By Rosemary Baillie
rose_baillie@hotmail.com
February 2005

The Port of Melbourne Corporation is currently proposing to deepen the shipping channels in Port Phillip Bay, with the economic objective to protect Victoria's position as Australia's leading container port. I belong to a local community action group, the Bay Ecology Action Network. which formed in response to the threat of channel deepening in Port Phillip Bay. As we learnt more about the project, we were all shocked at the ecological risks posed to our beautiful Bay: to the dolphins, seals, penguins, fish and seagrass; to the over 12000 species that call her home. Our group’s mission is to “honour the intrinsic value of all life in Port Phillip Bay, and aim to give a voice to the multitude of plant and animal species living in and around the Bay. We invite the community to join us in a spirit of celebration and protection of the life of Port Phillip Bay”.

THE COUNCIL OF ALL BEINGS

In December 2004, our group made a formal public verbal submission to the Channel Deepening Panel Hearing. (This is the independent planning panel which must assess the pros and cons of the Channel Deepening project in light of the Environmental Effects Statement). We used an innovative group process called the Council of All Beings. The Council of All Beings is a ritual that grew out of the philosophy of deep ecology. The purpose of this ritual is to look at the world through other species' eyes and share this perspective with others. The ritual invites participants to represent nonhuman species and voice their concerns, questions, gifts, and wisdom in response to a threat to their home environment (in this case, the threat was Channel Deepening in Port Phillip Bay).

The Council of all Beings from the Bay took place in the courtroom setting of the Panel Hearing room, incongruously perched in a high-rise eleven storeys above sea-level in the middle of Melbourne city. Ten of us were there with our species face masks, representing some of the Bay’s life-forms. Our human witnesses were a panel, a handful of barristers and corporate representatives and a public audience. We had no idea how the council would go, how it would be received, nor whether we would successfully be able to create a sacred space in the sterile environment of the panel room.

The council began with a bowl of saltwater from the Bay and the recorded sound of waves in the background. We made a prayer that the power of the bay move through us, and that the work we are about to do give protection for the bay and healing for ourselves and the witnesses.

As the Council began, there was a space of no talking where we started to drop into our hearts. The energy felt strong and clear. We each introduced ourselves: dolphin, whale, penguin, seagrass, seven generations of unborn children of the future, and even a phytobenthic organism. We offered our concerns about channel deepening, and then our gifts and wisdom for the human witnesses. All the species seemed to speak with a genuiness and depth, as if really speaking in the energy of that organism. Our voices were different: slowed down, deeper, moving to a different energy from our ego selves. Dolphin offered the gift of leaping to new states, of human society leaping into an ecological worldview. The Seven Generations of Unborn Children offered the gift of innocence and wonder. The Bay itself spoke of the interrelationships of all life. Little Penguin was meek and mild, small but needing to be heard. The majestic Sea Eagle offered the gift of far sightedness beyond short-term economic goals; and Blue whale calmly offered patience and wisdom. All the species solemnly requested that the humans remember their place in the natural order, and resume guardianship of their beautiful Bay home

As I sat still in the council as Dolphin, I felt fully present and fully connected to the lifeforms of the bay that I know and love. I was experiencing a sense of love and compassion, near to tears; but also a joy for the beauty of the life that exists and all the gifts that these forms offer to humanity. It was an amazing experience and privilege to be there representing the different species from the Bay. I looked out through my mask at the audience and Panel and I felt that they too understood and felt what I was feeling. I felt as if we were all in that room sharing the same awareness, that is common to all humans and maybe even all of life. It was a deep appreciation for the beauty and gifts of life, a deep knowing of our interconnectedness, and a deep shared empathy and compassion. The facial expressions of the panel seemed to be softening; some members of the audience had tears in their eyes. It was as if we had entered a space of deep meditation and reflection, a place of the heart. It was a sacred moment, a time of feeling fully present and interconnected with all life.

By the time of the ritual closing of the Council of All Beings from the Bay, we felt we had achieved our goal of affecting consciousness, by trusting the power of the council process, and allowing the space for the emergence of empathy and compassion for other lifeforms. A participant commented they would probably dredge the Bay anyway, but I realised that the work we were doing was not about controlling outcomes, but about facilitating experiences. At some level which we may not even be able to detect or measure, we are part of a movement which is facilitating expansion of consciousness. That is how we feel our work, its success or failure. By bringing focussed emotioning into a panel room, we had achieved our goal. It was about bringing an energy into that room and helping that energy to grow in the hearts of the panel, the barristers and the audience. It was a gift to all of us there, including us the species, and to all of life. It was about trusting the energy that comes from feeling the connection with all life. Trusting the council as a process that was real and true: releasing ego fears and doubts to fully trust the interconnectedness of ourselves with nature and each other. It was a transcendent experience where we felt ourselves open as channels for wisdom and power to move through us.

On reflection, it would not have surprised us at all if a sea eagle had suddenly landed outside the window of the panel room to witness the occasion: for the Spirit of the Bay was surely with us that day.