|
Seeing with New Eyes |
 |
 |
|
Purpose: To begin knowing, at all levels, the shift to a life-sustaining worldview and culture. Length: 2.5 hours Opening – 15 minutes
- One minute of silence
- Check-in
- Reading
The deepest cause of the present devastation is found in a mode of consciousness that has established a radical discontinuity between the human and other modes of being and the bestowal of all rights on the humans. The other-than-human modes of being are seen as having no rights. They have reality and value only through their use by the human. In this context the other than human becomes totally vulnerable to exploitation by the human, an attitude that is shared by all four of the fundamental establishments that control the human realm: governments, corporations, universities, and religions - the political, economic, intellectual and religious establishments. All four are committed consciously or unconsciously to a radical discontinuity between the human and the nonhuman.
Discussion about the Earth Charter - 20 minutes
After reading the Earth Charter, what do you notice about your worldview? What opened your heart?
Review of Agreements - 10 minutes
Go-round about how the group process/agreements are working; participants are invited to say just a few words to describe their experience thus far.
Exercise: Learning from other-than-human beings – 40 minutes
(Note: The group should consider doing this exercise outdoors, if possible.)
Facilitator or a volunteer chosen in advance invites group members to divide into groups of three and then leads them in the guided visualization. In this and all guided visualization exercises, the facilitator should read very slowly, pausing at designated places to allow time for people to visualize and imagine.
Now, relax . . . Close your eyes if you are comfortable doing so . . . slow down and take a deep breath, lean back from your usual way of viewing the world . . . Allow yourself to experience contact with the ground by feeling your body on the chair, the chair on the floor of the building, the building on the earth… Feel the ground coming up to meet you. . . Invite your imagination to take you out into the living web of life and existence on this Earth. . . into the landscape of your natural being, the being that ‘chose’ you this past week, or into a familiar landscape where you can be chosen if you have not yet been . . . Now allow yourself to open and be present to sensations, images, intuition. . . In this openness, let yourself be receptive to this other, to its display, its approach, its arrival . . . whether it be a plant, an animal, or an ecological feature . . .When the connection occurs, ask this being what it would like to communicate through you to humans on the Earth at this time . . . Take some time now to open to what it has to offer.
(This should take 3-4 minutes, with a reminder at the halfway point to linger with this being, opening to its message).
“Now, keeping your connection to your being, slowly return to this room. Open your eyes. Each of you will have time to speak as your natural being to the others in your group of three. Choose who will go first. . . Speaking as your natural being, start by saying who you are and what messages you have for humans - what concerns, what requests, what gifts. Here is an example: "As Mountain, I am ancient, strong, enduring. But now my forest skin is being torn off me, and my topsoil washes away, my streams and rivers choke. Dynamite shakes me and mines carve into my depths. Still, I can offer you my deep peace, my steadfastness, my strength and endurance. Come to me to find your path to healing us all.” Each of you will have two minutes . . . I will ring this bell when it is time to move on. The listeners' task is to be present, silently listening. When the speaker is finished, others can say, "We hear you, Mountain.” The next being then begins to speak.”
Bell…
Now it is time to come back to the present moment in our Circle.
To complete this process, take time to share as a whole group (10-15 minutes). The facilitator may want to direct the focus onto world views again before the end of the time.
Break – 10 minutes
Open Sentences III: Opportunity – 30 minutes
This set of open sentences will take place in the group as a whole as a go-around. John Gardner writes: "We are all faced with a series of great opportunities – brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems."
The facilitator posts the quote, reads it, then invites participants to take a few moments to consider the following open sentence:
"In response to this global climate crisis, the opportunity I am presented with is to..."
Then the group goes around and each person has a minute to describe the opportunity they see for them self.
Homework - 15 minutes
1. Spend ten minutes writing a page about where your opportunity lies in this global crisis. Send your thoughts via email to the rest of the group.
2. With your buddy, choose one of the following elements of your bioregion and sign up to research it. Take a moment to remember the insights you gained from the natural being exercise. See if you can use these insights to inform your choice of one of these areas: - water
- waste – trash, sanitation and recycling
- energy – electricity, heating oil and gas, renewable energy, conservation
- transportation
- food – local availability and production, organic vs. conventional, imports, genetically modified food
For all these areas, consider the following questions:
- Where does it come from?
- Where does it go?
- What are the particular challenges or characteristics in your community?
- What could happen to it?
- Who has access to it? Who does not?
- How does it make you feel?
3. Visit with the natural being during your meditation, prayer time, and/or activities of everyday life, noticing and exploring further its habitat and listening to its message for you and all of us.
4. Continue to check the CCC or other newsfeed.
Closing Circle – 10 minutes
- Facilitator thanks everyone for participating.
- Read below, Rainer Maria Rilke's "Leaving the House," about leaving the worldview we know well so we can see the world with new eyes.
Leaving the House
Whoever you are: some evening take a step
out of your house, which you know so well.
Enormous space is near, your house lies where it begins,
whoever you are.
Your eyes find it hard to tear themselves
from the sloping threshold, but with your eyes
slowly, slowly, lift one black tree
up, so it stands against the sky: skinny, alone.
With that you have made the world. The world is immense,
and like a word that is still growing in the silence. . .
Rainer Maria Rilke |
|
Words of Wisdom |
|
|
LOST
Stand still.
The trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two branches are the same to Raven.
No two trees are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
David Wagoner, in Molly Young Brown, ed., Lighting a Candle: Quotations on a Spiritual Life (Center City, Minn.: Hazeldon,1994), 30. |
|
1st Assignment |
|
|
|
Regular Contact with the Non-Human Natural World:
Daily Visit with a Natural Being
Lane K. Conn & arah A. Conn
Begin this exercise by opening your senses to the landscape near your home or on your daily route. Without making a particularly focused effort, open to all the natural beings you encounter as you leave and return to your home or travel to and from work.
By "natural," we mean relatively unaltered by humans. A "natural being" can be a plant, a particular landscape, an animal.
As you attend in this open way, notice what attracts your attention, what beckons you. In this way, let yourself “be chosen” by a particular natural being who presents itself to you in some way.
For this exercise, it is important to connect with a particular natural being embedded in a particular place. You will visit the same place every day, becoming familiar with your natural being's context and developing the practice of relationship with it. Before the end of the course, you will also do some further research about its natural history: how it came to be where it is and what relationships it has with the surroundings.
From now until the end of the course, visit this being every day. Spend at least 5 minutes with it each time. Pay attention to the following possible experiences:
Sensations: sights, sounds, textures, tastes, smells, kinesthetic feelings;
Internal verbalizations and visualizations: thoughts, memories, dreams;
Values: predispositions, judgments, theories, generalizations, etc;
Emotions;
Relational experiences: participation and communication patterns and styles, energy, boundaries.
Notice how this natural being contributes to your ways of knowing.
As soon after the visit as possible, write a few sentences about your experience that day. Keep these entries in a small notebook, designated for that purpose. You will be invited to describe your experiences during class, and there will be a question about this experience on the take-home exam. |
|
2nd Assignment |
|
|
|
Opening to the Other
Lane K. Conn
In this exercise we will be opening ourselves to the other beings. To do so, it is necessary that we take a step outside our usual and customary ways of being conscious.
To do this requires us to put aside some of our present notions and habits of relating to non-human (more-than-human) beings. We begin by leaning back from our usual way of relating to the world around us. Doing so will allow us to be open, receptive to the arrival or presentation of the other.
Being curious and willing to have experiences that go beyond the familiar requires that we adopt a beginners mind, giving our habitual mind a ‘coffee break’ so that we may come to our senses and to other ways of knowing.
What we are opening ourselves to is the direct experience of the other. It will support our having a direct experience of the other if we shift our sense awareness from a precipitating to a participating mode of interaction, from making it happen to sharing in the happening. It will nurture our mindfulness of the other if we switch from looking to seeing, from listening to hearing, from touching to being touched.
Usually we restrict our sense awareness through our intention. We look for something, we listen for something, and we reach out to touch something. Essentially we are shaping the meeting with the other. But suppose we see instead of looking, hear instead of listening, and are touched in place of touching?
Now, starting as a beginner, shift your habitual way of relating from an assertive to a receptive mode. Notice the breeze touching your face. Notice how it brushes against your skin, making its presence known to you directly.
Notice the experience now in your feet. We are in the habit of thinking about this contact with the earth as our touching the ground with the soles of our feet. Reverse that assumption - notice the earth touching you. Notice the ground coming up to meet you.
Now turn your gaze toward a leaf or blade of grass and allow it to present itself to you, to make contact with you. Imagine it coming over and into your consciousness instead of you going out and getting it. Give up (surrender) being the director and take your place in the audience, opening to the wonderful display of the world. Give yourself over to the world around you; allow it to touch you, to direct your senses.
As you go on your walk give yourself permission to Open To The Other. Allow the birds and the flies, the flowers and the trees to knock on the doors of your awareness, open yourself and invite them in for a visit on their own terms and in their own language.
To have the other as a guest in our house of consciousness requires our attending to the other's expression of itself. To do this we have to stop attending to the words and stories we have for the other. These symbols are no more the other than is the map the territory or the menu the food. Instead of throwing out a net of words to capture the other, we can open ourselves. Standing before other, accept the invitation of the other to reveal itself to us.
In this exercise, we ask you to wander with no preconceived destination, keeping yourself mindful of all that surrounds you, perceiving with soft, moist, and open senses.
Simply let yourself be led into the presence of the other, for at some point the other will call for your attention. Heed the call and allow yourself to respond with your fascination.
Go to the other and be with it, giving it your full presence. When you feel comfortable enough, close your eyes to heighten the receptivity of your other senses. Lean more fully into the presence of the other, feeling its nearness to you, reach out and, with your eyes still closed, find your way to it, allow it to touch you. As it touches you, lean out and into the other through your fuller ways of knowing, including your kinesthetic and olfactory senses, and enjoy and celebrate commingling with the other. Luxuriate in the experience of intimacy and oneness with the other.
Then say and ask the following statements and questions, without giving or expecting a reply or answer, simply be with the questions and notice whatever manifests or happens.
1. I'm willing to open more to you. Please reveal more of yourself to me so that I might enter into a fuller relationship with you.
2. How can I in my life more fully affirm your being?
3. How might I know you as part of my larger body?
4. How might we communicate more fully?
There is no hurry or lack of time for this encounter between you and the other. Simply be with the experience for as long as it feels right. |
|