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UN Warns of ‘Total Societal Collapse’ Due to Breaching of Multiple Planetary Boundaries

In Uncategorized on September 30, 2022 at 7:28 pm

A landmark report by the United Nations concludes that ‘global collapse’ is becoming more likely. But was it watered-down before being published?

“I think the problems we’re seeing now, whether you’re talking about hunger, massive inequity, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity, have been driven over the last 200 years by a system of overproduction of stuff and a overconsumption of stuff. And then that’s been inflated and inflated and inflated to the point where it really is not in any way reasonable. The companies and those within government who have supported that approach are now saying they will provide new technologies, to continue that consumption of stuff, that level of production, its just not realistic.” -Jim Thomas

“This report was published back in May 2022. There have been zero mentions of it in any of the media outlets I frequent. There have however, been many mentions; a deluge if you will, of climate related disasters, characterized as “catastrophic”, “unprecedented”, “once in (insert hundreds or thousands of years here) climate events. There have been ever widening droughts and desertification worldwide, food scarcity, rapidly disintegrating biogeochemical systems, widespread habit losses, mass extinctions, etc, etc. etc. It has been suggested by some scientists that 6 of 9 “planetary boundaries” required to maintain a safe operating space for our species have been breached. It was recently reported that it’s all but certain the 2.c climate safety threshold will be breached toot sweet. And the wild shit is, an unnamed source who worked on the UN report discussed below claims what has been published is “an eviscerated skeleton” of what it was pre publishing. IMO this all ads up to more confirmation that we are in for the worst case scenario, leading to total societal collapse in all probability, faster than expected. Be kind to each other and all other beings while you can. Only love remains. Planetary hospice is where we’re at. ” -Jevon

By Nafeez Ahmed @ Byline Times

When the United Nations published its 2022 ‘Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction’ (GAR2022) in May, the world’s attention was on its grim verdict that the world was experiencing an accelerating trend of natural disasters and economic crises. But not a single media outlet picked up the biggest issue: the increasing probability of civilisational collapse.

Buried in the report, which was endorsed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, is the finding that escalating synergies between disasters, economic vulnerabilities and ecosystem failures are escalating the risk of a “global collapse” scenario.

This stark conclusion appears to be the first time that the UN has issued a flagship global report finding that existing global policies are accelerating toward the collapse of human civilisation. Yet somehow this urgent warning has remained unreported until now.

The report does not suggest that this outcome is inevitable or specify how close to this possibility we are. But it does confirm that, without radical change, that’s where the world is heading.

Planetary Boundaries

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Framework are a set of social, economic, legal, political and institutional measures to reduce “disaster risk and losses” – both involve targets to 2030 which the world is in danger of failing to meet.

That failure, however, is directly linked to the rate at which human activities are interfering with natural systems, in particular, ‘planetary boundaries’.

The planetary boundaries framework was developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre in 2009 to provide what it calls a “science-based analysis of the risk that human perturbations will destabilise the Earth system at the planetary scale”. This framework identifies a range of nine key ecosystems which, if pushed passed a certain threshold, will dramatically reduce the “safe operating space” for human habitation.

The report notes that at least four of the nine planetary boundaries now seem to be operating outside the safe operating space.

While land system change and climate change are in a zone of “uncertainty with increasing risk” of overstepping the safe operating space, the report says, biochemical flows and ‘novel entities’ (“new engineered chemicals, materials or organisms and natural elements mobilised by human activity such as heavy metals”) have “far exceeded” that space.

However, the situation is likely to be worse than acknowledged in the UN’s report.

Byline Times revealed last summer that, according to Professor Will Steffen of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, two more planetary boundaries – ocean acidification and freshwater use – would probably by then also be “transgressed”, meaning that we are breaching six out of nine planetary boundaries. If we continue to cross boundaries at this rate, it is possible that we cross almost all of them before 2030.

Don’t Look Up

According to the UN ‘s report, “the human material and ecological footprint is accelerating the rate of change. A potential impact when systemic risks become cascading disasters is that systems are at risk of collapse”.

Yet, although the risk of systemic collapse is discussed at different points in the report, the “global collapse” scenario did not receive extensive elaboration. Instead, the report makes reference to a separate ‘contributing paper’ published by the UN’s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

That paper, ‘Pandemics, Climate Extremes, Tipping Points and the Global Catastrophic Risk – How these Impact Global Targets’, offers an in-depth scenario analysis of global collapse risks based on how human activities are transgressing planetary boundaries.

The paper is authored by Thomas Cernev, a researcher at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. It finds that the continuation of ‘business as usual’ and a failure to invoke drastic policy changes means that human civilisation is moving inexorably toward collapse.

“From the scenario analysis… it is evident that in the absence of ambitious policy and near global adoption and successful implementation, the world continually tends towards the global collapse scenario,” it says.

Four Pathways – Three Lead to Collapse

Thomas Cernev’s paper identifies four potential pathways ahead. Yet only one of them, “stable Earth”, involves the achievement of global targets under the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Sendai Framework. All the others are heading toward collapse.

“In all of these scenarios except for ‘stable earth’, the achievement of global targets and accompanying frameworks is negatively impacted,” the report states. “Furthermore, in the absence of change, scenarios ‘Earth under uncertainty’ and ‘Earth under threat’ tend towards that of ‘global collapse’.”

The paper explains that, by adopting a systems analysis, it is possible to see how “the crossing of one planetary boundary systematically results in the crossing of others”. They are crucial to providing a ‘safe operating space’ for human societies to develop within a stable earth system, “with the passing of these boundaries subsequently, and most likely resulting in societal destabilisation and potential GCR events”.

Global Catastrophic Risk (GCR) events are defined as those leading to more than 10 million fatalities or greater than $10 trillion in damages.

The paper’s worst-case global collapse scenario is described as the result of multiple planetary boundaries being breached, increasing the likelihood of GCR events that set in motion a sequence of economic and political breakdowns, which further drive ecological collapse processes.

In this scenario, “total societal collapse is a possibility”, the paper warns.

“This scenario presents a world where planetary boundaries have been extensively crossed, and if GCR events have not already occurred or are in the process of occurring, then their likelihood of doing so in the future is extreme,” the paper says. “In this scenario, global targets have most likely not been achieved, and the resulting collapse of society in this scenario means that the future achievement of any global targets is unlikely, and total societal collapse is a possibility. Disaster risk reduction has not been successful and disasters are common, with disaster events as well as GCR events such as pandemics increasing.”

It goes on to suggest that, in such a scenario, without policy changes designed to mitigate risks and make the global system more resilient and adaptable, “the crossing of planetary boundaries is likely to exacerbate GCR risk, with large and complex environmental feedback loops leading to further environmental and social collapse” and that “depending on the extent of the crossing of the planetary boundaries and the severity of any GCR events that may have occurred, policy interventions that are not drastic are unlikely to improve society and a reactive policy approach will need to be taken”.

That scenario leads to extremely limited international cooperation, in turn creating a higher risk of global or environmental conflict as the environment degrades, “with potential forced migrations of people from uninhabitable areas that in turn has the potential to heighten GCR by making events such as a pandemic or nuclear war more likely”.

While the global collapse scenario represents the worst-case, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we can see signs of it emerging today. Of greater concern is that the two other scenarios explored by the paper still tend toward this worst-case scenario.

In the earth under threat scenario, “planetary boundaries have been crossed past a safe limit, or there is a large degree of uncertainty as to humanity’s position relative to the boundaries with strong suspicion and evidence of some if not all having been crossed”. We appear to be either very close to reaching this point, or have already reached it.

The UN paper adds: “Whilst GCR is low and GCR events are unlikely to occur, the complex feedback loops that operate between the planetary boundaries are likely to increase the likelihood of GCR events occurring in the near future.”

The paper argues that political and global instability will be exacerbated by “a quickly degrading environment” which could further “drive conflict and hinder future progress towards achieving global targets. In this scenario, the world is on a path towards a global collapse scenario, where GCR events are occurring unless considerable preventive and reactive policy interventions that are ambitious are globally adopted and successfully undertaken”.

Even in the Earth under uncertainty scenario, where “planetary boundaries have not been extensively crossed, or there is a high level of uncertainty as to humanity’s position relative to the boundary”, we would still be in a position where “GCR risk is high, with the likelihood of a GCR event being extreme or a GCR event having already occurred or in the process of occurring”.

Avoiding Collapse

Despite the potential to achieve some global targets and international cooperation, the paper concludes that only further ambitious policy changes can “ensure that development targets are achieved and the world is not pushed towards a Global Collapse scenario”.

The paper states: “The scenario analysis undertaken illustrates a dangerous tendency for the world to tend towards the Global Collapse scenario,”

Although “reactive” policies are necessary to mitigate existing risks, the paper calls for a focus on “preventive” policies to build greater system resilience and to avoid further crossing planetary boundaries.

In particular, it calls for “the creation of a planetary boundaries goal” in the next version of the SDGs adopted after 2030, along with “the incorporation of GCR into the targets”.

A Diluted Narrative?

As I had found in 2017 as a researcher at Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute, the process of global societal collapse is likely to accelerate as a self-reinforcing feedback loop between human system destabilisation (HSD) and earth system disruption (ESD).

In this feedback loop, earth system disruptions – in this case, triggered by breaching of planetary boundaries – destabilise social, political and economic institutions. This, in turn, inhibits successful policy responses to ESD, leaving the planet vulnerable to further ESD outbreaks.

The result is a feedback effect in which HSD and ESD occur in an amplifying cycle with the potential to culminate in a dramatic loss of complexity in the human system – what might be defined as a collapse.

The UN Global Assessment Report, and its contributing paper by Thomas Cernev, offer scenarios that are consistent with this process – but it is not clear whether any of these scenarios have actually begun, only that currently the world is tending dangerously toward them.

No precise timescales are identified in the documents and neither the UN nor Cernev have responded to requests for comment from Byline Times.

But there are reasons to suspect that a collapse process has already started, even if it is still possible to rein in.

A senior advisor to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and contributor to the Global Assessment Report who spoke to Byline Times on condition of anonymity, claims that the GAR2022 was watered-down before public release.

The source said that the world had “passed a point of no return” and “I don’t feel that this is being properly represented in UN or media as of now”.

“The GAR2022 is an eviscerated skeleton of what was included in earlier drafts,” they claimed.

The UN GAR2022 is a landmark document. It is the first time that the United Nations has clearly underscored the impending risk of “total societal collapse” if the human system continues to cross the planetary boundaries critical to maintaining a safe operating space for the earth system.

Yet, despite this urgent warning, not only has it fallen on deaf ears, the UN itself appears to have diluted its own findings. Like the fictional film Don’t Look Up, we are more concerned with celebrity gossip and political scandals, seemingly unable – or unwilling – to confront the most important challenge that now faces us as a species.

Either way, these UN documents show that recognising the risk of collapse is not about doom-mongering, but about understanding risks so we can make better choices and avoid worst-case outcomes. As the report acknowledges, there is still much that can be done. But the time for action is not after 2030. It’s now.

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Conscious Capitalism is an Alibi and an Apology for Our Existing Paradigm

In Uncategorized on May 23, 2022 at 10:33 pm

“Many people in the psychedelic realm are aspiring tech entrepreneurs or Silicon Valley mavens. They believe capitalism—rather than human ingenuity—creates innovation, jobs, and “progress.” As a result, the breadth of ideas within the psychedelic discourse is astonishingly narrow because they’ve already situated themselves within a false construct. It is of no surprise then that ideas such as conscious capitalism have become popular among psychedelic communities.

Conscious capitalism is often dressed up in appealing euphemisms like social innovation, cultural entrepreneurship, green growth, financial inclusion, and impact investing. Although some truly believe in the power of these approaches, I would argue their bias stems from their privilege—and privilege is a blinding constraint.

It is hard to hold a truly structural, constellational worldview that takes into account a vast multitude of factors and perspectives required for deep social change, while benefiting from the current system. Conscious capitalism is an alibi and an apology for the existing paradigm.

For those who have disproportionately benefited from the last 500 years of a globalizing capitalist force, animated by extrinsic values, it seems apparent that more of the same could only be better. After all, it was called the “Enlightenment.” How could more be worse?

Conscious capitalism is simultaneously more and better, like the economic equivalent of Diet Coke. Conscious capitalism’s role is to prop up the existing order by modifying its more minor attributes, while keeping its essential nature intact. It is the desperate strategy of a dying system trying to keep our thinking within the narrow band of logic that makes it appear inevitable and necessary. This entirely false belief is what gives us the license to act as if we can continue human activity as we have been. In fact, it tells us that the world will be better for it. It is a strategy of business as usual, with the addition of a moral incentive.

Imagine a world where no one would have to toil as a wage slave, but the basic needs to thrive (food, shelter, transportation, healthcare, etc.) were provided by society. Imagine a world where every human had access to the privileges of Western spiritual communities: yoga, ayahuasca, ayurvedic diets, juice cleanses, qi gong, etc. We would have a social, cultural, and spiritual renaissance on this planet.

Although there is no blueprint for what post- capitalist systems could look like, what unites the various expressions are shared values such as love, generosity, altruism, interdependence, empathy, non-violence, compassion, and solidarity with all life. These values inform ideas such as zero-waste, circular production methods that mimic nature’s own genius in turning all waste back into productive use; co-operative ownership models and commons-based governance structures that privilege a more democratic distribution of economic power; universal basic income, a global wealth tax, and shorter working weeks that restructure the logic of work in the age of automation and AI; regenerative agriculture that rebuilds depleted soils, sequesters carbon, and returns our food production to long-term sustainability; localization to bring economies back to human-scale; and many other growing alternatives.”

–Alnoor Ladha

“WOWOWOWOWOW. Resonating so deeply with these thoughts from Ms. Ladha. Capitalism is at it’s root a devastatingly destructive, carnivorously cannibalizing and externalizing force with which we “modern” humans have radically altered multiple fundamental and life sustaining biogeochemical processes of the planet upon which we depend for life, to service our ever expanding constellation of wants and “needs”. We’ve turned this garden of eden into a toxic and tortured waste dump. Business as usual is failing, as this way of being nears collapse. It is necessary for us amidst this 6th great extinction of life to deprogram and disidentify with this dominator culture animated by fear and greed. Psychedelic and ancestral medicines provide means by which we can change our programming. We have to figure out new and easily repeatable ways to provide access to these medicines that fall outside the extractivist, destructive and hyper consumptive capitalist constructs that currently reign supreme. Ways which protect and place at the forefront, the first peoples, who carry the ancestral knowledge required to sustainably and respectfully administer medicines. Not tech bros and venture capitalists.” -Jevon

By Alnoor Ladha @ Double Blind:

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” –James Baldwin

Scientists call our current period of planetary history the Anthropocene, the geological epoch where humans have become the most powerful force affecting the global ecosystem. We are also, not coincidentally, entering the 6th great extinction in our planet’s 4.4 billion year history. The ancient texts of India called it the Kali Yuga, the dark age of unconsciousness, shadow, and despair. Buddhists call this time “the degenerate age” because of the preponderance of great suffering and the denigration of compassion within society. The Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (commonly known as North America) invoke wetiko, the spirit of cannibalism that impels some humans to consume the living world.

Within this context, there is a growing contingent of people, especially within psychedelic communities, who argue that what’s needed is a more “conscious capitalism.” From Whole Foods to Tom’s Shoes, there’s an expanding choir arguing that our current model of free-market capitalism has brought vast wealth and abundance for humanity, but needs to alter its focus from profit extraction to more “sustainable” and “humane” approaches to growing the global economy.

So if reformist approaches such as “conscious capitalism” are not going to help address our current crisis, what will? I do not claim to know the answer to this; however, I believe that our ability to identify, curate, co-create, and amplify antidotes and alternatives will be enhanced by adopting some shared guideposts. In that spirit, I offer three principles that may assist in our collective inquiry to midwife the better world we know is possible.

Disidentification from the Dominant System

What characterizes a counterculture is its explicit stance against a dominant culture. While the battle lines were clear in the Civil Rights movement or the anti-war movement protests of the 1960s, they have blurred in the era of capitalist modernity.

The psychedelic movement (or more accurately movements) have a broad range of motivations and impulses that are rarely linked to social justice. Outside a shared political project or understanding, there is very little critique of the dominant culture. Timothy Leary’s prophetic plea of “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” holds very little weight in today’s psychedelic communities partly because no one knows what they are tuning into or dropping out from.

Many people in the psychedelic realm are aspiring tech entrepreneurs or Silicon Valley mavens. They believe capitalism—rather than human ingenuity—creates innovation, jobs, and “progress.” As a result, the breadth of ideas within the psychedelic discourse is astonishingly narrow because they’ve already situated themselves within a false construct. It is of no surprise then that ideas such as conscious capitalism have become popular among psychedelic communities.

Timothy Leary’s prophetic plea of “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” holds very little weight in today’s psychedelic communities partly because no one knows what they are tuning into or dropping out from.

By identifying with capitalism or as capitalists, or by making the false link between capitalism and innovation, we are actively disparaging the 90 percent of humanity who are being tortured by the existing system; we are dishonoring the 200 species a day that go extinct because of our carbon-based, growth-dependent economy. Counter to what the establishment propaganda preaches, human ingenuity would actually flourish under a system that distributed its wealth more fairly, rewarded generosity, and created conditions for collective and individual healing.

Our existing globalized culture of capitalist modernity is held in place through the complicity of us all. The South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko once said, “the most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” In other words, the base station of capitalism is the human mind.

Deprogramming ourselves and decolonizing our minds is both a spiritual and political practice.

Deprogramming ourselves and decolonizing our minds is both a spiritual and political practice. It requires us to be good students of our culture. It demands that we understand the consequences of having a global economy that is required to grow at three percent every year. The implications of this is that we have to double the global output of human activity every twenty years. Exponential growth on a planet with finite resources is leading us toward collapse, yet our daily lives are structured around “more.”

In order to stop the damage of the current system, we must examine our existing values and how we lead our day-to-day lives. What are we consuming? Where does it come from? How do we treat each other? What is our relationship to our food? How do we interact with the natural world and more-than-human-life?

This is a constant practice of vigilance and a realm where psychedelics can play a critical role. After all, few things stoke the imperative to act as if one is interdependent with all other beings like the realization of oneness that psychedelics can engender; an experience that can also help us decide what aspects of our lives and privileges no longer serve us. There will be sacrifices that need to be made and consequences that need to be heeded. This is part of our maturity process as a species. This is a much more profound and personal inquiry than what the current cultural discourse has created space for. It is also precisely the type of deep inner work and deprogramming that psychedelic practices facilitate by allowing us to temporarily step outside our cultural conditioning.

The truth of ultimate oneness, however, can also be a trap if it is understood in a reductive or unskilled way. It requires careful examination and a subtle, ongoing practice to discern its true meaning and value for issues of societal change.

Transcending the Fear of Dualism

There is an unstated understanding within psychedelic communities, and the New Age more broadly, that the root of societal problems is the idea of “us versus them.” So much of the violence on this planet stems from othering and creating separation. Yet, by accepting this belief the result is often an abdication of personal responsibility and a refusal to engage in political processes. Many refuse to take a political stance out of fear of judgement—they believe that judgement creates duality.

Let’s look at this another way. Could it be that the fear of duality creates duality itself? As we have established, there is an existing system of capitalist modernity that is destroying life at an unprecedented rate and scale. Issues such as inequality, poverty and climate breakdown are not externalities or aberrations of the system—they are the logical outcome of the system’s rules, a system that turns every living thing into a commodity and resource to fuel more growth. By ignoring this reality we actually strengthen it.

Perhaps, part of what is happening on a societal level is that we are being initiated into understanding non-dualistic thought. We are transcending the binary, oppositional logic that is inherent in many of our languages to see that there is no “us versus them” and simultaneously, there are those who are disproportionately responsible for what is happening on this planet.

Yes, the “psychopathic one percenter” is a shadow aspect of the collective unconscious and, simultaneously, there are individuals who have agency and power that are actively benefiting from the destruction of the planet. Yes, there may be a Donald Trump archetype within all of us—the bully, the patriarch, the misogynist—and yet, he is responsible for the morality of his actions as an elected leader. This is not creating separation. The separation already exists. We are simply acknowledging multiple layers of a non-dualistic reality.

By exclusively focusing on one layer of reality or the meta-layer of unity consciousness—the New Age equivalent of monotheism—we are engaging in a form of spiritual bypassing. A common variant of this is the argument that all reality is an illusion or maya. In studying the Vedic texts that originally discuss the concept of maya, what I’ve come to understand is that maya does not simply mean “the world as illusion,” but rather, illusion is what you as an aspect of God, as Atman, decide is illusion.

There is a responsibility that comes with being a co-creator of reality. As Ram Dass once said, “the universe is perfect, including my desire to change it.”

There is a responsibility that comes with being a co-creator of reality. As Ram Dass once said, “the universe is perfect, including my desire to change it.” Creation or maya or evolution are not static processes that are happening outside us; we are active participants in co-creating reality, or more accurately, relationality. We, ourselves, evolve by actively engaging in creating a better world. The struggle for justice, empathy and solidarity with all Life creates grace within us and deepens our spiritual practice.

Non-dualistic thought is a critical ally when trying to understand the complexity of modernity, and, fortunately, is greatly aided by psychedelic medicines where we achieve states of consciousness where we can actively hold multiple realities without conflict. We can simultaneously critique the system, live within the contradiction of being complicit in that system, while working towards changing the system itself. We don’t have to define ourselves by what we stand against, although we do have to know what we stand against and why. That’s how all the progressive shifts in culture have happened—from the abolition of slavery to women getting the right to vote—that the majority of us benefit from every day. How can we reap the fruits of labor for those who risked their lives to enter the messiness of duality, while claiming that the sanctity of singularity or oneness is all that matters?

Fortunately, there is a growing movement of people applying their spiritual and psychedelic practices to engage in non-dualistic thought and action, giving birth to a multiplicity of possibilities. Many of these emergent possibilities are a part of the umbrella concept of post-capitalism—ideas that transcend the traditional structures of ownership, growth and accumulation. Post-capitalism is not simply another ‘ism’ to replace previous ideologies. Rather, it is a conceptual container of pluralities based on shared values that stem from the critique of the existing system.

For those who aspire to truly create systemic change, post-capitalism is a powerful unifying frame. As an idea it is testament to what is possible when we transcend the fear of dualism and actively engage in critiquing and remaking the world around us.

Being in Dialogue with an Animate Planet

It goes without saying that human beings have approached most of the problems of human history with a particular, anthropocentric lens. We have also created and exacerbated most of the issues and risks we face as a civilization with the same problem-solution mindset. The Cartesian, mechanical, binary, linear model of causality has been the core engine of Western thought and the lens by which we see the world.

If we are producing too much carbon as a civilization, how do we capture and store this carbon? If the climate is changing, how do we geo-engineer it? If capitalism is creating inequality, how do we redistribute wealth? This is how basic human problem-solving tends to work—but it is also an indicator of how dangerous anthropocentric thinking can be.

What if the current polycrisis, this civilizational crossroads we face, is demanding from us something else, something more?

Rather than approaching social issues from a problem-solution lens of linearity and causality, what if we started being in dialogue with our living planet, and indeed, the living universe?

The last thirty years of science has helped the Western world catch up to many Indigenous worldviews. For example, the Gaia Theory posited by chemist James Lovelock, microbiologist Lynn Margulis, and others helped to popularize the idea that the planet is a living being: a self-regulating, complex system that actively creates the conditions for life on Earth. Evolutionary biology is revealing the complexity and interconnected nature of living ecosystems, from mycelial networks to the bacteria that make up the human body. Chaos theory is revealing the fractal patterns and non-linearity that make up reality. Developments in quantum mechanics have helped us see the universe as animate, responsive, and queerer than we can imagine. The very act of observing atoms shifts the behavior and position of those atoms. As the quantum physicist and philosopher Karen Barad reminds us, there is no objective reality; we meet the universe halfway.

Rather than approaching social issues from a problem-solution lens of linearity and causality, what if we started being in dialogue with our living planet, and indeed, the living universe? If it’s our best thinking that got us here, perhaps it is time for us to embrace a trans-rational approach, to start asking our elders—including the living landscapes and more-than-human-life that surrounds us—for perspectives on what we should do.

I don’t mean this in a sentimental way or in addition to thinking through the best strategy for what to do as a civilization. I mean this seriously, as an activist and political strategist. I would like you to imagine what the world would look like if our primary activity was to humble ourselves to Nature and ask what the living world needs from us as a companion species.

What would it mean to engage in life-projects or social change projects based on seeking request, permission, and consent from the natural world? What if we stopped thinking of our purpose as an individual endeavor of choice, but rather a prayer to be heeded in guidance with broader planetary needs? What if our starting place for our social, political, and economic work was asking the most marginalized beings, human and otherwise, how we could be of deepest service to their needs?

No tree would consent to conscious capitalism. No eco-system would.

Perhaps this type of dialogue and permission-based action will be a part of the evolving role of psychedelics and psychedelic communities—to serve as a bridge between our maturing species and the entelechy of a living planet; in turn, to help re-sacralize Nature with and through the sacraments generously offered to us.

I’m not sure the rational mind can fathom such a reality, but I assure you, whatever the outcome, it would not look like the linear, reformist approaches that are masquerading as social change today. No tree would consent to conscious capitalism. No eco-system would.

Like trees, we are also ecosystems—literally, on a cellular level, we are made up of communities of bacteria and microorganisms. On a temporal level, our ancestors are living through us, as are our future selves and future generations of our lineage, if they have the same chance at life as we did. On a spatial level, we are an ecology of selves, of all the beings, seen and unseen, that we are in perpetual entanglement with—those that define us through our relationality.

The false choice of growth or more growth must give way to new and ancient ways of being. Animism may be our most potent antidote to rationalism, as humility is to hubris, dialogue to domination, and wonder to knowing.

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Toward A Revolution Of Love

In Uncategorized on April 22, 2022 at 8:19 pm

From Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism, the ground-breaking book she started writing at age 19, through works such as All About Love, Bone Black, and Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks was one of the most influential progressive thinkers of our time. A practicing Buddhist, she was a frequent contributor to Lion’s Roar. Photo by Karjean Levine / Getty Images

“Right now there is such a profound collective cultural awareness that we need to practice love if we are to heal ourselves and the planet. The task awaiting us is to move from awareness to action. The practice of love requires that we make time, that we embrace change… Fundamentally, to begin the practice of love we must slow down and be still enough to bear witness in the present moment. If we accept that love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we can then be guided by this understanding. We can use these skillful means as a map in our daily life to determine right action….When we commit to love in our daily life, habits are shattered. We are necessarily working to end domination. Because we no longer are playing by the safe rules of the status quo, rules that if we obey guarantee us a specific outcome, love moves us to a new ground of being… This movement is what most people fear. If we are to galvanize the collective longing for spiritual well-being that is found in the practice of love, we must be more willing to identify the forms that longing will take in daily life…. Lots of people listen to and affirm the words of visionary teachers who speak on the necessity of love. Yet they feel in their everyday lives that they simply do not know how to link theory and practice… Whenever anyone asks me how they can begin the practice of love, I tell them giving is the place to start… Through giving we develop the mind of gratitude. Giving enables us to experience the fullness of abundance—not only the abundance we have, but the abundance in sharing. In sharing all that we have we become more. We awaken the heart of love… Dominator thinking and practice relies for its maintenance on the constant production of a feeling of lack, of the need to grasp. Giving love offers us a way to end this suffering—loving ourselves, extending that love to everything beyond the self, we experience wholeness. We are healed.” -bell hooks

“Oldie but goodie from Sister/Teacher bell hooks here. In this time of the Great Turning, we are bearing witness to the end of a doomed and diseased way of being, grounded in domination, destruction, exploitation, extraction, and infinite industrial growth on the earth we inhabit. A revolution of love is key to facilitating the transition to a life-affirming and supporting way of being that is grounded in care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust. Giving, without expectations, without conditions, without fear, is a powerful antidote to the culture of scarcity and lack that is currently dominant and causing widespread suffering for all life. Find time to slow down, be still and cultivate your practice of love. Practice moving through life with a commitment to mindfully loving everything beyond self… Be love, give love, behold with awe the beneficent dance that is inter-being in this thing called “life” all around you and be grateful for the experience. Give love and be healed!” -jevon

By bell hooks @ Lions Roar:

Fundamentally, the practice of love begins with acceptance—the recognition that wherever we are is the appropriate place to practice, that the present moment is the appropriate time. But for so many of us, our longing to love and be loved has always been about a time to come, a space in the future when it will just happen, when our hungry hearts will finally be fed, when we will find love.

More than thirty years ago, when I first began to think about Buddhism, there was little or no talk about Buddhism and love. Being a Buddhist was akin to being a leftist: it was all about the intellect, the philosophical mind. It was a faith for the thinking “man,” and love was nowhere to be found in the popular Buddhist literature at that time. In circles where an individual would dare to speak of love, they would be told that Buddhists were more concerned with the issue of compassion. It was as though love was just not a relevant, serious subject for Buddhists.

During the turbulent sixties and seventies the topic of love had made its way to the political forefront. Peace activists were telling us to “make love not war.” And the great preacher Martin Luther King, Jr., elevated the call to love from the hidden longing of the solitary heart to a public cry. He proclaimed love to be the only effective way to end injustice and bring peace, declaring that “Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace.… If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

There could not have been a more perfect historical dharma moment for spiritual leaders to speak out on the issue of love. No doubt divine providence was at work in the universe when Martin Luther King, Jr., and a little-known Vietnamese Buddhist monk named Thich Nhat Hanh, found themselves walking the same path—walking toward one another—engaged in a practice of love. Young men whose hearts were awakening, they created in mystical moments of sacred encounter a symbolic sangha.

They affirmed one another’s work. In the loneliness of the midnight hour, King would fall on his knees and ask himself the question, “How can I say I worship a God of love and support war?” Thich Nhat Hanh, knowing by heart all the bonds of human connection that war severs, challenged the world to think peace, declaring in the wake of the Vietnam War that he “thought it was quite plain that if you have to choose between Buddhism and peace, then you must choose peace.” Linking Buddhism with social engagement, Thich Nhat Hanh’s work attracted Westerners (myself included) precisely because he offered a spiritual vision of the universe that promoted working for peace and justice.

hooks in her apartment in New York’s West Village, where she lived for many years before returning to her native Kentucky to teach at Berea College, now home of the bell hooks Institute. Photo by Joyce Dopkeen / The New York Times

Significantly, Buddhism began to attract many more Western followers because it linked the struggle for world peace with the desire of each individual to be engaged in meaningful spiritual practice. Coming out of a time when it had been cool for smart people to be agnostic or atheist, people wanted permission to seek spiritual connection.

For many Western seekers, the feeling that we had failed to create a culture of peace and justice led us back to an introspective search of our intimate relations, which more often than not were messy and full of strife, suffering, and pain. How could any of us truly believe that we could create world peace when we could not make peace in our intimate relationships with family, partners, friends, and neighbors?

Responding to this collective anguish of spirit, visionary teachers (like King, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Sharon Salzberg) were moved by spiritual necessity to speak more directly about the practice of love. Proclaiming transformation in his consciousness engendered by a focus on love, Thich Nhat Hanh declared in the poem “The Fruit of Awareness Is Ripe”: when I knew how to love the doors of my heart opened wide before the wind. / Reality was calling out for revolution. That spirit of revolution, that call to practice transformative love, captured my critical imagination and merged with my longing to find a loving partner.

When lecturing on ending domination around the world, listening to the despair and hopelessness, I asked individuals who were hopeful to talk about what force in their life pushed them to make a profound transformation, moving them from a will to dominate toward a will to be compassionate. The stories I heard were all about love.

That sense of love as a transformative power was also present in the narratives of individuals working to create loving personal relationships. Writing about metta, “love” or “loving-kindness,” as the first of the brahmaviharas, the heavenly abodes, Sharon Salzberg reminds us in her insightful book Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness that “In cultivating love, we remember one of the most powerful truths the Buddha taught…that the forces in the mind that bring suffering are able to temporarily hold down the positive forces such as love or wisdom, but they can never destroy them.… Love can uproot fear or anger or guilt, because it is a greater power. Love can go anywhere. Nothing can obstruct it.”

Because of the awareness that love and domination cannot coexist, there is a collective call for everyone to place learning how to love on their emotional and/or spiritual agenda. We have witnessed the way in which movements for justice that denounce dominator culture, yet have an underlying commitment to corrupt uses of power, do not really create fundamental changes in our societal structure. When radical activists have not made a core break with dominator thinking (imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy), there is no union of theory and practice, and real change is not sustained. That’s why cultivating the mind of love is so crucial. When love is the ground of our being, a love ethic shapes our participation in politics.

To work for peace and justice we begin with the individual practice of love, because it is there that we can experience firsthand love’s transformative power. Attending to the damaging impact of abuse in many of our childhoods helps us cultivate the mind of love. Abuse is always about lovelessness, and if we grow into our adult years without knowing how to love, how then can we create social movements that will end domination, exploitation, and oppression? John Welwood shares the insight in Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships that many of us carry a “wound of the heart” that emerged in childhood conditioning, creating “a disconnection from the loving openness that is our nature.” Welwood links individual failure to learn how to love in childhood with larger social ills; however, even those who are fortunate to love and be loved in childhood grow to maturity in a culture of domination that devalues love.

“I see love as a combination of six ingredients: care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust,” said hooks in this conversation about The Power of Real Love with Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg, moderated by Lion’s Roar editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod. Photo by Christine Alicino

Being loving can actually lead one to be more at odds with mainstream culture. Even though, as Riane Eisler explains in The Power of Partnership, our “first lessons about human relations are not learned in workplaces, businesses, or even schools, but in parent–child and other relations,” those habits of being are not formed in isolation. The larger culture in our nation shapes how we relate. Any child born in a hospital first experiences life in a place where private and public merge. The interplay of these two realities will be constant in our lives. It is precisely because the dictates of dominator culture structure our lives that it is so difficult for love to prevail.

When I began, years ago now, to focus on the power of love as a healing force, no one really disagreed with me. Yet what they continue to accept in their daily life is lovelessness, because doing the work of love requires resisting the status quo. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s treatise on the subject, True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart, he reminds us that “to love, in the context of Buddhism, is above all to be there.” He then raises the question of whether or not we have time for love. Right now there is such a profound collective cultural awareness that we need to practice love if we are to heal ourselves and the planet. The task awaiting us is to move from awareness to action. The practice of love requires that we make time, that we embrace change.

Fundamentally, to begin the practice of love we must slow down and be still enough to bear witness in the present moment. If we accept that love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we can then be guided by this understanding. We can use these skillful means as a map in our daily life to determine right action. When we cultivate the mind of love, we are, as Sharon Salzberg says, “cultivating the good,” and that means “recovering the incandescent power of love that is present as a potential in all of us” and using “the tools of spiritual practice to sustain our real, moment-to-moment experience of that vision.” To be transformed by the practice of love is to be born again, to experience spiritual renewal. What I witness daily is the longing for that renewal and the fear that our lives will be changed utterly if we choose love. That fear paralyzes. It leaves us stuck in the place of suffering.

When we commit to love in our daily life, habits are shattered. We are necessarily working to end domination. Because we no longer are playing by the safe rules of the status quo, rules that if we obey guarantee us a specific outcome, love moves us to a new ground of being. This movement is what most people fear. If we are to galvanize the collective longing for spiritual well-being that is found in the practice of love, we must be more willing to identify the forms that longing will take in daily life. Folks need to know the ways we change and are changed when we love. It is only by bearing concrete witness to love’s transformative power in our daily lives that we can assure those who are fearful that commitment to love will be redemptive, a way to experience salvation.

Lots of people listen to and affirm the words of visionary teachers who speak on the necessity of love. Yet they feel in their everyday lives that they simply do not know how to link theory and practice. When Thich Nhat Hanh tells us in Transformation and Healing that “understanding is the very foundation of love and compassion,” that “if love and compassion are in our hearts, every thought, word, and deed can bring about a miracle,” we are moved. We may even feel a powerful surge of awareness and possibility.

Then we go home and find ourselves uncertain about how to realize true love. Finding ways to express true love requires vigilance, patience, a will to let go, and the creative use of the imagination to invent new ways of relating. Thich Nhat Hanh told me to see the practice of love in a tumultuous relationship as spiritual practice, to find in the mind of love a way to understanding, forgiveness, and peace. Of course this was all work. Just as cultivating a garden requires turning over the ground, pulling weeds, planting, and watering, doing the work of love is all about taking action.

Whenever anyone asks me how they can begin the practice of love, I tell them giving is the place to start. In The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen offers this testimony: “Every time I take a step in the direction of generosity I know that I am moving from fear to love.” Salzberg sees giving as a way to purify the mind: “Giving is an inward state, a generosity of the spirit that extends to ourselves as well as to others.” Through giving we develop the mind of gratitude. Giving enables us to experience the fullness of abundance—not only the abundance we have, but the abundance in sharing. In sharing all that we have we become more. We awaken the heart of love.

Dominator thinking and practice relies for its maintenance on the constant production of a feeling of lack, of the need to grasp. Giving love offers us a way to end this suffering—loving ourselves, extending that love to everything beyond the self, we experience wholeness. We are healed. The Buddha taught that we can create a love so strong that, as Salzberg states, our “minds become like a pure, flowing river that cannot be burned.” Such love is the foundation of spiritual awakening.

If we are to create a worldwide culture of love then we need enlightened teachers to guide us. We need concrete strategies for practicing love in the midst of domination. Imagine all that would change for the better if every community in our nation had a center (a sangha) that would focus on the practice of love, of loving-kindness.

All the great religious traditions share the belief that love is our reason for being. All of us who work toward creating a culture of love seek to share a real body of teaching that can reach everyone where we are, extending the circle of love beyond boundaries, bringing together people from different backgrounds and traditions, and feeling together the way love connects us.

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Modernization of Sacred Plant Medicine Traditions: At What Cost?

In Uncategorized on April 6, 2022 at 4:30 pm

“…in the past few years, the New Age spirituality movement has merged with positive psychology and the wellness industry, bringing many to seek healing, transcendental experiences, and self-improvement through entheogens. For many, these plants are the catalyst of positive life changes and are also revered with respect… There is a growing tendency to commodify these substances without giving back to the communities who have held this knowledge for centuries at their own risk. For example, who is really benefiting from expensive retreats in the Amazon jungle? Additionally, the development of new treatments with synthetic derivatives of these substances will reach the market through pharmaceutical patents without properly recognizing traditional knowledge.

For Indigenous people throughout the world, the commercialization of their spirituality is just one of many daily challenges embedded in larger societal struggles. Western engagement with Indigenous spiritual traditions often contributes to a false romanticization of these communities’ situations; it can even feel like an erasure of the injustices that they have experienced in the past, and continue to experience to this day. Indigenous people have to fight daily for the preservation of their lands, their languages, and their cultures. In fact, many continue to be murdered for standing up for their rights. As psychedelic enthusiasts, we have the responsibility to bring awareness to these dynamics.

“While psychedelic plant medicines still have most of their potential still to be taped into for the benefit of society, contemporary psychedelic studies are at risk of replicating harmful colonial behavior with the territories and communities from which the plants originate,” writes anthropologist, Paloma David, in her forthcoming publication, “Decolonizing Psychedelic Studies: The Case of Ayahuasca”. “A decolonial approach is essential to the current renaissance as failing to recognize indigenous perspectives as equally valuable to the discussion in the appropriate use of these substances only contributes to deepening the colonial wound in which these plants are interwoven.” –Jessika Lagarde

“Mmm. Such necessary wisdom shared by the author in this piece. Ms. Lagarde is spot on when she speaks about the commercialization and monetization of indigenous spirituality and ancestral medicine traditions. It’s happening on an industrial scale. Having attended a number of conferences and talks on psychedelic medicine it quickly became abundantly obvious that a colonial approach that fails to recognize indigenous peoples perspectives as equally valuable to the discussion in the appropriate uses of these substance is in effect across the vast majority of the psychedelic medicine business. At one conference in particular, I spent a whole day at their “Psychedelic Business Forum”. The host was brown, but aside from him, I counted only one other person of color called to speak about the business of psychedelics. Zero indigenous folk. In the end it was a parade of sales pitches from some of the biggest psychedelic capitalists seemingly targeted to potential investors and industry types. They spoke about the virtues and viability of their business models, expected returns on investments, corporate values and mission statements. Navigating government and legal structures. The thousands of facilitators and integration coaches they were “training” without indigenous folks input or involvement, to guide clients through their medicine experiences. There was talk about the great advances being made in the in the synthesis and patenting of so called “proprietary molecules” that would be monetized with no mention of giving back to indigenous communities from whence they came. Speakers made the obligatory statements about deep commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, but a quick scan of most of their websites, revealed the the same personnel composition as was found in the audience at the conference. Mostly, white, affluent, and male. It took until day 4 of the conference for them to trot out a few indigenous folk and other people of color to offer their perspectives on their ancestral medicines. The same can be said for much of the psychedelic tourist industry. Aside from unintended consequences of misuse, deforestation, overharvesting of sacred plants, and distortions of indigenous traditions and cultures for the entertainment of guests, These healing retreats are hosted by mostly white, affluent and male proprietors. Not indigenous folk. With prices for retreats ranging from thousands to tens of thousands, where the majority of profits flow in to the pockets of owners, indigenous folk are present in largely low wage, ceremonial worker and support roles. One doesn’t have to think long to understand who’s benefiting most from these arrangements. And as is typical of many wellness industries, many BIPOC, LGBTQIA and other underserved and underserviced communities that need healing the most end up on the outside looking in. In the current kleptocapitalist business context, the cost of modernization of sacred plant medicine traditions is unsustainably high and existentially threatening to the indigenous peoples who originated them. And as western appetites for sacred plant medicines grow, I fear the costs to indigenous communities will only grow higher. A shift to decolonial, diverse, equitable, inclusive business practices grounded in awareness, balance and respect with indigenous community controlled, sustainably sourced medicines is in my view, the best way forward.” -Jevon

By Jessika Lagarde @ Psychedelics Today

Sacred psychedelic plant medicines are increasingly entering the Western mainstream, but is it cultural appropriation?

From the medicinal and ceremonial use of mescaline-containing plants by the Indigenous peoples of Mexico thousands of years ago, to the brewing of ayahuasca by several Indigenous groups in the Amazon today, entheogens have been a part of the cultural heritage of these communities in ways that Western society is just starting to understand.

Because there are significant differences in the ways these plants have been used historically and the way Western society is integrating them, let’s take a brief look at both approaches.

Indigenous Uses of Sacred Plant Medicines and Traditions

Various Indigenous cultures have used medicinal plants with psychoactive properties for hundreds of years including the Mazatec and Huichol of Mexico, Native North Americans, tribes in Africa, and Indigenous groups in the Amazon. The uses of these plants vary from culture to culture, but have a few commonalities when it comes to their healing purposes. For most, there is a general belief in their sacredness and spiritual properties.

“Plants, in general, have been used for ceremony, food, and utilitarian purposes. Sacred plant medicines were always used in ceremonies and never used for recreational purposes. Plants were placed on this earth to heal humanity as I understand it,” Belinda Eriacho, Native American Healer, tells Psychedelics Today. “In my own experiences, these sacred plant medicines have helped me to heal intergenerational trauma, to find peace with deceased loved ones, and to look at my own life and improve many areas of [it].”

When it comes to ayahuasca, Indigenous peoples from Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador have used the brew in their sacred rituals for many years. It served and continues to serve as a basis for the establishment of different spiritual traditions by these peoples. They hold the vine in high regard and believe it can facilitate the perception of the complexity of the natural world and human creation.

Similarly, the consumption of peyote in sacred rituals allowed the Huicholes and the Tarahumaras of Mexico to come into contact with divine beings or ancestors and to cure various diseases. To this day, peyote has also been adopted by several Native American peoples. They see peyote as a gift from the creator, and a direct communication channel with the “Great Spirit”.

These cultures have preserved rituals and sacred medicines but have also gone through extreme hardships in order to do so. Many Indigenous spiritual practices in Mexico were severely persecuted and banned during the Spanish Inquisition, and hundreds of thousands of natives were brutally murdered. Many other Indigenous communities in the Americas faced the same barbarities during colonization, having their codices destroyed and much of their ceremonial knowledge lost.

Western Uses of Plant Medicines

In the Western world, the use of psychedelic plant medicine can also be traced for thousands of years. A few examples are The Eleusinian Mysteries, the most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece that involved ceremonies with psychoactive plants. Furthermore, Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Sámi people of Northern Europe used Amanita Muscaria mushrooms in their sacred traditions.

Many medicinal plants have found their way into numerous products that the pharmaceutical industry sells today to treat a variety of diseases and health conditions, from aspirin derived from willow tree bark, to the current growing interest in entheogens for therapy and the possibility to revolutionize global mental health.

Scientists have been carrying out research for decades on psychedelic plants for their chemical properties and pharmaceutical potential. In this model of Western medicine, science seeks to understand these substances simply as chemical compounds detached from their ethnobotanical origin.

Adapting the uses of sacred psychedelic plants to Western medicine brings the advantage of making them accessible to people who can benefit tremendously from their properties on a global scale. In recent years, research into psychedelics has demonstrated their potential to address disorders that have proved difficult to treat including depression, anxiety, chemical dependency, and post-traumatic stress disorders.

But in reality, there is a suspicion that dominating the market is more important than addressing the mental health crisis. For instance, we are currently witnessing a debate on whether it’s ethical for companies such as COMPASS Pathways to try and monopolize the psychedelic industry with their patent strategy.

Additionally, in the past few years, the New Age spirituality movement has merged with positive psychology and the wellness industry, bringing many to seek healing, transcendental experiences, and self-improvement through entheogens. For many, these plants are the catalyst of positive life changes and are also revered with respect. However, there is concern that some are engaging in ceremonies so often that “spiritual bypassing” is now a recurring theme in psychedelic community discussions.

“I find it interesting how often I hear stories of people doing ceremony [using sacred plant medicines] every weekend. In many indigenous cultures, you were blessed to have one ceremony in your lifetime,” says Eriacho. “I would suggest that if individuals are finding that they need to use these plant medicines every weekend then (1) they are not taking the time to fully integrate into the experiences shown to them, and (2) these plant medicine(s) are not working for them.”

This high demand and constant search are not without negative consequences. Issues related to cultural appropriation, sustainability, and the commercialization of spirituality are often ignored by Westerners while engaging in such frequent ceremonies and spiritual tourism when they should be taken into greater consideration.

What Is Cultural Appropriation?

To understand the meaning of “cultural appropriation”, we need to understand the meaning of “appropriation” and ”culture” on an individual basis. We can define culture as the set of practices, symbols, and values that a specific group shares. For example, tattoos are an important symbol for many Indigenous cultures, as they are an essential part of the historical constitution of the groups to which they belong.

On the other hand, appropriation is the act of taking for oneself a certain element without the owner’s consent. So cultural appropriation would be the action of adopting elements of a culture to which you don’t belong without consent. An important detail to remember is this becomes problematic when it involves a power relationship. For example, it’s cultural appropriation when a culture which has historically been suppressed and marginalized has its elements stolen and its meanings erased by another culture that has dominated it.

Cultural appropriation contributes to the maintenance of structural racism in our society and the continuity of different stereotypes about cultures. But we must not forget that individuals appropriating a culture are just symptoms of a much larger problem. A capitalist system that aims for profit and uses extractivism (the exploitation of natural resources on a massive scale generating significant economic profits for a powerful few) to transform a community’s culture into a product but does not value the people whose culture it belongs to, is the real problem that needs addressing.

In the context of medicinal psychedelic plants and fungi, cultural appropriation may manifest itself in different ways. An example was the bioprospecting (the practice of searching for botanical miracle cures) of psilocybin mushrooms out of their Oaxacan context at the end of the 1950s by R. Gordon Wasson. And more recently, cases of “neo shamans” offering ceremonies they label “authentic” without years of experience and a real understanding of the cultures to which these ceremonies belong, are also examples of cultural appropriation.

The Answer? Awareness, Balance and Respect

There is a growing tendency to commodify these substances without giving back to the communities who have held this knowledge for centuries at their own risk. For example, who is really benefiting from expensive retreats in the Amazon jungle? Additionally, the development of new treatments with synthetic derivatives of these substances will reach the market through pharmaceutical patents without properly recognizing traditional knowledge.

Will psychedelics be reduced to high-class wellness, healthcare, or self-optimization products that are only accessible for those who can afford the steep price tag while the people that carried this traditional knowledge are excluded from the market? As we are about to enter the era of psychedelic capitalism, it’s important for us to remember that balance can be achieved if we acknowledge that respect is crucial for any relationship.

We need to look at what we are doing when it comes to sacred plant medicine, how we are doing it, and what impact our actions have on other communities around the world. There needs to be an effort to educate ourselves in order to comprehend Indigenous paradigms, and the effect of their loss of languages, land, culture, and knowledge. As we begin to better understand spiritual identity and sacred reciprocity, we can start making an effort to no longer let Indigenous peoples and their cultures be seen as resources to be harvested.

“Through my lens as a Native American woman, when we are ill or when we seek balance in our lives through ceremony, we often look to our plant relatives for healing,” says Eriacho “There is a ritual or practice of utilizing these sacred beings. Before the plant is harvested, we are mindful about how much will be needed, and then explain to the plant why it is needed and for whom. This is done out of respect for the plant in exchange for its life. We offer tobacco, cornmeal as an act of appreciation. This is referred to as sacred reciprocity. We need to be respectful and reverent of these sacred plant medicines.”

So how can we protect and develop traditional ceremonies in a way that is useful and respectful of Indigenous communities? And how can we prevent the so-called psychedelic renaissance from exclusively benefiting non-Indigenous Western entrepreneurs?

When I speak to Paloma David about how we can move forward in a respectful fashion, she says, “Firstly, by being culturally humble in actively listening to Indigenous voices who are authorities on the use of psychedelic plant medicines and actively including them in the conversation on the appropriate use of these substances.”

“By being aware of our own cultural biases. By understanding that people’s making-sense of an ayahuasca experience is highly dependent on their cultural background, religious beliefs (or the lack thereof), and personal psychology.” David continues, “And secondly, by avoiding the harmful reproduction of colonial dynamics of appropriation, epistemicide and exploitation in which the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous knowledges are interwoven.”

Reflecting on these ethical dilemmas can offer us models for understanding and solving this continuing harmful and extractive economy. Another solution might be pointing out paths for fair and reciprocal reparation agreements with Indigenous communities.

More importantly, considering these issues make us question the colonial and racialized Western mentality that contributes to the continued delegitimization of Indigenous communities and their knowledge so we all can at least start asking ourselves: What are the true costs of our healing?

About the Author

Jessika Lagarde is a Brazilian storyteller, Earth and climate activist, and Women On Psychedelics co-Founder. Women On Psychedelics is an educational platform that advocates for the end of the stigmatization around women’s mental health and substance use, and the normalization of the use of psychedelics for its therapeutic potential and healing capacities. Jessika’s environmental work and psychedelic path have made her more aware not only of the crisis of our planet but also of how human disconnection is a direct cause of it. All of her work is informed in taking action in a way that serves the Earth and our human collective, in hopes of mobilizing inner healing towards outer action.

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“The Problem Is Getting Worse. We Are Sleepwalking To Climate Catastrophe.” UN Warns

In Uncategorized on March 22, 2022 at 10:45 pm

“The world and ourselves are not two different entities, the world is us and we are the world… The world is burning and the world is me. I am terribly disturbed, terribly confused, and there must be some order somewhere in all this. That is what is making me look. But if you say “The world is alright, why do you bother about it, you have got good health and a little money, wife and children and a house, leave it alone.” -then, of course, the world isn’t burning. But it IS burning all the same, whether you like it or not. So that is what makes me look, not some intellectual conception, nor some emotional excitement, but the actual fact that the world is burning — the wars, the hatred, the deception, the images, the false gods, and all the rest of it. And that very perception of what is taking place outwardly, makes me aware inwardly. And I say the inward state is the outward state, they are both One, indivisible.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1969

By Eric Lutz @ Vanity Fair:

“There is no kind way to put it,” United Nation’s Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday in a keynote address to the Economist Sustainability Summit in London: The chief goal of the 2015 Paris agreement — to keep the Earth’s temperature from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — is in critical danger.

“We are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe,” Guterres said. “The 1.5 degree goal is on life support. It is in intensive care.”

Last year, an alarming UN assessment found that some of the deleterious impacts of climate change had become irreversible — but that significant action could keep the crisis from spiraling out of control even more. That sense of urgency seemed to be missing, though, when world leaders gathered in Glasgow a couple months later. While the climate conference in November was meant to be the commencement of a “decade of ambition and innovation to preserve our shared future,” as President Joe Biden described it, leaders emerged from COP26 with only a watered-down accord — one that acknowledged global warming was happening and that something needed to be done about it, but that ultimately failed to provide much in the way of a blueprint for doing so.

Guterres warned the path to addressing global warming has only become less clear in the months since, as other crises, like the war in Ukraine, have dominated international attention and threatened to exacerbate the climate emergency. Not only has the window of opportunity for action continued to close — the political will has been diluted by a “cauldron of challenges,” including the “scandalously uneven” recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the “fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine,” which itself could exacerbate the climate crisis, Guterres said. Indeed, the horror of Vladimir Putin’s invasion has relegated global warming to the back-burner, even as its onset coincided with another dire warning from the IPCC that the climate is changing faster than the world can adapt. The war has also threatened the international cooperation needed to address the climate crisis and, as Guterres pointed out Monday, led to an “‘all of the above’ strategy to replace Russian fossil fuels” that have been subject to harsh sanctions. “Countries could become so consumed by the immediate fossil fuel supply gap that they neglect or kneecap policies to cut fossil fuel use,” Guterres said. “This is madness.”

In August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the planet was locked into a hotter future, thanks to human activity and a lack of action to reverse course. It was a grim assessment, but came with one hopeful note: With aggressive, concerted action now, humanity could still prevent even worse climate disaster. At COP26 in November, leaders pledged in a pact to “revisit and strengthen” emissions targets, direct “public and private finance” to combat global warming,” and do more to support communities to “adapt to climate impacts.” But the agreement lacked teeth and didn’t go far enough, as exemplified by an 11th hour concession to India in its language about coal: Where the pact originally called on nations to “phase out” fossil fuels, the accord ultimately called on them to “phase down” their use. “If we hadn’t done that,” Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, said in defending the amended language, “we wouldn’t have had an agreement.”

That alteration underscored the weakness of that accord. “These are welcome steps, but they are not enough,” Guterres said at the time. There was already a maddening lack of urgency among world leaders in addressing global warming. But the prospect of moving the 1.5 goal “from life support to the recovery room,” as Guterres put it Monday, has only seemed to grow more distant. “If we continue with more of the same, we can kiss 1.5 goodbye,” the secretary-general warned. “Even two degrees may be out of reach. And that would be catastrophe.”

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The Practice Of Love

In Uncategorized on February 22, 2022 at 9:53 pm

“There are two sides of every coin and two sides of life: Love & Fear. Which do you choose more often?”

-Rune Lazuli

“Unconditional love is not a sentiment, but a willingness to be open. It is not a love of personality, but the love of being, grounded in the recognition of the unconditional goodness of the human heart….Loving-kindness is unconditional friendliness—a quality of allowing and welcoming human beings and their experience….

In meditation practice, you work directly with your confused mind-states, without waging crusades against any aspect of your experience. You let all your tendencies arise, without trying to screen anything out, manipulate experience in any way, or measure up to any ideal standard. Allowing yourself the space to be as you are—letting whatever arises arise, without fixation on it, and coming back to simple presence—this is perhaps the most loving and compassionate way you can treat yourself. It helps you make friends with the whole range of your experience….

As you simplify in this way, you start to feel your very presence as wholesome in and of itself. You don’t have to prove that you are good. You discover a self-existing sanity that lies deeper than all thought or feeling. You appreciate the beauty of just being awake, responsive, and open to life. Appreciating this basic, underlying sense of goodness is the birth of maitri—unconditional friendliness toward yourself.

The discovery of basic goodness can be likened to clarifying muddy water—an ancient metaphor from the Taoist and Buddhist traditions. Water is naturally pure and clear, though its turbulence may stir up mud from below. Our awareness is like that, essentially clear and open, but muddied with the turbulence of conflicting thoughts and emotions. If we want to clarify the water, what else is there to do but let the water sit?

Usually we want to put our hands in the water and do something with the dirt—struggle with it, try to change it, fix it, sanitize it—but this only stirs up more mud. “Maybe I can get rid of my sadness by thinking positive thoughts,” we say, but then the sadness sinks deeper and hardens into depression. “Maybe I’ll get my anger out, show people how I feel.” But this only spreads the dirt around. The water of awareness regains its clarity through seeing the muddiness for what it is—recognizing the turbulence of thought and feeling as noise or static, rather than as who we really are. When we stop reacting to it, which only stirs it up all the more, the mud can settle.” -John Wellwood

“In the wake of yet another state sanctioned orgy of conspicuous consumption, trumpeting the unassailable superiority and desirability of a very narrow, conditional and performance based construct of Love, I’ve taken the occasion to meditate on it. Ooof. I learned about the clarifying water metaphor described above the hard way recently. That sometimes, doing, fixing, struggling with things and people, despite our best and most noble intentions, makes the situation worse. In my zeal to salvage a failing and transitioning relationship, driven by ego and fear and their attendant variants of love, I completely upended my life and spread the dirt ALL THE WAY AROUND the water of awareness… SMDH…. I reacted to life. Didn’t make friends with it. I didn’t listen to people’s concerns. I ignored my plant, and spirit guides’ messages imploring me, to let go of the old world I’d been desperately and fearfully clinging to, that was in reality, already gone. I felt a deeply ego and people pleasing need to prove my ‘goodness’ and ‘love’. I thought my love, time, effort and energy would win the day. Predicably, it was not to be. Yogi Bhajan’s words were never truer when he said “If there is a purpose other than compassion in the relationships in your life, you will also find pain in those relationships.” Over time my heart center closed to expressing ‘unconditional positive regard’ to beings I felt deep transformative unconditional love for. I suspect many of these thoughts and activities arose from losing sight of my practice of love. Living from a place of fear. Fixating on my fearful and closed-hearted thoughts and feelings. Losing sight of my practice of love for myself and by extension, “others”. I stopped practicing deep listening. Listening only for opportunities to muddy the water. I could not for the life of me, find the space to let the water settle. It was only by ceasing to struggle, cultivating stillness, flowing with what IS, that I was finally able to gain the clarity and closure that eluded me. Grateful for the ALL the experience. Make some time today to practice unconditional love and friendliness for ALL. Offer Love and kindness to your difficult thoughts. Even those you find it most challenging to do so with. Make friends with the whole range of your experience. Be willing to be open to the light and the dark. One goes with the other after all. Your heart will be lighter for it. Meditate! It’s great! Ashe!” -Jevon

For many of us, opening our hearts to ourselves may be the hardest part of the path. Here, the late John Welwood shares how and why meditation helped him do it — unconditionally.

By John Wellwood @ Lion’s Roar:

Freud once admitted in a letter to Jung that “psychoanalysis is essentially a cure through love.” Yet while many psychotherapists might privately agree that love has some kind of role in the healing process, the word “love” is curiously absent from most of the therapeutic literature. The same is true for the word “heart.” Not only is this term missing from the psychological literature, the tone of the literature itself also lacks heart.

My interest in the place of heart in psychotherapy developed out of my experience with meditation. Although Western thought often defines mind in terms of reason, and heart in terms of feeling, in Buddhism heart and mind can both be referred to by the same term (chitta in Sanskrit). Indeed, when Tibetan Buddhists refer to mind, they often point to their chest. Mind in this sense is not thinking mind, but rather big mind—a direct knowing of reality that is basically open and friendly toward what is. Centuries of meditators have found this openness to be the central feature of human consciousness.

Heart and Basic Goodness

Heart, then, is a direct presence that allows a complete attunement with reality. In this sense, it has nothing to do with sentimentality. Heart is the capacity to touch and be touched, to reach out and let in.

Our language expresses this twofold activity of the heart, which is like a swinging door that opens in both directions. We say, “My heart went out to him,” or “I took her into my heart.” Like the physical organ with its systole and diastole, the heart-mind involves both receptive letting in, or letting be, and active going out to meet, or being-with. In their different ways, both psychological and spiritual work remove the barriers to these two movements of the heart, like oiling the door so that it can open freely in both directions.

What shuts down the heart more than anything is not letting ourselves have our own experience, but instead judging it, criticizing it, or trying to make it different from what it is. We often imagine there is something wrong with us if we feel angry, needy and dependent, lonely, confused, sad, or scared. We place conditions on ourselves and our experience: “If I feel like this, there must be something wrong with me… I can only accept myself if my experience conforms to my standard of how I should be.”

Since we are all embryonic buddhas, why would anyone want to hate themselves?

Psychological work, when practiced in a larger spiritual context, can help people discover that it is possible to be unconditional with themselves—to welcome their experience and hold it with understanding and compassion, whether or not they like it at any given moment. What initially makes this possible is the therapist’s capacity to show unconditional warmth, concern and friendliness toward the client’s experience, no matter what the client is going through. Most people in our culture did not receive this kind of unconditional acceptance in their childhood, so they internalized the conditions their parents or society placed on them. Conditions like, “You are an acceptable human being only if you measure up to our standards.” Because of this they continue to place these same conditions on themselves, causing them to remain alienated from themselves.

The Dalai Lama and many other Tibetan teachers have spoken of their great surprise and shock at discovering just how much self-hatred Westerners carry around inside them. Such an intense degree of self-blame is not found in traditional Buddhist cultures, where there is an understanding that the heart-mind, also known as buddhanature, is unconditionally open, compassionate, and wholesome. Since we are all embryonic buddhas, why would anyone want to hate themselves?

Chogyam Trungpa described the essence of our nature in terms of basic goodness. In using this term, he did not mean that people are only morally good—which would be naive, considering all the evil that humans perpetrate in this world. Rather, basic goodness refers to our primordial nature, which is unconditionally wholesome because it is intrinsically attuned to reality.

This primordial kind of goodness goes beyond conventional notions of good and bad. It lies much deeper than conditioned personality and behavior, which are always a mix of positive and negative tendencies. From this perspective, all the evil and destructive behavior that goes on in our world is the result of people failing to recognize the fundamental wholesomeness of their essential nature.

Meditation, Psychotherapy and Unconditional Friendliness

While studying Rogerian therapy in graduate school, I used to be intrigued, intimidated and puzzled by Carl Rogers’ term “unconditional positive regard.” Although it sounded appealing as an ideal therapeutic stance, I found it hard to put into practice. First of all, there was no specific training for it. Since Western psychology had not provided me with any understanding of heart, or the intrinsic goodness underlying psychopathology, I was unclear just where unconditional positive regard should be directed. It was only in turning to the meditative traditions that I came to appreciate the unconditional goodness at the core of being human, and this in turn helped me understand the possibility of unconditional love and its role in the healing process.

The Buddhist counterpart of unconditional positive regard is loving-kindness (maitri in Sanskrit, metta in Pali). Loving-kindness is unconditional friendliness—a quality of allowing and welcoming human beings and their experience. Yet before I could genuinely express this kind of acceptance toward others, I first had to discover what it meant for myself. Meditation is what allowed me to do this.

Meditation cultivates unconditional friendliness through teaching you how to just be—without doing anything, without holding onto anything, and without trying to think good thoughts, get rid of bad thoughts, or achieve a pure state of mind. This is a radical practice. There is nothing else like it. Normally we do everything we can to avoid just being. When left alone with ourselves, without a project to occupy us, we become nervous. We start judging ourselves or thinking about what we should be doing or feeling. We start putting conditions on ourselves, trying to arrange our experience so that it measures up to our inner standards. Since this inner struggle is so painful, we are always looking for something to distract us from being with ourselves.

Unconditional love is not a sentiment, but a willingness to be open. It is not a love of personality, but the love of being, grounded in the recognition of the unconditional goodness of the human heart.

This core discovery enabled me to extend this same kind of unconditional friendliness toward my clients. When I first started practicing therapy and found myself disliking certain clients or certain things about them, I felt guilty or hypocritical. Eventually I came to understand this in a new way. Unconditional love or lovingkindness did not mean that I always had to like my clients, any more than I liked all the twists and turns of my own scheming mind. Rather, it meant providing an accommodating space in which their knots could begin to unravel.

It was a great relief to realize that I did not have to unconditionally love or accept that which is conditioned—another’s personality. Rather, unconditional friendliness is a natural response to that which is itself unconditional—the basic goodness and open heart in others, beneath all their defenses, rationalizations, and pretenses. Unconditional love is not a sentiment, but a willingness to be open. It is not a love of personality, but the love of being, grounded in the recognition of the unconditional goodness of the human heart.

Fortunately, unconditional friendliness does not mean having to like what is going on. Instead, it means allowing whatever is there to be there as it is, and inviting it to reveal itself more fully. In trying to help clients develop unconditional friendliness toward a difficult feeling, I often say, “You don’t have to like it. You can just let it be there, and make a place for your dislike of it as well.”

Similarly, letting myself have my whole range of response and feeling towards my clients allows me to be more present with them. The more maitri I have for myself, by letting myself be, the more I can be with others and let them be themselves.

This of course holds true for all relationships. For instance, it is only when we can let our fear be, and hold it in a friendly space, that we can be present with our loved ones in their fear. We only react to others with blame and rejection when their experience mirrors or provokes some feeling in ourselves that we cannot relate to in a friendly way. In this way, developing loving-kindness toward the whole range of our own experience naturally allows us to have loving-kindness toward others.

The health of living organisms is maintained through the free-flowing circulation of energy. We see this in the endless cycles and flow of water, the cradle of life, which purifies itself through circulating, rising from the oceans, falling on the mountains, and rushing in clear streams back to the sea. Similarly, the circulation of blood in the body brings new life in the form of oxygen to the cells, while allowing the removal of toxins from the body. Any interference with circulation is the beginning of disease.

Similarly, when loving-kindness does not circulate throughout our system, blockages and armoring build up and we get sick, psychologically or physically. If we fail to recognize the basic goodness contained within all our experiences, self-doubt blooms like algae in water, clogging up the natural flow of self-love that keeps us healthy. If we can extend unconditional friendliness toward our own or another’s whole range of experience and being, this begins to penetrate the clouds of self-judgment, so that our life energy can circulate freely again.

This understanding allowed me to approach psychotherapy in a new way. I found that if I could connect with the basic goodness in those I worked with—the underlying, often hidden longing and will to be who they are and meet life fully—not just as an ideal or as positive thinking, but as a living reality, then I could start to forge an alliance with the essential core of health within them. I could help them meet and go through whatever they were experiencing—as frightening or horrifying as it might seem—just as I myself had done on the meditative cushion. Orienting myself toward the basic goodness hidden beneath their conflicts and struggles, I could contact the deeper aliveness circulating within them and between the two of us in the present moment. This made possible a heart-connection that promoted real change.

I was inspired in this approach by the example of the bodhisattvas in Buddhism, who, in their commitment to help all sentient beings, join compassion with the discriminating wisdom that sees through people’s suffering to the embryonic buddha within. For me, seeing the buddha in others is not a way of denying or minimizing their suffering or conflicts. Rather, in the words of Robert Thurman, “A bodhisattva sees simultaneously how a being is free from suffering, as well as seeing it with its suffering, and that gives the bodhisattva great compassion that is truly effective.”

Just as muddy water contains clear water within it when the dirt settles out, all our negative tendencies reveal a spark of basic goodness and intelligence at their core, which is usually obscured by our habitual tendencies.

When bodhisattvas engender this kind of all-seeing compassion, according to the Vimalakirti Sutra, they “generate the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings; the love that is peaceful because free of grasping; the love that is not feverish, because free of passions; the love that accords with reality because it contains equanimity; the love that has no presumption because it has eliminated attachment and aversion; the love that is nondual because it is involved neither with the external nor the internal; the love that is imperturbable because totally ultimate.”

Honoring our Experience

The poignant truth about human suffering is that all our neurotic, self-destructive patterns are twisted forms of basic goodness, which lies hidden within them.

For example, a little girl with an alcoholic father sees his unhappiness, and wants to make him happy so that she could experience unconditional love—the love of being— flowing between them. Unfortunately, out of her desire to please him, she also winds up bending herself out of shape, disregarding her own needs and blaming herself for failing to make him happy. As a result, she ends up with a harsh inner critic and repeatedly reenacts a neurotic victim role with the men in her life. Although her fixation on trying to please is misguided, it originally arose out of a spark of generosity and caring for her father.

Just as muddy water contains clear water within it when the dirt settles out, all our negative tendencies reveal a spark of basic goodness and intelligence at their core, which is usually obscured by our habitual tendencies. Within our anger, for instance, there may be an arrow-like straightforwardness that can be a real gift when communicated without attack or blame. Our passivity may contain a capacity for acceptance and letting things be. Our self-hatred often contains a desire to destroy those elements of our personality that oppress us and prevent us from being fully ourselves. Since every negative or self-defeating behavior is but a distorted form of our larger intelligence, we don’t have to struggle against this dirt that muddies the water of our being.

With this understanding, work with our psychological blockages becomes like Aikido, the martial art that involves flowing with the attack, rather than against it. By recognizing the deeper, positive urge hidden within our ego strategies, we no longer have to treat them as an enemy. After all, the strategies of the ego are all ways of trying to be. They were the best we could do as a child and they’re not all that bad, considering that they were dreamed up by the mind of a child. Realizing that we did the best we could under the circumstances, and seeing ego as an imitation of the real thing—an attempt to be ourselves in a world that did not recognize, welcome or support our being—helps us have more understanding and compassion for ourselves.

Our ego itself is testimony to the force of love. It developed as a way to keep going in the face of perceived threats to our existence, primarily lack of love. In the places where love was missing, we built ego defenses. So every time we enact one of our defensive behaviors, we are also implicitly paying homage to love as the most important thing.

As a therapist, meditation was my Aikido teacher. As I sat on the meditation cushion with a whole range of “pathological” mind-states passing through my awareness, I began to see depression, paranoia, obsession and addiction as nothing more than the changing weather of the mind. These mind-states did not belong to me in particular or mean anything about who I was. Recognizing this helped me relax with the whole spectrum of my experience and meet it more inquisitively.

This helped me relax with my clients’ mind-states as well. In working with someone’s terror, I could honor it as the intense experience it was, without letting it unsettle me. I also took it as an opportunity to meet and work with my own fear once again. Or if I was helping someone explore an empty, lonely place inside, this gave me a chance to check in with that part of myself as well.

Realizing that I shared one awareness with the people I worked with allowed me to keep my heart open instead of retreating into a position of clinical distance.

It became clear that there was only one mind, though it may appear in many guises. While this might sound strange and mystical, I mean it in a very practical sense: The client’s awareness and mine are two ends of one continuum when we are working together. Fear is essentially fear, self-doubt is self-doubt, blocked desire is blocked desire—though these may take on a variety of forms and meanings for different individuals. Realizing that I shared one awareness with the people I worked with allowed me to keep my heart open instead of retreating into a position of clinical distance.

Whenever two people meet and connect, they share the same presence of awareness, and there is no way to divide it neatly into “your awareness” and “my awareness.” This basic fact—that other people’s experience resonates in and through us, whether we like it or not—is why other people can grate on our nerves and “drive us crazy.” Yet this “interbeing” is also what allows us to feel genuine empathy for what someone else is going through. Before we can truly embody this vast space of empathy and compassion for others, where we can totally let them be who they are, we must first be on friendly terms with our own raw and tender feelings. For many of us this may be the hardest path of all—opening our hearts to ourselves.

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About John Welwood

John Welwood, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist who has been a student of Tibetan Buddhism for more than thirty-five years. His books include Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart.

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Your Happiness Is My Happiness

In Uncategorized on January 1, 2022 at 10:07 am

“How different would the world look if we could all practice and embody the spirit of these 5 words. This way of viewing life and recognizing our interbeing with all that Is, could help to facilitate some of the transformational change we need to right the course of Earth, Our Crowded Spaceship. Consider bringing in the New Year with a resolve to do more sharing and less comparing with others. To see abundance where you’ve been conditioned to see scarcity. To do less competing and more cooperating. Practice cultivating gratitude and being in touch with what you DO have and spending less time fixating and complaining about what you don’t. As it is said in ‘The Law Of One’ : “All experiences come to you so that you may reclaim your peace, so that you can acquire wisdom and knowledge… All is one, and that one is love/light, light/love, the Infinite Creator.” Happy New Year! I wish you all Love, Light, Life, Peace and Prosperity. Mudita Rocks! Try it today!’ -J

By Sharon Salzberg @ Tricycle:

The quality of sympathetic joy or joy in the happiness of others is known as mudita in the Pali language. Sympathetic joy is what happens when we actually feel happy for the happiness of others.

Rather than witnessing someone’s success or good fortune and falling sway to the voice that so often arises within us, which says, “Ooh, I wish you didn’t have so much going for you right now. You don’t have to lose everything, but I’d be rather pleased if the light could just dim a bit,” we actually can be happy when someone else is happy. We don’t need to feel that their happiness is taking something away from us. We can recognize that their happiness is our happiness and feel at one with them in that way.

You know when you receive sympathetic joy from others and when you don’t. When someone is happy that something great happened for you, their delight in your good fortune feels like such a tremendous gift. Then there are times when something really good happens for you and the other person may look at you and smile, but you get the feeling they would be just fine if it all went away. And that feels terrible, that they somehow feel bad because of your happiness, your good fortune.

Among Buddhism’s Four Immeasurables of lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, sympathetic joy can be the most difficult to develop. Of course, some people naturally have this quality of sympathetic joy. They just exude happiness for the happiness of others. But for many of us, it actually requires training. Sympathetic joy can be difficult, though not impossible, because we often hold various assumptions that we need to challenge and ultimately dissolve in order to have sympathetic joy.

For example, we may hold the assumption that a prize, praise, success, or good fortune was heading right toward us. But somehow this other person intervened and kept it for themselves. So we feel that it rightfully should have been ours.

However, we’re not always in competition with everybody. Sometimes we are. We may be applying for the same job or the same grant; if someone else gets it, you don’t. But a lot of times, we’re not in competition. That success was not coming my way, and so it wasn’t appropriate, in that instance, to feel as though something was stolen. And yet we often react that way.

We may also have the idea that happiness is a limited commodity in this world and the more someone else has, the less there is for us. Or we may fall into the idea of permanence, like if someone has everything then they will have it forever, and you will have nothing forever. Whereas of course wisdom tells us nothing is forever. Wisdom also tells us it is very unlikely that we have nothing.

It’s important to pay attention and challenge each of these assumptions—the ways we withhold, the ways that we compare, the ways that we needlessly compete, the ways we feel that our lives are empty and always will be. We need to look at our assumptions and spend less time fixating on what we don’t have and more time actually appreciating what we do have.

Here is where the practice of gratitude steps in. This is the place where we begin to think about actively cultivating the force of gratitude to look at what we have consciously. Keeping a gratitude journal can be a very powerful healing act that any of us can do. At the end of the day, write down three things from the day that you’re grateful for. I always say that one of the three could be that you’re breathing. It doesn’t have to be grandiose or magnificent.

And I also say that gratitude doesn’t come automatically to me. My personal conditioning, my familial conditioning, and my cultural conditioning are such that I am more likely to come to the end of the day and automatically think about what I can complain about, or ways I disappointed myself, or how other people didn’t show up in the way I wanted them to. That’s more the habit of my mind. So for me to think of three things I’m grateful for from the day is a stretch. It’s the kind of stretch where we move from a place of familiarity to someplace that is true, but maybe less accustomed for us.

Through that stretch, through actively practicing gratitude and being in touch with what we do have, we don’t look at someone else’s success or good fortune with quite the same feeling of impoverishment relative to their plenty.

A long time ago, the Dalai Lama shared some wisdom about sympathetic joy. He said, “It only makes sense to cultivate happiness for the happiness of others because then you increase your own chances of happiness six billion to one.” Today it would be around seven billion to one. He continued, “Those are very good odds.” Right? And so I joke sometimes that that’s an easy way to get happy. You don’t have to spend any money. You don’t have to even get dressed in the morning. Just think of someone’s success and you’re filled with joy.

There you are, you did it.

⧫

Adapted from Tricycle’s Online Course “The Boundless Heart,” an eight-week course on Buddhism’s Four Immeasurables: lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Learn more about Tricycle’s online courses here.

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WHO: “Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity.”

In Uncategorized on October 13, 2021 at 8:40 pm

A man skates as a woman walks before the Manhattan city skyline at a park in the Brooklyn borough of New York on July 20, 2021. – Domestic media reported that smoke from wilfires buring on the west coast had made its way across the country as World Air Quality project published an air quality index reading of 172, or ‘unhealthy’ for New York city. (Photo by Ed JONES / AFP) (Photo by ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images)

“The same unsustainable choices that are killing our planet are killing people. WHO calls on all countries to commit to decisive action at COP26 to limit global warming to 1.5°C – not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s in our own interests.”

-Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General

“The report and open letter come as unprecedented extreme weather events and other climate impacts are taking a rising toll on people’s lives and health. Increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, kill thousands and disrupt millions of lives, while threatening healthcare systems and facilities when they are needed most. Changes in weather and climate are threatening food security and driving up food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, while climate impacts are also negatively affecting mental health.

The WHO report states: “The burning of fossil fuels is killing us. Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity. While no one is safe from the health impacts of climate change, they are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable and disadvantaged.

Meanwhile, air pollution, primarily the result of burning fossil fuels, which also drives climate change, causes 13 deaths per minute worldwide.

The report concludes that protecting people’s health requires transformational action in every sector, including on energy, transport, nature, food systems and finance. And it states clearly that the public health benefits from implementing ambitious climate actions far outweigh the costs.”

–WHO News Release

“Sigh. These increasingly frantic calls for “transformational action” to attempt to avoid the worst case scenario climate catastrophies continue to fall on deaf ears. Life-threatening emissions are expected to soar higher at the second highest rate in history. Environment destroying extraction and consumption rates have not significantly decreased. Business as usual, get back to “normal” imperatives seem to be the order of the day. Are you expecting transformational action to be taken at COP 26? LOL! They’ll be discussing things like “global carbon finance” and “carbon market rules”. A.K.A. Market-based responses to non market based realities. That’s not gonna cut it. There have been 25 years of increasingly dire reports coming out of the U.N. alerting world leaders to the steadily increasing probabilities of life-altering climate changes. Many of the changes have come to pass and far faster than expected. Despite this grim reality, there has been none of the transformational action required to ensure public health, and by extension, the long-term continuation of health and life on Earth as we know it. Unfortunately for us and much of life on earth our political and decisions making systems are not designed to enact transformational change, unless of course it’s to go to war. Unsustainable choices are likely to continue to destroy planet and people. Tick, tick, tick, tick….” -J

By Jacqueline Howard and Rachel Ramirez @ CNN:

The World Health Organization, in a new special report, is calling for governments and policymakers to “act with urgency” on the climate and health crises. The report describes climate change as the “single biggest health threat facing humanity,” and outlines 10 recommended climate and health actions along with the research in support of why each action is beneficial. Groups representing 45 million nurses, doctors and health professionals around the world have now signed an open letter to heads of state and national delegations urging action on the climate crisis, ahead of a pivotal UN climate change summit in early November.”As health professionals and health workers, we recognize our ethical obligation to speak out about this rapidly growing crisis that could be far more catastrophic and enduring than the Covid-19 pandemic,” the letter reads. “Those people and nations who have benefited most from the activities that caused the climate crisis, especially fossil fuel extraction and use, have a great responsibility to do everything possible to help those who are now most at risk.”

Both the special report and open letter highlight key climate issues that are already affecting public health including air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, which causes climate change; intensifying heat waves, floods and storms taking thousands of lives; rising sea levels destroying homes and livelihoods; and extreme weather exacerbating food insecurity and hunger.

“Protecting health requires action well beyond the health sector, in energy, transport, nature, food systems, finance and more,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in the report’s foreword. “The ten recommendations outlined in this report — and the action points, resources and case studies that support them — provide concrete examples of interventions that, with support, can be scaled up rapidly to safeguard our health and our climate.”

Much like the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis has caused devastating ripple effects across society and the economy, threatening people’s lives, decreasing worker productivity, and straining infrastructure and health services. Moreover, the consequences of both crises have exposed the inequalities that have led certain communities to be more vulnerable than others. “Even as they have been battling to end the Covid-19 pandemic, health leaders everywhere have been sounding the alarm on climate change,” Maria Neira, director of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health at the WHO, said in a press release. “It is time we listened.”

The landmark UN state-of-the-science report released in August concludes that the world has rapidly warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and is now barreling toward 1.5 degrees — a critical threshold that world leaders agreed warming should remain below to avoid worsening impacts.The recommendations in the new WHO special report include prioritizing climate interventions with the largest gains, building climate-resilient and environmentally sustainable health systems, and promoting sustainable food production as well as sustainable and equitable urban design and transportation systems.”The recommendations are the result of extensive consultations with health professionals, organizations and stakeholders worldwide, and represent a broad consensus statement urging governments to act to tackle the climate crisis, restore biodiversity, and protect health,” Tedros wrote.

The report was written “in memory of Ella Kissi-Debrah — and all other children who have suffered and died from air pollution and climate change.”Kissi-Debrah, who died at age 9 after an asthma attack, is thought to be the first person in the world to have air pollution listed as a cause of death in a landmark coroner’s ruling. Kissi-Debrah lived in southeast London, near one of the UK capital’s busiest roads, the South Circular.

As world leaders prepare for this year’s UN climate talks, health care leaders are urging heads of states to expand their international climate commitments to tackle the current public health crises brought by a warming world — and to prevent future ones. “The health arguments for rapid climate action have never been clearer,” Tedros wrote. “I hope this report can guide policymakers and practitioners from across sectors and across the world to implement the transformative changes needed.”

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Why It’s Time We All Celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day

In Uncategorized on October 11, 2021 at 5:43 pm

“It’s just not appropriate to celebrate Columbus and Indigenous peoples on the same day. It’s a contradiction. One is a genocidal enslavement, is what Columbus represents. And the situation of Native people today, still under colonialism, with shrunken land bases and not true sovereignty, is the fruit of that beginning, and they’re completely contradictory. So, it would require an act of Congress, and that would be difficult. The Italian community and the Catholic Church would definitely oppose this, so we have really a long ways to go to make it real. It’s the Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and it cannot be co opted into tolerating Columbus being alongside it.” -Dr Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

“Holidays and acknowledgement are nice. Important even. But not when they also celebrate genocidal murderers. It’s long past time that we as privileged and enfranchised settler colonial occupiers of Indigenous lands need to take many real and substantive looks at how we stop violating the rights, bodily, psychic and terrestrial integrity of the Indigenous peoples of Pachamama. The people who are under continuous & global assault by colonial empires are the ones best equipped to show us the way forward and to slow the advance of Earth’s rapidly accelerating 6th mass extinction. We have to find serious and scaleable ways to incorporate Indigenous thinking and ways of being into the heart of our dominator culture currently ravaging our planet. As Bell Hooks once noted: “Dominator culture teaches all of us that the core of our identity is defined by the will to dominate and control others… In the dominator model the pursuit of external power, the ability to manipulate and control others, is what matters most. When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent but it will frame all relationships as power struggles.” We need to shift from a dominator culture to a partnership culture before all is lost.”

-Jevon

By FirstNations.org

On October 11th, 14 states and over 130 cities will celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day. With the increasing urgency to speak truth to history and celebrate the Indigenous Peoples who have endured through centuries, the movement to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day is growing. And for good reason.

Moving on from the Myth

The truth is that Columbus Day celebrates a history that never existed. It’s a false narrative of Columbus’s brave exploration, when in actuality it was a conquering and enslavement of Indigenous Peoples for profit and power.

The celebration of Columbus suppresses an honest interpretation of a history in which vibrant Indigenous cultures thrived. Moreover, the perpetuation of the narrative of a heroic Columbus is a slap in the face to Indigenous Peoples’ throughout the Northern and Southern hemispheres and a continuance of historical trauma and genocide.

The movement to dispel the story of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, Columbus, and Columbus’ discovery of the “Americas” has been hard fought and long awaited. Tribal communities and organizations across the United States have battled with government entities to censure the commemoration of a known murderer and slave owner. Rooted in this movement is the need to recognize, acknowledge, and share the truth.

The Need for Proper Acknowledgement

We live in a society in which Native American Peoples are lumped into the “other” slice of just about every pie chart. This is not by accident. The system is rigged to maintain this order and to limit the political power of Indigenous Peoples now and in the future by keeping the dreams of their children small. This is easily done by robbing Indigenous Peoples of the accomplishments of their ancestors.

Indigenous Peoples are often disenfranchised or not even recognized at all. We all recall CNN referring to Native American voters as “something else.”

How do thousands of groups of people go unrecognized and forgotten? How does millennia get written out of history books, while a few centuries define a continent?

The continued erasure of Native peoples from national narrative is devastating. If we do not create a space for Indigenous Peoples to share their stories of resilience, we leave room to be written out of history books, we provide a backdrop in which unconcerned law enforcement acts with impunity to continue the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Women and Girls, we preserve the policies that openly discriminated against and tried to wipe out tribal communities, and we make space for people to tell stories that are not representative of the true inspiration of Native peoples.

It’s Time to Change the Narrative

Indeed, creating space for Indigenous Peoples to be celebrated has been a struggle in a colonizer society. But the good news is that, right now, the United States is at another pivotal time in its history, where Indigenous Peoples are once again being recognized and at the forefront of important conversations.

Important players like Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and director Sterlin Harjo are helping rewrite the negative narratives and create a seat at the table for Indigenous Peoples.

And, First Nations and other Native nonprofits are working diligently to generate robust narratives about Native values, ideas, contributions, relationships, and issues. We are supporting and revitalizing the stories that make us unique, and we are sharing accounts that give light to tribal communities and reinforce the knowledge and values that existed before contact.

We must teach the truth in our history books and acknowledge that there were great civilizations and complex societies that had working governments and advanced technology. We must provide different perspectives of the Indigenous ancestors who still inhabit our beautiful country today.

Celebrating a New Day

Being Indigenous today is an amazing feat and Indigenous people are here for a reason. We are here to remind the world that our beauty still lives on, and we will continue to survive and thrive. We live on through our stories and art, we live on in the land, we live on through our culture and traditions, we live on through our songs and prayers, and – most importantly – we live on through our children.

As the saying goes, “We do not inherit the earth from ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” – Chief Seattle

As we move forward as a society we are changing perspectives. Now is the time we teach a new narrative and share the stories of the peoples who first inhabited the “Americas” – the stories of survival, resilience, perseverance, and victory.

First Nations, as an Indigenous-led nonprofit, will continue to champion the movement to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. We will continue to help eliminate the celebration of genocide, trauma, and colonization, and move to replace this event everywhere with a true celebration of Indigenous ways of life, resiliency, ingenuity, tradition, and culture.

We hope you join us in the movement. Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day!

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Climate Change, Dystopia, Earth's 6th Mass Extinction

MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse Around 2040. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule.

In Uncategorized on July 15, 2021 at 1:48 pm

“Sigh. This news should be front page on every social and media network. Yet, crickets…. It’s been confirmed that this business as usual, omnicidal way of being is no longer possible. That continuing on this path of destruction will very likely lead to the end of economic growth and shortly after civilizational collapse. Why are we being assured that a return to “normal” is the best way to go? “Normal was quite obviously not working for billions of poor, working & middle class people. It still isn’t. “Normal” most certainly wasn’t and isn’t working for our Great Mother who sustains and protects us and all life within her. Our rapacious rates of consumption and waste production are not sustainable and are literally killing everything that lives. This way of being is not ok. It is is accelerating Earth’s 6th mass extinction with each passing day. We are hurtling at breakneck speed toward collapse. The changes necessary to reverse or mitigate the damage we’re doing are not being made. Sadly profit is still paramount, and it seems the only thing that will change this mindset is collapse. This crisis of civilization will only become more acute as time passes. Everything has to change drastically. It is essential for our survival that we begin to embrace ‘agrowth’ and focus on other environmentally complimentary goals and priorities. Yet, crickets… The catastrophe of estrangement continues unabated. Hence, we’re screwed. Tick, tick, tick, tick….” -Jevon

By Nafeez Ahmed

A remarkable new study by a director at one of the largest accounting firms in the world has found that a famous, decades-old warning from MIT about the risk of industrial civilization collapsing appears to be accurate based on new empirical data.

As the world looks forward to a rebound in economic growth following the devastation wrought by the pandemic, the research raises urgent questions about the risks of attempting to simply return to the pre-pandemic ‘normal.’Advertisement

In 1972, a team of MIT scientists got together to study the risks of civilizational collapse. Their system dynamics model published by the Club of Rome identified impending ‘limits to growth’ (LtG) that meant industrial civilization was on track to collapse sometime within the 21st century, due to overexploitation of planetary resources.

The controversial MIT analysis generated heated debate, and was widely derided at the time by pundits who misrepresented its findings and methods. But the analysis has now received stunning vindication from a study written by a senior director at professional services giant KPMG, one of the ‘Big Four’ accounting firms as measured by global revenue.

Limits to growth

The study was published in the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology in November 2020 and is available on the KPMG website. It concludes that the current business-as-usual trajectory of global civilization is heading toward the terminal decline of economic growth within the coming decade—and at worst, could trigger societal collapse by around 2040.

The study represents the first time a top analyst working within a mainstream global corporate entity has taken the ‘limits to growth’ model seriously. Its author, Gaya Herrington, is Sustainability and Dynamic System Analysis Lead at KPMG in the United States. However, she decided to undertake the research as a personal project to understand how well the MIT model stood the test of time. Tech

New Report Suggests ‘High Likelihood of Human Civilization Coming to an End’ Starting in 2050

The study itself is not affiliated or conducted on behalf of KPMG, and does not necessarily reflect the views of KPMG. Herrington performed the research as an extension of her Masters thesis at Harvard University in her capacity as an advisor to the Club of Rome. However, she is quoted explaining her project on the KPMG website as follows:

“Given the unappealing prospect of collapse, I was curious to see which scenarios were aligning most closely with empirical data today. After all, the book that featured this world model was a bestseller in the 70s, and by now we’d have several decades of empirical data which would make a comparison meaningful. But to my surprise I could not find recent attempts for this. So I decided to do it myself.”Advertisement

Titled ‘Update to limits to growth: Comparing the World3 model with empirical data’, the study attempts to assess how MIT’s ‘World3’ model stacks up against new empirical data. Previous studies that attempted to do this found that the model’s worst-case scenarios accurately reflected real-world developments. However, the last study of this nature was completed in 2014.

The risk of collapse

Herrington’s new analysis examines data across 10 key variables, namely population, fertility rates, mortality rates, industrial output, food production, services, non-renewable resources, persistent pollution, human welfare, and ecological footprint. She found that the latest data most closely aligns with two particular scenarios, ‘BAU2’ (business-as-usual) and ‘CT’ (comprehensive technology).

“BAU2 and CT scenarios show a halt in growth within a decade or so from now,” the study concludes. “Both scenarios thus indicate that continuing business as usual, that is, pursuing continuous growth, is not possible. Even when paired with unprecedented technological development and adoption, business as usual as modelled by LtG would inevitably lead to declines in industrial capital, agricultural output, and welfare levels within this century.”

Study author Gaya Herrington told Motherboard that in the MIT World3 models, collapse “does not mean that humanity will cease to exist,” but rather that “economic and industrial growth will stop, and then decline, which will hurt food production and standards of living… In terms of timing, the BAU2 scenario shows a steep decline to set in around 2040.”

The end of growth?

In the comprehensive technology (CT) scenario, economic decline still sets in around this date with a range of possible negative consequences, but this does not lead to societal collapse.

Unfortunately, the scenario which was the least closest fit to the latest empirical data happens to be the most optimistic pathway known as ‘SW’ (stabilized world), in which civilization follows a sustainable path and experiences the smallest declines in economic growth—based on a combination of technological innovation and widespread investment in public health and education.

Although both the business-as-usual and comprehensive technology scenarios point to the coming end of economic growth in around 10 years, only the BAU2 scenario “shows a clear collapse pattern, whereas CT suggests the possibility of future declines being relatively soft landings, at least for humanity in general.”

Both scenarios currently “seem to align quite closely not just with observed data,” Herrington concludes in her study, indicating that the future is open.

A window of opportunity

While focusing on the pursuit of continued economic growth for its own sake will be futile, the study finds that technological progress and increased investments in public services could not just avoid the risk of collapse, but lead to a new stable and prosperous civilization operating safely within planetary boundaries. But we really have only the next decade to change course.

“At this point therefore, the data most aligns with the CT and BAU2 scenarios which indicate a slowdown and eventual halt in growth within the next decade or so, but World3 leaves open whether the subsequent decline will constitute a collapse,” the study concludes. Although the ‘stabilized world’ scenario “tracks least closely, a deliberate trajectory change brought about by society turning toward another goal than growth is still possible. The LtG work implies that this window of opportunity is closing fast.” Advertisement

In a presentation at the World Economic Forum in 2020 delivered in her capacity as a KPMG director, Herrington argued for ‘agrowth’—an agnostic approach to growth which focuses on other economic goals and priorities.

“Changing our societal priorities hardly needs to be a capitulation to grim necessity,” she said. “Human activity can be regenerative and our productive capacities can be transformed. In fact, we are seeing examples of that happening right now. Expanding those efforts now creates a world full of opportunity that is also sustainable.”

She noted how the rapid development and deployment of vaccines at unprecedented rates in response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates that we are capable of responding rapidly and constructively to global challenges if we choose to act. We need exactly such a determined approach to the environmental crisis.

“The necessary changes will not be easy and pose transition challenges but a sustainable and inclusive future is still possible,” said Herrington.

The best available data suggests that what we decide over the next 10 years will determine the long-term fate of human civilization. Although the odds are on a knife-edge, Herrington pointed to a “rapid rise” in environmental, social and good governance priorities as a basis for optimism, signalling the change in thinking taking place in both governments and businesses. She told me that perhaps the most important implication of her research is that it’s not too late to create a truly sustainable civilization that works for all.

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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Planetary Boundaries

Don’t Look Up

Four Pathways – Three Lead to Collapse

Avoiding Collapse

A Diluted Narrative?

Disidentification from the Dominant System

Transcending the Fear of Dualism

Being in Dialogue with an Animate Planet

Indigenous Uses of Sacred Plant Medicines and Traditions

Western Uses of Plant Medicines

What Is Cultural Appropriation?

The Answer? Awareness, Balance and Respect

About the Author

Heart and Basic Goodness

Since we are all embryonic buddhas, why would anyone want to hate themselves?

Meditation, Psychotherapy and Unconditional Friendliness

Unconditional love is not a sentiment, but a willingness to be open. It is not a love of personality, but the love of being, grounded in the recognition of the unconditional goodness of the human heart.

Just as muddy water contains clear water within it when the dirt settles out, all our negative tendencies reveal a spark of basic goodness and intelligence at their core, which is usually obscured by our habitual tendencies.

Honoring our Experience

Realizing that I shared one awareness with the people I worked with allowed me to keep my heart open instead of retreating into a position of clinical distance.

By Nafeez Ahmed

Limits to growth

The risk of collapse

The end of growth?

A window of opportunity

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