the flourishing point
Yesterday was a day of excursions to Cosmic Communities nearby. Jana and Lucy (who is visiting Adelaide from the Mulch Pit in Darwin) dropped in on Pete and Colleen at the family farm on the Fleurieu Peninsula. Mandy went with the grandkids to an Open Garden Day at Sophie's Patch in the Adelaide Hills.
Inspirations in Ecozoic Living!
Pete and Colleen raise a glass while Lucy plants a rosemary bush, in remembrance of our dear friend Wendy - the inspiration for so much of all of our gentle living.
Lucy and Jana brought home a bigger-than-our-heads heirloom broccoli from Pete and Colleen's and popped it right into the pan. Delicious and mild, but flavoursome.
Jana's turn to plant a rosemary remembrance bush for Wendy, part of the overall garden scheme that includes rosemary and lavender, and espaliered pear trees all around the edges of the garden.
Found object sculpture at Sophie's Patch
at Sophie's Patch
fabulous found object recycling with this garden "bed"
At yesterday's weekly Community meeting, we talked at length outcomes and expectations for Ecozoic Living.
It is hard to imagine that individuals undertaking a shift in consciousness in order to learn to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner is going to amount to anything. Shouldn't we be doing more - to say that climate change is an urgent, pressing reality is an understatement. And yet we know that "Reflection is indicative of deep learning, and where teaching and learning activities such as reflection are missing… only surface learning can result." (Biggs 1999 in King 2002) The key to sustained efforts, deepening efforts, at addressing climate change is learning.
The philosophy of individualism that emerged out of the Enlightenment was at first just a new and radical idea; a new consciousness. The interdependency - verified by evolutionary and ecological sciences and experienced as spiritual connectedness - at the heart of the New Universe Story is an idea that is catching on in various places and pockets of Western industrialised culture (and has always existed within many indigenous cultures around the world). It will/can/may come to permeate all the systems and activities of human culture.
Some work for the week ahead is to try articulating some rationale for Ecozoic Living. Asking the "why" question at least five times!
A funny thing happened on the way to figuring out next steps for the Community of the Cosmic Person: we realised that by playing to our strengths, we can create a Certificate in Ecozoic Living for ourselves and others.
One of us has been a professor of English Lit at the Uni for 20 years (recently promoted to Associate Professor - well done, M!)
Two of us have been writing adult education materials for 15 years.
One of us is in the midst of a Coursera specialisation "Journey of the Universe"
And so the course writing begins...
blue cornflower from the CCP HQ rooftop
This has been a week of big ideas and concrete plans.
J finished reading The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era - a Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry.
Wow.
The narrative of the universe, told in the sequence of its transformations and in the depth of its meaning, will undoubtedly constitute the comprehensive context for the future.
Soon, when the other two members of the starter community have read the book, we'll all be living within and relating to this "comprehensive context for the future." It's the key to the shift in consciousness required for the Great Work; a "functional cosmology" to guide awareness and action.
The Community set some goals this week: hoping to host a first event by this time next year and to give a first Community of the Cosmic Person award by then, too. Of course, no one is completely sure what any of this means or how to do it...but it's generative and exciting to have some goals to work towards.
Website development this week included filling in many of the practices of the Cosmic Person/Ecozoic Living.
It's a shame invasive species like the purple "Salvation Jane"are so pretty!
"Tickletank" is one woman's extraordinary experiment in "reduce, reuse, recycle." Irene Pearce has spent since 1998 creating a beautiful home, fully integrated into gardens and landscape, out of a 500,000 gallon concrete water tank. The CCP Team visited last week for inspiration in "learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner."
Jana writes, "When I first encountered The Great Work: Our Way into the Future by Thomas Berry, I immediately recognised it as a frame of reference with the power to give order and direction to the jumbled and often sporadic concerns I have for the state of the world, especially with regard to the environment.
"Berry's core idea of "human beings learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner" continues to inspire me. It's about 1) learning (one of my favourite things; 2) presence (something I value and practice; 3) the planet (my favourite place to live!); and 4) mutual benefit (win-win situations thrill me).
"So much of who I am - my commitments and consciousness (things I regularly think about) - can be described in terms of the Great Work. I am grateful to Berry for his life's work of giving us the Great Work."
The CCP team has spent the past week identifying and living with alternative words to the three Cosmological Imperatives around which the Great Work revolve. According to Berry, the Great Work consists of a shift of consciousness by which human beings come to realise and celebrate that these bio-evolutionary principles govern our lives just as they govern all life on Earth. Berry uses differentiation, subjectivity, and communion to describe the imperatives.
P writes, "These are the truths of the universe by which everything has to exist. The reason we're articulating them is because human beings (in dominant Western culture) live as if they aren't true.
"It's like if we were to try and live as if gravity weren't true. You'd just end up hurting yourself all the time and nothing's going to work right. To acknowledge the truth of gravity or these cosmological imperatives gives you a chance to live harmoniously."
The team was having trouble relating to these terms.
M, a literary scholar, comments, "These Enlightenment era words are the problem; they are Latinate and obtuse. I need something more accessible and embodied."
In order for the team to acknowledge and play with the Cosmological Imperatives more comfortably and creatively, we came up with some substitute words to trial for a while:
differentiation - particularity (what makes us unique)
subjectivity - agency (the ability to learn from our environment)
communion - unity (interdependency and connection)
We'll see how we go!
The team watched Journey of the Universe together - it features in a Coursera course Jana is taking.
Jana writes:
The movie made me think about 4 characteristics of the Cosmic Person -
connectedness: it suggests a radically de-personalised sense of being part of the whole and I find this liberating
subjectivity: the frame of reference changes - one is a subjective part of the universe rather than (or as well as) a particular individual
communion: the story is about the bond of all things being based on the shared energy and material of the "great flaring forth" (aka the Big Bang)
differentiation: these two realities - communion and differentiation - are somehow no longer dualistic; being unique configurations of the same energy and material means that both communion and differentiation are equally and concomitantly true
Today begins an experiment in living the Community of the Cosmic Person: human beings learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.
Thomas Berry calls this our "Great Work." He describes it as a reinvention of the species, by which he means a shift in consciousness from an anthropocentric culture to an ecocentric culture.
"The proposal has been made that no effective restoration of a viable mode of human presence on the planet will take place until...intimate human rapport with the Earth community and the entire functioning of the universe is reestablished on an extensive scale." (Berry, 1999. The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. 19)
Here we'll tell the story of three people who are committed to a collective mindfulness about making this shift in themselves and together creating a microcosm of this culture. The overarching task involved is mindfulness of our place in the universe.
"We think of a viable future for the planet less as the result of some scientific insight or as dependent on some socioeconomic arrangement than as participation in a symphony or as renewed presence to some numinous presence manifested in the wonderworld about us." (Berry, 1999. 20)
The hope is that our experiment will tell a story we can share with others about how to join the Community of the Cosmic Person - that is, ways to participate in the Great Work of learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. Our hope for ourselves is that our lives will deepen in meaningfulness and purpose in the face of all the challenges of our time.
The mindfulness journey we're embarking upon has nine key features, or characteristics of the Cosmic Person - a term coined and defined by Jana Norman. Here are the categories and characteristics, and we'll be unpacking their meaning in this blog as we go along:
cosmological imperatives (those realities that govern all life on Earth):
differentiation
subjectivity
communion
conscious awareness (particular attributes of our species)
transcendence
self-awareness
sensitisation
spiritual wellbeing (beneficial to human being, fulfilling the "mutually beneficial" aspect of The Great Work):
self-actualisation
consonance
connectedness
Here is the experiment team:
The Community of the Cosmic Person is set to launch on 1 October, 2016.
Here's who we are:
3 people living together in Adelaide, South Australia (with Jana taking the lead)
Here's where we hope our experiment in living the Community of the Cosmic Person will lead:
to the development of a network of people engaged in the Great Work who want to support each other with connection and resources
Here's how we hope to get there:
by paying daily attention to the Characteristics of the Cosmic Person in our lives and around us
by intentionally engaging in "learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner"
by reflecting on this journey and sharing it here
