Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [92]
Raise the level of your awareness and consciousness. Find a spiritual practice, take a permaculture class, learn about systems theory.
I see this as a sort of “Chinese menu” approach to mental health in light of our present circumstances. Pick one activity from category #1, one from #2, and one from #3.
The Call to Action
Macy’s three-part prescription is very wise, encouraging us to find a balance in our lives so we have the resilience to deal with challenges. It can be dangerous to both you and your loved ones if you spend too much time in the war against the bad guys (Category One). It’s far too easy to burn out on political and social activism if you’re not also involved in more positive activities (Category Two and Category Three).
But it can also be counterproductive to avoid the call to battle. In fact, the only cure for the tumultuous emotions that arise as one wakes up to the challenges is to get into constructive action as quickly as possible. Hanging out too long in denial, guilt, or eco-anxiety is downright unhealthy, both for you and for the human future. Most of us who are aware of what’s really happening right now won’t sleep very well at night if we don’t get involved in some way, doing our bit by trying to put a stop to at least some of the bad stuff, whether it’s environmental, social, or political. One’s own consumption is a great place to start.
The trick is to balance that “warrior” activity with at least one activity from Category Two and one from Category Three.
Be the Change
Category Two offers a lot of joyful, fun opportunities to get involved with creating and building positive, hopeful lifeboats and solutions. Work on building a local school garden. Create new bike paths. Plant fruit trees. Take a class on grey water plumbing and water harvesting. Learn how to do permaculture design. Move into an eco-village or co-housing. Do a green remodel. Join a Simplicity Circle.
Bottom line: start building a local, sustainable lifestyle for you, your family, and your local community.
Find Your Inner Serenity
As we do the work to create alternatives, Category Three invites us to develop some sort of spiritual practice to keep our equanimity as we take a stand against those who actively destroy life. This practice can be as simple as walking in nature or taking a yoga class—or as complex as learning a sophisticated meditation technique, studying “Creation Spirituality” and the Universe Story, or immersing ourselves in the new and old wisdom traditions from our own or other cultures. It can also involve deep intellectual exploration of Earth’s biological systems and the history of our species and the many other species sharing this planet. By engaging in Category Three activities, we seek a long view that insulates us from the immediate ups and downs of daily life.
But don’t get lost in that long view. Spirituality can be so personally satisfying that it can lure us into spending most of our time exclusively in Category Three, as some meditators, yogis, and New Age folk have done. It’s important to realize that by focusing only on our own spiritual life or yoga practice to the exclusion of growing real-world threats, we can inadvertently become part of the problem rather than doing our part to find solutions.
The core message here is that it’s not a good idea to hang out exclusively in any one of these modes to the exclusion of the others. Even if you’re working hard building, say, a permaculture ecovillage (Category Two), life goes better if you include some Category One and Category Three activities in your day as well.
Take practical steps toward making what author James Howard Kunstler calls “other arrangements” in your daily life—and get support from like-minded people as you do so. My husband and I joined a Simplicity Circle eleven years ago and have been very grateful for the group’s ongoing encouragement as we take slow and incremental steps away from the consumerist,