As the deep ecology movement begins to recognise the importance of grieving the demise of industrial civilisation, conversations around sacred activism and psycho-spiritual healing are inevitably beginning to surface.
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A few of the really big questions in life are: does everything depend on perspective? How big an effect do our thoughts have in changing the world? Can fear be overcome by transforming thought itself?
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Kari McGregor caught up with Helena Norberg-Hodge – new economy activist, founder and director of Local Futures, and producer of award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness – for a glimpse at the journey that led her to conclude that the future is necessarily local.
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What is needed to get us out of our comfort zone and fight for our children’s future?
Consume less, share more and stand up against fossil fuels, urban sprawl, destructive infrastructures and resource extractivism. And, above all, fight for an economy that can fulfil everyone’s basic needs within the natural boundaries of a healthy planet.
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Radical transformation cannot happen without a spiritual initiation, and what makes the transformation radical is the downsizing of the human ego and rational mind and the limitless expansion of the Sacred Self.
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Although it’s defined a thousand ways, spirituality is ultimately about belief, and faith. For most who call themselves spiritual, it is about belief in something larger and more important than ourselves and our species, and faith that there is a purpose to our struggle and a meaning to our lives.
I don’t understand the need of spiritual people for purpose or meaning or something larger than everything-that-just-is, the need for something to strive for and to progress towards.
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We are now awakening to the realization that the self is porous and not as contained as we might like to think – and that all aspects of consciousness dance together in a mutual state of inclusivity, so that it is ultimately impossible to divorce happiness from grief. Perhaps coming home to ourselves involves recognizing that grief has its purpose, without which happiness is a mere plastic echo of itself. Perhaps coming home to a more beautiful world means we realize – as the gentleman up in the Himalayan regions told Ej and I – that life isn’t that coherent.
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Of paramount importance in the new Sacred Activism is regular, conscious grief work. Unless activists mourn, they can easily be consumed with the fires of passion because their psyches are not tempered with the waters of grief. Conscious grieving is an integral aspect of the “astringent maturity” we develop as we balance hero/warrior courage with discerning acceptance of our predicament.
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Deepening our shade of green means coming to terms with the history of humankind: how we came to be a dominant force ushering in a new era – the anthropocene – from our humble origins among the countless other species that make up the web of life. Our desire for security and comfort has led us to pad our nests to the extent that we are oblivious to our connection to nature, and in denial of our own fragility when left to the mercy of the elements.
But we are not exempt from the forces that shape nature, and we are not in control. Surrendering to our own uniquely human niche in the web of life is at once humbling and liberating, and is the beginning of our return journey toward harmony.
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Faced with modernity’s collapse, we are increasingly restless for spiritual meaning and catharsis as a result of excessive bio-psycho-social stress, intergenerational trauma and systemic conditioning, much of which we are exposed to during our early, critical developmental years.
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SHIFT magazine 