vibrancy, diversity, and the kind of stability required to continue building ever more complex forms of life.
I loved connecting, hugging and crying when speaking from the depths of our passion and pain. I began to get more comfortable as time went on and spoke my truth form a place I never get to speak from. I got to dance. I’ve wanted to dance for months (I have been an almost completely non dancing person) and I got my chance, after a brief bit of self consciousness I started to warm up and after a while I was dancing with abandon, dancing the dance of being alive, the dance of gratitude and joy, amazing. I hope the amazing people who participated will show up on Joanna’s website after I launch it so we can see what develops. There are a lot of people I want to explore connecting with and learning from. I hope the delays I experienced yesterday don’t dissuade anyone from coming to the new site and connecting with each other, I would feel real bad about that. Continue reading My First Workshop with Joanna Macy
I have been seeing the implications of the Buddhist dependent co-arising causality model. On the level of individual psychology and time the changes that occur in my perspective are liberating. When I understand that there is no linear process to adhere to in my psychology I realize that i am not bound by the line from the past propagating into the future as the western psychological model mandates. It isn’t that the past doesn’t exist or isn’t part of what conditions the present it is that there isn’t a linear past and future with the present just being one of Hume’s distinct moments.
There is no end point which means there is no perfection, no static goal, no effect of the cause which is the full realization of the cause. Without a starting point cause (all potent) dictating the effect or end point, there is no necessary line. This turns nouns into verbs. My most potent realization during the re-owning of my adopted infant self left behind in identification with my biological mother when we were separated was I have a right to be. I can now see the linearity in that statement, the linear causal model deeply assumed. Now it becomes, being is right, the active process of be-ing is inherently right, not that it is right to be, or that I have a right to be, being is right, an active process of birth and change is right. Yep! Continue reading Latest thoughts about Dependent Co-Arising
In meditating the other day I started to see how my experience, as a 12 or 13 year old, of the formless, as my mind flew past the edge of space and the return to my body through the funnels of light, each one having its own world and beings, where both form and formlessness were present together, is taken into account by the Buddhist model of causality that Joanna Macy calls dependent co-arising. In the formless state unaware of particularity there was an intuitive knowing of all things even without any awareness bounded objects. When returning to the awareness of my bounded living self I was aware of both form bound experience and formless at the same time. From either perspective both are inherent in each other, they dependently co-arise.
The way this came up in meditation was that in focusing on awareness of breathing I found that my mind wanted to fly out toward the formless. The two movements toward awareness of breath and flight toward awareness of formlessness seemed antagonistic at first but the false choice quickly became clear and the practice of awareness of breathing seemed to be a nice place to allow the two aspects of life to co-exist in my awareness. The western linear causal trap is to force a false choice to align with a causal starting point, so one side becomes the origin of the other, the source, the right side to identify with. It is much more true to my experience to regard them both as simultaneous and inherent in each other. Continue reading Form and Formless
Thank you causal agents
And line combatants
I thank my ignorance
My participation in the line dance
Of our combat
The tearing apart has left a hole
For the tiny seed of wisdom
To find soil in which to root
Brothers and sisters of the fight
We toil in vain
There is no start to our problem
The line on which we fight
Is drawn not in the sand
But in the mind
In the assumptions
That lure us to the line
And call our fighting hearts
To action Continue reading On The Line
There is no starting point
Now I can dance
The ceaseless dance
The spinning and choosing
The moving and being moved
There is no starting point
Now I can dance
I saw a spider on my windshield just the other day
I watched him struggle to stay on as I drove away
At first the spider slowed, it moved a whole lot less
It stopped and stayed real still, the gas my foot did press
I could not tell from its eyes what was on its mind
Faster I did go cars pressing from behind
The legs of that poor spider spread strong and holding fast
From strength it had developed far back in the past
But today is now, I’m late for work, the freeway will not wait
Spider’s front legs start to shake and that will seal its fate
Those legs so strong when spread, crunch into a ball
The spider blows onto the street, will that happen to us all
I just want what Buddha had
A nice, hot, mom, and a rich ass dad
and something that’s missing and hurting real bad
I just want to do what Buddha did
To sit by a tree till the truth is unhid
To take a cool raft to the other shore
Then tell the cool raft I don’t need you no more
I’m tied to the wheel in so many ways
That hasn’t changed just cuz my hair grays
I have me a life in a machine culture
That preys on the world like a robot vulture
The trees are not there just for sitting around
They”re just worth too much to leave in the ground
A tree and some dirt, burn a whole lot of coal
To make a few things that might soothe our soul
But Buddha had none of it, wealth would not suffice
Though the life of a prince must have been very nice
Princes are all of us industrial culturerer’s
Trying real hard to be much better vulturerer’s
The kids and the spouse caught up in it too
Like we’re just consumers who live in this zoo
The raft called efficiency to no other shore
As all we envision is to consume more
I may already have, what Buddha found
I share the same sky, the rivers, the ground
And my sense of what’’s missing grows more profound
So what shall I do with this urge in my heart
In my own tiny way, will I do my part
Will I sit by a tree till I see what I can
Then will I become a whole personed man
I started my first real garden four weeks ago and I am really enjoying taking care of the plants and watching them grow. My 2 1/2 year old daughter was surprised to hear that some of the plants will grow strawberries that we can eat. It is going to be delightful to share the experience of eating food grown from the ground with my daughter and my 12 year old son. I dropped my perfectionist trip about doing it pure like John Jevons does in his wonderful “how to grow more fruits and vegetables” book and started from small plants I bought. I did break up and compost the soil under the wood portion of the raised beds and enjoyed how the soil gets more fluffy and light when you break it up and add compost. I can imagine the roots of the plants having a lot more room to move and grow in soil like this. I have soil about the depth and with some of the characteristics Jevons recommends and I have broken the ice between me and the world of edible plants on which my continued living depends, It feels good.
I planted zucchini, and yellow squash in the first planter box, strawberries and a melon of some kind in the second planter box, tomatoes and bush beans in the third planter box. I check them and give them small amounts of water if they look like they need it. On hot days they can look a little fried around the edges and I don’t see any bugs or snails messing with them yet. I have a lot to learn but I am on my way to a more intimate relationship with dirt, water, bugs, plants, and weather. I’m hoping that my kids will not grow up as estranged from the natural world we live in as I have.
More blossoms, new fruit, the plants all seem well established and happily growing. The new developments are the flowers on the melon, a small new tomato on the plant that didn’t have any yet, and new strawberries.
I am a Physical Presence
My mind and body are Unified
My whole self is miraculous
Ever changing, yet complete
I experience with the World
Every instant of my being
Mind and Body
Living Self and Living World
Many, yet singular
Together and Aware
We are a Physical Presence
Each day is my birthday
Each moment, my birth moment
All that is, born anew
Each moment, each day
My birthday every day
My birth moment
Each moment
Right now
Appreciating
The gift
My birth
Moment
and
Day
 Me: I was curious about where our conversation ended during our last talk. I mentioned that I was aware of a lot of talk of cyborgs, human machine hybrids, but no talk of bio-borgs hybrids of animals and plants for instance. I did a little reading via the web to refresh my recollection about what the cyborg line of story/thinking is. I remembered that some people I had heard or read talked about a technological singularity and I didn’t understand it at the time but I remember thinking the idea was way off as far as I was concerned. Well I found some information, particularly Ray Kruzewell and his conception of a singularity caused by the acceleration of technology and his conclusion that humans would end up transcending biology. That’s just the sort of crazy idea I thought it was, and just the perfect description, but in a technical guise, of the ideas in Genesis, that people are primary and nature is secondary. The most obvious criticism of this mind set is that unless the technical acceleration is fast enough to find a technology based replacement for the environment that supports human life, technical acceleration of the industrial economy will simply more rapidly being an end to the experiment of super-powering exclusively human objectives. I think Kruzwell, and the science fiction writer Victor Verne are the two most popular exponents of this view. I will read more of them and address them more specifically.
Tree: They think your kind can live without me?
Me: In essence yes. I think both people are so impressed with a linear reading of technical progress that they ignore the biological context within which the technical progress occours within. It is like Genesis realized in reverse where with Genesis God creates the earth, then man, then plants and other animals thereby leaving man dependent on God not nature. With the singularity theorists they see us arriving at the point where Genesis starts, a non nature based origin and continuance of humankind, by the math of technical progress acceleration ending up with a God of biology transcending intelligence. I really think this all has its roots in an unconscious reactionary patriarchy that must break away from dependence on mother and do so by elevating the maleness of their ability to isolate themselves from the flesh and transpose themselves into exclusive residence in the abstract mind. Some powers come out of this psychological operation but the expense must be totally ignored or dramatically devalued for them to continue. It is hard to continue this story because it leads to a self evaluation that is just to significant, relative to all the other entities and relations that a man has in reality.
Tree: So they ignore and dramatically devalue me so they can imagine they were not born by their mothers. Your kind is crazy. Continue reading Suburban Tree Dialog 6 (Singularity and Cyborg)
 Me: When we left off our last conversation we had been talking about thinking long ideas and I mentioned I had been thinking of what humans would become if we succeeded in living with power and not destroying our planet at the same time. I think I am ready to talk more about this and see where we go with it.
Tree: I don’t have any ideas about it, that is your job. I know what soil, roots, water, air, the sun, my trunk, leaves, and branches will look like and how they will be. Why are you talking about being different, you will be the same unless you are talking about a very long time in the future when your kind might look different, you might grow roots or leaves.
Me: I’m not thinking that far into the future, although being part animal and part plant would be a pretty interesting development.
Tree: So you aren’t talking about becoming like my kind?
Me: Not physically anyway
Tree: In some other ways then?
Me: I think that people would have become completely responsible for the ideas, systems, and things we create and not relate to them as if they were existing on their own independent from us. I also think we would see our bodies like they were extended into the world around us all the time and that all the things around us were also extending into us all the time in the same way. We would see ourselves as more than we are individually. Continue reading Suburban Tree Dialog 5 (Behaviorally Modern Human 2)
Tree: Lets talk about a new Genesis. I have much longer thoughts than humans but it seems that you have learned a lot about my world and how far back trees go. I want you to try to make a new Genesis story out of that.
Me: OK I’ll give it a try. The old pattern was God -> Earth with water -> rain -> man -> planting a garden -> putting man in the garden -> making the garden grow what is good for man -> adding the tree of life and the tree of knowledge.
A new Genesis story that puts mankind, tree, in a more realistic ecological relationship, without exclusion of a conscious origin of the universe, but with no creator God in charge of events in a linear causal chain of events that lead to man as an endpoint, would sound something like this;
- God, formless, all encompassing, and all knowing, held everything that had the potential to become in the undifferentiated state of formless unity beyond conception of one or many
- God conceived particularization of it’s formlessness by creating a single form that held all the potential of God’s formlessness
- The single thing of God knew its form and the unformed source of its form in the formlessness of God
- The single thing also understood that the vast potential of the one thing was best expressed through the creation of many things so the potential of the formless one could unfold.
- The single thing then started to expand and divide it’s self into many very small distinct things and to create an expanding space that all things shared.
- The single thing now began to know its self from the perspectives of many distinct things that were continually becoming, and a participatory space that was expanding to allow more room for the increasing of many small things.
- Space seemed different than thing but they were all an expression of the limitless potential of the undifferentiated God and the one thing that was now dividing into an unending manyness and creating space.
- This expanding space and the dividing/multiplying things appearing within it was capable of unfolding change because time became apparent as part of the distance of space. With time and space the small individual things were able to change as time progressed.
- The things that formed began to know themselves through their way of interacting with each other through the flowing medium of space, time, gravity and other forces. This ability of small things to interact, exchange, and gain knowledge through this process was another wonderful aspect of the potential of the undifferentiated, the one, and the many.
- Clouds of these small things formed in the expanding diversity of space and time
- Clouds of small things became more closely connected through the effect of gravity on space and hot suns began to appear. This was good because many suns warmed space and provided a strong force around which other things could form and be warmed Continue reading Suburban Tree Dialog 4 (New Genesis)
So far, engaging in this dialog with a suburban tree I have learned that my relationship to nature is changing through giving voice to an individual tree and engaging in a subjective dialog with my representation of the tree’s perspective in relation to me. This dialog has pointed me in several directions that have helped me understand the culture I have grown up in, and to feel a relationship to a non-talking, slow-moving (I thought of trees as non-moving before the dialog), very important, member of the living community of which I am a part.
The cultural part surprised me in the turn it took toward understanding trees from a religious and spiritual perspective and the two traditions where I am aware of trees in the literature of Buddhism and Christianity. I was shocked by reading Genesis and finding what seem to be roots of a grandiose description of the place of humans in the natural world and a patriarchy toward nature, as well as the one I am already aware of related to women. It seems like a pure power grab to me, where God creates man, then plants, and gives man dominion over nature. The dependencies are all wrong from a biological point of view. Man is a late development of an incredibly long and complex chain of interrelated building of life from starting with the primitive single celled creatures without a nucleus into complex organisms like plants, complex animals, and eventually humans. When Genesis says,
5: And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
6: But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
7: And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
8: And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9: And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
So the Genesis chain of events goes in this order, God -> Earth with water -> rain -> man -> planting a garden -> putting man in the garden -> making the garden grow what is good for man -> adding the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. Man is in a privileged position relative to the creator’s intentions and the order of dependencies involved in the acts of creation the story depicts as having caused the world to be as we know it. Continue reading Suburban Tree Dialog 3 (Genesis and Evolution)
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