00:05:00.140I don't know why. It's strange because I didn't grow up in a community that talked about these things or was maybe even consciously aware of what was happening. And it was just something so loud for me. And even when I didn't know how to talk about the tar sands or nuclear, even when I didn't have that activist vocabulary, I was shouting and I was pushing against this.
00:09:42.760And for the moment, we can let our hearts sing with the sense of purpose we have in our love for life.
00:09:50.780That brings to mind the very first interview I recorded, which was with the ecology writer Stephanie Mills.
00:09:59.240And she said something that I haven't ever forgotten, which is cleaving to beauty is of great sustenance and we can all help a little beauty to continue.
00:10:12.760i'm grateful too for the teachers that tell us that we don't need to pick and choose but we can
00:10:21.900be ready for everything and you may know that i do translations of the poetry of rilke
00:10:30.100reiner maria rilke who wrote some of the most amazing short poems and there's a poem where
00:10:39.520He says, it's as if he imagines the sacred talking to us and saying, beauty and terror keep going.
00:19:52.460and so this can make you feel oh there's no clear enemy but when we realize that we all belong
00:20:01.340together in the living body of earth and we can see that that we're as living systems we participate
00:20:10.940in the not only the biosphere the ecosphere but we participate in the political and economic
00:20:20.500systems that were born into and living in so in a way oh you can say damn it i want to be purely
00:20:31.160on the side of good and not tainted in any way by my complicity but this very difficult if not
00:20:40.340totally impossible today to live without interdependence with the reigning system.
00:20:49.520But the good news of that is that because you're part of it, you can also be part of
00:20:58.040its self-healing because the world actually can't be fixed from the outside and you can't
00:21:07.800heal the world but the world can only heal itself and we are part of that so we know that the drag
00:21:17.340of the habits that we've acquired we know the sloth and laziness that is our bread by our getting
00:21:28.340accustomed to the comforts and and so as we free ourselves we are showing everybody because
00:21:38.640everybody's complicit and that there's no convenient enemy out there except that there are
00:21:48.020sort of institutionalized forms of the mistakes we make.
00:21:54.360By that I mean, well, in Buddhism, which as you know is very important to me
00:22:00.660and been very helpful, the sources of suffering are seen to be
00:22:06.720not some evil principle, but they are simply human greed
00:22:12.920and human hatred and human confusion delusion so that's been ever so we make mistakes when we're
00:22:24.320motivated by fear hatred and delusion what's happening in our time with these technologies
00:22:31.480and market forces is that these great sources of suffering greed hatred and delusion have taken on
00:22:40.940institutionalized and technologically assisted systems forms that's what we need to fight
00:22:51.380and separate from these institutionalized forms and therefore that means that
00:22:57.200when you bump up against people who are working for the system in corporations or government or
00:23:06.540military or police or monsanto or what have you then you realize they're not the enemy
00:23:13.460that they're just in bondage to these organized forms of greed hatred and delusion
00:23:21.540so you don't waste energy and risk separation by seeking to hate or defeat them they're not the
00:23:30.200enemy but what you do then you recognize that you can help them see you can that you focus your
00:23:39.200energy on how you dismantle these forces that we've allowed to arise am i making any sense
00:23:47.180absolutely you know in the work that we connect it's not in the books yet but there's a practice
00:23:54.540that we do it's on my website called bowing to the adversary and that you some of the people you
00:24:02.640have to oppose the people you have to maybe do civil disobedience to stop what they're doing
00:24:10.020that they're not the enemy and so you make these there are 10 different bows you make
00:24:16.360You bow to them knowing that you who are destroying the natural world for your own profit, you have shown me how much I love the natural world.
00:24:30.340You have shown me how much I love the earth and its being.
00:25:05.740And there's this thing called behavioral conditioning.
00:25:09.700The shift needs to be as deep as our psyche goes
00:25:12.580to the roots of our cultural identities and our myths.
00:25:16.400We need to rejoin the river of creative life.
00:25:21.460So I'm wondering how we can approach simultaneously fixing our inner disconnects
00:25:28.040and engaging in effective struggles in the wider context.
00:25:33.680I think that they actually help each other.
00:25:37.900That's why I argue with people who seek a spiritual path that is characterized by tranquility and focusing just on your own emotional and spiritual responses without engaging in the hurly-burly of social change work.
00:26:01.660That shift in consciousness can actually be furthered and become more real for us in the course of taking risks and stepping out and speaking out.
00:26:21.620And you know why? It's because at the root of this shift that we're required to make now for life to go on, at the root of it, I think, and it comes both from science and spirituality, two revolutions, we're seeing that the earth is alive.
00:26:45.240Our political economy is treating the earth as a supply house and a sewer.
00:26:52.920And this is wrecking havoc with our own self-understanding and with our own peace of mind.
00:27:01.540It breaks our heart in a way far greater than we imagine to see our earth treated this way.
00:27:08.560But now, just as you and I are alive in this moment, both from science, quantum theory, chaos theory, system theory, and from spiritual traditions, from the indigenous people to the currents in every religion that are recognizing that our world is alive.
00:33:02.440My next question challenges me constantly.
00:33:27.320I experience the primal instinct of survival, of self-preservation, and the desire for creature comforts, but I've noticed a shift in my motivation lately.
00:33:40.280The age-old biological impulse towards the survival of our species has gone into overshoot, far past what would keep our population steady.
00:33:50.140and that's the great irony of our time to increase or even just maintain our standards
00:33:57.920of living in the global north we have to defile and deplete the whole of life
00:34:02.500so one big challenge as i see it is to override this biological urge
00:34:08.560and override the habits of over consumption with the much stronger forces of cultural evolution
00:34:15.660which teaches us balance do you see this cultural therapy as just awakening in us this instinct for
00:34:23.920harmony or is it supplanting instinct what are your thoughts on this
00:34:29.660as i was saying just before what struck me oh just a few years after we started
00:34:40.280There's a shift in self-interest that occurs, a shift to the next systemic level that, as perhaps our earliest ancestors felt, and as we get from indigenous teachings of native societies, as well as in other religions and spiritual paths,
00:35:05.700there's a shift from focusing on the separate self
00:35:12.300to feeling just part of a larger body, a larger being, a larger system.
00:36:17.520And John Seed used to remind me of this.
00:36:20.000He said we've got to do these rituals and practices almost daily and very regularly at any rate
00:36:28.040to counteract the pull of a hyper-individualized society
00:36:34.840that conditions us and has since birth toward acquisition and competition.
00:36:41.420And so we have, as you may have noticed in the work that Reconnects,
00:36:46.980we follow a spiral of practices where we begin with gratitude.
00:36:52.840Once you listen what the Haudenosaunee say, the Mohawks and Anandagas of central New York, these are the words that come before all else.
00:37:07.420We give greetings and thanks to the sun as it rises, to the trees that stand in their majesty and teachings, to the waters that strengthen us and the fish that clean the waters, etc.
00:37:22.840So just rehearsing or opening to your gratitude to be alive, the gratitude that I now am able to meet this extraordinary young woman, Ayana, and that I will meet her in person someday, fills me with such, oh, what a gift I've just been given.
00:37:46.340so gratitude also keeps us that self-interest extended wide the other parts of the spiral are
00:37:55.960just what we talked about about not being afraid of the suffering and then daring to look with new
00:38:02.860eyes in deep time and deep ecology linking arms to move forward there is a huge pull and fear
00:38:15.460That's why fear of scarcity and fear of danger can pull us back to just worrying about ourself or our family or our clan.
00:38:27.580It really helps to keep looking through the lens that widens, that helps you experience the widening circles of your life.
00:40:06.020But there are a couple of basic reminders to oneself that really help.
00:40:13.860One is that of all these issues, yes, they are multiple, but they have one core, what we used to call problematique.
00:40:24.680There is one core mistake at the source of all of these wreckings of life on our planet.
00:40:36.060And that is the notion that we are separate, that we can hold relief from the sufferings of others, and that we can find some private salvation.
00:40:52.740In a way, it doesn't matter that much which different issue you work on,
00:40:58.040whether you work on domestic violence,
00:41:02.680the slave trade that's still existing in our private prison system.
00:41:07.800We can work to liberate ourselves from the tragedy of imagining that we're separate.
00:41:18.560So that means we can move from one to another.
00:41:21.700That also saves us from thinking that our issue is more important than other people's issues.
00:41:29.000And that has taken a big toll on activism in previous decades.
00:47:47.680First, they speak from their own heart, their own point of view.
00:47:52.160And then they change identity and speak as the opponent would speak.
00:47:56.740But you insist on it being a sincere attempt, not a caricature of the opponent.
00:48:01.520But you take it further then and have the person assume the role of non-human being that is affected by the issue, perhaps the fish that were completely wiped out in the creek in Kentucky where frocking fluids spilled.
00:48:16.780And then the final voice is of the future human being, speaking from the distant future about the cascading effects through time of the actions we're taking now.
00:48:28.180so how has your study of deep time shaped what you consider to be important
00:48:34.140in the blink that is this life i'm just imagining if every politician
00:48:41.520and corporate policymaker did this exercise before work in the morning
00:48:46.320oh what a different world that would be oh i just can't think of anything that
00:48:55.800would make me happier that would be more wonderful well what to say i feel that a lot of the simple
00:49:05.620practices and the work that we connect if they could just pause and do them at the cabinet level
00:49:13.960or in any decision making body in government or corporate structures of that have so much power
00:49:24.060over our lives at this present moment yes this is our birthright to feel these connections
00:49:31.840all of them and what's wonderful you know ayana is that this revelation that happens
00:49:40.420this particular exercise i call widening circles as you speak for first yourself the adversary
00:49:50.000the non-human and the future one let me put it this way i could decide to go and help people know
00:49:59.920how important it is to identify with these three other voices and i could give a lecture about it
00:50:09.280i could give a lecture about feeling non-violent identifying with your enemy a lecture about
00:50:16.160deep ecology with the more than human a lecture a part of the lecture on deep time but instead
00:50:24.820people don't hear any sermonizing not a word of it all they do is speak
00:50:34.320from that perspective and that teaches them you follow me it's in us already we don't need to
00:50:45.960sermonize people moralize them let them speak and then in that speaking they find how big
00:50:58.180their heart really is or their heart mind as i say because in buddhism that's your mind is located
00:51:08.680in the heart i have to tell you something that happened with that earth leadership cohort
00:51:14.260we went and had the wonderful weekend together at row and in the course of that you know we go
00:51:23.080around the spiral of the work that reconnects and each one is so powerful and subversive in a way
00:51:31.420even letting in gratitude for life is subversive to the consumer society that you are enough the
00:51:40.540way you are and don't need to buy everything in that weekend we did a very fierce piece of work
00:51:49.280around truth telling about our pain for the world called the truth mandala which you may have done
00:51:56.460or heard about it was the following few days since there were some members of the earth leadership
00:52:03.820cohort young people that stayed on well this truth model where people enter the ritual circle
00:52:11.160and pick up an object and let it speak let the fear speak that's a stone or let the grief speak
00:52:20.440those are dead leaves or let the outrage and anger speak that's a thick stick or let the
00:52:28.840emptiness and overwhelm speak that's an empty bowl so this has always been i mean this has been
00:52:35.960around for 25 years and it's uh gets better and better at any rate this particular truth mandala
00:52:43.860was so fierce and the grief and even hopelessness that was being expressed what people were saying
00:52:54.320that was just pouring out of all the feelings they'd been sitting on for years that just erupted.