For The Wild - JOANNA MACY on the World as Lover and Self⌠HOMAGE⌡ ⧸371

00:00:00.000 this week we are honoring the life and legacy of joanna macy who passed away just days ago

00:00:15.160 she was a visionary and beloved teacher and guided generations towards deeper connection

00:00:22.180 with the earth and one another now this conversation was recorded over 10 years ago

00:00:27.640 In the very early days of For the Wild, I was just at the beginning of this journey of interviewing and listening, and I remember recording this in an old farmhouse in Pennsylvania, not knowing how deeply this exchange would shape my path.

00:00:45.880 After we spoke, Joanna invited me to attend one of her workshops in Navarro, California.

00:00:52.800 And I went, and there I met some of my closest friends and collaborators.

00:00:58.760 I was introduced to the work that reconnects community, and from that point on,

00:01:04.960 Joanna's teachings really became a touchstone in my life and activism and in my relationship to the earth.

00:01:13.500 she will be dearly missed

00:01:17.760 may this conversation be a small offering

00:01:24.060 in celebration of her immense spirit

00:01:28.060 and the web of care she helped weave

00:01:32.040 for so many of us

00:01:43.500 guitar solo

00:02:13.480 There ain't no way of knowing

00:02:16.680 The mountain grass is short

00:02:19.980 It's dry and close to burning

00:02:22.720 Crying out for water

00:02:25.960 As the season's turning

00:02:28.980 Sweet smell of the pines

00:02:33.980 Tall western cedar

00:02:35.640 Drifting on the wind

00:02:39.100 Through the mountains like a river

00:02:41.720 Hello, my name is Ayanna Young, and I welcome you to Unlearn and Rewild, where we explore

00:02:54.800 radical ideas relating to earth renewal.

00:02:58.300 Today from Berkeley, California, we are joined by Joanna Macy, eco-philosopher, activist,

00:03:05.740 scholar of Buddhism and systems theory, who has an international following thanks to 50

00:03:11.160 years in movements for civil rights, global justice, and ecological sanity. Her 12 books

00:03:18.560 include Coming Back to Life, Widening Circles, a memoir, World as Lover, and World as Self.

00:03:27.020 She travels the world teaching her program for activist empowerment and healing from the

00:03:32.100 psychological damage of civilization, entitled The Work That Reconnects. Hello. There you are.

00:03:41.540 There you are.

00:03:43.300 Hi, Ayana.

00:03:44.240 I am thrilled to be meeting you this way and in conversation with you.

00:03:50.140 Well, it's an honor for me as well to share your voice in this way.

00:03:55.940 The radio show was created out of a deep despair in my heart

00:04:00.320 and needing to reach out to people like yourself for guidance.

00:04:05.280 And I know there's a lot of other people that are in the same boat as I am.

00:04:09.840 you show how significant it is and how productive it is to not be afraid of your despair and grief

00:04:21.220 and outrage over what's happening instead of thinking of that as doom and gloom

00:04:27.600 closing your heart to it or thinking that it's some private pathology you didn't close your eyes

00:04:35.120 and you let it in there's no more energy being devoted to protecting yourself from

00:04:43.960 what's happening to the world you open to it and look where it's taken you

00:04:49.220 i feel so grateful that i've been able to open myself up to the despair you know that's the

00:04:56.680 most subversive thing we can do because the power holders the whole late capitalism project

00:05:04.200 would have us distrust our feelings and privatize them,

00:05:11.620 that it's some personal craziness, and to pave them over.

00:05:16.860 And that makes us very obedient and silent.

00:05:21.720 And so it's easier to manage a population that is silent, depressed, isolated, and obedient.

00:05:30.360 but you didn't buy into that for some blessed reason you may not even know yourself you didn't

00:05:41.400 you let yourself feel it i don't know why it's strange because i didn't grow up in a community

00:05:47.940 that talked about these things or was maybe even consciously aware of what was happening and

00:05:54.560 it was just something so loud for me and even when i didn't know how to talk about

00:06:01.540 the tar sands or nuclear even when i didn't have that activist vocabulary i was shouting and i was

00:06:10.220 pushing against this and you were feeling sick at heart yes and you didn't shut up about it no

00:06:17.660 I didn't praise be you may not know even what it was then you are growing up or your ancestry that

00:06:26.660 gave you that courage before I really stepped into this open-heartedness towards what's happening

00:06:35.200 I was constantly feeling this chronic dissatisfaction and I was just feeling this

00:06:40.340 heaviness of meaninglessness and emptiness and it wasn't until I really opened up you know broke

00:06:49.040 my heart open cried felt the deep darkness of what's going on and then you know starting to

00:06:54.940 be proactive that's when I felt wow okay this is enlivening it's impact yeah it's I feel alive

00:07:03.180 yeah and then you found that you also that you weren't alone you suddenly found that you had

00:07:11.620 all these wonderful people to link arms with we are not alone in this despair and

00:07:19.380 at the core of it all the despair comes from this deep love that is undeniable unexplainable

00:07:27.260 It's our birthright to feel it and live out of it, to let it pour through us for our world.

00:07:35.440 And that's what I'm feeling with a lot of the young people today.

00:07:39.880 They move me so.

00:07:42.240 I feel like my generation is beginning to emerge from the paralysis of despair.

00:07:48.420 I've always hesitated to use the word hope since it carries a sense of passivity or resigning your power.

00:07:57.260 So, I would distinguish what I'm feeling as a sense of calling, not based in hope, but in the certainty of this path and the need to rise to this occasion, whether or not we will ever personally see the kind of change we dream about.

00:08:16.100 there's nothing that could stop me from doing this work and even through times of doubt and

00:08:23.000 lack of results i know i can always take in the beauty of the world every day and

00:08:29.700 love it fiercely and that's a great economy too because it saves you from constantly taking

00:08:41.820 Your pulse, either your spiritual pulse or your strategic activist pulse.

00:08:49.060 Oh, how am I doing? Am I this successful, that successful?

00:08:52.480 Constantly trying to gauge a look at what the outcome is.

00:08:58.980 And you just drop that because you can't tell.

00:09:03.860 There are people who have done things and said things that have profoundly enriched and altered your life.

00:09:10.420 and they're part of the compost that's nourishing your life

00:09:15.500 and they don't even know it.

00:09:17.720 You don't go back to tell people.

00:09:19.680 Sometimes they're not even alive anymore.

00:09:23.020 Sometimes there are people that you've forgotten the name

00:09:25.800 and that they've gone off, they live a place you can't reach them.

00:09:28.660 So we absolutely are getting free from being dependent

00:09:33.560 on knowing the outcomes of what we're doing.

00:09:38.280 and that is an incredible liberation and what a privilege it is isn't it gosh absolutely i think

00:09:45.720 about that a lot that so many people don't have the opportunity because they're faced with real

00:09:53.040 issues of survival that's right you're so right and we're so lucky that we have a little psychic 0.85

00:10:00.340 space a little physical space we're not locked up we're not cut off in some refugee camp we're 0.99

00:10:08.140 all we have to do is stand in line for a crust of bread 0.89

00:10:11.320 or a piece of paper to get us out of there that we actually have.

00:10:16.900 This means you have this radio show.

00:10:19.820 We have this Skype technology.

00:10:22.260 We don't know how long we'll have it.

00:10:24.720 But for the moment we do and for the moment we can let our hearts sing

00:10:29.860 with the sense of purpose we have in our love for life.

00:10:33.280 that brings to mind the very first interview i recorded which was with the ecology writer

00:10:41.400 stephanie mills and she said something that i haven't ever forgotten which is

00:10:50.380 cleaving to beauty is of great sustenance and we can all help a little beauty to continue

00:10:56.140 I'm grateful too for the teachers that tell us that we don't need to pick and choose but we can

00:11:05.420 be ready for everything and you may know that I do translations of the poetry of Rilke Rainer Maria

00:11:14.860 Rilke who wrote some of the most amazing short poems and there's a poem where he says

00:11:24.220 It's as if he imagines the sacred talking to us and saying, beauty and terror keep going.

00:11:34.880 Feeling is final.

00:11:37.180 So there'll be terror as well as beauty.

00:11:40.420 We're here when there's this turning that can happen.

00:11:44.300 There's the great unraveling of living systems, and there's also the great turning toward a life-sustaining society.

00:11:54.220 and we don't know how it's going to end but we're here to face the unraveling and act for the great

00:12:02.780 turning and in that we'll see beauty but we'll also experience terror and grief and we just let

00:12:10.480 it all in let it all in as he said that's just keep going because you're not going to let anything

00:12:18.880 quell the joy you feel in being of use to life on earth.

00:12:25.640 I'd like to read one passage from your book, Coming Back to Life, and it's really stuck in

00:12:32.040 my mind, and it makes sense of that paralysis, that moment of stillness as you awaken to the

00:12:39.440 fact that your pain is the pain of the world manifesting in us.

00:12:44.060 quote the very distress that when we hide it seem to separate us from other people

00:12:51.640 now uncovers our connective tissue this realization whether it comes in a flash of insight

00:12:58.380 or a gradual dawning is a turning point we shift to a new way of seeing ourselves in relation to

00:13:04.800 the world and a new way of understanding our power many metaphors come to mind for describing

00:13:10.860 this shift. It is like the turning of the tide, or the pause between breathing in and breathing

00:13:16.680 out. As we allow the world's pain to flow in, it rearranges our internal structures.

00:13:23.120 Then the outflow releases our gifts of response into the world.

00:13:27.960 Or it is like a fulcrum, letting us shift the weight of our despair, turn it, and raise it

00:13:33.800 into new understandings. The Chinese character for crisis is a combination of two forms,

00:13:39.920 One means danger, the other opportunity.

00:13:43.840 On this fulcrum, danger turns to opportunity, unquote.

00:13:48.980 Oh, wow.

00:13:50.360 That's beautiful.

00:13:52.280 So could you speak about how pain helps transform us and unlocks our healing powers?

00:14:00.220 For one thing, this has been known to us humans, maybe to other life forms as well,

00:14:08.560 for thousands of years in every spiritual path in every mythological structure there is this

00:14:19.860 recognition that the way to fulfillment is often through a dark and painful turning like the

00:14:28.080 hero's journey for the hero to become a hero and to discover to engage in the great saving adventure

00:14:37.380 of whatever she or he is about there's first a descent where you feel almost powerless you have

00:14:44.440 to confront the monster and you have to embrace the monster and that you break free of the

00:14:53.080 restrictions that your culture has imposed on you in daring to love what is unlovable or what you've

00:15:01.980 been told is unacceptable and to run the risks of being considered crazy or loony or weak or

00:15:11.180 unpatriotic or too sensitive or too emotional or what have you and just open your eyes your mind

00:15:21.980 your heart to what is it's a declaration of allegiance to the truth of where you are

00:15:29.180 and it's at the same time

00:15:32.340 this has been part of our knowing

00:15:34.500 for a long time

00:15:36.060 and it seems particularly

00:15:38.120 significant

00:15:40.240 and necessary now

00:15:42.120 in our facing

00:15:43.980 our mainstream

00:15:46.020 culture and the

00:15:48.260 political economy

00:15:49.660 of the industrial growth

00:15:52.160 society or we could call

00:15:54.240 it late stage capitalism

00:15:55.980 that intensifies

00:15:58.180 this oppressive nature of our culture and so for the power holders would have us

00:16:06.780 not get acquainted with the power of our and the intensity of our outrage and the depths of our

00:16:16.700 grief they would like us to feel that everything is just okay the way it is put a little smiley

00:16:24.020 face wherever you can keep a stiff upper lip be obedient conform don't step out and don't raise

00:16:35.500 your head and so when you dare to accept these the inner turbulence which is really life itself

00:16:46.680 knocking at the door feel me see me open up to me i am your world you become not only

00:16:57.660 so personally liberated and find more energy and more vitality and more joy and the numbness and

00:17:07.660 the anesthesia begin to wear off but you also become subversive dangerously subversive you are

00:17:17.680 breaking free of the kind of deep oppression that our political culture can threaten us we can be

00:17:27.540 threatened with so much with jail with isolation with torture the power holders in defense of

00:17:37.440 corporate globalization are rolling out just about every scary device they can

00:17:44.280 with genuine harm to keep us quiet to keep us obedient

00:17:49.840 so i like to see i love to see in myself and in all the many people i've had the good fortune to

00:17:59.820 work with in the work that reconnects how feeling their pain for the world builds a

00:18:07.040 wonderful kind of gleeful courage of being allied with life and begin to act and feel

00:18:16.620 that life is flowing through you.

00:18:37.040 All over the land

00:18:39.740 Mother against daughter

00:18:45.580 Father against son

00:18:50.020 The whole thing

00:18:53.520 Is getting out of hand

00:18:57.200 But folks wouldn't have to suffer

00:19:03.660 If there was more love for your brother

00:19:08.520 But these are trying times

00:19:12.660 Got the riots and the ghetto

00:19:20.440 And it's all around

00:19:24.920 A whole lot of things that's wrong

00:19:30.200 is going down

00:19:33.820 I don't understand it

00:19:38.680 My point of view

00:19:42.600 I remember somebody said

00:19:45.720 Do one or other

00:19:47.360 As you would have him do under you

00:19:52.040 This system is set up for mandatory participation

00:19:56.920 with vanishingly few exceptions.

00:20:00.200 the people who have gone money or fossil fuel free. But slave labor and environmental toxification

00:20:07.720 are built into the structure of the economy. And without them, as it stands, it wouldn't function. 0.70

00:20:15.140 So here we are in this impossible place of never being able to live guilt-free.

00:20:21.140 And this guilt is just another form of pain for the world.

00:20:24.540 but how do we deal with this pain is there a way to move through it yeah i just said it so

00:20:32.460 beautifully that you can't be guilt-free in this and so this can make you feel oh there's no clear

00:20:40.520 enemy but when we realize that we all belong together in the living body of earth and we can

00:20:49.100 see that that we're as living systems we participate in the not only the biosphere the

00:20:58.880 ecosphere but we participate in the political and economic systems that were born into and

00:21:08.280 living in so in a way oh you can say damn it i want to be purely on the side of good and not

00:21:16.700 tainted in any way by my complicity but this very difficult if not totally impossible today

00:21:25.920 to live without interdependence with the reigning system but the good news of that

00:21:35.240 is that because you're part of it you can also be part of its self-healing

00:21:43.700 because the world actually can't be fixed from the outside

00:21:49.740 and you can't heal the world.

00:21:52.800 But the world can only heal itself and we are part of that.

00:21:57.140 So we know that the drag of the habits that we've acquired,

00:22:04.620 we know the sloth and laziness that is our bread

00:22:10.060 by our getting accustomed to the comforts.

00:22:15.580 And so, as we free ourselves, we are showing everybody,

00:22:21.920 because everybody's complicit,

00:22:24.440 and that there's no convenient enemy out there,

00:22:29.600 except that there are sort of institutionalized forms of the mistakes we make.

00:22:37.880 By that I mean, well, in Buddhism, which as you know is very important to me and been very helpful, the sources of suffering are seen to be not some evil principle, but they are simply human greed and human hatred and human confusion, delusion.

00:23:03.200 so that's been ever so

00:23:05.840 we make mistakes when we're

00:23:07.840 motivated by fear, hatred

00:23:09.880 and delusion

00:23:10.620 what's happening in our time

00:23:13.500 with these technologies and market

00:23:15.820 forces is that

00:23:17.720 these sources

00:23:19.760 of suffering, greed

00:23:21.720 hatred and delusion

00:23:23.020 have taken on

00:23:24.460 institutionalized and

00:23:27.480 technologically assisted

00:23:29.360 systems, forms

00:23:31.420 that's what we need to fight and separate from these institutionalized forms and therefore that

00:23:39.860 means that when you bump up against people who are working for the system in corporations or

00:23:49.280 government or military or police or monsanto or what have you then you realize they're not the

00:23:56.560 enemy that they're just in bondage to these organized forms of greed hatred and delusion

00:24:05.060 so you don't waste energy and risk separation by seeking to hate or defeat them they're not

00:24:13.500 the enemy but what you do then you recognize that you can help them see you can that you

00:24:21.940 focus your energy on how you dismantle these forces that we've allowed to arise am i making

00:24:29.880 any sense oh absolutely you know in the work that we connect it's not in the books yet but there's

00:24:37.480 a practice that we do it's on my website called bowing to the adversary and that you some of the

00:24:45.660 people you have to oppose the people you have to maybe do civil disobedience to stop what they're

00:24:53.100 doing that they're not the enemy and so you make these there are 10 different bows you make

00:24:59.860 you bow to them knowing that you who are destroying the natural world for your own profit

00:25:08.960 You have shown me how much I love the natural world.

00:25:13.860 You have shown me how much I love the earth and its being.

00:25:18.040 So I bow to you in gratitude.

00:25:21.440 If it weren't for you, you have shown me how much I value justice and freedom.

00:25:29.780 And so I bow to you.

00:25:32.420 You teach not acting from short-sighted reactionary impulses.

00:25:37.340 because if we do succeed in knocking down the system we oppose,

00:25:41.100 it will spring back up with a new twist or a new slogan or flag,

00:25:46.060 but something equally problematic.

00:25:49.480 And there's this thing called behavioral conditioning.

00:25:53.380 The shift needs to be as deep as our psyche goes

00:25:56.100 to the roots of our cultural identities and our myths.

00:25:59.640 We need to rejoin the river of creative life.

00:26:04.300 So I'm wondering how we can approach simultaneously fixing our inner disconnects and engaging in effective struggles in the wider context.

00:26:16.120 I think that they actually help each other that's why I argue with people who seek a spiritual path

00:26:27.440 that is characterized by tranquility and focusing just on your own emotional and spiritual

00:26:35.580 responses without engaging in the hurly-burly of social change work

00:26:45.180 That 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.

00:27:05.140 And you know why?

00:27:07.560 It's because at the root of this shift that we're required to make now for life to go on,

00:27:16.120 at the root of it, I think, and it comes both from science and spirituality,

00:27:21.420 two revolutions, we're seeing that the earth is alive.

00:27:26.580 It's a living system.

00:27:27.920 our political economy is treating the earth as a supply house and a sewer

00:27:35.200 and this is wrecking havoc with our own self-understanding and with our own peace of

00:27:43.600 mind it breaks our heart in a way far greater than we imagine to see our earth treated this way

00:27:52.080 But 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.

00:28:16.940 The earth is alive.

00:28:18.420 from it derives everything we know and have and are and therefore it is sacred to us

00:28:28.020 oh my god my world is alive this planet is alive that's what you were feeling today ayanna when

00:28:34.500 you were walking out in the turning leaves this is a living world i'll do everything for it and

00:28:41.700 nothing I can do, nothing will ever befall me that will separate me from this living world.

00:28:49.160 It's my larger body. It can pour its intelligence and its bliss through me.

00:28:59.520 When the paradigm of separateness and separate individuals fades away,

00:29:05.780 there's a tremendous weight lifted in a sense. There's a pressure in our culture

00:29:10.520 to be exceptional, to be original in your ideas and in your expressions.

00:29:16.300 This may partially derive from the notion of human exceptionalism or national exceptionalism

00:29:22.660 in certain cases. So when we begin to see the world as a unified whole, personal success only

00:29:31.140 makes sense if it serves a wider collective success, the thriving of a community or an

00:29:37.740 ecosystem. You've invoked Arnie Nass, originator of the term deep ecology, and his call for

00:29:44.880 cultural therapy to break out of the anthropocentrism. You are one of the leading

00:29:50.700 advocates for deep ecology. So can you speak about Arnie Nass and how your work has dovetailed with

00:29:57.640 his? Oh, yes, his coming into my life was his thought was very important to me. When I started

00:30:07.140 this work i thought it was just about freeing people from their negative emotions and so that

00:30:14.940 they could be more effective uh more effective activists but then i found to my surprise

00:30:22.860 that in so doing uh the people around me and i myself were feeling a shift in identification

00:30:31.140 shift to identifying with the earth itself herself himself i don't know what pronoun to

00:30:41.220 use but then i thought oh that's just like the buddhist teaching of dependent co-arising

00:30:50.380 of radical interbeing and then came uh my acquaintance with deep ecology and i thought

00:30:59.140 Oh, goody. Now I have a secular term for what I only had spiritual language before, that we are gaining access to our deep ecology.

00:31:12.100 That is our structural, the universe is so structured as to involve our mutual belonging and our capacity to think and act together.

00:31:25.980 so arnie nass almost as soon as i discovered that i was with my buddy john seed in australia

00:31:36.480 founder of the rainforest information center and we invented the council of all beings

00:31:42.920 where people could experience step aside from their human identification and speak for another

00:31:51.020 life form. And this was not losing their superiority. Actually, what almost everybody

00:31:59.260 felt was taking off a girdle around you. Oh, I don't have to just constantly be identified

00:32:08.520 with my society-defined social role. I'm part of life. Oh, I can feel what it's like

00:32:18.780 to be a wild goose or a slithering snake or a blade of grass and that that's our birthright

00:32:29.000 being human is just the last chapter in a journey that has shaped our minds and bodies

00:32:36.740 we remember that journey in our mother's womb where we remember being fish and amphibians

00:32:45.960 and going gills and tails we do the whole remembering of our origins there and it's

00:32:53.760 wonderful to be liberated from our human exceptionalism and then real wisdom and a lot

00:33:01.020 of ingenuity pops up we must do a council of all beings together ayana someday

00:33:15.960 Thank you.

00:33:45.960 my next question challenges me constantly i experience the primal instinct of survival

00:34:14.480 of self-preservation and the desire for creature comforts, but I've noticed a shift in my

00:34:22.180 motivation lately. The age-old biological impulse towards the survival of our species has

00:34:29.080 gone into overshoot, far past what would keep our population steady. And that's the great

00:34:36.740 irony of our time. To increase or even just maintain our standards of living in the global

00:34:42.360 north, we have to defile and deplete the whole of life. So one big challenge as I see it is to

00:34:50.040 override this biological urge and override the habits of overconsumption with the much stronger

00:34:57.560 forces of cultural evolution, which teaches us balance. Do you see this cultural therapy as just

00:35:05.360 awakening in us this instinct for harmony or is it supplanting instinct what are your thoughts on

00:35:12.740 this as i was saying just before what struck me oh just a few years after we started there's a

00:35:25.180 shift in self-interest that occurs a shift to the next systemic level that as perhaps

00:35:35.340 our earliest ancestors felt and as we get from indigenous teachings of native societies

00:35:45.660 as well as in other religions and spiritual paths there's a shift from focusing on the separate self

00:35:56.140 to feeling that you're just part of a larger body, a larger being, a larger system.

00:36:05.160 You define yourself differently.

00:36:09.160 The realm of your self-interest enlarges and expands

00:36:15.220 so that what happens to the rainforest of the Amazon basin, for example,

00:36:26.140 strikes you with the same kind of concern or at least similar concern as to what's happening to

00:36:35.560 your own lungs because you know these are the lungs of your larger body the planet earth

00:36:43.700 it's very easy to slip back continually into identification with your personal needs

00:36:52.180 for comfort and security and approval and da-da-da.

00:36:56.880 So you need constant practices.

00:37:01.040 And John Seed used to remind me of this.

00:37:03.580 He said we've got to do these rituals and practices

00:37:06.780 almost daily and very regularly at any rate

00:37:11.560 to counteract the pull of a hyper-individualized society

00:37:18.360 that conditions us and has since birth.

00:37:22.180 toward acquisition and competition and so we have as you may have noticed in the work that

00:37:29.320 reconnects we follow a spiral of practices where we begin with gratitude once you listen what the

00:37:40.120 hudnashanis say that the mohawks and onondagas of central new york tell me they these are the

00:37:48.700 words that come before all else we give greetings and thanks to the sun as it rises to the trees

00:37:57.440 that stand in their majesty and teachings to the waters that strengthen us and the fish that clean

00:38:04.860 the waters etc so just rehearsing or opening to your gratitude to be alive the gratitude that i

00:38:15.080 now am able to meet this extraordinary young woman ayana and that i will meet her in person

00:38:24.360 someday fills me with such oh what a gift i've just been given so gratitude also keeps us that

00:38:34.060 self-interest extended wide the other parts of the spiral are just what we talked about about

00:38:41.220 not being afraid of the suffering and then daring to look with new eyes in deep time and deep ecology

00:38:50.120 linking arms to move forward there is a huge pull and fear that's why fear of scarcity and

00:39:01.120 fear of danger can pull us back to just worrying about ourself or our family or our clan

00:39:10.480 It really helps to keep looking through the lens that widens, that helps you experience the widening circles of your life.

00:39:21.060 You wrote, quote,

00:39:23.460 When we reconnect with life by choosing to bear a pain for it, our mind retrieves its natural clarity, end quote.

00:39:30.420 in this epic journey from the human-centered exploitative society to a society that honors

00:39:39.240 the principles of inner being of interconnection and co-evolution there are enormous feats of

00:39:47.960 logistics and engineering transitioning to minimally consumptive societies with

00:39:53.360 local and sustainable food and energy production, and a complete reworking of the hierarchical

00:40:00.420 political systems and legal systems, and a dissolution of the police state and the military

00:40:06.560 structures, and then shutting down the 400 nuclear reactors worldwide and dealing with the

00:40:13.060 unimaginable amounts of nuclear waste, just to name a few of the incredibly complex tasks ahead.

00:40:20.800 so i'm interested in the open-ended question of how to self-organize among the huge and growing

00:40:30.580 body of concerned people globally and how to decide where each of us fits into this project

00:40:36.580 and be able to shift our strategies as the situation evolves i know it's a sweeping question

00:40:43.380 that of course has no simple answer well i could say you're right it's a huge question but

00:40:49.660 that there are a couple of basic reminders to oneself that really help one is that of all

00:40:59.740 these issues yes they are multiple but they have one core what we used to call problematique there

00:41:08.640 is one core mistake at the source of all of these wreckings of life on our planet

00:41:18.340 and that is the notion that we are separate that we can hold relief from the sufferings of others

00:41:29.800 and that we can that we can find some private salvation in a way it doesn't matter that much

00:41:39.060 which different issue you work on whether you work on domestic violence the slave trade that's

00:41:47.540 still existing in our private prison system,

00:41:51.760 we can work to liberate ourselves from the tragedy of imagining that we're separate.

00:42:02.100 So that means we can move from one to another.

00:42:05.220 That also saves us from thinking that our issue is more important than other people's issues.

00:42:12.520 and that has taken a big toll on activism in previous decades they're all important

00:42:22.400 it's been very helpful to me by the way Ayana that we have separated as we see these three

00:42:32.620 dimensions of the transition to a life-sustaining society the great turning and they're holding

00:42:42.500 actions where we slow down the destruction and the changing of the positive actions of changing

00:42:50.680 the very way we do things and the third the shift in consciousness they all support each other and

00:43:00.420 so we can slip free of being competitive about which of our strategies is most important and

00:43:09.960 just let life move through us and through it all we must steer clear of the great mistake

00:43:18.400 the great mistake is to think that we can do it alone even looking at what's happening

00:43:24.700 we can't even take that in alone the name of this game now is link arms and do it together

00:43:35.040 and that brings us enormous rewards you found that look where you found your beloved

00:43:42.680 me too i had 56 years of a marriage where we were looking together at the challenges of our world

00:43:53.700 and loving each other through the courage and ingenuity we saw in each other as we waded into

00:44:02.180 one challenge after another. That's why the wedding ring that is still on my hand, on my

00:44:10.500 finger, has three circles of a different kind of gold. One is me, one is my beloved, and the third

00:44:21.340 circle that links the two is our world. We stand together not gazing riveted into each other's

00:44:31.600 eyes but we stand side by side looking out at our world strengthening each other and loving each

00:44:39.520 other through what we discover as we walk hand in hand into the great turning that's true love

00:44:48.760 I know you didn't ask me that question but it just came out oh I love that answer thank you

00:44:58.000 so much for sharing that intimate

00:44:59.840 insight. It is

00:45:02.100 so amazing to join

00:45:04.040 with others in the

00:45:05.900 deep passions and convictions

00:45:07.920 for life.

00:45:09.600 And it's so fulfilling.

00:45:12.760 It's the sweetest thing.

00:45:14.440 It is. It's so sweet.

00:45:15.840 You're already in heaven.

00:45:17.600 And so it makes this, you're doing

00:45:19.580 just what you want.

00:45:21.520 You can't imagine being happier and so

00:45:23.720 and you know, oh, you may

00:45:25.840 not see the results of this action.

00:45:28.000 for another lifetime or two so you're you're free to engage without constantly

00:45:34.820 taking your pulse how effective you are it can almost demean all that heartfelt work

00:45:44.360 put into something that may not have the um outward success that we so wished it had but

00:45:51.520 what else would we be doing during this time what else could we potentially spend our time on other

00:45:57.840 than deeply loving this planet that is part of us you ayana you've been prepared for this moment

00:46:09.860 by four and a half billion years of life on this planet your mind your heart your sensitivities

00:46:19.480 your body uh all awarenesses that's it didn't start with your birth and your particular line

00:46:27.120 of ancestors. You're their

00:46:29.160 gift to this time.

00:46:37.360 Here for a

00:46:39.160 moment

00:46:40.280 Treasure

00:46:43.080 the thought

00:46:45.760 To feel the

00:46:49.080 still apple

00:46:52.080 in the strings

00:46:53.820 of your

00:46:55.640 heart

00:46:56.660 You're given to dreaming

00:47:01.200 With love on your mind

00:47:08.280 I wish I could help you to find

00:47:26.660 You're a girl with horizons, so easy to see

00:47:43.660 Atop your high mountain, time is temporary

00:47:55.660 Maybe I'll pass you, just say hello, or maybe we'll never know.

00:48:19.420 I'd like to ask you about deep time.

00:48:22.420 You do an exercise in which a participant expresses an activist issue from several vantage points.

00:48:29.360 For instance, fracking.

00:48:31.180 First, they speak from their own heart, their own point of view.

00:48:35.780 And then they change identity and speak as the opponent would speak.

00:48:40.520 But you insist on it being a sincere attempt, not a caricature of the opponent.

00:48:45.040 But 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.

00:49:00.280 And 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.

00:49:11.700 so how has your study of deep time shaped what you consider to be important

00:49:17.660 in the blink that is this life i'm just imagining if every politician and corporate policy maker

00:49:27.160 did this exercise before work in the morning oh what a different world that would be oh

00:49:35.060 I just can't think of anything that would make me happier that would be more wonderful

00:49:42.740 well what to say I feel that a lot of the simple practices and the work that we connect

00:49:52.000 if they could just pause and do them at the cabinet level or in any decision-making body

00:50:00.820 in government or corporate structures

00:50:05.240 that have so much power over our lives

00:50:08.660 at this present moment.

00:50:11.080 Yes, this is our birthright

00:50:13.460 to feel these connections, all of them.

00:50:17.300 And what's wonderful, you know, Ayanna,

00:50:20.440 is that this revelation that happens,

00:50:24.980 this particular exercise I call widening circles,

00:50:28.460 as you speak for first yourself the adversary the non-human and the future one let me put it this

00:50:39.620 way i could decide to go and help people know how important it is to identify with these three other

00:50:49.460 voices and i could give a lecture about it i could give a lecture about feeling non-violent

00:50:56.360 identifying with your enemy a lecture about deep ecology with the more than human a lecture a part

00:51:04.580 of the lecture on deep time but instead people don't hear any sermonizing not a word of it

00:51:15.080 all they do is speak from that perspective and that teaches them you follow me

00:51:25.260 it's in us already

00:51:27.760 we don't need to

00:51:29.560 sermonize people

00:51:31.720 moralize them

00:51:33.860 let them

00:51:35.940 speak and then

00:51:37.540 in that speaking

00:51:39.060 they find how big

00:51:41.680 their heart really

00:51:43.600 is

00:51:44.680 or their heart mind as I say

00:51:47.660 because in Buddhism

00:51:49.880 your mind is

00:51:51.660 located in the heart

00:51:53.000 I have to tell you something

00:51:55.160 that happened with that earth leadership cohort we went and had the wonderful weekend together

00:52:02.480 at row and in the course of that you know we go around the spiral of the work that reconnects

00:52:10.020 and each one is so powerful and subversive in a way even letting in gratitude for life

00:52:18.060 is subversive to the consumer society that you are enough the way you are and don't need to

00:52:26.680 buy everything in that weekend we did a very fierce piece of work around truth telling about

00:52:34.600 our pain for the world called the truth mandala which you may have done or heard about it was the

00:52:42.260 following few days since there were some members of the earth leadership cohort young people that

00:52:48.960 stayed on well this truth model where people enter the ritual circle and pick up an object

00:52:56.380 and let it speak let the fear speak that's a stone or let the grief speak those are dead leaves

00:53:05.620 or let the outrage and anger speak that's a thick stick or let the emptiness and overwhelm speak

00:53:14.600 that's an empty bowl so this has always been i mean this has been around for 25 years and it's

00:53:22.060 uh gets better and better at any rate this particular truth mandala was so fierce and the

00:53:32.340 grief and even hopelessness that was being expressed what people were saying that was

00:53:38.520 just pouring out of all the feelings they'd been sitting on for years that just erupted it was like

00:53:46.400 a fierce wind blowing i could feel it and there were moments when i wanted to protect

00:53:57.420 some of the younger people there one especially she was so young and so fragile even though I

00:54:05.620 knew she was a dynamite activist I for the first time in my life as I wanted to go and put my hands

00:54:15.540 over her ears and not be faced with so much total grimness of the outlook of what we've done to

00:54:24.380 ourselves and to the earth but of course i didn't but i hadn't and she came in too just utterly

00:54:33.160 devastated these terribly grievous things kept pain pouring out and when it was over she said

00:54:40.740 well i wish i'd done that nine years ago i feel wonderful to yeah to release it yeah and and we

00:54:51.820 made it clear too that each of these dark emotions that so many people fear and flee

00:54:59.840 have a tantric side or a flip side or a source and that if the grief the source of the grief

00:55:09.000 is not craziness but love you mourn what you love and that the source side of the anger

00:55:19.300 is not hatred at all it's passion for justice and the sore side of the fear is the courage that is

00:55:32.900 there when you actually speak it because we're supposed to be so afraid of our fear we can't

00:55:39.300 even call attention to it. I keep discovering the same thing and that we can trust our deep

00:55:49.720 feelings about what's happening to the world and that it can bring us strength and it can bring us

00:55:56.300 each other. Wow, I can see that exercise being really instrumental, especially for people

00:56:03.520 feeling the despair, and who have grown cold-hearted and numb from serial defeats.

00:56:11.120 You know, I've heard some really unsettling justifications for doing nothing, usually

00:56:16.040 some variation of, you know, this is all part of Gaia's process.

00:56:20.460 But if your intuition is awake, it's impossible to ignore the suffering of the earth.

00:56:25.560 And a sense of certainty comes from being an active participant in the journey towards

00:56:30.720 inner being.

00:56:31.240 I love the word you

00:56:33.320 certainty just knowing

00:56:35.580 ah

00:56:36.660 this is who I really am

00:56:39.700 or what I really am

00:56:40.940 this is the source of my life

00:56:43.360 oh it's so much

00:56:45.680 bigger than I thought

00:56:46.860 oh I don't ever

00:56:49.660 need to be separated from that

00:56:51.420 oh there's no need

00:56:53.700 to fear

00:56:54.360 it's a kind

00:56:57.200 of release

00:56:59.260 not a striving to comprehend

00:57:03.260 not a striving to scramble up

00:57:06.060 to learn

00:57:07.140 to reach for the next rung

00:57:09.620 of learning and competence

00:57:11.340 but rather a

00:57:12.220 letting go

00:57:14.280 into what has always been there

00:57:17.300 always been there

00:57:19.120 but unrecognized particularly

00:57:20.920 in the industrial growth society

00:57:23.940 thank you so much Joanna

00:57:26.760 for bringing this wisdom

00:57:29.220 and serenity to this ongoing conversation.

00:57:32.860 I really hope I get to meet you one day

00:57:35.540 and be a part of the work that reconnects.

00:57:39.120 Well, that is occurring to me too,

00:57:41.500 that I feel you in my heart.

00:57:45.080 And you are so incredibly articulate.

00:57:49.360 And your voice is so filled with freedom of Earth's true nature.

00:57:55.880 there's a lot of life's intelligence that can flow through you

00:58:02.060 wow thank you so much i i'm in awe of your words and this quenching rain of

00:58:15.460 insight and love that flows through you so freely it's just so beautiful um you know my

00:58:25.040 partner and I have been feeling really overwhelmed with figuring out our roles in this planetary

00:58:32.140 journey with no blueprint or no antecedents to the challenge we are facing. So I just want to

00:58:40.980 thank you so deeply and truly for your work and for this conversation and for being a stepping

00:58:49.160 stone to help us get across this rough river. Well, I bow to you with gladness. I'm literally

00:58:57.800 doing that. I'm doing that too. Go well, dear heart.

00:59:10.840 Thank you for listening to another episode of Unlearn and Rewild. Our musical selections today

00:59:17.520 were by Roberta Flack, singing Trying Times,

00:59:21.420 Pharaoh Sanders with Sunrise,

00:59:24.320 Roy Harper with Time is Temporary,

00:59:27.160 and our theme song is Like a River, sung by Kate Wolfe.

00:59:31.060 Our producer is March Young.

For The Wild - August 05, 2025

JOANNA MACY on the World as Lover and Self⌠HOMAGE⌡ ⧸371

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