Return to part 1 of this article
Part 2 of "Invitation on a Shamanic Journey"
In 1985, Joanna Macy and John Seed
created a new workshop called 'The Council of
All Beings' which is based on the despair and
empowerment work but has an even more eco-centric perspective.
Together with Arne Naess (founder of deep ecology) and Pat
Fleming, John and Joanna published the book called 'Thinking Like
a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings' (1988). These
workshops are now held all around the world - including Poland,
Japan, the UK, and Chile - by over two hundred facilitators (that
we know about). They are held in a wide variety of contexts,
including the traditional constituency who John Seed refers to as
"hippies, witches and pagans", in schools and
universities, with youth gangs, peer support groups for people
with HIV, and in church congregations.
The distinguishing process in Council of
All Beings workshops is what may be thought of as a role play,
where each participant speaks for a non-human being in a sharing
circle which can last up to three hours. Rabbit, sun, turtle,
frog, lion, earth, ant, river, pot-plant... There are no humans
present in this council, providing the opportunity for new
perspectives to emerge without the interference of our usual
anthropocentric perspective. (After all, the humans have held the
floor for too long!) The workshop is usually woven with ritual,
often spontaneously emerging from participants, and choosing the
non-human beings for whom we speak takes the form of a
mini-vision quest or a shamanic journey where the spirit of our
'ally' chooses us. Participants make masks to represent their
allies, and then we enter a ritual gateway into the non-human
world, inviting allies to take form in our bodies. We will lend
them our human voices, and we move and sound as they do once we
enter the gateway. From this point onwards, the process is not
facilitated in the usual sense (the creatures themselves conduct
this process) and new insights and guidance from the non-human
realms are received every time. The Council can be understood as
role play, an exercise in moral imagination, ritual, or the
channeling of nature spirits. It doesn't matter which, because
the process involves practising 'ecological self' - identifying
with the 'more than human'.
Scientific
research
So, maybe some of you are thinking that this is just a whole lot
of new age mumbo jumbo. How can this be relevant to mainstream
culture? This is where science, in this case, social psychology,
can be very useful in creating a bridge between paradigms. In
answer to the theme question about scientific evidence to inform
strategic actions and future visions, I will focus on my PhD
research (Bragg, 1995).
So, my PhD research also straddled methodological paradigms -
between the positivist and the postmodern. I used a mixture of
qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and three different
projects. I analysed the popular magazines, interviewed people
with different relationships with nature (farmers, environmental
activists, alternative lifestylers, and people living in the
suburbs who rarely got out into natural environments), and
evaluated the Council of All Beings workshops.
I will briefly outline some findings which seem most relevant in
this context.
Firstly, 'ecological self', the experience of strong emotional
and spiritual connection with nature, is something accessible to
many Australians. This varied in its expression from the poems I
read earlier, through images of Christian Paradise and
stewardship, to descriptions inspired by the magic of European
faerie-tales. This quote from Mr Danaci, a 67 year-old cane
farmer in Far North Queensland, is one of my favourites,
expressing to me the depth and somehow 'ordinary' nature of
connection with the Earth. When I asked what motivated him to
plant and care for trees on his property, in his thick Italian
accent, with tears in his eyes, he told me
"Because that tree and that spot that it live, you
like to see grow, is not in the way for anything. So, instead to
destroy it, you like to see.. you see grow steady steady.. like
you see your children grow steady steady. Almost the same as the
tree. (...) You plant, and you always go and look whether it come
out of the ground. Then it starts to shoot out, and grow, steady
steady, and you always keep an eye, that you see it grow nicely.
You enjoy to see it."
Although it is difficult to convey his response solely in words,
the depth of feeling expressed by linking his love of family with
his love for nature is clear. Expressed in this way, a sacred
experience of the Earth, a 'love of nature', is as ordinary as a
'love of family'. It is accessible to, understandable by,
everyone.
A second finding. Experiences of ecological self were linked with
the practice of environmentally responsible behaviour. This was
evident by the readership analyses of popular magazines which
contained most expression of ecological self. The sample groups
of people engaged in the most 'environmentally responsible'
lifestyles - the active environmentalists and alternative
lifestylers also had the highest levels of ecological self. On an
individual level of analysis, I found that scores on ecological
self 2 were significantly correlated with self-reported
environmentally responsible behaviour 3.
Interestingly, it was the emotional aspect of ecological self,
rather than an intellectual understanding of ecological self,
which had the highest correlation with the general measure of
environmentally responsible behaviour. From a strategic point of
view, this means that encouraging people's strength of feeling
for the natural environment (com-passion - feeling with), is the
key thing to foster in people. It doesn't matter why people care
about nature, whether its through conceptual understanding of the
fundamental interconnectedness of all things, or because we must
be responsible stewards for God's creation, or because it will
mean a better standard of living for future generations. The
important thing is that people care.
The popular media undoubtedly functions to provide people with
information or different ways of understanding of the
relationship 'self' and 'nature'. A third finding from my
research, however, was that it is interactions with 'significant
others' (i.e., family and close friends) which determines which
of these 'understandings' are integrated and owned by people. It
is dialogue, the ongoing process of expressing new ideas or
experiences and receiving feedback from people who we care about,
through which we come to know the world anew.
The last finding I wish to share with you is that the Council of
All Beings workshops, while very much 'preaching to the choir'
(i.e., people who attend already have high levels of ecological
self), produced significant increases in ecological self. At the
six-month follow-up, people still experienced a sense of
community and affirmation generated by the workshop, and felt
empowered. There appeared, however, to be no increase in
environmentally responsible behaviour as a result of the
workshop, possibly because many participants were very active
already. It seems that the way that Council of All Beings
workshops can help create a healthy future is by nurturing and
empowering social change agents.
Scores on ecological self dropped to their original levels after
six months, stressing the point that these workshops should not
be considered to be a 'therapy', a quick-fix. These workshops,
like religious rituals, need to be regularly practised in order
to retain our experience of connection with nature.
Taken together, these findings (amongst many) have suggested to
me that an overall strategy for nurturing ecological self must
encourage people to express their own sacred connection with the
Earth. In order for this to reliably motivate environmentally
responsible behaviour, practical action needs to be interwoven
with the experiences of personal sharing. (An example might be
the combination of some despair and empowerment work with a
permaculture design course.) A fundamental aspect of this overall
strategy is that each method of encouraging people to express
their experiences of connection with the Earth must be
sub-culturally appropriate. Personally, I see this as the biggest
challenge. (Council of All Beings workshops have been tried with
men in business suits, but up to this point, they've not been too
successful!)
***
Back to my prayer. After reminding me of the guidance available
to us through our bodies and the four elements, the answer
continued.
"Each of us has access to this wisdom ... so freely
given. Our task is to learn to listen, and we will each be given
a pathway to follow ... different for each of us and only
knowable step by step."
Elements of
future visions likely to motivate and energise
This brings me to another theme question: What are the elements
of future visions which are likely to motivate and energise? I
believe that these visions, whilst they have common threads, will
be different for each of us. These visions are also likely to
change for that person over time. The most important task, rather
than isolating what these common themes might be, is to encourage
people to access their very own empowering visions of the future.
As I once heard Joanna Macy say, "people believe most what
they hear coming from their own mouths."
Our task is to provide people with opportunities to receive and
speak the visions of the future which most inspire them.
Associated with the 'deep ecology' and 'despair and empowerment'
workshops, are a series of experiential processes which can do
just this (I hope that we can explore some of them together later
in the conference). We call this work an exploration of 'deep
time' (Macy, 1991). All of them involve creative
visualisation of the future or the past, and enable us to expand
our sense of self not just through space (to embrace the rest of
the natural world), but also through time.
A simple example is an 'automatic writing'
exercise, where we write a letter to ourselves as if it was
written by a being from the future. Doing this can really bring
the spirits of the future into close contact. Here is the letter
written to me while I was preparing this presentation, which
illustrates how supportive and empowering these beings can be.
24th February 2167
Dear Eshana
I am from seven generations beyond your time. I want to tell you
that you're doing a good job ... just go on doing what you're
doing ... healing yourself, making yourself whole and strong ...
building your confidence. You, like us, know the way. We can show
you. We can show others, if they let us. Your job is to open them
up to listen, help them not to be afraid. Let us show them our
solidarity. Help us be near them and whisper in their ears. We
are here. We are here right now amongst you, you know ... Can you
feel our presence? ... Eshana, your task is to be fully present
in your power, with your vision of the future we know is
possible. Show them the way, dear one.
Loving you, the future ones.
As well as future visioning, expanding our sense of self to
include our evolutionary past (both biological and cultural) can
be very motivating. Processes to foster this include an 'evolutionary
journey' (we will do together at the end of my
presentation) connecting us with the creativity, immensity and
power of our biological roots. Another exercise is called 'harvesting
the gifts of our ancestors' in which we physically walk
backwards, accompanied by a guided visualisation of our personal
and cultural heritage, right back to our emergence from the
forest as protohumans. We then walk forwards harvesting, step by
step, all the gifts which have enabled us to survive until this
point in time - courage, strength, wisdom... Then, we stand and
face the future, with more faith and skills than we had ever let
ourselves recognise).
My favourite 'deep time' process of all is a role play
where half the participants become people from seven generations
(or 100 years) in the future. The basic version is that the
future beings ask the present beings questions like "What
happened?", "What was it like at the turn of the
century?" "What did you do?" Did you think about
us?" and listen compassionately to the answers. Despair work
is particularly powerful in this context. One version of this
process developed by John Seed, involves two stages. The group
generates a vision of the future as it would be if things
continued as they are - pretty grim. We call out phrases like
"concrete", "no trees", "disease",
"famine", etc. The role play is then enacted. This is
the most intense grieving process I know of and should not be
taken lightly (i.e., facilitators must be experienced in despair
and empowerment work, and the workshop context carefully
considered). Once this is complete, we have a resting, nurturing
break, and then begin stage two. This time, the group generates a
vision of the future as it could be if we manage to 'turn things
around'. We call out "green", "playing
children", "food forests", "wilderness"...
The power of this exercise highlights the function of despair
work in the context of visioning for the future. Once our most
intense fears are faced, there is nothing to hold us back from
envisioning a utopian future, fewer 'niggling inner voices'
saying "but that just isn't possible!".
Participants emerge from this process having had a wide varieties
of experiences, which are particularly relevant to that person,
but also enlightening and empowering for others to hear 4.
BUT, I hear a voice inside me say, if each person has a different
vision, and those visions change over time, isn't that a recipe
for chaos? Don't we need to plan? ... envision the future in a
well-coordinated, rational way? Don't we need consensus? The
answer to my prayer continued, talking about 'Living the Mystery
Step by Step'.
"This means being fully in the present, and
conscious at each moment in one's path. Surrendering to the whole
brings us together ... past and present, young and old, all
races, all religions. In our diversity, we follow a divine path
... reaching for the continuation of the richness of life on
Earth."
Conclusion:
'Learning To Listen'.
This leads to my concluding suggestion. Learn to listen to 'the
other'. This is a theme which has run through all the other
activties raised in this paper. It is a key element of developing
ecological self, as well as fundamental to developing shared
visions for the future and cooperating so that we can carry them
out. This 'other' can be parts of ourselves which we have
repressed. It can be a frog, a cricket, the Earth itself ... the
beings of the past, the present, the future. It can be our
sister, or the politician we most love to hate.
Returning for the last time to the prayer, my own voice and the
voice of the Earth begin to merge, impossible for me to
distinguish.
"The most important thing we can do is to learn to
listen with our hearts, to listen with open minds and a free
spirit. Listening ... to our own hearts. Thich Nhat Hanh, the
Vietnamese Buddhist monk, once said "the most important
thing that we can do is to hear inside ourselves the sounds of
the Earth crying". Once we can hear that, it is just as
important for us to hear the sound of the Earth rejoicing,
because this is where we get the visions of what to build upon.
Listening to our own hearts, and those of other people, and of
other creatures including the future ones ... Where and why are
they crying? Where and why are they rejoicing, fully alive? How
do we encourage healing? The shamanic way, the way of despair and
empowerment, is to give full expression to the fears, the pain,
the rage we feel ... riding the wave of transformation through
Shiva's fire into a truly new future. We need to support each
other on this journey, create a sacred vessel within which the
alchemy can take place.
Learning to listen to 'the other', especially the practice of
giving voice to what we have heard, enables us to connect, to
understand, and to generate compassion. It expands our vision.
Through it, we can free ourselves from the hindrances of the
shadow, our fears of unacknowledged parts of ourselves. In this
way, we generate visions of how we can cooperate to create a
future for ALL.
Together, we can each find our own path. Finding our own paths,
we can walk together.
Fearlessly."
Hand
Evolutionary Journey
I'd now like to invite you on a short journey to expand your
sense of self into 'deep ecology' and 'deep time'. I highly
recommend the process, but of course feel free not to participate
if you wish. You will need to find a partner to do this with.
(Anyone without a partner who wants one put up your hand and
maybe you can crawl over the seats to find each other!)
Take your partner's hand in your left hand and close your eyes.
Now, begin to explore this hand, gently, and with great
sensitivity and innocence. Imagine that this is the first time
you have ever touched a human hand. ... Feel the skin (its
texture, its temperature) ... and now he structure of this hand
(the nails, the knuckles, the bones and sinews, the flesh). ...
What can this hand teach you about the person it belongs to? Is
it used to physical labour, being in the soil of the Earth, does
it write a lot, or maybe play a musical instrument? ... This hand
can express deep feelings ... perhaps it held a baby when it was
first born. Perhaps this hand has comforted someone in their last
moments before death.
Now let this hand take you back into its history. Can you feel
the hand of the child which this person once was ... playing with
toys and climbing trees? Certainly much smaller, but somehow the
same hand. ... Going back further still, can you feel the baby's
hand, really tiny and reaching out into the world for the first
time?
Now, with the help of your imagination, go even further back into
the history of this hand. Can you feel the paw of the monkey -
with its strong opposable thumb for swinging through branches ...
and sensitive fingertips for judging the ripeness of fruit and
grooming other monkeys. ... And now back to the hand of the
reptile, feel the claws in those fingernails and the strong
knuckles for gripping the earth. ... And now feel the fin of the
fish, before this hand had crawled out onto the land, feel this
fin swimming through the waters of the ocean. ... And perhaps if
you're really sensitive, you can feel the very dust of stars from
which this hand is composed.
References
Bragg, E.A. (1995). Towards ecological self: Individual and
shared understandings of the relationship between 'self' and 'the
natural environment'. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, James
Cook University, Townsville, Qld.
Bragg, E.A. (1996). Towards ecological self: Deep ecology meets
constructionist self theory. Journal of Environmental Psychology,
16, 93-108.
Conn, S.A. (1995). When the earth hurts, who responds? In T.
Roszak, M.E. Gomes, & A.D. Kanner (Eds.), Ecopsychology:
Restoring the Earth, healing the mind (pp.156-171). San
Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
Cushman, P. (1990). Why the self is empty: Toward a historically
situated psychology. American Psychologist, 45, 599-611.
Downton, J.V. (1989). Individuation and shamanism. Journal of
Analytical Psychology, 34, 73-88.
Macy, J. (1983). Despair and personal power in the nuclear age.
Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers.
Macy, J. (1991). World as lover, world as self. Berkeley, CA:
Parallax Press.
Revington, J. (1995). Don't just do something, sit there!
Unpublished manuscript available from the Rainforest Information
Centre, PO Box 368, Lismore NSW 2480.
Seed, J., Macy, J., Fleming, P., & Naess, A. (1988). Thinking
like a mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings. Philadelphia,
PA: New Society Publishers.
Shields, K. (1991). In the tiger's mouth: An empowerment guide
for social action. Newtown, NSW: Millenium Books.
Footnotes
1 The fear that we may not know what to do, or
what will happen in the future, has created a cultural denial of
what is actually happening in the present. We have created
blinkers which do not allow us to see what is in front of our
very eyes.
2 I developed two test instruments to 'measure' the concept quantitatively - the 'Who am I?' developed from the Twenty Statements Test and 'Emotional Connection to Place' based on a sociogram
3 as measured by a 74 item scale I designed called 'Ways You Can Help Your Environment'
4 There are two
insights which I, personally, have gained from this process. The
first was that the 'positive scenario' seemed absolutely real to
me. By accepting the possibility, or rather the 'reality', of a
bright future - and by taking the perspective that this has
already happened - all the specific tasks and strategies needed
to create this reality seemed so simple and clear. The second is
more of a visual image, which shows me the possibility of massive
social and psychological change taking place in a short time.
This is a dynamic image of a circle rippling outwards with each
point on that circle being the centre of another circular ripple,
each point on which is the centre of another rippling circle, and
so on. It feels like a very organic process, and the changes
which take place are wildly exponential, almost instantaneous.