Rooted and Rising

I am kneeling on a sunlit wooden floor in the middle of the circle. My eyes scan the five natural objects in front of me: a pile of dry leaves, a stick, a rock, a palm frond and a wooden bowl. Where to begin? It’s the first day of a workshop called The Power of Nature and these seemingly inert objects have taken on a resonant power all their own. They are willing me to speak on their behalf.

Dare to care

Nature, such is her power, has drawn me to this workshop, into the circle, brought me to my knees to be the first volunteer to share the truth about what connects all humans, love and loss, specifically loss of the natural world. With a shaky hand, I pick up the palm frond symbolic of guilt and shame, shielding my face from the raw, messy crying cascading out like a river in full flood.

The words spill out juddering and random, and the gist is this. Through my own complicity as a passive consumer in the most extractive region on earth, the Middle East, I have been part of authoring the collapse of our ecosystem. My daughters were born there. We lived on petrodollars for 20 years and traded ancient stored sunlight for micro-litres of dopamine to serve our unconscious consumptive addictions. We watched from our air conditioned mansions in Dubai, with our 4 wheel drives parked in the driveway, a megalopolis rising out of the desert, a city built on exploitation of man by man, exploitation of land by man, poisoning the oceans and devastating the fragile desert ecosystem. After 20 years we fled in the space of 24 hours with nothing to show for it but a karmic debt of epic proportions.

Ecological and Societal Collapase

I tell the group I have not equipped my daughters with the most basic knowledge of what’s likely ahead of them – ecological and societal collapse. Like the palm frond I am hiding behind, I have shielded them from catastrophe. I have tried to insulate my children from the complex, fragile and precarious nature of life and loss whilst knowing it’s an impossible task, that life will throw it their way regardless and more frequently. 

I have handed them a world on fire that consists of 2 seasons; flood season and fire season and the guilt is crippling. How will I guide my own children through the flames of ecological and humanitarian crisis when it’s so easy for me to be flooded and drained by sorrow. How can I tend my own inner flame without burning up or out? 

Brave

I have never wanted my children to have to be brave, like other children in boats fleeing wars. Yet at the end of all those years in Dubai we had to abandon our home and flee a war of our own making.  Brandishing the stick, I rage for nature, my own passive nature. Then the rock is in my hand symbolic of a numbness and fear that freezes me. The dry leaves fall between my fingers as despair and finally I am left looking into the abyss of overwhelm, represented by the bowl. 

With intimacy, we witness each other enter the circle and reach for the object to express their feelings about the impact of climate change, collectively holding the discomfort of the moment; the tender complexity of being human in a world so full of pain. In the reciprocity of sharing our own emotions and then offering quiet acknowledgement of each other’s, something deep inside me drops into place. 

At a very pivotal moment in the history of this planet and of human evolution, I could either succumb to these emotions, or I can feel them, express them, use them as fuel to rise up. I am building a bridge with my body using the felt sense of a rock or a stick in my hand to root in my unwavering love of wild nature, the rage rising as passion for equality and justice. Fear transmutes into courage to act and shame, my capacity for humility and reconciliation with the past. I can choose to cross that bridge and rise to the challenge of living according to my deepest truth; abundance, joy and freedom. Grounded in solidarity with the world, my phrase for the coming year becomes embodied as “rooted and rising”.

I have arrived at what I believe is my healing seed for navigating the ecological crisis and the guiding question presented at the retreat “With increasing climate chaos, how do we support each other to navigate our way?” The paradox of the times is to be able to hold all these conflicting emotions and instead of collapsing into fight, flight, and freeze we can coregulate our nervous systems together – metabolise our grief, together – and find a new way to repair and regenerate WITHIN community. 

It feels healing. Based on the pioneering work of Joanna Macy’s Truth Mandala, ecopsychologist Dr Eshana Bragg and her team at the Joyality Project have created their own container called Dare to Care. It formed part of a 2 day immersion workshop, The Power of Nature, I attended at the end of 2023 in a secluded valley called Foresthaven, in Maclean, Northern NSW.  With Eshana and her team’s rooted guidance we transform our emotional responses to human-caused destruction—our heartbreak, despair, and outrage—into collaborative and constructive action.

Stay awake, connect, act!

In another exercise that beautifully illustrates systems change, inserting a change into a living system could skew it in both directions, either into regeneration or equally as rapidly into collapse. And how quickly it could happen. The serene setting on the grass under a shady tree and our random chaotic movements triggered an Orwellian moment in me: modern humans are pawns in an extractive, exploitative and expansionist monetary system that is designed to manipulate the worst aspects of human behaviour, benefitting the elite.

And conversely, the simple fact of our being here participating in this exercise, in the workshop creates quantum ripples in the opposite direction; towards regeneration. The workshop provides a radical reset; nature holding us with the ancient wisdom of meditation, deep rest, ritual, tea ceremony, dancing, qigong moving through us. It’s only when we regenerate our hearts and minds first can we be agents of change to regenerate the planet. By exploring the three workshop themes, “stay awake”, “connect” and “act”  we are being guided towards our highest purpose of service to humanity, whatever that looks like for each of us.

Path of least resistance

On the second day when we are able to walk unencumbered in nature, we realise we need wild nature more than she needs us. It reminds us there is no separation, reminds us of our own wholeness, beauty and oneness with all things. Claire Dunn’s line of questioning comes to mind from Rewilding the Urban Soul. Have domesticated humans addicted to comfort and convenience forgotten our wild animal roots at the same exponential rate as the loss of wild nature? Are wild humans the ones at risk of extinction?  If we reclaimed our own wildness, felt it landing in our ancient bones vibrating with the same stardust as a supernova, would we be able to save our wilderness in time? 

Earth will continue, in some form regardless, all life continuing to evolve indifferent to our struggles being fully and deeply its own beautiful self. As Nick Cave says, it’s a form of “cosmic betrayal” ; the sun will set and rise the next day regardless of all the millions of big and little losses happening all around us. 

Instead of resisting the reality of suffering and change, could we instead hold it more lightly in an open palm, wrapped in cosmic time, deep time, earth time, humans but a blip in the evolutionary timeline?  The last second before the stroke of midnight. Would it be easier then to release ourselves into joy, love what we love and be attentive to beauty, our own and others wherever it is to be found? 

In my walk I reach a thicket of lantana and can’t go any further. Ah…. nature reflecting back to me, take the path of least resistance, let go of the old story. Turning towards the billabong I stretch out on the ground and feel an overwhelming connection to this place, to be in this valley, its feminine softness calling me, you will be supported and safe here, you are never alone. 

Finishing the weekend with the “act” part, many of us commit to having difficult conversations with loved ones. Others want to ground themselves more within their community and another has decided to take her kayak on to Sydney Harbour to join an act of rebellion. It is at this moment I commit to tending the embers of my inner flame; being an example to my daughters of another way to live by moving my tiny home to Foresthaven.

Live as nature

At the retreat, I am able to feel in my body how this secluded valley enveloping me in her womb-like power could help heal my nervous system. To feel content, to stay grounded and connected to nature, to live more AS nature, to grow more food, could bring me closer to a wilder, freer and simpler me, an equanimous expression of the masculine and feminine I crave. Working alongside these wise elders running the retreat I could bring their work to a wider audience and guide others towards their own radical revelations. God knows we need more heart led feminine leadership; shared power, collaboration, care, empathy, compassion, kindness and aware, responsible action if we are to navigate the climate crisis together.

This declaration to the group ripens in me and spills open like the jeweled garnet-red seeds of a pomegranate on my return home to Currumbin Valley. Back to the rich, volcanic soil of the Caldera, of ancient pulsating Gondwana Rainforest, untamed and vital where I have lived and died a thousand little deaths in the last 6 years. Sharing this new realisation with others excites, thrills and terrifies me. That’s how I know I’m on track as well as the seed that has been growing inside me wanting change, wanting to live a more harmonious life.

Jagera Eco community

Living in Foresthaven and co-creating the Jagera Eco community I’d be immersed in Yaegl country a matriarchal lineage of First Nations people; sandstone country, river country, where Boorimbah, the mighty Clarence River carves a passage to the ocean at Iluka on the north bank and Yamba, on the south bank.

Thich Nhat Hanh famously said the next Buddha may be Sangha or community. After 2 years of researching EcoVillages and living in 6 different communities for short periods I think I have found my Sangha here in Foresthaven. My lifetime’s work is simple; to feel comfortable in my own skin and in the world, so that I can be here for other people.

Next time I’m in Maclean I will lie down by the river and listen to her whispers and secrets; her quiet flow connecting me with both beauty and tragedy of the voices of all those who have been here before me, calling me to stay awake, connect and act on behalf of the living world.