Category: Articles

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

The Hopi Elders

The Project

The creation of a collective narrative to promote and accelerate the deep transformation we must bring about to heal the pressing environmental and social crises and create a future of hope and possibility for all.

The mission is to create a myth for our times: a weaving together of the many generative stories that are being spun by thinkers, mystics, artists and activists the world over into a single, rich tapestry to help portray, fortify and usher forth the emerging era.

Key Concepts

Joseph Campbell once described myths as “energy evoking and directing images” whose task (one of four main functions) is to bring forth in individuals “a sense of grateful, affirmative awe before the mons trous Mystery that is existence”.

These images have guided humankind through many a dark night. But the hegemony of linear thinking and banishment of mythopoetic language and imagination has driven myth from its rightful place as nourishment for the soul, and left it languishing as a historical artifact, or even as another name for “untruth”.

This information already exists, but the story is being told in fragments. How much more powerful would it be to create a unified fabric with social, biological, artistic, spiritual and environmental strands, that could reach the mainstream population and promote the tidal wave of changes we so urgently need?

The Name

“Earthrise” is the name given to a photograph of planet Earth and some of the Moon’s surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24th, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. Nature photographer Galen Rowell described it as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”.

Joseph Campbell predicted that this striking image of the blue-green dot floating in infinite space, without a single border in sight, would be the inspiration for a new, global myth for mankind. Although this has not come to be in the way he envisioned, the symbol remains as potent today as the day the photograph was taken.

“Earthrise” could speak of the need to transcend individual stories and cultural and ideological narratives, to prioritize the story of a unified Earth (with its human and non-human inhabitants), rising from the ashes of environmental destruction and social and economic polarization, to an era of collaboration, integration and collective intelligence.

The Challenge

To bring together a group of writers, poets, scientists, activists, environmentalists, artists– who are already expressing important fragments of the new story, for a series of working sessions, to help put together the outline of a guiding story.

The story would offer a vision of the world we are ushering into being, in its many different dimensions, such as:

• Restored intimacy with Nature, in a planet recognized as wholly alive and conscious.
• Compassionate, just and inclusive social relations and dynamics.
• Purpose-centered economies, where experiences and right livelihood are valued over consumption.
• Access to a dignified living for all.
• Shift to renewable resources and wise use of them.
• Invigorated democracies, local decision-making, decentralized governance.
• Verdant cities that promote and facilitate healthful living.
• Community hubs connected through interlocking networks of exchange and support.
• So much more!

With the help of seasoned writers, the story would then be edited for clarity, precision and evocative power. The text version of the story would be seeded with hyperlinks to invite people to dig deeper in areas of personal interest (providing further education and opportunities to join existing initiatives and contribute).

The next step would be to create an audiovisual telling of the story, and a set of practices, rituals and activities to help embed the myth into daily life.

Jane Benyus, creator of Biomimicry (one of these vital strands) states that Life creates conditions conducive to life. This is an invitation to join forces in order to create the Story to feed all stories, the Life to feed all lives.

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.
In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.
To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light

Gary Snyder

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.

“Can’t you?” The Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Many people regard the imagination with suspicion, as something that has no place in adult life. In contrast, the wisdom traditions teach that the imagination is one of the most important, most direct channels to the divine, and probably one of the oldest.

In The Evolution of Imagination, Stephen T. Asma, a specialist in the philosophy of the natural sciences, describes the imagination as “the eye of ancestral man” and considers it a human skill acquired before language. Thomas Moore in Care of the Soul, speaking from a spiritual perspective, proposes: “The key to seeing the world’s soul, and in the process wakening our own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination is illusion.”

Another scientist, the never mediocre Albert Einstein, defies convention when he asserts: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

Let’s look at some of the many ways we can explore this fantastic river and see what surprises it can offer us.

Play, Dreams, Mysteries: Playing to Create

No child ever receives a box of colored crayons and says, “What’s the point? I can’t draw.” Nor does she reject a jar of modeling dough because sculpture is too complicated. If you give him a guitar, he gets sounds out of it without fuss. If you ask her to sing, she doesn’t refuse to because she doesn’t know the words or because she hasn’t got a perfect voice: she simply takes a breath, opens her mouth and belts it out!

Creativity is not just our birthright: it’s the most important expression of our nature. But something happens when we begin formal education. Suddenly, to draw a tree you are only allowed to use green and brown; the sun has to be round and smiling and to be placed in a certain corner of the sky; and if you don’t get it right you are told: “Look how your friend did it.”

New teaching methods question such judgmental approaches, but for the vast majority of adults the artists that we once were have retired to winter quarters. We live in a strange paradox: as children we are dissuaded from freely expressing our creativity in pursuit of social and educational rules, and as adults we pay fortunes to free ourselves from our blockages and learn . . . to play like children!

Rehabilitating Our Repressed Artist

Several artists have come to our aid. One such is Julia Cameron, who has created a rehabilitation program for blocked artists that is set out in her book, The Artist’s Way. Cameron does not address herself only to painters and dancers, but to every living person, because there is no one born without creativity and the desire and need to use it. Cameron’s main premise is that modern society has convinced us that creativity is the privilege of a few but that things were not always this way.

The Native American Tewa people, for example, do not have a word for “art” because they do not consider it an activity separate from others. Their closest approximation is po-wa-ha (literally, water-wind-breath), which means “the creative force that moves through all things.”

Even if we accept that the creative force exists in all of us, there are some almost universal fears that prevent us from expressing it.

If we are to recover what we have lost we must learn to detect and (gently) silence the internal critic and encourage ourselves to let go of control, trusting that a higher force (however you conceive it, perhaps as our own subconscious) will support our efforts and show us the way. If the universe is inherently and profoundly creative, how could we—who are an intrinsic part of it—not be so as well?

Julia Cameron’s Exercises To Recover Your Own Voice

Writing your morning pages

Actually, you can write them at any time of day, but the morning is best because it allows you to channel the energy of your dreams, and also because the effect continues for the rest of the day. The aim is to write three pages by hand, without stopping to correct or edit yourself, and without reading what you have written (until you finish working through the book).

Actually, you can write them at any time of day, but the morning is best because it allows you to channel the energy of your dreams, and also because the effect continues for the rest of the day. The aim is to write three pages by hand, without stopping to correct or edit yourself, and without reading what you have written (until you finish working through the book).

This stream-of-consciousness writing frees you from the mental noise that gets between you and your intuition and creativity. In the pages you will see yourself thinking, dreaming and holding a dialogue with yourself. Many pearls may turn up in the course of your writing (interesting images, insights you were not aware of, possible projects), but the point is not for these pages to be somewhere to fish for items to be used elsewhere but to give your mind permission to express itself freely. The idea is not to seek to channel the river but to learn to let it flow.

A date with the artist

Spend two hours a week on a “date” with your inner artist. This can mean visiting a museum, seeing a play, walking around in the park, going to an antique shop or just sitting down in a favorite coffee shop to read or write. The only two conditions are: go alone in order to focus on the guest of honor—the inner artist who languishes for lack of attention—and don’t use this time to do anything you are obliged to do. At the end of the date, note down how the experience went.

Write three parallel lives (that you would have liked to live)

The idea here is to think without limits. Write about yourself as a pilot, Arabian dancer, monk, carpenter or soap opera actress. Once you have done that, notice which “autobiography” brings a smile to your lips, or a glint to your eye, by merely reading it. Think of a gesture or action that you can incorporate into your day, to take you in the direction of fulfilling your longing. It can be purely symbolic.

Strive for balance

Draw a circle and divide it into six “portions,” as if it were a pie. Put the following labels on each area: work, exercise, fun, friends, romance/adventure and spirituality. Draw a point on each portion to indicate how satisfied you feel in that sector: closer to the outer edge means greater satisfaction.

Connect the dots. This drawing will show you where you feel there is something lacking.

Are there any simple ways that you can nourish neglected areas? Do this exercise every now and then and observe whether the drawing becomes more harmonious and balanced.

©2018, 2021 by Fabiana Fondevila. All Rights Reserved.
Publisher: Findhorn Press, imprint of Inner Traditions Intl.
www.findhornpress.com and www.innertraditions.com

Are otherworldly sunsets a prerequisite to experiencing wonder and awe? Do we need to see the Grand Canyon or the Taj Mahal for our jaw to drop open and the hairs on the back of our arms to stand up? I think not.

What is awe? This important but long forgotten emotion has come into focus recently, mainly thanks to the research undertaken by Dacher Keltner (and others) at the Greater Good Science Center in Berkeley, California. They have defined awe as “the perception of something so vast (in size, number, dimension, quality) that it challenges our understanding of the world” and forces us to reframe our thinking. In other words, what we are witnessing, when in a state of awe, does not fit into our pre-existing lens, and so we need to reach for a larger frame of reference.

That is what our body seems to be doing when it responds to awe by taking in a deep breath, holding it for a moment, expanding our chests and our irises, and—for as long as the feeling lasts—inhabiting some kind of timeless present.

Awe and wonder are identical in all but one respect. Wonder arises in the face of something mysterious and overpowering but with a positive tint: a magnificent nature scene (the night sky, a waterfall, a mountain), a rapturous symphony, an uncanny sports feat, an act of sublime kindness. Awe, on the other hand, can arise when something is frightening as well as grand: a lightning storm, an earthquake, a tsunami, a Nazi parade. Awe doesn’t have to be scary, but it can be; wonder is always a delight!

Of course, words are just words, and we can describe this feeling with a host of other terms, such as amazement, astonishment, surprise, transcendence, or even “goose bumps”! And we are always talking basically about the same experience: coming into contact with that which is larger than us, something that is, in some way, unfathomable.

Why do we feel awe?

Studies have found that awe and wonder lead people to cooperate, share resources, and sacrifice for others (all of which are necessary for living in community). And some studies have found a specific link between awe and altruism: apparently, being in the presence of something vast calls forth a more humble, less narcissistic self, which enables greater kindness toward others.

This is how Keltner explains it: “In the course of our evolution, we became a most social species. We defended ourselves, hunted, reproduced, raised vulnerable offspring, slept, fought, and played in social collectives. This shift to more collective living required a new balancing act between the gratification of self-interest and an orientation toward supporting the welfare of others. Experiencing awe might have helped us make this shift. Brief experiences of awe redefine the self in terms of the collective and orient our actions toward the interests of others”.

But the effects of awe go even beyond altruism: it has also been associated with greater discernment (being able to tell faulty arguments from sound ones), improved health (by enhancing our immune system), and greater creativity (by helping us think “outside the box”).

Aside from all of these very worthy and important repercussions, I believe awe and wonder can provide one more (and perhaps less studied) effect: it can serve as a doorway into ecstasy!

What is ecstasy? Merriam Webster defines it thus: “a state of being beyond reason and self-control”; “a state of overwhelming emotion, especially rapturous delight”; “a mystic or prophetic trance.” What is the common thread between all these different “tastes” or varieties of ecstasy? The answer lies in the etimology of the word. “Ecstasy” literally means “to stand outside oneself.”

Our ordinary state of consciousness is one of separate, autonomous individuality. This mindset is what allowed us to create the world we live in, to focus on tasks and achieve them, to respect boundaries (others and our own), and to deal with life’s myriad everyday tasks and affairs. But it has also left us feeling lonely, isolated, and even threatened by others (since the egoic mind tends to focus mainly on fulfilling its own interests and securing its own safety). And this has made for a very stressful and disconnected way of life.

Our ancestors who lived in tribal cultures tended to think of themselves as families, or even as single, multi-faceted organisms, and they had many practices (dancing, singing, drumming, ingesting visionary plants) that enhanced this perception and regularly helped bring them to a sense of oneness, not only with others in the tribe but also with the “more than human world”: other animals, the forces of Nature, life itself.

Modern civilization affords us few opportunities to catch a break from our small selves and to joyfully melt back, even for a moment, into the wholeness from which we came and into which we shall return.

Awe and wonder may well be our ticket back into that elated and embodied experience of oneness and transcendence. And we don’t even have to find or create a tribe to get there. In fact, from today’s integral perspective, the idea of a “tribe” only makes sense if we think of it encompassing all of humanity, and even all sentient beings. The evolution of consciousness has allowed us to expand our sense of kinship and to forge a sense of belonging that is truly boundless.

Unlike many religious or spiritual practices, wonder and awe do not require any particular beliefs, mantras, prayers, or special attire. We can choose to enter wonder wherever we are, whatever we are doing, by simply changing our mode of perception.

For example, one could be walking down the street, looking down at the ground, as we often do when lost in our own thoughts (and, by looking down, becoming more and more self-absorbed), and suddenly decide to shift perspective, and look up. Look up at what? At the sky, at the clouds, at the tops of buildings, at the tree canopy and the sun shining through it, at whatever happens to be displaying itself above our heads.

This simple act helps us to connect to the larger world and to gladly relinquish our “small minded” thoughts, our obsession with our own specific set of problems and circumstances. We can couple this renewed perspective with a conscious change in our breathing; for instance, taking a few slow, deep breaths, intending to take in our surroundings with every inhale and to let go of what is not immediately important with the exhale. And some may find that adding the right kind of music will directly turn this conscious, open, and expanded walk into a full-on ecstatic experience.

Another practice that can help catapult us out of our everyday identities is this: stand outside (barefoot, if weather and situation permits) and stretch your arms wide open, while raising your face to the sky. Let your mouth relax into a smile, and make sure your forehead is uncreased. Every bit of you should be in a state of delightful expansion. You can also think of a question or something you need help with, and inhale slowly as you bring your arms up to the sky, stay there for a few moments, sensing for a tingling in your upturned palms, or arms, that signals circulating energy. Then very gently bring your arms back to yourself with a sweeping motion, as if your arms were moving through sludge (if you are sensitive you may, in fact, feel the resistance of the energy you are moving), and let them come to rest on your heart. Repeat as many times as you feel the need to.

Here are a few other practices that could help you spark moments of awe and wonder into your life without too much effort:

• Seek out novel ways to do things. If your walk always tends to take you along a regular path, challenge yourself to choose alternate paths every day. Try out new recipes, new colors to wear, new fragrances, new music; wander away from the ordinary in any way you can!
• See the ordinary with fresh eyes. When you go out into the night, imagine you are seeing the stars for the very first time. What would you say, what would you do, if this were the case? Would you go about your evening as if nothing were happening? Would you go back inside to watch TV? Or would you linger there, marveling at the crazy, spectacular show of lights?
• Wonder about the people around you: the passersby on the street (as you perhaps did as a child or youngster), but also those closest to you. What don’t you know about your son, your daughter, your friend, your workmate, your partner? What might you ask them to help reveal a layer of themselves that is completely new? Or, perhaps, revel in the fact that there is so much in them you will never, ever know.
• Put on earphones, crank up that song that makes you tingle with joy and abandon, and go all out. If you can dance outside, with the grass under your feet and the stars above you, imagine you are joining others as they honor the night and each other by moving as one single, pulsating, jubilant organism.
• Let your mind wander into unexpected places: read about the limits (or lack thereof) of outer space, of life on the ocean floor, of matter in the center of the earth, of how your continent looked when dinosaurs roamed on it, of space travel and the first ocean voyages, of the unimaginable courage and thirst for adventure that is the hallmark of human kind.
• Remember awe-inspiring moments in your life; write about them, tell about them, relive them in your imagination.
• Watch movies or read biographies of great feats. Let the inspiration move you to conjure up bold, boundary-pushing dreams.
• Read or write science fiction. Let your imagination bring you a glimpse of alternate universes that may very well come true (in some form) in your own lifetime.
• Read some of the more far-out science out there, such as epigenetics, quantum physics, astronomy, and even psychology, which are always pushing the frontier of the possible.
• Think in terms of deep time: not your lifetime but that of the earth, the solar system, the universe. Consider the time frame of mahakalpas (Sanskrit for “eons”) employed in Buddhist cosmology. One kalpa lasts approximately 16 million years, one “mahakalpa,” 1.28 billion years.
• Challenge your view of yourself. We are not born with a set number of talents, assets, or characteristics, nor are we the net result of our experiences. Rather, we are what we make of what we have lived and received (both by upbringing or genetic inheritance). In other words, just as the universe appears to be unbounded, so are we. Not because we can literally do or be anything we want to be, but because we are free to define ourselves by our limitless imagination, and by the immeasurable vastness of our heart.

BY FABIANA FONDEVILA, published by innertraditions.com
Photos by Miriam Posz. Find her work at @miriamposz

2020 is finally coming to an end. If this were any other year, it might find us booking flights to spend the holidays with our loved ones, exploring recipes, choosing presents, decorating our homes and pondering worthy New Year’s resolutions. But this isn’t any other year. This is the year that has shaken us to our core as individuals, as families, as communities, as a species.

Most of us will not be able to gather with our loved ones. Many of us are grieving fresh and devastating losses. It has been a time of great uncertainty, which will not magically end with the passing of the year. In this context, it may be tempting to ask if celebrating even makes sense at all.

As a first response, we might recall a story told by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. The Jewish writer once shared how, while living as a prisoner in Auschwitz, he watched a fellow prisoner trade his daily ration of bread for some simple materials with which to piece together a makeshift menorah. Astonished at the sacrifice this man was making to observe the holidays, Wiesel asked the man, “Hanukkah in Auschwitz?” The man replied, “Especially in Auschwitz.”

What did Wiesel mean? Why was honoring a religious holiday so important in a place where everything that was familiar and sacred had been taken away? Precisely for that reason. When the usual scaffolding of our lives has been dismantled, when the comforting routines that sustain us have all but disappeared, then ritual and ceremony become vital nourishment, perhaps as never before.

What are rituals? There are as many definitions as scholars who study them and people who perform them. I can humbly offer my own: A ritual is an embodied symbolic act through which we render visible the invisible values, emotions, and insights that are most essential to us. For example, transcendent emotions such as love, awe, grief, gratitude, compassion, longing, forgiveness; values such as courage, kindness, humility, justice; the memory of those no longer with us; the lessons of our forefathers that we want to keep alive; our personal and collective milestones.

By embodying those inner realities and bringing them out into the world, in symbolic form, we give them a proper place in our lives, we allow ourselves to experience the emotions they evoke in us, and we share them with our communities

More specifically, here are some of the functions of ritual and ceremony in our lives:

• To create or strengthen bonds between people.
• To serve as reassurance and stability during a crisis.
• To forge a bridge between the past and the present and recall the elements of the founding myth.
• To distinguish kairos (soul time) from chronos (calendar time).
• To help heal body and soul.
• To recognize and usher in changes (rites of passage) in age, stage, and life cycles, while at the same time keeping participants connected to what is deep and unchanging.
• To consecrate new statuses, roles, and skills.
• To help us say goodbye.
• To engage in a form of adult play, with a serious purpose and meaning.
• To honor the sacred at the heart of everyday life.

We often associate ritual with time-honored traditions that are passed down across the generations. While it’s true that repeated gestures, symbols, and songs can be powerful and reassuring, we are beginning to understand that created or improvised rituals can be just as effective, and perhaps even more genuine, as they are adapted to the needs and sensibilities of those who perform them.

In fact, as scholars like Ronald Grimes and Sabina Magliocco point out, in the face of the growing secularization of Western societies (which has left us with a reduced repertoire of rituals), and the commercialization and appropriation of ritual occasions (which has impoverished those that remain), new rituals are emerging all around us to fill the gap. These newly minted rituals respond to the needs of current generations: They celebrate women’s autonomy and empowerment, protest racial discrimination, redefine families, redesign our ways of facing death. Most importantly, they help to usher forth social transformation.

Author Esther Perel tells of her experiences attending Burning Man, one such current day collective ritual. “[It] provided me with an immersive, secular ritual of remembrance I’d never known was possible. By day seven, the once empty temple formed a living memorial. In pictures, poems, objects, artwork, and other shreds of lives gone, thousands of people responded to their individual loss and our collective impermanence. I saw the entire drama of human experience laid bare and then burned away.”

All along in our private lives we have been enacting ceremonies, even though we might not have thought to call them by that name: Friday night dinners, book clubs, gratitude circles, contemplative walks, Crossfit, Soul Cycle and other fitness trends that have communal aspects. All of these spontaneous ritual gatherings have served somewhat the same purpose as ancient traditions (minus the religious underpinnings): they forge bonds, make friends out of strangers, help us quiet down and come back to ourselves, and instill a sense of connection and meaning — without preordained roles, scripts, or authority figures.

In his book The Power of Ritual, Casper Ter Kuile emphasizes the way such spontaneous rituals can help satisfy our deep and abiding need for community and belonging. But in order to get the full benefit from these activities, we must be intentional about them. And this brings us to one of the most important aspects of any ritual: intention. Whatever activity we are undertaking, we must stop and ask ourselves: What does this mean for me? What do I want it to mean? What do I wish to honor, celebrate, grieve, remember? Intention plus our full attention turns any activity that we deem worthy into a life-enhancing, sacred act.

Some authors also underscore the importance of repetition. Although repetition does help inscribe an act into our daily or weekly routine, proclaiming its importance, rituals can also be powerful as a one-time only event.

Lastly, the form and exact design of a ritual is, perhaps, the least important. In the chapter entitled “The Fire,” in my book Where Wonder Lives, I tell a short Hasidic tale about a village where a rabbi lived. Every time there was a hardship, the village people followed the rabbi to a certain tree in the forest and performed a certain ceremony. Many hard times ensued, and generation after generation disappeared. Finally, there came a time when the young people went out into the forest to perform the rite. But they couldn’t find the tree nor remember the songs or prayers. So they picked a tree, and they said the few words they remembered, the bits of song they could still sing, and that was enough.

So here we are, rounding the bend of this year, facing our own collective rite of passage. How are we to say goodbye to a year that has challenged our very ways of understanding the world, our role in it, and the future we want to build?

We can resort to ritual creativity, and find our own way to honor what each of us has learned as well as what we would like to carry forward into 2021. Here are some ideas:

• If this year drove home the importance of holding close those dearest to us, could we, perhaps, ritualize our intention to never again take each other for granted?
• If we are awed and moved by how Nature flourished during our absence these past months, could we commit ourselves to being better stewards by planting a tree, feeding the birds in our yard, cleaning up a nearby park, deciding on a weekly day off from driving?
• If we learned that distance is no barrier when there is genuine connection, can we organize a virtual festivity for the ages, remembering that, as Mary Oliver writes in her poem “The Messenger,” “all the ingredients are here”?

At first, we might feel awkward creating a ritual from scratch. But we can trust the ritual intelligence that inspired our ancestors (and that we have inherited, whether we know it or not), decide what it is we want to consecrate (make sacred) with our time and attention, and find the words and the gestures that feel natural for us. Some will work, some will need some fine tuning, but if they ring true to our hearts, we will be stepping on hallowed ground.

To nudge us along, here again is Mary Oliver, with her timeless advice: “Let me / keep my mind on what matters, / which is my work, // which is mostly standing still and learning to be / astonished.”

How will you give voice to your astonishment as you bid farewell to this year and welcome the next?

What images or symbols will you choose to honor it?

What will you make sacred today, and how?