Balancing the light

The first in a series of posts responding to content produced by the Deep Time Network. I’ve signed up for their Cosmology, Consciousness and Birthing the Ecozoic course, which begins on 23 September 2020. Here I’m responding to an Equinox special event presented on 10 September 2020.

all the light at the centre of a tulip

It’s good to know that darkness and light are only in balance twice a year. It’s good to know because that means the rest of the year is in process, balancing rather than being in balance. This feels familiar, like the everyday wrestling of shadow and light in Jungian terms. The presence of the unconscious shadow not always in equal, knowable measure in relation to consciousness, but more of a mixture and muddle most of the time. That’s my lived experience, anyway.

image from the Equinox Gathering with Stephan Martin and Maureen Wild, Deep Time Network 9 Sep 2020

The Deep Time Network equinox gathering via Zoom was geared towards celebrating the light and this blip of balance. Content that caught my attention revolved around the process of sunlight as absorption and emission: when we see a tulip, we see it radiating rather than reflecting. The tulip’s atoms absorb the sun’s energy and emit it afresh in constant relation. Everything is aglow with its own heat and light, absorbed in relation to the sun, as can be seen in images coloured to show infrared heat signatures of people on a city street at night.

This is enough for me: to feel part of this process of light. Like a tulip.

Shed Your Skin and Let's Get Started

What are you noticing?

Today, small squares of papery bark flutter down from the long trunks of the gum trees in the back yard. The big gum, the one that drew me to this place, stands covered in bark peels waiting for a liberating breeze; they look like the windows of an advent calendar deep into the season, most of them opened so that the anticipation is heightened not relieved.  A brief gust and the flakes fall like confetti. What are we celebrating? The final cool of morning as the sun starts pulling a hot blanket over these hills for another record-breaking day? How the cycles of things persist, and the constancy of adaptation? The invitation to shed my skin?

seeing the forests for the trees

resources for Ecozoic Living in the March 2019 Equinox Cosmic Connection newsletter

Click on the photo to link to resources for Ecozoic Living.

For an archive of Cosmic Connection past issues and to subscribe, please click here.

Cosmic Collecting 24 Nov 2018

posting by Jana

Schwartz, S.H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M.P. Zanna, ed. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25. Orlando: Academic Press, pp. 1–65; Rokeach, M. (1973). The Nature of Human Values. New York: The Free Press.

This week I participated in a Common Cause introductory workshop and masterclass session in Common Cause Communications over two days here in Adelaide. The scholarship to participate was such a gift: I learned so much about values and frames, and met some amazing people working on incredibly meaningful co-flourishing causes related to the environment, democracy, and asylum seeking. My thanks to the facilitator and co-founder of Common Cause Australia, Dr Eleanor Glenn for this opportunity and for creating such a collegial learning environment.

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WHAT IS COMMON CAUSE?

“Initially a social change report published by several UK NGOs, Common Cause is a large and growing civil society network working to rebalance cultural values for a more sustainable society. Values are a driving force behind many of our attitudes and behaviours, and a ubiquitous presence in advertising, media, politics, and third sector campaigns. Working at the level of values helps us address the structural causes of ecological, economic and social injustice.”

— https://valuesandframes.org/

WHAT DID I LEARN ABOUT VALUES & FRAMES?

I learned that a large number of values, or principles/motivations that guide (most subconsciously) our goals, attitudes, and behaviours, have been found to be universal and can be grouped into two categories: intrinsic and extrinsic.

The 58 values distilled from extensive research are mapped in the image above.

https://www.pexels.com/@joey-kyber-31917

“Intrinsic values are inherently rewarding to pursue.
Extrinsic values are based on external validation or reward. ”

— https://valuesandframes.org/

Researchers have further grouped these values into 10 motivational goals or values segments. These are the coloured labels in the segments on the map above.

These segments clump together into 4 broader sets.

Intrinsic value segments include self-direction, universalism, and benevolence.

Extrinsic value segments are achievement and power. Security operates differently, and stimulation and conformity/tradition have elements that relate to both intrinsic and extrinsic values.

The workshops, and the work of Common Cause generally, centres around helping organisations activate intrinsic values when engaging with people about their work. Research referred to in Common Cause materials indicates that intrinsic values are associated with greater pro-social and environmental attitudes and behaviours and that extrinsic values are associated with reduced pro-social and environmental attitudes and behaviours.

“Just like a muscle, our individual values are strengthened each time they are activated.”

— https://valuesandframes.org/

Frames are sets of associations that help order ideas. I found that the concept of frames is easiest to understand by example. One example Eleanor shared in the workshop was to invite us to think about taxes from two different frames: tax as a contribution and tax as a burden. Frames are a choice, and organisations can choose frames for communication that activate intrinsic values and help people reason about an issue from the organisation’s perspective.

To learn more, download resource guides at https://valuesandframes.org/downloads

For me, the Community of the Cosmic Person and the idea of Ecozoic Living activate the Openness to Change and Self-Transcendence segments of the values map:

What activities and associations help nurture your intrinsic values?

Cosmic Collecting 4 Nov 2018

posting by Jana

One of the resources featured in this post is the theory of the growth mindset by Carol Dweck. Dweck, C.S. & Leggett, E.L. (1988). A Social-Cognitive Approach to Motivation and Personality

I’m distracted as I write this, watching a magpie feed its fledgling on a branch outside my window. The young bird seems to be practicing foraging in between serves from the adult, picking away at the bark of the big pine. What are you noticing where you are?

Here are some resources for Ecozoic Living (learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner) that came across my path this week. You’ll find more resources for each of these items further down the post.

• the growth mindset

• the Order of the Sacred Earth

• Figuring, a new book from the creator of brainpickings.org

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The Growth Mindset

In the learning department, I was introduced to the work of Carol Dweck on mindset, specifically the difference between a growth mindset and fixed mindset:

growth mindset - the understanding that abilities and intelligence can be developed

fixed mindset - the belief that traits, intelligence, talents are given or fixed

Here’s a quick intro video, followed by a few links to learn more.

Want to learn more?

1. Maria Popova summarises Dweck’s mindsets work here at brainpickings.org. (short)

2. This article in the Atlantic is about what the growth mindset is and isn’t. (medium)

3. Order a paperback copy of the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. (long)

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The Order of the Sacred Earth

In conversation with a new friend over lunch in her back garden, with grunting male koalas for a soundtrack, I learned about an initiative founded by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Listug to bring people together in a community of vowed commitment in service to Earth.

It’s a self-organising movement of people living the question of ‘how do we become the best lovers and defenders of the Earth possible’ (from founder Skylar Wilson in the video below).

Want to learn more?

1. Here’s a review of the book Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action. (short)

2. Interviews with the founders. (medium)

3. Buy the book. (long)

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Figuring

One of my favourite in-box treats is the Sunday newsletter from brainpickings.org. In this week’s edition, blog creator Maria Popova introduces her new book, Figuring.

Figuring explores the complexities, varieties, and contradictions of love, and the human search for truth, meaning, and transcendence, through the interwoven lives of several historical figures across four centuries — beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists — mostly women, mostly queer — whose public contribution has risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson.

Like her blog, Popova’s book is about ‘an inquiry into what it means to live a good life.’

Want to learn more?

1. Check out brainpickings.org. (short)

2. Listen to Maria Popova’s On Being interview: https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/maria-popova-cartographer-of-meaning-in-a-digital-age (medium)

3. Buy the book. (long)

Context is Everything

posting by Jana

Once again, it’s been a long time between drinks. I find that PhD thesis writing, and the various articles and other writing that accompanies it, taps me out in terms of words. Each week I think about writing something about co-flourishing … and each week goes by with only my good intentions to show for it. And the guilt :(

Today I resolve to post, even if it is only words I’ve already written elsewhere on this website. Context for the Cosmic Person is on my mind a lot lately as I finish the final substantive chapter of my thesis which is an introduction to the Cosmic Person as a legal subject and the effect I envision this embodied, embedded and entangled legal person might have within the law.

Why Cosmic? It’s all about context:

It’s also all about connection. Find out more here.

On Connectedness & Reconnecting

posting by Jana

It's been a long time between drinks, as the saying goes. My last blog post was 31 March - wow. 

What's been keeping me away from the Flourishing Point? Ecozoic Living, of course. 

I have structured my commitment to Ecozoic Living - learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner - around three areas of focus: critical thinking, daily practice, and connecting with others through the Community of the Cosmic Person. Sometimes I can strike a balance of time and energy amongst the three, but at other times one or two areas just sort of take over.

In the past few months, I have been focused on meeting certain deadlines related to my PhD and to completing the training to become a certified nature and forest guide. I have also moved house - selling one and buying another - and paid a visit to family half-way around the world. It's been a busy time. 

The PhD is back to plodding along, the houses have settled (fingers crossed...as of Monday), the family trip is a fond memory, and the guide training is complete. Finally, some space in my brain and my days has opened up for reconnecting with community. 

So let's talk! 

Connectedness, in fact, is a common thread between the critical theory and the daily practice work that's been taking up so much of my time recently. For the PhD, I've been reading new materialism, particularly the work of quantum physicist and philosopher Karen Barad. In her book, Meeting the Universe Halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, Barad proposes that beyond everything being connected to everything else, everything brings everything 'else' into existence. There are no pre-existing entities that interact, but rather intra-action itself is the primary reality. The implication is that matter and meaning are co-emergent. Colloquially speaking, we really are 'making it up as we go along', with the 'we' being existence itself including human beings along with everything else. It's the 'along with' that counts, inviting a sense of participation or, as I like to call it, CoFlourishing. 

In terms of daily practice, the forest therapy guide training I've just completed emphasises reciprocity and relationship. Forest therapy is not a matter of going into the woods to get something out of it but rather spending time in nature connecting to self and others, including the non-human others with whom our existence is intricately interwoven. The primary practice is one of presence, invited through a simple question: what are you noticing? A daily practice of living this question sets the stage for participating in the CoFlourishing of people, place, and planet ... together. 

I invite you to 'like' the Facebook page for a nature connection collective that colleagues and I from the forest therapy training group have formed. We share resources and research about the practices of nature connection and post announcements about local forest therapy events. Meanwhile, I also invite you to live the question, 'What are you noticing?' 

Immersed ... and Emerging

after six weeks of picking up new skills and resources for CoFlourishing - we're back!
posted by Jana

CCP is a partner in delivering a program called Located! Being Onkaparingan - helping people connect to people & planet in their particular place (a beautiful and naturally diverse region south of Adelaide, South Australia)

I've just completed a 6-month practicum in nature and forest therapy guiding. What a journey! The practice is 5-star Ecozoic: it's all about learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. 

In a series of invitations, participants on a forest therapy/nature connection walk slow down, pay fresh attention with all of their senses, and engage in mindfulness practices that put the focus on reciprocity with nature. 

It's also an amazing practice for CoFlourishing of people, place, and planet ... together. In addition to invitations to experience connecting with nature, participants are invited to connect with one another. After most invitations, the group regathers in a circle to hear from each other, prompted by the simple and open-hearted question, 'What are you noticing?' To listen and be listened to, without judgement and with attention to one's authentic experience, is a not only a gift but also a conscious act of cultural repair. 

The CCP, through my involvement as a Certified Forest and Nature Therapy Guide, is participating in a number of local projects aligned with Ecozoic Living and CoFlourishing. Read more here (and subscribe to the quarterly newsletter if you'd like!) 

Meanwhile, my intention is to be more regular with blog posts now that the extra flurry of busy-ness is past (for the moment). Thanks for your patience while I was immersed in these off-line connections. 

It's a Meaningful Life

meaning-making as a pathway to CoFlourishing - fourth in the series on PERMA
posting by Jana

What's meaningful? What does it mean to have a meaning - full life? Whatever the actual content of what makes a meaningful life, which is no doubt unique to each person, the fact and act of making meaning is an important part of human flourishing. One could argue that the rest of the structure of what positive psychologist Martin Seligman has identified as components of human flourishing - Positive Emotions, Engagement, Positive Relationships, and Accomplishment (the P, E, R, and A of PERMA) constitute Meaning (the M). 

In the fourth week of the year's first journey into CoFlourishing: people, place, and planet ... together, the daily Cosmic Quotes, rather than suggest what meaning to make of life, offer simple reminders that meaning is there to be made, whatever that 'means' to each of us. 

Monday 22 January 2018
A quote from Alice Walker began the week's focus on meaning and the medium ended up being the message for this one. I was surprised to discover on watching the clip on the YouTube playlist to prepare this summary that the cicadas in the background almost obscured the audio. Good thing the quote was about surprise:

“Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. ”

— Alice Walker

Tuesday 23 January 2018
It was a noisy nature night again for this quote but being about affiliating with trees a little 'extra communion' with nature seemed fitting. This from Walt Whitman invites reflection on giving attention to what 'is' rather than what 'seems' as a pathway to meaning-making.

One lesson from affiliating with a tree — perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he (sic) likes or dislikes. What worse — what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about seems, (generally temporarily seems too,) and no trouble at all, or hardly any, about the sane, slow-growing, perennial, real parts of character, books, friendship, marriage — humanity’s invisible foundations and hold-together? (As the all-basis, the nerve, the great-sympathetic, the plenum within humanity, giving stamp to everything, is necessarily invisible.)

Wednesday 24 January 2018
What are the attitudes required to make meaning? Perhaps an important one is courage. It takes courage to reflect, to question, to experiment, to find out the hard way what matters - what fills us up and what empties us out. Today's quote on courage as:

... a kind of tenacious willingness; an attitude of being willing to try something
from psychologist Peter Fields in a Huff Post blog on 'How to Live a Meaningful Life'
 

Thursday 25 January 2018
Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018), 'a fierce thinker and largehearted, beautiful writer who considered writing an act of falling in love', was celebrated this week on one of my favourite meaning-making resources: brainpickings.org

I love the idea of questioning what is 'spare' time when life can be 'fully and vitally occupied'. 

“An increasing part of living at my age is mere bodily maintenance which is tiresome but I cannot find anywhere in my life a time or a kind of time that is unoccupied. I am free but my time is not. My time is fully and vitally occupied with sleep, with daydreaming, with doing business and writing friends and family on email, with reading, with writing poetry, with writing prose, with thinking, with forgetting, with embroidering, with cooking and eating a meal and cleaning up the kitchen, with construing Virgil, with meeting friends, with talking with my husband, with going out to shop for groceries, with walking if I can walk and traveling if we are traveling, with sitting Vipassana sometimes, with watching a movie sometimes, with doing the Eight Precious Chinese exercises when I can, with lying down for an afternoon rest with a volume of Krazy Kat to read and my own slightly crazy cat occupying the region between my upper thighs and mid-calves, where he arranges himself and goes instantly and deeply to sleep. None of this is spare time. I can’t spare it....  I am going to be eighty-one next week. I have no time to spare.”

— Ursula LeGuin

Friday 26 January 2018
American poet, critique, essayist, and novelist Laura Riding on thinking rather than just doing.

People who for some reason find it impossible to think about themselves and so really be themselves try to make up for not thinking with doing.

Saturday 27 January 2018
Letting nature do the talking - how a long horizon invites meaning making, offering breadth for thinking about the self apart so that our doing has depth of purpose.

These were all the quotes for this week on Meaning. What meaning making practices do you employ? Who are your meaning-making companions (in person, in books, in nature?)

Enjoy the journey!

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The purpose of these journeys via the Cosmic Quotes is to explore what it means to be a Cosmic Person, to live with sensitivity to and conscious awareness that we belong to the universe and that our lives are governed by interdependency, connectedness, and emergence. To be a Cosmic Person is to let this awareness support our wellbeing and direct our decisions and choices such that our lives become about participating in the flourishing of the whole community of life on Earth. It's about living a bigger story, a better story, and a beautiful story, the one about falling in love with the Earth over and over again. 

Walking with a Friend

exploring a third pathway to flourishing - positive relationships
posting by Jana

I suppose it's possible to imagine a genuinely flourishing solitary life, but (almost by definition) I don't know anyone who has accomplished it. It seems rather fitting that the centre point of the PERMA flourishing scheme by Martin Seligman rests on Positive Relationships, given the central role relationships play in most human lives. (Click here for an early journal article about the focus of positive psychology and its connection to human flourishing.)

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
-Raymond Carver 'Late Fragment'

Feeling beloved; be-loving others ...there is a magnitude of flourishing here that is difficult to surpass. And so we journey this week along the pathways of positive relationship. 

Monday 15 January 2018
The week began with a very quick quote but one that stirred a bit of reaction: is there an implied discounting of solitude? Does it seem to suggest that individuation, or being able to find our own way in the world, is not of value? Or, given the source of the quote - Helen Keller - maybe it is simply a remark on the experience of one woman who knew much more viscerally than most how dependent we all are on each other, every step of the way. 

I would rather walk with a friend in the dark then alone in the light. 

Tuesday 16 January 2018
When I think about what 'flourishing' means it has something to do with 'enough', with a sense of having or being enough, of being satisfied. Walt Whitman offers a second stepping stone along the positive relationship path to flourishing that highlights the role of friendship in the sense of 'enough.'

I have learned that being with those I like is enough.

Wednesday 17 January 2018

The mid-week quote featured a couple of proverbs on friendship, one from Turkey and one from Sweden. 

No road is long with good company.

Shared joy is double joy and shared sorrow is half a sorrow.

Thursday 18 January 2018
Traveling a little deeper into the notion of friendship, here's something from John O'Donohue that's alive with contemporary Celtic poetics. 

A friend is a loved one who awakens your life on order to free the wild possibilities within you.

Friday 19 January 2018
Every once in a while it's fun to let nature do the talking and this Cosmic Quote for a week on positive relationships as part of flourishing features human friends in their natural habitat - Friday night drinks and nibbles. 

Saturday 20 January 2018
For the second time this week, a quote is offered that sparks some reaction. What CS Lewis says about friendship may ring true in the sense that friendship does add value to life, but is it really true that it is not necessary for survival? I wonder. 

Friendship is unnecessary like philosophy like art like the universe itself it has no survival value rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

Sunday 21 January 2018
Returning to the contemporary Irish poet John O'Donohue for our closing remark on positive relationship, this last quote for the week describes a concept of the soul friend, or Anam Cara. 

Love allows understanding to dawn and understanding is precious. Where you are understood you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person's soul. This art of love discloses the special and sacred identity of the other person. Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person's individuality and soul. Love alone is literate in the world of origin. It can decipher identity and destiny.

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The purpose of these journeys via the Cosmic Quotes is to explore what it means to be a Cosmic Person, to live with sensitivity to and conscious awareness that we belong to the universe and that our lives are governed by interdependency, connectedness, and emergence. To be a Cosmic Person is to let this awareness support our wellbeing and direct our decisions and choices such that our lives become about participating in the flourishing of the whole community of life on Earth. It's about living a bigger story, a better story, and a beautiful story, the one about falling in love with the Earth over and over again.