My friend John Heney has referred to our normal experience of the world as an “isolating personal performance.” This seems to me a telling phrase, one I can certainly relate to from personal experience. In this essay, I want to take this experience of isolating performance and place it beside the experience of Presence or non-performance and offer some ideas about moving from one to the other. Along the way this I’ll show the relevance of […]
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Climate change as celebration of consciousness
Few of us talk about the inner side of climate change, surfacing the inner angst, sense of pressure or despair we may feel. But when we do we see it as a burden and a problem. It shows up as, “Oh my god, how am I going to be with this?” A hundred, a thousand questions arise: how will our families understand it, how real is the science, Green New Deal?, how does Climate Change […]
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The personal challenge in climate change
How does our inner life connect into our thinking and feeling about climate change? Our activism? Or even do they connect? It’s likely that many of us haven’t considered this question much, if at all, and for good reason: Mainstream thought, which exerts a strong gravitational pull, carefully avoids the connection between what’s happening in the outer world and what might be happening in the inner world of the citizen. The mainstream has its own […]
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The gold in hidden climate change denial
Can it be we’re all grappling with various stages of denial, even those of us who – like me – have been working on it for a while? I think we do know what’s happening, but our knowledge doesn’t easily percolate down to where we actually live. I’ll share very recent thoughts, some coming into focus this morning on a springtime walk with my brother. Truly knowing that profound change is on the way due […]
Continue readingDisrupting the Status Quo – 1
When we first seriously consider the climate change facts, we tend to feel down low and hopeless. It’s tempting for a while to withdraw into a semi-private world where we feel worried or helpless. It’s normal too. Our existential situation is difficult. We or our children are likely to have it much rougher in future than we do now. We may not pull through as a species. But why do we take the climate news […]
Continue readingSaying “No” to the Green New Deal
Many of my friends and connections like the Green New Deal. Here’s why I’m saying “No thank you!”. While it would be wonderful to see a broad coalition toward a new future, the Green New Deal can’t be that. It’s a wish list put forward by a coalition of the radical left without consultation with the rest of society. Small “c” conservatives dislike it intensely. The GND is almost certain to lead quickly to increased […]
Continue readingHow are we being with the climate emergency?
I was reminded of this poem by David Whyte the other day, speaking with a friend. It was the words “secret water,” that came to mind, though I couldn’t place them at the time. THE WELL OF GRIEF Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning down through its black water to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which […]
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Right now – this climate moment
See here for Climate Change “Inner Work” link. Wow to the Extinction Rebellion activists for what they’ve accomplished in the last ten days. Just wow! Particularly in London, England, but worldwide – including where I am in Ottawa Canada and probably in your country too – ordinary people / activists brought a huge new intensity to the climate emergency. [If you missed this dramatic upscaling of the climate movement – the mainstream media outside of […]
Continue readingClimate Change changes everything – 1
If you knew me you’d know that I’m a person with a lifelong interest in personal development, how we serve the times and the best of ourselves. You’ll know I value a spiritual approach and especially value learning with others, small groups as a best place to grow in. We benefit amazingly from the collective intelligence that good groups tap into. I love that. Now I want to add more of the “showing up” part […]
Continue readingCoherent and incoherent collective action
When we come together for some common purpose we often arrive in different frames of minds, different ways of seeing reality. If we can’ come into alignment for out time together we’re much more effective in whatever we want to do. To understand the dynamic, think of these different ways of seeing as different imaginations, different ways of approaching reality and being together. Imagination 1 is ordinary waking consciousness though this can be more or […]
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