“This is not a war between the good guys and the bad guys but the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart.” More posts inspired by the work of Joanna Macy on this website: Transforming Despair On Staying Sane in a Suicidal Culture The great turning: the shift from industrial growth… Continue Reading →
By Jen Peer Rich — True-nature is overdue for normalization. Self-awareness and living a conscious life is often reserved for gurus, teachers and “spiritually enlightened” folks. In our Western culture, it is the norm to put people who wake up to true-nature on a kind of a psychological and spiritual pedestal. This approach is flawed because it maintains an illusory hierarchy of consciousness, an exclusively human mind-trick. We tend to make simple things mysterious. This is exactly what keeps true-nature such a carrot-stick mystery for many.
Courageously move forward and into every feeling you ever were unable to feel due to oppressive circumstances. Feel them, let go and be free. Our nervous systems have recorded each and every instance of repression and denial. We have a store of tension from our ancestors as well. This store of repressed emotions, denial, violence etc is stored in our DNA. It is our “karma” …to be transmuted in this lifetime. …
As a species on the brink of many sorts of environmental disasters that threaten our world and our lives, we need an ecopsychology. We need it now. Consider this. … [click on title to read post]
I want to suggest and even underscore that practicing gratefulness does not entail denying the difficulty in our lives.
“The health of the society and the health of its individuals are inextricably linked. To end the worldwide epidemic of depression, we must combine individual psychological therapies with new social and economic systems that respect the earth and more fairly distribute the worlds resources. Such models already exist. What we need is the political will to implement them. If we can do so, we will be able to create a more equitable culture that optimizes the mental and emotional health of each of its ciitizens.” … [click on title for full view]
To reframe what we’ve generally been told about mental anguish and suffering by the mental illness system is a very important part of healing. Psychiatry makes out that the individual is sick. A much more honest as well as empowering way to view much mental anguish is to see ourselves as part of the web of life. Our despair is telling us something very real and valid. We should listen to it and pay attention and learn. Feeling pain is not a weakness, it is a capacity. We can learn to let it fuel us rather than cripple us. (a collection of links on the subject is included at the end of the post) … [click on title for the rest of the post]
Macy believes nothing short of a radical shift in consciousness is mandatory.
“What I’m witnessing is that this uncertainty is a great liberating gift to the psyche and the spirit,” she said. “It’s walking the razor’s edge of the sacred moment where you don’t know, you can’t count on, and comfort yourself with any sure hope. All you can know is your allegiance to life and your intention to serve it in this moment that we are given. In that sense, this radical uncertainty liberates your creativity and courage.” … [click on title for the rest of the post]
Practicing gratitude came upon me as a form of grace. It was not something that made a whole lot of sense to me during the darkest times of illness. No, gratitude did not come easy from that darkest of dark nights and yet the little there was I clung to for dear life (quite literally). For me the bearers of this gift were my cats. While there was nothing else I could find any consistent source of comfort from, I could find it from my cats. For that, I was profoundly grateful and because I had that gift my practice of gratitude began. … I want to suggest and even underscore that practicing gratefulness does not entail denying the difficulty of our lives. I think it’s equally important to honor and embrace our pain and anger and hurt. If we are feeling those things we need to approve of and love the parts of us that feel all those things. That does not negate also being grateful for that which we can be grateful for. So many times when things like gratefulness or forgiveness or other virtues are considered the message is that we should not feel all the bad stuff. I say that’s crap. Feel it all…the bad and the good. Feel grateful and angry. It’s all good and necessary. … [click on title to read and view more]
To be able to suffer with is good news because it means you can share power with, share joy with, exchange love with. Let your pain tell you that you are not alone. What we thought might have been sealing us off can become connective tissue. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
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