Revisioning Ourselves and the World
By Len Cruz, MD, ME
Seminar Registration http://ashevillejungcenter.org/upcoming-events/ecopsychology/
“…our present ego-feeling is only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive, indeed, an all-embracing, feeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it.” (Sigmund Freud)
Ecopsychology is more than the conflation of two words, ecology and psychology. This nascent field expands the horizon of the deep self beyond the frontiers of the individual. James Hillman said, “The deepest self cannot be confined to “in here” because we can’t be sure it is not also or even entirely “out there”![i] The exaggerated emphasis on the personal, interior, individual psychology has contributed to a denial of the world “out there”. Several trajectories can be subsumed under the broad canopy of ecopsychology and the field is distinguishable from other related subjects[ii]. There is an arc that begins with the personal unconscious, traverses the collective unconscious, and leads to a planetary unconscious. The near apotheosis of mankind that installed our species with a belief in our dominion over flora and fauna may be coming of age. The Navi race depicted in the movie AVATAR is a pop culture reflection of an emerging archetype or at least a cultural complex. As Thomas Singer points out, “Failure to consider cultural complexes as part of the work of individuation puts a tremendous burden on both the personal and archetypal realms of the psyche.”[iii] Depth psychological influences have shaped out language appearing with phrases like Biophilia (Erich Fromm[iv], E.O. Wilson[v]), Ecosophy & Deep Ecology (Arne Naess)[vi], Terrapsychology (Chalquist)[vii] or Ecotherapy (Clineman)[viii]. 
There is an ecological imperative forcing itself on our consciousness through images environmental catastrophes, species and habitat destruction, and threats of irreversible climate change. Lifton’s concept of psychic numbing regarding the threat of nuclear disaster applies to the ecological crisis upon us. But this festering wound can no longer be located solely within nor strictly outside of ourselves.[ix] Ecopsychology attempts to restore the intimate connection between the ego and the world. And with the added the richness of the archetypal strata a more inclusive psychology is emerging.[x]
If a planetary consciousness is developing and we should expect that there will be a planetary unconscious developing alongside. In the pioneering days of psychoanalysis, Janet, Freud, and others were cartographers of a vast inner landscape. A centrifugal force developed in the generations following Freud. Ego psychology pressed beyond the id, social psychiatry and later self psychology expanded into the interpersonal and social milieu, and Jung expanded the personal notion of the unconscious into vast territory of the collective unconscious. However, all these trends established human beings at the axis of the psychological world. Ecopsychology revisions this singular focus upon man. It is a restorative psychology, where place matters and the distinction between inhabitants of the earth is removed, hierarchical disappears. Ecopsychology grounds our existence and psychology in a broader context of the ecosphere.
Let us agree that human activity is causing rapid and profound changes to the climate, to the water cycle, to the soil, and to species extinction.
Billions of people watched oil gush into the Gulf of Mexico for months. On a daily basis human beings grew more alarmed by the risks of massive radiation leakage from the Fukushima nuclear reactor.And though the ecological underpinnings of mass migration and starvation in sub-Saharan Africa are poorly understood, the images of starving human beings nevertheless etches itself into our psyches. Such events remind us that there is an imperative imposing itself with ever-increasing urgency. But the complexity of these issues exceed our capacities.
Robert Jay Lifton, coined the term psychic numbing to describe “a form of desensitization … an incapacity to feel or confront certain kinds of experience, due to the blocking or absence of inner forms or imagery that can connect with such experience”.[xi] The intricate webs comprising our world are complex. Ever increasing computing capacity permits us to model extremely complex systems and to detect elegant patterns. Nonlinear systems (see also complexity, chaos, Madelbrot sets)possess some unique characteristics including inflection points (see also attractors, repellors, bifurcations) where sudden, large changes in behavior result from small changes in conditions of a a stable system. Catastrophe theory, a branch of bifurcation mathematics, demonstrates that bifurcations are in fact part of a large well defined geometric structure. Carl Freidrich Guass laid the foundation for these discoveries but the ability to model such complex systems had to wait for the invention of supercomputers.
Our ability to recognize patterns, create accurate models, and decipher complexity on our own has limits.[xii]Rebecca Costa suggests there are five common supermemes that we should understand because of their limiting effects upon our capacity to reason. These include: irrational opposition, counterfeit correlation, personalization of blame, silo thinking, and extreme economics.[xiii] Time magazine recently suggested that people like Rebecca Costa might be able to solve the world’s biggest problems (http://tinyurl.com/6fz6uuu). The rest of us may need to acknowledge that the sheer complexity of the ecological crisis combined with our own psychological complexity often exceeds our capacity to understand.
There a practical ecopsychology developing that might equip us to navigate through the treacherous times with greater understanding. Ultimately it may also preserve us. First, we will need to acknowledge that the planet and many of its inhabitants are being placed at risk by the impact our species has upon the environment. There is an ecopsychological unconscious, and like all unconscious material, it resists exposure and yields its fruits reluctantly. Those of us who live in the technologically advanced first world must make sure that we keep contact with the wilderness. An earlier blog (May 31, 2010) addressed the diminishing wilderness of childhood and readers may want to read an excerpt from Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs.[xiv] A practical ecopsychology will provide tools for working through the despair and psychic numbing that so easily overwhelms us. Out of the fertile fields of ecopsychology will emerge ecotherapeutic techniques and understanding that can be expected to equip us to participate in the healing that we all need.[xv]
In 1973, Our Bodies, Ourselves[xvi] became a feminist canon through its empowering, educational message. The time has come for Our Planet, Ourselves that might collect the expanse of ideas that intersect with ecopsychology.
The confluence of many shaping influences unite many archetypal energies forming a bedrock for further psychological explorations. A river’s delta provides a good metaphor for region where complexes, archetypes, and outer come together. In the delta fresh water and salt water meet and mix. In the ecopsychological delta, conscious and unconscious, interior and exterior, introject and projection combine and create a limen realm where the participation mystique more easily is detected. Jung wrote, “PARTICIPATION MYSTIQUE is a term derived from Lévy-Bruhl. It denotes a peculiar kind of psychological connection with objects, and consists in the fact that the subject cannot clearly distinguish himself from the object but is bound to it by a direct relationship which amounts to partial identity.”[xvii] It is tempting to oscillate between extreme impressions of the world. Between Cormac MacCarthy’s The Road[xviii] and Fox’s recent Fall series Terra Nova with a tagline of “There is no paradise without sacrifice” we encounter repeated apocalyptic scenarios alongside utopian ones.[xix] [xx] [xxi]. KIA Motors produced a Superbowl commercial last year that exploited apocalyptic images of the Mayan Prophecy. The appearance of such impressions in popular culture points toward the chthonic psychic regions, the places where archetypes reside. Paul Ricouer observed that utopias function to develop “new, alternative perspectives”.[xxii] And some of our most compelling utopian literature actually present dystopias (Brave New World, Nineteen eighty-four, Fahrenheit 451). These days anyone can turn on a computer and create their own utopia (SimCity). IMDb, the movie database, has compiled a list of the top 50 Post-Apocalyptic movies (http://www.imdb.com/list/2WCgJcXeSEQ/). The images and impressions of a global consciousness, of an ecopsychological dimension are everywhere.
A recent favorite of mine is AVATAR. James Cameron’s creation of the Navi, a large, lithe, colorful, and powerful race of humanoid creatures with tails. These tails, symbolizes the Navi’s sustained connection to their world and hints of a noble savage. From the opening minutes of the film the there are rumbles and rhythms of mechanization that contrasts with a perky newscaster announcing the comeback of the nearly extinct Bengal tiger we are presented with competing impressions of soulless exploitation of the planet’s resources by an interplanetary corporation and the soulful natives and their planetary conscious ways. By the end of the movie our sympathies are powerfully attached to the Navi. Apart from the symbolism of the Navi’s tail, it is the physical means by which they experience a deep empathic connection to their world, it is the vehicle for their participation mystiqeu. As if these images alone were not enough, Cameron chose for his protagonist a physically disabled man injured in battle. He seems to be telling us of our woundedness, our disability, and our hope for restoration. In the final scene of AVATAR, the viewer is left believing that the protagonist has made a final and complete transformation from man to Navi. The movie’s ability to arouse archetypal energies of both apocalypse and utopia is gripping. But the promise that WE might experience such a deep connection to the biosphere as the protagonist is even more compelling. Ecopsychology is unlikely to deliver some well wrapped experiences of connectedness like we get in the movies but perhaps it can provide a guide for the journey. This is journey that began in an idyllic garden to which it one day hopes to return.
INVITATION
Take a moment to reflect on the impressions that reside in your own psyche of this world, your place in it, and the planetary images and impressions that you have encountered. Perhaps it is a dream, a piece of art, a moment of communion with nature. As we share our stories, we may help one another to awaken to something deep within that also is suffused outside. If we hope to develop a consciousness spacious enough for the biosphere it must include one another. Share your stories here.
Len Cruz
[i] Roszak, Theodore, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner. Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1995 (page xix).
[ii] Scull, John. “Ecopsychology: Where Does It Fit in Psychology in 2009?.” The Trumpeter Fall 2008: 68-85. The Trumpeter. Web. 8 Oct. 2011.
[iii] Singer, Thomas. “The Cultural Complex and Archetypal Defenses of the Collective Spirit | Psyche-and-culture | Articles.” IAAP. IAAP, 19 June 2005. Web. 08 Oct. 2011. <http://iaap.org/articles/psyche-and-culture/the-cultural-complex-and-archetypal-defenses-of-the-collective-spirit.html>.
[iv] Fromm, Erich (1964). The Heart of Man. Harper & Row.,
[v] Wilson, Edward O. (1984). Biophilia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-07442-4.
[vi] Næss, Arne (1973) ‘The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement.’ Inquiry 16: 95-100
[vii] Chalquist, Craig (2007) Terrapsychology, New Orleans, Spring Journal Books. ISBN-10: 1882670655
[viii] Clinebell, H. 1996. Ecotherapy: Healing ourselves, healing the earth. New York: Haworth Press.
[ix] Chalquist, Craig. “The Environmental Crisis is a Crisis of Consciousness.” Terrapsych.com – serving the animate presence of place. Terrapsych.com, n.d. Web. 7 Oct. 2011. <http://www.terrapsych.com/cris (also Chalquist, Craig, and Mary E. Gomes. Terrapsychology: Re-engaging the Soul of Place. New Orleans: Spring Journal, 2007.)
[x] Watkins, Mary . “On Returning to the Soul of the World: Archetypal Psychology and Cultural/Ecological Work.” Terrapsych.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Oct. 2011. <www.terrapsych.com/Watkins.
[xi] Lifton, Robert Jay (March 1968). “America in Vietnam—The circle of deception”. Society 5 (4).
[xii] Costa, Rebecca D. The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking Our Way out of Extinction. New York: Vanguard, 2010.
[xiii] Costa, Rebecca D. The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction. New York: Vanguard Press, 2010.
[xiv] Chabon, Michael. “Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood by Michael Chabon | The New York Review of Books.” New York Times Review of Books. New York Times, 16 July 2009. Web. 7 Oct. 2011. <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jul/16/manhood-for-amateurs-the-wilderness-of-childhood/>
[xv] Buzzell, Linda, and Craig Chalquist. Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 2009.
[xvi] Our Bodies, Ourselves. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973.
[xvii] Jung, C.G. ([1921] 1971) Paragraph 781. Psychological Types, Collected Works, Volume 6, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
[xviii] McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.
[xix] Geus, Marius De. Ecological Utopias: Envisioning the Sustainable Society. Utrecht, the Netherlands: International, 1999.
[xx] Thiele, L. P. 2000. Book Review: de Geus, M. 1999. Ecological Utopias: Envisioning the sustainable society. International Books, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Conservation Ecology 4(1): 18. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol4/iss1/art18/
[xxi] Gues, Marius de. Ectopia, sustainability, and vision. Organization & Environment. Vol: 15:2, 187-201Jun 2002. Web. October 7, 2011.
[xxii] Ricoeur, Paul. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Ed. George H. Taylor. New York:
Columbia UP, 1986.
Additional Recommended Readings:
Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine, 1972.
Buber, Martin, and Ronald Gregor. Smith. I and Thou. New York, NY: Scribner, 2000.
Capra, Fritjof. The Hidden Connections. London: Flamingo, 2003.
Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life: a New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. New York: Anchor, 1996.
Chivian, Eric, and Aaron Bernstein. Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.
Matthiessen, Peter. Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
McKibben, Bill. Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York: Times, 2003.
Singer, Thomas. Psyche & the City: A Soul’s Guide to the Modern Metropolis. New Orleans: Spring Journal, 2010.
Suzuki, David, and Amanada McConnell. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. Vancouver, BC: Greystone, 2007.
Walljasper, Jay. All That We Share: How to save the Economy, the Environment, the Internet, Democracy, Our Communities, and Everything Else That Belongs to All of Us. New York: New, 2010.
Wilson, Edward O. Consilience: the Unity of Knowledge. New York: Knopf, 1998.
I appreciate your informative summing up of so many places where psyche and planet meet. It has taken psychology (including depth psych) a long time to make this connection, and it’s rewarding to see it coming into view. Jung was right: if we go deep enough, then at bottom psyche meets world.
Thanks Len for a significant and scholarly posting that addresses what remains deep within the collective shadow and that is our connection to the earth, the coagulatio of alchemy. I am struck by his observation of the polarity of the apocalyptic and utopian views of the world manifested in images in television and film especially Avatar, a film that continues to resonate within our collective consciousness and unconcious. Bringing the field of ecopsychology into focus is very timely.
Several years ago I suffered a collapsed lung due to aspirating lake water that led to a Klebsiella infection that ate through my pleural membrane and caused havoc with my lungs and near death. I had chest tubes inserted and was given enough antibiotics to cure an epidemic. I was attached to a vacuum pump for three weeks in a hospital. Though it all saved my life I am still sorting out the psychological impact of the experience and that leads me to an image. Shortly after I was released from the hospital and the technological vacuum that I still suspect wanted my soul before it was finished, I was riding with a friend in a car and was feeling extremely fragile and exposed. We were taking a trip to Wisconsin and she needed to stop at a conference for a few hours which left me time to myself. We were in Steven’s Point at a hotel. From the hotel I saw a large field that was bathed in the sun and the field dipped into a valley at its center. Something emerged in me that required me to go to the field and I did. When I got there I needed to lay down in the grass and feel the sun and earth beneath me. I began to cry, a deep cry that came from somewhere outside me, just as Len suggested. I wanted to taste the earth, become it. I wanted to know the grass, the insects, the soil. I layed there for hours until the conference was over and it was time to leave and somehow afterwards I was less afraid, less vulnerable, less disconnected from my instinctual and primitive and collective nature. The alchemical convergance of the low valley (soul) and sun (spirit) the earth (body) helped in the healing.
I am also reminded of Henry David Thoreau and not his polished and intellectually honed work, Walden but his journals which depicted a man deeply disconnected not only from society but his own instinctual nature. It was through living with and off of the land, noticing the rhythms and sounds and smells of the earth, studying it and letting it bathe him and heal him that he came to know himself and his place in the world and all his anger and cynicism melted away before he died. Years after his experience living in a small cabin near Walden Pond Thoreau used that experience to continue to hone his character. To this day when I pull out his journals and read this line it brings me once again to tears…
July 16th, 1851 “For years I marched as to a music in comparison with which the military music of the streets is noise and discord. I was daily intoxicated, and yet no man would call me intemperate. With all your science can you tell how it is and whence it is that light comes into the soul?”
Dan’s anecdote and the blog reminded me something I used to do as a child. I grew up in South Florida before it had been overdeveloped. Sometimes I would leave my house at night and jump the fence of a recreation center that was no more than 50 meters from our front doorstep. I brought a blanket and spread it in the middle of the field that was about 100 meters square. I remember this mostly on nights with a full moon but once or twice, I went out at the new moon. Something about the grandeur and immensity of outer space combined with the proximity to the earth stirred the sort of communion I think we long to recover. I remember these nights now as a prayerful, reverent time but this may be the accretion of my adult mind.
Last night, I spread a tarp on the grassy slope outside my basement door. I set up a pup tent that has a see through mesh at the dome. I brought with me a sleeping pad and a sleeping bag for warmth. I slept under the stars like I once did in childhood. in between the sound of cars racing down the street that borders my house, I heard the crickets. There was a solitary bull frog whose croaking I think was muffled by the thick bed of liriope surrounding him; he sounded more like a cow mooing in the distance than a bull frog. By two in the morning the cars had mostly stopped and there was just the sound of the night.
When morning broke, I heard a a couple birds chirping and the same old bullfrog. There were finches and in blue jay in the tree under whose canopy I’d slept. But there was certainly not a roaring symphony of birds. In the 1960s, in South Florida, I remember the birds would make such a racket that I could wake and slip back into my house undetected. This morning I wondered where the birds had gone. I have read accounts of this country in the early days of its settling when a species of pigeon that has since been driven to extinction, were so thick in the sky that a flock would block the sun for hours as it flew by. I can scarcely imagine birds so plentiful. This morning I when I woke, I had pushed the sleeping pad aside in favor of sleeping with only the tarp and the bottom of the tent separating me from the earth. Like did when I was a boy, I quietly slipped back into the house remembering to retrieve the note I had written and left on the kitchen counter. I slipped into bed. I think I will have more nights outdoors, it is good to “ground” myself from time to time.
I would suggest that the work of Martin Buber encapsulates one aspect of ecopsychology–in some ways, perhaps the main thrust of ecopsychology, as I understand it. He discusses the evolution of I-it from a state of I-Thou. Separation versus unity. Both objectivity and unity are important, but many have lost touch with unity. I agree also that wilderness is key. I work with Koyukon Athabascans in Alaska. I’m struck by the potential for their traditional beliefs to touch the world with eco-healing.
Peter reminds us of Buber’s insights into a right relationship with the creator and by extension the world. In the I-Thou experience there is a reverence, a connectedness that is shared with the aspirations of ecopsychology. I appreciate his mention of an indigenous people who have in the past, and continue in the present, to live harmoniously with their environment.
What little I know about the people of the region who call themselves Koyukon Athabascans, includes that they are great storytellers. Perhaps we will tend to the narratives of our modern culture in ways that engender deeper, more reverent, more humble placement of ourselves in the web of life. I will add Buber to the list of additional recommended readings. Thank you Peter.
From an image encountered the other morning.
Black Moth
You would not hear
engage
there was no place
primal form I became
showed my aboriginal face
ground of your being
you had no choice
but to notice.
Extremely well written and fresh account of Eco-Psychology. The field and concept of Eco-Psychology has been around for over 20 years, yet it has been marginalised and left to the side. Len Cruz is revitalising it and giving it new rigour at a time when the urgency of transforming our relationship with the planet is at a peak. I am inspired by this blog and will read his book. I would offer something else though, neuroscience has shown us that beyond reflecting on your dreams and thoughts as he has invited us to do, we can shift our individual interior perceptions, our ego and therefore our relation to the planet. Through specific simple experiences, no more difficult than visualising, focused in specific ways we can change ourselves to be beings akin to the Navi. And, more importantly, we do not have to look to fantasy creatures like the Navi, real indigenous cultures around the globe are in that state of harmony with the planet, and we, all of us are hard wired for those experiences which are easy to tap into that put our egos and our souls in harmony with first, each other and as a natural unfolding that puts us in harmony with the planet. Healthy egos will not want to destroy the planet. The really tricky part is as Jung says, and I paraphrase, you will not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by going into your own darkness and embracing the rejected parts of yourself. Bringing to light the volcanos, hurricanes, and other destructive forces of our own psyche to light will stop our projecting them onto the planet.
Nita calls attention to the fact that we do not need to examine fantasy people like the Navi from Avatar when there are real indigenous people who can teach us how to live in harmony with the planet. She echoes Peter’s remark about the traditional beliefs of the Koyukon Athabascans of Alaska and the potential healing touch their beliefs might provide us.
I mentioned the Navi from Avatar in part as a subtle introduction to a film related seminar we have started trying to put together after the success of the seminar on The Black Swan. http://tinyurl.com/67u9za7.
I love that Nita tells us we are all hardwired for experiences of living in harmony with the planet. Several years ago I remember the fascination with accounts of an aboriginal people living on the island of Andaman that forms part the boundary between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. These islanders were feared dead due to the massive hit the islands took from the tidal wave. But they were spared and here is what National Geographic reported concerning the reason.
Their awareness of the ocean, earth, and the movement of animals has been accumulated over 60,000 years of inhabiting the islands. Oral history teachings and their hunter-gatherer lifestyle might have prepared them to move deeper into the forests after they felt the first trembles of the earthquake. To read more go to
I want to offer a rousing affirmation for Nita’s rejoinder about the cessation of our projecting the destructive contents of our psyche onto the planet.
DEEP APATHY is the key wordS for global ecology problems simply because the average person has an apathy towards all aspect of life: people, places and things that does not immediately concern him or her. None of us are immune to this psychological state of being for it grips us all to the point that individually we are unaware of it hold on us.
We all believe we care: careless is more like it.
Collectively this apathy translates to global problems because few have control of the world’s major resources and energy technologies, which allows for a small error to translates to global disaster.
The soul/psyche cannot live in the maelstrom of the unconscious (witness the dream) it need ego-consciousness to experience life (the ego succumbs to the unconscious during sleep): hence the compensentory nature of the unconscious alway guiding the soul/psyche towards a better way of experiencing life. LIFE is to be experienced and enjoy: there is no other purpose for existence.
What I find intriguing is that neighter the conscious or the unconscious knows of each other’s existence yet they interact at all times. We are aware that the collective unconscious is perfect so much so that it has become a God to the average person: an unknown superbeing. Yet, the world is a reflection of that perfection and yet the individual does not see God in the perfection of the world: it goes towards that DEEP APATHY I mentioned above.
Not until the majority of the race sees the perfection of the collective unconscious globally in all aspect of the Earth’s ecology will the ecological problems fade from the global stage.
The only way to achieve such a feat will be to change global politics from the RULING MERCHANT to those that are suppose to govern: THE PEOPLE. This can only take place when the individual and the collective realize that government is not necessary if all respects the planet as a reflection of God: SPIRITUAL LAW (collective unconscious).
Dear Len,
Your introduction fascinated me very much by its combination of jungian and other perspectives, and not least your example/analysis of the film Avatar, which is an exellent example of contemporary cultural expressions dealing with this new and growing field.
I have taken the liberty, inspired by your article to establish a group for “Eco-Psychology” on the global community now established for the global network Culture|Futures – the transtion to an Ecological Age, where I use your introduction as the first reference. You are welcome to sign into this network also and comment further on this. The link is http://culturefutures.ning.com/group/eco-psychology – but you may have to sign into our community web-site first. The overall website of this network is http://www.culturefutures.org – in the US we are doing a program in New York 6th jan, with the American Performing Arts Presenters at their world congress.
Just for your info, Culture|Futures is a global network I have co-founded the last few years for cultural change and ecology, involving also some of the worlds largest cultural organisations and networks as well as large cities such as London, Sao Paulo etc and other green stakeholders.
FYI, I am also a past president of the Int’ Association for the Study of Dreams, who its annual conference in 2010 in Asheville.
I would love to attend the upcoming seminar organised by the Ashevill Jung Center on this, but unfortunately I am based in Copenhagen, Denmark, but I have made a brief refence to it on above mentioned site.
Many regards
Olaf Gerlach-Hansen
ogh@culturefutures.org
Len,
Thanks for sharing some of your personal story. I appreciate hearing about your memories and recent back yard camp out. It stirs my own recollections and inspires my desire to spend more time outside re-connecting to the earth (and my body). Stories inspire while action IS. ———————— I just went out to look at the moon. It is hiding behind the clouds…the grass was cool…the air was fresh.
I wonder what would happen if more and more people began to share their stories of heartfelt resonance with the planet?? Might it awaken a collective passion and movement capable of creating change? What if the Earth was not our mother (perhaps the apathy we feel is somehow related to a collective negative mother complex?) What if the Earth became our lover?….or better yet…what if the Earth became ourselves (and She is really…from her dust we are created). Would we have the courage, and the love(self-love), and the choice then to truly live…to fight for the life of this amazing planet Earth?
My questions are to add to the conversation.
I share some poems as part of my story…and also to inspire perhaps…others.
Thanks again…and for the blog,
Debbie
A hundred thousand million beaded jewels
Walking in to pockets of heaven…every now and then
behind a flower patch – deeper in
I discover that the world has died away around me.
And I have come trance-fixed upon the sun,
glowing in the center of a daisy or echinacea flower.
Pollen once again surrounds me
and I am lost in the sweetest scent
lying flat upon my back.
Blue sky and swirling bundles of white cloud
come and touch my breast.
I am gone in this – way gone beyond yesterday,
beyond the last four footsteps I just took.
Life consumes me completely in the grass.
The soil bubbling up beneath me
wipes her clay red hand upon my face.
And I am dirty and saved…
welcomed back into the arms of a garden I never knew.
Touching completely the earth,
a heart beating strong for me
(for anyone willing to watch and wait through the nighttime unknown),
I awaken baptized in Her blood.
The morning dew touches me caressed in tears
and a hundred thousand million beaded jewels.
______________
A crossing over
A crossing over
the face of time
finds the Spirit falling
into this flesh.
And arms wide open
through the calling
welcome home
the last of the lost.
Tumbling home,
crawling home,
wondering
wherever is home.
In the beating,
beating,
beating
of a Heart singing on,
In the song of the singing
of the Earth.
Home is Here,
and Here,
and Here.
Debbie
I wanted to let your remarks percolate before replying. I cherished the closing lines of your verse that “Home is Here, and Here, and Here.” John Hill’s book “At home in the World: Sounds and Symmetries of Belonging” was a hymn to some of the ideas you’ve expressed. I wrote a review for Spring Journal of this book along with another. The journal is available at http://tiny.cc/l56t5 and the book at http://tiny.cc/9j727 Thanks for sharing.
Len
Hello Len,
I enjoyed what you had to say regarding this topic. As a young man I pursued an education and career in psychology but eventually left it because of the lack of this sort of perspective. My path led to field biology and then after twelve years of field work to landscape architecture with a practice that focuses on ecological restoration. “By healing the land we heal ourselves.” You may find fertile ground on our website at the address listed above. Please do check it out.
Craig
As someone who has little more than an intuitive belief in the relationship between our collective psyches and the environment, I would like to submit a dream I had during the height of the oil spill crisis.
DREAM: “I am watching a scene where A.N. (a very “mind-oriented” academic friend of mine) and George Clooney are walking down a path together. Try as he might, Clooney cannot get A.N. to connect with him. As they come to the end of the path and a dock, George jumps into the water and begins to thrash around, hoping A.N. will jump in and try to save him. Although Clooney can swim well, he hopes that maybe this will prompt A.N. to come into the water and finally connect with him. It does not. Just then a huge whale comes up under Clooney and lifts him up out of the water so that he is at eye level with A.N., who still does not respond. The whale submerges, allowing Clooney to go back into the water, but then lifts him up again to allow him to attempt to connect one last time. Getting no response, Clooney turns to gaze at the whale, whose eyes are deep, sad, and compassionate. At that point I also gaze deeply into these giant, deep eyes. Clooney then puts his hand on the whale’s head and says that “we” will help him.”
I awoke from this dream with a deep feeling of sadness. I named the dream “The Great Sorrow” and and collaged a picture of a whale coming up out of a woman’s chest as she lay on a sand beach with candles surrounding her. Some time later I felt compelled to reenter the dream and experience it from the perspective of each of the characters. “Becoming” A.N. and then Clooney was enlightening, but when I experienced the dream as the whale it was most revealing. As the whale, I swam around under the water for some time – appreciating the quiet and the quality of the images, sensations, and feelings. It made me think of direct emersion in the quantum energy field. Suddenly – as the whale – I became aware of the oil slick moving toward my part of the ocean, threatening this amazing and beautiful world. I could feel the great sorrow of the creatures whose domain seemed doomed to be irreversibly compromised. Suddenly I “saw” the connection between the pollution of the whale’s world – the ocean – and the pollution of the quantum field/spiritual reality. I could see how people’s greed and fear – all our negative thoughts and emotions and actions – were polluting the ultimate domain. And I realized how I, like Clooney in the dream, was beginning to turn my attention away from trying to get others to jump into the water (metaphorically speaking) and toward more directly affecting the plight of the whale and it’s home. In other words, I was being invited to more direct service to both the physical and spiritual environment as I avoided polluting these realms with my own negative “stuff”. In the year and a half or so since I had this dream, I have made some substantial changes in my personal life and am living out of a space of more consistent love. Maybe it is the small part I can play.
I write all this to say that, even among those not steeped in the conversations surrounding ecopsychology, perhaps a Spirit is moving in hearts and changes are being effected bit by bit.
Thank you Len and all for profound insights and personal experience helping me, and hopefully many others, to sustain our interest and need to contribute to our planet’s survival. I hope to do so in creating a foundation here in Switzerland where I live. Its primary aim will be to educate and promote respect for the environment and nature by a wholistic ecology, where psychecology, integrating the psyche and the spiritual dimensions from the viewpoint of analytical psychology will point us to the need for a radical change of the present paradigm. (Inspired by the writings and teaching of Brigitte Egger) I will let you know when it is officially sanctioned by the Federal authority here. In the meantime, well into my retirement, I meet few in circle of friends and others that have any interest in the global predicament. However, when I talk to the children in my village, they are very interested, concerned and connected to the world they live in and what their future will be. With the myriad problems of growing up I wonder if they will be able to sustain this interest. As for the “psychic numbing”, a real problem and I think a lot about ways of reaching people which will inspire them to get involved without blaming or judging them. I don’t have the whole answer or magic formula but I know how much my own awareness came from many sources: experiencing nature directly but also through poetry, music and literature that extolled the beauty as well as the the awesome and terrible force of the elements.
In addition to the already long and important reading list, you might like to read on the subject of indigenous learning, F. David Peat’s “Blackfoot Physics”. Also to read by him “Gentle Action*
Looking forward to staying connected . Valjeanne
Valjeanne
Thank you for your remarks and your thoughts about the youth and their interest. My own 17 year old daughter’s passionate interest in the environment inspires me. This afternoon she read a quote from The Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy that sates “In every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decision on the next seven generations.” If a generation is about 20 years, then we might ask what kind of world it would be if the people living on earth in the 1870s had deliberated and made choices with us in mind in the year 2011. Thank you for the suggested readings you mentioned.
Len
It is so encouraging to see Jungian psychology joining the conversation on how we can heal the horribly dysfunctional (suicidal/matricidal/fratricidal)human-nature relationship. Ecopsychologists and ecotherapists around the world are now engaged with what Dr. Mary Watkins and Dr. Craig Chalquist call “cultural (eco)therapeutics” and depth psychology has so much to contribute to this dialogue.
Len has done a wonderful job of pulling together so many different threads and still managed to give a coherent picture of several trends that are converging. One wonders wether their convergence bodes well for future generations or signals a decisive and even catastophic change. After reading Cormack McCarthy’s The Road and then seeing the movie, I often find myself living in a parallel universe in which his apocalyptic vision has already happened. But, it hasn’t and trying to reorient oneself to all the issues that Len so thoughtfully raises will undoubtedly take generations. I guess the only question is whether or not we have that kind of time. Tom Singer
Dr. Cruz, I have been meaning to open up a dialog with you, but you know how busy the world can make us. I was a student of Hillman back in the late 70′s and early 80′s at the University of Dallas, so I appreciated your memorium. However, what I wanted to respond to was your article on ecopsychology. I have been teaching archetypal psychology here at the formerly known as Pikeville College. I will be teaching a course in Cuzco, Peru entitled Ecopscyhology and the Aesthetics of spirituality in June. I was wondering if you had connections with or knew of people who had written about ecopsychology in Peru in terms of their sacred landscape? John HOwie
[...] to “in here” because we can’t be sure it is not also or even entirely “out there”![i] The exaggerated emphasis on the personal, interior, individual psychology has contributed to a [...]
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Thank you for your kind remarks. I hope you will post again (unless you already have). Len
Thanks for finally talking about >Ecopsychology: Revisioning Ourselves and the World <Liked it!