Getting engaged ... in life

summing up a second pathway into flourishing - engagement
posting by Jana

It was our second week focusing on Martin Seligman's five points of human flourishing as pathways to Co-Flourishing of people, place, and planet ... together, which brought us to 'Engagement' as a theme. 

Here's Seligman in a 2011 article talking about engagement: 

The second element, engagement, is about flow: being one with the music, time stopping, and the loss of self-consciousness during an absorbing activity. I refer to a life lived with these aims as the “engaged life.” Engagement is different, even opposite, from positive emotion; for if you ask people who are in flow what they are thinking and feeling, they usually say, “nothing.” In flow we merge with the object. I believe that the concentrated attention that flow requires uses up all the cognitive and emotional resources that make up thought and feeling.

There are no shortcuts to flow. On the contrary, you need to deploy your highest strengths and talents to meet the world in flow. There are effortless shortcuts to feeling positive emotion, which is another difference between engagement and positive emotion. You can masturbate, go shopping, take drugs, or watch television. Hence, the importance of identifying your highest strengths and learning to use them more often in order to go into flow.

'Hence the importance of identifying your highest strengths and learning to use them more often in order to go into flow.' This defining aspect of 'engagement' sent me on a quest for inspiration from people known to have honed their highest strengths: famous writers and elite athletes, for example. 

Monday 8 Jan 2018
As a launch pad for exploring engagement, we started the week with musings on the term's etymology. The word 'engage' comes from the French word for 'to pledge,' which is of course the basis of its association with betrothal and marriage. More generally, however, the word means 'to occupy or attract (someone's interest or attention)' and synonyms include engross and absorb. 

For positive psychologist Lynn Soots, engagement as a component of human flourishing can also take a more generic form:

Engagement can be deep states in which we purposely create an extended period of time that includes a passion such as a hobby, a technique or a skill, and commitment to performance. This is just one aspect of engagement as engagement is not limited to long-term binding activities. Engagement can be a choice to engage in life ... 

I wonder about the mutually enhancing relationship between the two states of engagement: the deeply immersive is a concentrated version that serves as an invitation to imagine how life in general can attract our attention and absorb us in its details, beauties, challenges. And to cultivate engagement in our lives without the pressure of developing an all-engrossing hobby or vocation. As Soots reminds her readers at The Positive Psychology People, flourishing through engagement can also be about being 'open to and willing to initiate, create, and savour experiences that fuel our inner (and outer) wellbeing.'

Tuesday 9 Jan 2018
In the first part of the week, we focused on the immersive sense of engagement, the flow notion of being deeply absorbed in some one particular activity. The first quote of the week was from author of National Velvet fame, Enid Bagnold, who speaks of writing in ways that communicate the sense of being engrossed and absorbed. Interestingly, her craft absorbs her in life. 

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything ... It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.

Wednesday 10 Jan 2018
Athletes are quintessential exemplars of 'flow', and sports philosopher Michael Novak describes the moment of unity (another aspect of definition of engage is to join together or unite as regards parts in machines, which raises interesting points to ponder about the machinery of marriage and the athlete as machine).

This is one of the secrets of sport. There is a certain amount of unity within the self, and between the self and the world, a certain complicity and magnetic mating, a certain harmony that conscious mind and will cannot direct ... the discovery takes one's breath away. 

Thursday 11 Jan 2018
Too engaged (in whatever I was doing?) to post a quote! Practicing what I preach and all that ...

Friday 12 Jan 2018
Near the end of the week we moved into the more generalised sense of being absorbed in life. Walt Whitman is perhaps the great ambassador of such:

This is what you should do:
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and the crazy,
devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people ...
re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem. (Leaves of Grass)

Saturday 13 Jan 2018
Today's quote was short and sweet:

I intend to live life, not just exist. 
- George Takei

Sunday 14 Jan 2018
To close the week's focus on engagement, we switched from an implicit understanding of how our own flourishing through engagement enables, conspires with, co-incidences the flourishing of the whole community of life on Earth into an explicit naming of this symbiotic relationship: as we are part of life, so our flourishing participates in the flourishing of the whole. 

Mythologist Joseph Campbell invites us to imagine our heroic role in bringing vitality to life by living our own story of vitality: 

The influence of a vital person vitalizes ... People have the notion of saving the world by shifting it around and changing the rules and so forth. No. Any world is a living world if it's alive and the thing to do is to bring it to life. And the way to bring it to life is to find in your own case where your life is, and be alive in yourself. 

Living questions and invitations
arising out of this week's journey into engagement as part of flourishing (as part of co-flourishing of people, place, and planet): 

• What do you find absorbing? 
   
• You are invited to imagine your experiences of flow as part of the overall vitality of life. 
   
• Being engrossed in something you enjoy can feel quite self-indulgent, like a turning away from greater responsibilities and caring for others and the Earth. What do you embrace and what do you resist about the idea that your own vitality is essential to the world's vitality?

What other questions and invitations arise for you when you reflect on engagement? You're invited to share your thoughts and get some discussion going in the comments section. Or here.

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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. 

Feeling our way to flourishing

summing up a week on cultivating Positive Emotions as a pathway to co-flourishing
posting by Jana

The daily Cosmic Quote program on YouTube is off to a fresh start this year with a five-week focus on human flourishing. Due to the inherent interdependency of the universe, human flourishing is integral to the flourishing of the whole community of life on Earth (or as we like to call it around here: co-flourishing of people, place, and planet ... together). 

Positive psychologist Martin Seligman identifies five components of human flourishing; flourishing being something beyond happiness and unrelated to 'having it all.'

It might be a good idea at the outset to check in on a dictionary definition of the term 'flourish':

flourish /ˈflʌrɪʃ/
verb

1. (of a living organism) grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly congenial environment.

healthy * vigorous * congenial environment - that's what we're talking about! 

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The five components of human flourishing identified by Seligman create the acronym PERMA, which is pretty fun given the association with permaculture, a system of looking after people and land with the intent of mutual, permanent flourishing. 

P - positive emotion

E - engagement

R - positive relationship

M - meaning

A - accomplishment

Here is the 'study version' of the journey we undertook in our first week of exploring the theme 'flourishing': positive emotions. You are invited to follow the links for a deeper journey with the theme. 

Monday 1 Jan 2018
After introducing the theme of flourishing and its components, the first positive emotion under the spotlight was gratitude. Gratitude was chosen from a 'top 10' list compiled by Dr Barbara Fredrickson, author of Positivity. 

Gratitude is the fairest blossom that springs from the soul. Henry Ward Beecher

The question for living as a Cosmic Person arising from this focus is, 'How do you express gratitude in your life as part of your own flourishing? What's your gratitude practice?'

Tuesday 2 Jan 2018
Here's a good one: joy. Read more from Rollo May on the vital difference between happiness and joy.

Joy is an overflowing of inner energies and leads to awe and wonderment. Joy is a release, an opening up; it is what comes when one is able to genuinely 'let go.' Joy is new possibilities ... It is an unfolding of life. Rollo May

Wednesday 3 Jan 2018
Taking up a different tone, the focus for mid-week was on serenity. 

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity that nothing is. Thomas Szasz

One of the best lines in the Australian cult classic The Castle forms the question of the day, 'How's the serenity?' 

Thursday 4 Jan 2018
It turned out to be impossible to find a quote about the positive emotion of amusement. It was belittled by most as some sort of lower order emotion. How dull! Why not be counter-cultural and cultivate amusement as a pathway to co-flourishing of people, place, and planet?!  Thanks to Community members for your reports from the field on what amuses you! (scroll the FB group to explore)

Friday 5 Jan 2018
From the Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, Lewis Thomas describes with a certain poetry how the Earth is a source of endless, begging the question for flourishing: What interests you? What keeps you 'awake and jubilant with questions'? 

Saturday 6 Jan 2018
It seemed appropriate to choose the closely linked emotions of awe and wonder for Epiphany, a Christian holy day commemorating the visit of wise men from the East to the infant Jesus, evoking awe and wonder (Who is this child? What are these gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh?)

Awe and wonder can be responses to what is revealed; revelation being the common use of the term epiphany as in 'to have an epiphany'. 

The more clearly we focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction. Rachel Carson 

The connection between human flourishing and the flourishing of the whole community of life on Earth is evoked in this simple note of sagacity by one of the most famous female scientists, known for her close powers of observation of marine ecology as well as her detailed exposé of the harmful effects of the pesticide chemical DDT throughout the entire food chain. 

Sunday 7 Jan 2018
all you need is love ...

The Journey this Week
has been about cultivating positive emotions.  We belong to the universe with such interdependency that your wellbeing is interwoven with the wellbeing of the whole community of life on Earth. You are invited to flourish! 

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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. 

Constellations of Awakening

posting by Jana

I've just finished a season of presenting at conferences about the Cosmic Person as a way of re-conceiving the legal subject or person at law. I argue for law to take greater account of the human being in context as opposed to the highly abstracted ideal of the rational, autonomous individual that's been very influential in Western culture. The effect of the rational autonomous individual as the chief 'player' at law has been to privilege the 'individual life project' in legal decision-making. It's time, I argue, to value the project of life - interdependent, connected, and emergent - by remembering ourselves as part of the whole community of life on Earth not apart from or above it. 

At some point over the next few weeks I intend to sit down with my notes from all three conferences: The Green Institute's 'Everything is Connected', the Australian Earth Laws Alliance 'Inspiring Earth Ethics: Linking Values and Action', and Law, Literature and the Humanities Association of Australasia's 'Dissents and Dispositions'.  So many new connections, such a flurry of new ideas. And I look forward to the keynotes and so on being uploaded to those websites so I can review the highlights (you might want to check them out, too). 

The title of this post relates to a notion I picked up at the last conference, 'Dissents and Dispositions.' In a presentation on old and new materialism, Professor Chris Tomlins of UC Berkley Law included the phrase 'constellations of awakening.' It refers to critical theorist Walter Benjamin's proposal that 'ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars.' From the Oxford Reference:

Walter Benjamin famously proposed in the ‘Epistemo-Critical Prologue’ to Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (1928), translated as The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1977), that ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars. That is to say, ideas are no more present in the world than constellations actually exist in the heavens, but like constellations they enable us to perceive relations between objects. It also means ideas are not the same as concepts, nor can they be construed as the laws of concepts. Ideas do not give rise to knowledge about phenomena and phenomena cannot be used to measure their validity. This is not to say the constellation is purely subjective or all in our heads. The stars in the night sky are where they are regardless of how we look at them and there is something in how they are positioned above us that suggests the image we construct of them. But having said that, the names we use for constellations are embedded in history, tradition and myth. So the constellation is simultaneously subjective and objective in nature. It is not, however, a system, and this is its true significance for Benjamin, who rejects the notion that philosophy can be thought of as systemic, as though it were mathematical or scientific instead of discursive. Benjamin developed this notion further in his account of the arcades in 19th-century Paris. Theodor Adorno adopts and adapts constellation in his account of negative dialectics, transforming it into a model. The notion of constellation allows for a depiction of the relation between ideas that gives individual ideas their autonomy but does not thereby plunge them into a state of isolated anomie.

So the constellation is simultaneously subjective and objective in nature. That's of interest to me as a way to wonder about the ideas I carry around and how they relate to one another. The mixture of objective and subjective that cannot be collapsed or fully picked apart: there is an invitation in this for me to hold lightly my ideas and the system of meaning I think they create for me. What I hold as truth is always a mix of the observable and the perceived...with all the filters and biases perception entails. 

If you had to pick out a particular star of 'truth' from amongst your constellations of awakening today, what would it be? 

Inspiring Earth Ethics

posting by Jana

One of the astonishing grass trees covering the Nathan campus of Griffith University in Brisbane.

I've just returned to Adelaide from a wonderfully provocative conference in Brisbane hosted by the Australian Earth Laws Alliance. Many of the presentations will be available on their website soon. 

One of my favourite 'take-aways' is a statement by conference speaker Sallie Gillespie, who is a Jungian psychologist and author of soon to be published Sea Change: How Engaging with Climate Change Changes Us.

“Conversation is the alchemical task of changing consciousness.”

— Sallie Gillespie

The Community of the Cosmic Person is a community of support for a changing consciousness: from human beings in Western industrialised culture destroying the planet to human beings everywhere learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. 

The focus of the Community is on conversation...here in the comments section, on the Facebook page, in the Facebook group, and face to face. 

Workshop in Ecozoic Living at the Inspiring Earth Ethics conference. 

At the conference I had two opportunities to generate some conversation about Ecozoic Living and being a Cosmic Person. Here are bits and pieces from the workshop and a panel presentation. 

Thomas Berry believed that the wisdom to make the necessary shift is a available to us and he drew attention to four reservoirs: indigenous cultures, women, science, and the classical tradition. 

It's fascinating to think of science as a wisdom tradition: not simply a knowledge base but also a source for learning how to live and for giving life meaning. 

“With our empirical observations expanded by modern science, we are now realising that our universe is a single immense energy event that began as a tiny speck that has unfolded over time to become galaxies and stars, palms and pelicans, the music of Bach, and each of us alive today. The great discovery of contemporary science is that the universe is not simply a place, but a story - a story in which we are immersed, to which we belong, and out of which we arose. ”

— Brian Swimme & Mary Evelyn Tucker 'Journey of the Universe'

The rest of the workshop focused on three ethics that emerge out of the idea of Ecozoic Living: learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.

Learning: implies an ethic of openness
Presence: implies an ethic of participation
Mutual Benefit: implies and ethic of reciprocity

Unpacking these together with the group in conversation was fun, especially around a point raised about why the Ecozoic is phrased as 'learning to be present to the planet' instead of 'learning to be present with the planet.' One of the participants suggested that 'to be present to the planet' implied an active responsiveness, which fit well into the conversation about activating an Ecozoic ethic. 

In the panel presentation I talked about resetting the reference point in Western culture (specifically in the law, which is my area of research) away from the isolated self towards the self in context. The Cosmic Person is the person in context, aware of connection and drawn to participating in the co-flourishing of people, place, and planet. 

One of the real highlights of the conference was a forest bathing experience led by my colleague in the practice Alex Gaut of Nature & Wellbeing Australia. It was so lovely to be invited to put the Ecozoic ethic into practice in this experience of learning to be present to the planet. 

A forest bathing participant a the Inspiring Earth Ethics Conference activating Ecozoic Living by learning to be present to the planet.  

Conversation being the alchemical task of changing consciousness...please know you're invited to join the conversation by commenting here or participating in the Facebook communities mentioned above. Activating the Ecozoic is a shared enterprise as much as a personal commitment, defined by participating in the co-flourishing of people, place, and planet together. In other words, your presence in the conversation is desired/required! 

Practical EcoSpirituality: Not an Oxymoron?

posting by Jana

Yesterday I re-entered the familiar space of progressive spirituality, a space I inhabited in my professional life for 25 years until launching into a PhD and convening this community.

I was invited as one of three speakers for a morning of input and conversation on 'authentic spirituality for the 21st century.' Mark Kickett, the Development Officer of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, and Anne Hewitt, a chaplain on an interfaith team at Flinders Medical Centre, presented immersive talks about aboriginal and Celtic spirituality, respectively. 

We all found ourselves meeting at the point of interconnection as the heart of spirituality. Everything is connected, a reality that grounds us and moves us to compassionate action. 

I was, of course, talking about Ecozoic Living for my part. I titled my talk, Ecozoic Living: A Practical EcoSpirituality. By 'practical' I was signalling the possibility that ecospirituality is as much about going out from nature as going into it. Here's a bit of the introduction to my talk:

What I’m reaching for in the idea of a practical eco-spirituality is a framework for living that simultaneously feeds our spirits with reflective practices and guides our actions on behalf of others and the world we share. I’m looking for a pathway to co-flourishing: my own flourishing, the flourishing of the places and communities in which I find myself, and the flourishing of the whole community of life on Earth.

I’ve always been on a pathway into nature as a source of spiritual nourishment, but it wasn’t until I encountered an idea from Thomas Berry that I learned to articulate an ethical pathway leading out from nature. A complete spiral path of practical eco-spirituality – going in/going out – emerges for me in Berry’s idea of the Ecozoic Era.

The Ecozoic Era is a vision of a time when human beings will learn to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.

Obviously, there are human beings and entire cultures who embody the Ecozoic and have for millennia. But dominant Western culture has evolved according to a radical discontinuity: in the classical period with the elevation of the mind over the body; within the prevailing Christian tradition that demonised bodies – especially the bodies of women and the Earth – in the doctrine of original sin; and in the context of political, social, and scientific revolutions that forged a social imaginary of mastery and control instead of mutuality and coexistence.

As we thought, so we acted: disconnection led to objectification and objectification led to exploitation and exploitation has led to devastation.

I believe the vision of the Ecozoic can lead to transformation in the human-Earth relationship within Western culture if activated as a framework for living; as a practical eco-spirituality.

I hadn't explicitly named the practices of Ecozoic Living - learning, learning to be present, learning to be present to the planet, and learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner - as spiritual practices before this talk. But the notion sits well with me, for a few reasons: 

1.     These practices engage the big questions: Who am I? Who are we? Why are we here?

2.     They address the big relationships: self, cosmos, others.

3.     They pursue the big tasks: finding meaning, transcending, connecting, becoming.

Here is more from the talk, and here is a link to the full PDF.

I wonder: which of the practices do you connect with most easily and which do you find most challenging? 

learning
The spiritual practice of learning is about allowing ourselves to be changed by this fact: that the universe has evolved in us the capacity for self-reflective consciousness. We can choose to participate in the flourishing of the whole community of life on Earth. This is a better story than the one that imagines us as separate from or in opposition to nature. We can find all the energy we need to live this better story not only in the awe and wonder of the new universe story but also in our own nature love stories.

learning to be present
This practice is about opening up to the world as it is, with courage, clarity, and calm.

The practicality of the spiritual practice of learning to be present shines through in this teaching from Tibetan Buddhist master Chogyam Trungpa that Margaret Wheatley includes in her discussion of emergence in So Far From Home: Lost and Found in our Brave New World: 

We cannot change the world as it is,
But by opening ourselves to the world as it is,
We may find that gentleness, decency, and bravery are available –
Not just to us but to all human beings.

In other words, as Margaret Wheatley comments on this teaching, ‘If we fully accept the world as it is – in all its harsh realities – then we can develop the very qualities we need to be in that world and not succumb to that harshness.’

learning to be present to the planet
This is the point of the spiral pathway connected directly to the Earth. This is where we sit in nature and watch the interaction of bees and flowers. This is where we lean against the tree and pay attention to the inherent reciprocity of our relationship with that tree: as we breathe out, the tree breathes in, and we breathe in as the trees breathes out.

The practicality of this spiritual practices lies in setting our rhythms to those of the universe and the earth: rhythms of interdependency, connectedness, and emergence.

learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner
This is the point of the spiral pathway reaching out into the world in the ethic of mutual benefit.

Activating the Ecozoic as a practical spiritual framework is testing our participation in the human-Earth relationship – in every thought, word, and deed – with the litmus of mutual benefit.

I wonder: What are you noticing about your responses to my descriptions of these practices? I welcome your comments and conversation! 

Moving On and Reaching Out

posting by Jana

the cat on moving day. unimpressed. 

Over the last 10 days, we've moved the Community of the Cosmic Person HQ. It's a move towards deeper co-flourishing (even if the cat isn't convinced). The new HQ has an actual garden on the ground as opposed to a rooftop makeshift found-object (aka milk crates) cobbled together attempt at growing a few things. It's got a good roof for solar panels, and a square kitchen that invites group cooking and eating and connecting. The neighbourhood is mixed use and mixed population, rippling with gentle new waves of migration flowing into an Old World multi-generational pool of established market gardens, cafes, and footpath conversations.

And in the reaching out department, I've set up a Patreon page. Patreon is a place where people can pledge to financially support my work as the Convener of the Community of the Cosmic Person. I like this new level of accountability and of taking myself seriously in this work. My anti-marketing marketing coach, Carmel, has been incredibly helpful in directing me to clarify what I really want - the planet to flourish - and what I think it takes to work on this passion: helping other people to flourish, which to me means to live lightly, meaningfully, and interdependently as part of the whole community of life on Earth. 

I don't know what to make of the timeline from first having the idea for the Community of the Cosmic Person in the backseat of the car whilst driving across the Hay Plain between New South Wales and Adelaide. When was that? 18 months ago or something. Is it a long or a short time to have established a community and created spaces in which we can meet and content which we can engage? I don't know and it doesn't really matter. I'm blown away by the simple fact that it is, and I have, and we are. 

Thanks to you, we are. Thank you for being here and for sharing the CoFlourishing journey. 

yours in cosmic connection - Jana

the Cosmic Cat, just because

Barefoot at the Embassy

posting by Jana

Over the weekend I attended the Green Institute Conference 'Everything is Connected' in Canberra. This think-tank event covered a wide range of progressive/Green political agenda items like doughnut economics, Democracy in Colour, and 'truthiness' in politics. I was there to talk about the Cosmic Person as an image of the human-Earth relationship in law and life, on a panel about connecting with nature. 

The event began, as most do in Australia, with a welcome to country ceremony presented by the traditional owners of the area in which the meeting is being held. This one was like none other I'd ever experienced. 

We gathered in the park facing Old Parliament House, now a museum to the development of democracy in Australia. More notably, we gathered at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. 

This is a place of welcome and sovereignty for all Aboriginal people of Australia. It is an historical landmark, but it is also a working embassy where people continue to work for the recognition of the sovereignty of the hundreds of Aboriginal nations to whom this country belongs (and has belonged for over 60,000 years). This coming weekend, for instance, the embassy is hosting an event to formalise treaties amongst the first nations  as a step towards treaty recognition between these nations and Australia. 

As part of the welcome, Uncle Les Coe of the embassy invited a small number of us visitors to enter the sacred circle and share in the dance. How could I not? (black suit, orange scarf next to Uncle Les in the blue tank top and shorts)

I've never been invited to connect with someone else's country so literally. I'll never forget how humbling and gracious this single shuffling barefoot circuit around a sacred fire felt (a fire tended continuously since 1998); how honoured I felt to enter a dance with the earth that has gone on forever and will go on forever, as long as there are peoples who respond to the call to tend the fire and touch the earth.

May I - and you - may we always be counted amongst them. 

YEAR TWO: RELAUNCH

NOW WE KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING

post by Jana

The Community of the Cosmic Person has been getting to know itself over the past year and now we can finally say, 'We know what we're doing.' 

We are nourishing the flourishing of people, place, and planet together
by inviting people to take up Ecozoic Living. 

Ecozoic Living is about learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. 
It's a pathway of discovery and engagement:

learning
active wondering about what it means to 'flourish' as a part of the whole community of life on Earth
learning to be present
opening up to the world as it is, with courage, clarity, and calm
learning to be present to the planet
becoming aware of the inherent interdependency of life
learning to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner
participating in the flourishing of the whole community of life on the planet

This is a spiral pathway - wherever one enters and engages leads to flourishing.

And so...we begin. 

Year of Living the Community: Week 52

ONE DOWN...LIFETIME TO GO

posting by Jana

The journey of growing into the Community of the Cosmic Person began a year ago this week. 

Then we were talking to ourselves - 3 people living in community exploring the notion of becoming Cosmic Persons. 

Now other people are talking about it too

on the Facebook page

in the Facebook conversation group

on Twitter

Then there were hunches about how to play a part in the Great Work of our time, shifting from a time of human devastation of the planet into the Ecozoic Era: a time when people from cultures that have dominated nature for centuries will learn to be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.  

Now the Community of the Cosmic Person exists with online community, support, and resources to inspire, connect and equip people for Ecozoic Living. 

Then the issue that spurred us on had a feeling but not a name. 

Now we've got the name: we're calling it 'planet panic.' It's the feeling of learned helplessness and hopelessness in the face of overwhelming evidence for and, increasingly, lived experiences of anthropogenic climate change and ecosystem destruction. 

The Community of the Cosmic Person was born out of the despair that can overwhelm people who both love the Earth and read the news. People like us. That exhausting and often immobilising sense of desolation is what we're aiming to respond to by telling a better story about the human-Earth relationship. 

Now we've figured it out. The Community of the Cosmic Person is a resource network for recovery from planet panic. 

Then - in the coming months and years - the network will grow in people and tools for empowering a better way to love the Earth as it is and where you are. 

With gratitude for all the early adopters who, with patience and goodwill, have helped us clarify what we're on about, it's time to step across the threshold into a second year of being and becoming. 

Year of Living the Community: Weeks 49, 50, 51

TURNING THE PAGE: COMMUNITY RECOLLECTIONS FOR SEPTEMBER

posting by Jana

unfurling...

The following is a recap of content shared in the Conversation Community of the Cosmic Person Facebook group during September 2017. The group is open to everyone interested in sharing inspiration, connection, and resources for Ecozoic Living! As you'll see, it's been another rich month in Cosmic Community. 

What has the Cosmic Conversation – and the journey of Ecozoic Living shared in this place of cyberspace – been about in September 2017?

Believing that a recap makes things ‘sticky’, as in brings them back to mind so they have another shot at sticking, and that reviewing content can spark fresh insights, here’s my go at summing up the conversation last month, lightly catalogued and categorized.

Cosmic Quotes featured lots of 1-minute entries with nature doing the talking because I was away in beautiful places doing lovely things…the places inspired the content; the lovely things distracted me from digging up quotes.

Nature Therapy got quite a guernsey this past month, in part because both Cosmic Person Lucy and I were at training to become guides for the practice (and Cosmic Person Pauline took part in our very first public guided walk – cheers, Pauline, for making the drive from Melbourne to Warburton). Cosmic Person and Certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide Alex posted a link to an event she’s running in November: a Nature Remedy Retreat, which looks absolutely amazing.

Thanks to Cosmic Person Lucy for her blog entry about nature’s curative powers, which may be news to Westerners but is at the heart of the human-Earth relationship of indigenous peoples around the world.

An article was posted this month about rivers and forests as potent health tonics, by Rebecca Lawton at Aeon Magazine.

Fresh definition was given to a number of terms and ideas, including:

· the idea of sauntering (thanks to John Muir and Cosmic Person Bek)

· the idea of planting ourselves at the gates of hope: truthtelling, resistance, and joy in the struggle (thanks to Victoria Safford and Cosmic Person Jeremy)

· the new (now oldish) movement towards new consciousness in the West that sees the earth as a single organism and recognises that an organism at war with itself is doomed (thanks to Carl Sagan and Cosmic Person Pauline)

· the generative, purposeful idea of learning to see in the dark (thanks to Joanna Macy and Cosmic Person John)

· the powerful narrative of the seven sisters dreamtime story that rivals any and all the great narratives of creation (thanks to the National Museum and Cosmic Person Isabel)

· the beginner’s guide to biogeography (thanks to thoughtco.com and Cosmic Person Mandy)

· the three creative dynamics of cosmogenesis (thanks to Glenys Livingstone and Cosmic Person Pauline)

· the pathway to true belonging (thanks to Brene Brown and Cosmic Person me/Jana)

· the switch from problem solving to ‘mobilization of creative vision’ (thanks to Abundant Community and Cosmic Person me/Jana)

Opportunities to engage with experiences related to Ecozoic Living were offered, including:

· Nature Remedy Retreat offered by Cosmic Person Alex

· Pachamama Alliance ‘Get Grounded’ event suggested by Cosmic Person Riki

· Go Deep Green online course for sourcing renewable energy for loving the Earth created by CCP

Celebrations of Ecozoic Living and Cosmic Community were tagged, including:

· a feature on ABC’s Gardening Australia on The Mulch Pit, a fabulously mutually beneficial permaculture community garden in Darwin, highlighting the cultivating leadership of Cosmic Person Lucy

· a little clip of an installation for Splash Adelaide featuring a visual and audible experience of the cosmic ray bombardment that surrounds us at all times

· an invitation to share photo albums of close observation of place (you’re encouraged to scroll the page, find the entry, and add your own!)

Commentary on the Earth system this month included a blog post on the CCP website of my reflections on personal experiences of hurricanes and what it felt like to be half a world away as my home region was bombarded by three massive storms in a row.

New offerings from the Community of Cosmic Person this month featured the launch of the online course, Go Deep Green: Sourcing renewable energy for loving the Earth. The course is designed to inspire, connect, and equip people who love the Earth and don’t want to give up their advocacy and engagement with eco issues but feel overwhelmed and even despondent about the realities of species extinction, ecosystem collapse, and earth exploitation.

The course is off to a strong start, with 10 early adopters enrolled! It’s open all the time; it’s free; and it’s quick but (hopefully you’ll agree) rich with content. I encourage you to give it a go!

Comments, Likes, and Shares are encouraging and enriching for the whole Conversation Community, so please keep engaging as often as you can. Thank you to everyone who contributed this way over the past month, and to everyone who posted content for us to engage.

Please forgive and correct me if I have overlooked your contribution in September; it will be no reflection on how valuable your participation is but rather on how feeble my powers of observation and recollection are!

This space to share in Cosmic Community means a great deal to me as I continue to explore and embrace Ecozoic Living. I hope you feel the same way. If there is something that could be happening here that would enrich the experience for you, please let me know in comments or PM.

And now…what shall we talk about in October?