Strands of Infinity: Poetry to Reconnect by Looby Macnamara 2016: Greyhound Self-Publishing, Malvern, UK
Readers of this journal will recognize some poems in British permaculturist Looby Macnamara’s collection of poetry, Strands of Infinity: Poetry to Reconnect, as we have published a few here. The slim but powerful volume is a response to and useful for the experience of the Work That Reconnects. I recommend it to anyone who wants to freshen their workshop habits with new poems to enhance your workshop participants’ experience of any of the four stages of the Spiral.
The first few poems explore the poetic or creative urge, but soon the poet’s awe of the experience and how poetry helps her connect to the flow of life gives way to more classic themes of Gratitude, including a sweet poem written by the author’s 8-year-old daughter, which starts, “Thank you Earth for everything.” Then it’s clear the book is structured around the Spiral.
Her poems for Honoring Our Pain for the World are often raw expressions of the pain of patriarchy. Others link all kinds of social ills and injustice and ecological crises, as she sees them all as coming from “the system/that promotes disconnection.” The poem “What colour is my rage?” would be a great debriefing prompt for Honoring; in it she describes fearing her feelings, and from that “skating on the numb surface…plunging” into them, where she finds “Instead of the unbearable depths of grief expected and rage that explodes through my body and throat/I find the connection with a deeper channel” and “This current of grace has swept away my rage and grief/leaving a dynamic peace, /and transformed the ice into/a crisp layer of power, resolve, and trust.”
Poems on the theme of Seeing Anew with Ancient Eyes inspire like seeing that “power, resolve, and trust” in the faces and actions of our comrades, colleagues, collaborators, and kinfolk in the work she calls “cultural emergence.” Poems in the Going Forth sequence, like the one called “Cultural Emergence,” ring like anthems of social change.
This is a treasure trove for facilitators of the Work.
Many things are happening behind the scenes at the Work That Reconnects Network that we love sharing with the wider Network community:
We are embracing a Workers Self-Directed Nonprofit structure:
It is all about living the Great Turning. While we have been working on an inclusive and quite organic environment for years, we recently discovered that, as a Network, we would like to be more proactive and openly engage ourselves in what is known as a Workers Self-Directed Nonprofit (WSDN).
Some of the WSDN practices we use are:
We make decisions together and ensure all the voices are heard
We’ve created a structure where most work and decisions are made within smaller “circles” or “committees”, which include representation from staff, weavers and volunteers
We choose to share responsibilities and accountability with each other as opposed to being accountable to a “boss”
Rather than hierarchical structures, we have adopted a sociocratic decision-making approach
There are many other aspects of being a WSDN, you are welcome to learn more here.
We are also embarking on a shared learning journey called: Collaborate to Co-liberate:
Through a 12-month journey facilitated by the Nonprofit Democracy Network we will be exploring, among other topics:
Movement lineages, and consider themes including mutuality, reciprocity, Black queer feminism, and decolonization/anti-colonialism
Facilitation tools that center on building strong, trusting, open and accountable relationships
Tools for equitable and democratic conflict engagement and transformation.
Leadership development, supervision, and personal growth
Decision-making structures and processes
Democratically distribute labor and responsibility within your organization
And much more!
In our most recent session, we explored a number of approaches to decision-making and how organizations are currently overcompensating for previous models of non-inclusive ways of making decisions. Asking the questions of which voices need to be heard and what information to collect, whether our desire to have a say reflects our level of commitment and the tension of decisions under urgency or boundaries of budget, time and other factors. The reality is that those for whom many decisions are made are disproportionately under-represented in the process while usually being the most impacted. We learned that transparency with the public we serve helps to build trust and inclusion, even when most members may not have the time, energy or desire to be part of the decision-making.
Learn more about the Nonprofit Democracy Network here.
We are working on the creation of a new, engaging and more functional website that will be:
Globally oriented
Accessible
Co-created by staff, weavers, volunteers and members of the Network
Filled with WTR resources for newcomers, emerging facilitators, and experienced facilitators
An expression of the breadth and depth of the WTR, with images of people offering the Work around the world
We are in our third year of running our most successful initiative:
The Webinars & Conversation Cafe program has recently hosted many amazing speakers and presenters to share topics including: Postactivism, Transraciality and Decononiality, Principles and Practices of Deep Transformation, Regenerative Livelihoods for the Great Turning, Men in the Work That Reconnects and much more. We are excited to explore and share much more coming in the next weeks and months:
Ecological Civilization: Humanity’s Transformational Alternative
Conducting Effective WTR Rituals and Ceremonies
Love, Rage, Rebel: Climate Activism and the Great Turning
Liberation for All: Bringing Tenderness to Conversations of Power and Privilege
Learn more, watch past recordings, and register here.
We’ve also recently started offering Conversation Cafés every other month to provide opportunities for meaningful and engaging discussions on topics that emerge from our recent webinars or directly from the community. Hosted by WTR Network Staff and facilitated as council-style discussions, these unique gatherings allow us to connect with each other more deeply while entering into edgier conversations and exploring actionable ideas that can contribute to our personal and/or professional lives as WTR facilitators, emerging facilitators and/or participants.
The main content of each Conversation Café will continue to be generated by the participants as we learn from and with each other. In order to create a more interactive and intimate environment, Conversation Cafés are not recorded.
With the intention to delve directly into discussion of the selected topic, we may provide material to review ahead of time.
We are engaging our full team of weavers, staff and volunteers in inspiring ways:
Our team of volunteers has been growing beautifully over this past year and each of us is busy with the work of our committee projects, working closely with our fellow committee members. To strengthen our connections across committees and support the extended team we’ve created opportunities for the full team to connect with each other on a regular basis beyond the busy-ness of our projects. The entire WTR Network team gathers six times a year, alternating between Council sessions and Full Spiral WTR experiences.
Using the principles of the Council Way, councils are centered in inquiries that help people get to know each other and assure that each person is heard. The councils are facilitated by members on a rotating basis.
With a desire to engage in the Work That Reconnects on a regular basis and deepen our connection with each other as a team, we host three Full Spiral WTR experiences per year for our entire team (weavers, staff and volunteers)
The team actively working to support the WTR Network is now 28 people strong:
3 paid staff from two different countries
5 weavers from three different countries
20 volunteers from seven different countries
While most of our staff, weavers and volunteers are WTR facilitators, some are not, but all share the love and dedication to this Work.
To learn more about current weavers and staff see here. To learn more about our volunteers and committees, check here. If you’d like to join us please apply to volunteer on one of our committees.
In June 2022, Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone released a 10th anniversary revised edition of their well-loved book, Active Hope. This new edition features many updates from the first edition, including a new subtitle: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Power.
Isn’t “unexpected” a wonderful word? It brings to mind the concept of “emergent properties,” from systems science. Something new and unexpected arises as the components of a system interact. Co-authors Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone offer a straightforward brew of concepts, exercises and imagery to stir the pot of our psyches, so we can face the mess we are indeed in, and rediscover our resilience and creativity. Active Hope is a recommended guide for book groups, circles of practice, as well as individual study.
A beautiful visual (page 42), offers a simple and inspiring example of a journey through the spiral using “open sentences” or “sentence starters.” This can be experienced in pairs, as a group, and could be a great entry point for those new to the work.
You can find the introduction and first two chapters, including this practice, here.
The main thing that’s different from the first edition published a decade ago is the context the book address – our world conditions have become significantly more scary and depressing. The book has been updated and improved, drawing in new insights and practices that help us play our part in responding to this. The paragraphs below, from the introduction, describe the task the book sets out to serve.
So this is where we begin: by acknowledging that our times confront us with realities that are painful to face, difficult to take in, and confusing to live with. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself feeling anxious, defeated, or in despair.
There’s something else we’d like to bring in alongside this difficult starting point. It is a recognition that when we’re at our most exasperated, we can sometimes surprise ourselves. We might discover strengths we never knew we had or experience degrees of aliveness we’d not even suspected were available to us. This is a time to reach out and find new allies, as well as to discard forms of thinking and behavior that have led us astray. In a process known as adversity activated development, our very act of facing the mess we’re in can help us discover a more enlivening sense of what our lives are about, what we’re here to do, and what we’re truly capable of.
Do you hope this will happen for you? Or that you might play a role in helping this happen for others? If so, we invite you to join us in our journey. Together we will explore how we can access unexpected resilience and creative power, not just to face the mess we’re in, but also to play our part in doing something about it.
The authors describe some of the key changes in the book that build on this starting point:
The dedication at the start of the book – previously this was ‘This book is dedicated to the flourishing of life on this rare and precious earth’. We’ve now added ‘and to the role each of us can play in responding to our planetary emergency’.
In the first edition, the collapse of our civilisation was viewed as a risk for the future that might be preventable if we acted in time. With such significant worsening of planetary conditions over the last decade, the new edition begins with a recognition that a collapse process is already underway.
A central theme the book explores is how we can engage in a collective transition referred to as ‘the Great Turning’. The new edition brings a shift in emphasis in the way we think about the Great Turning, from outcome to process and from ‘will it happen?’ to ‘What helps this happen?”. Looking at how this larger story can happen through us in any moment brings a focus on three types of turning – turning up with an intention to play our part, turning away from that which causes harm and turning towards a way of doing and thinking and being that supports the flourishing of life.
The first chapter describes the mismatch between the scale of the problems we face and that of our collective response, looking at factors that block engaged responses, and also those that promote enlivened ones.
Decolonization is identified as a key element in the shift in consciousness integral to the Great Turning
The second chapter brings a new practice that offers a way for two people to go round the spiral of the Work That Reconnects in a half hour conversation.
In Chapter Five, we’ve added a new section on applying inspiration from the Shambhala Warrior Prophecy in our lives.
Addressing the toxic polarisation tearing apart communities, we look at what helps us stand together rather than turn against each other.
In Chapter Ten, we address the need to recalibrate our hopes, so that we can let go of those no longer supportable, or that lead us in the wrong direction. Drawing on insights from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we look at how to both be grounded in reality while also maintaining a sense of visionary possibility.
In Chapter Twelve, a new section draws on health psychology research in looking at how to nourish and strengthen our motivation to act for positive change.
The last chapter draws threads of the book together in building towards a climax that identifies resilience as a powerful and creative force of nature that can happen through us in unexpected ways. It identifies three ways we can open to active hope, with a framework of three Acts of Opening.
The resources section at the end of the book has been updated, with links to a free video-based online course in Active Hope at https://www.activehope.training, and other resources that can support the activation of hope in and through our lives.
Most of all, the book invites people to engage in a strengthening and transformative journey designed to nourish and build our capacity and commitment to play our part in the Great Turning. Each chapter has been revised to better support this journey from the context we face now.
“It is probable that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and loving-kindness, a community practicing mindful living.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
“The sea is made of drops of water.”
~ Desmond Tutu
“Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.”
~ bell hooks
We start 2022 with gratitude for all that is: as root teacher Joanna Macy has said, just being alive on this Earth is enough to celebrate.
We have, however, experienced three recent important losses: social activist and author bell hooks, human rights activist Desmond Tutu, and master precursor of the concept of engaged spirituality Thich Nhat Hanh.
Each of them left us with eyes wide open to the injustices and challenges as well as the possibilities. And their passings open the doors for new leaders and actions based on the inspiration they sowed.
Looking at the legacy of these three great human beings, it is time for us to honour the deeper roots and repercussions of the work we do: beyond the Spiral and the Work That Reconnects practices, we may ask: “How do different cultures and peoples of the world express gratitude, honour their pain, see with new and ancient eyes and support each other to go forth? Aren’t these practices what create resilience for peoples who have been historically suppressed, silenced, oppressed or left out of the conversation and big decision-making?”
Thay (as many lovingly called Thich Nhat Hanh) once said that there is actually no birth and no death, another way to see the concept (also created by him) of inter-being. How would this affect the work we do, the way we see the future, and our own role in all?
The invitation this time is to allow ourselves to observe around us and open our senses to what our immediate environments may teach us about the appropriateness of the Work That Reconnects practices. How can we enrich and expand our work as Work That Reconnects facilitators and practitioners to honour the deeper roots that have been carried by all the peoples and traditions of the world?
Remembering bell hooks and her enormous legacy:
Desmond Tutu in his own words: ‘He loved, he laughed, he cried’:
No Birth No Death | Thich Nhat Hanh:
Silvia Di Blasio works supporting various organizations and projects including the Work That Reconnects Network, the Capra Course, Gaia Education and the Facilitators Development program. In her spare time, Silvia tutors permaculture design students for the Women’s Permaculture Guild, gardens, cooks for her family or enjoys reading her collection of books about almost anything and everything. Silvia’s role in the DTJ includes receiving, organizing and posting the submissions and organizing the website.
The fires in California and parts of western North America last year, as well as the burning of the Amazon to make way for more meat consumption, were all stirring within as I created The Birthing Room, which envisions a forest nursery where we can be as children again; a place for Life to ripen.
The forest is my respite from patriarchy and polarization; but with the ecological devastation all around, the forest also does not deny the realities of degradation nor the deep sorrow at what is taking place. And yet, it can revivify our spirits; even the burned forests will regenerate with new life.
I have always believed that the messy work of looking within and allowing space for pain while finding the Sacred in Beauty is a part of life which must be honored. Perhaps this is why The Birthing Room is a dark forest – a night forest, where the shadows and intimations of new life abound, if only we have the eyes to see it; to see her, our earth, our Mother.
Jane Sherry has been making mixed media visual art, incorporating language into her visual works for over 50 years as well as a keeper of dreams, a writer and performer of poetry and prose. She has had a limited edition artist book published by Steve Clay of Granary Books in NYC called Venus Unbound. It resides in many university artist book collections as well as the NY Public Library and the Getty Museum. Her work is sparked by the “ancient traditions of priestess, shaman, scribe and storyteller” using myth, symbol, etymology and the sacred in her writings and imagery.
Note: Due to website limitations, poem line breaks will not be right on all screens, particularly narrow ones. To see the poet’s intended version, please click the Print Friendly button. Or try turning your phone or tablet to landscape orientation.
Be like a bear in the forest of yourself. Even sleeping you are powerful in your breath. Every hair has life and standing, as you do, swaying from one foot to the other all the forest stands with you. Each minute sound, one after another, is distinct in your ear. Here in the blur of mixed sensations, you can feel the crisp outline of being, particulate. Great as you are, huge as you are and growling like the deepest drum, the continual vibration that makes music what it is, not some light stone skipped on the surface of things, you travel below sounding the depths where only the dauntless go. Be like the bear and do not forget how you rounded your massive shape over the just ripened berry which burst in your mouth that moment how you rolled in the wet grass, cool and silvery, mingling with your sensate skin, how you shut your eyes and swam far and farther still, starlight shaping itself to your body, starship rocking the grand, slow waves under the white trees, in the snowy night.
Susan Griffin has written over twenty books, including non-fiction, poetry and plays. Her book, A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a New York Times Notable book. Woman and Nature, considered a classic of environmental writing, is credited for inspiring the eco-feminist movement. She and her work have been given many awards, among them a Guggenheim Foundation Award, an Emmy, and the Fred Cody Award for Life Time Achievement by Northern California Book Awards. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Susan’s new book will be published in January 2023.
The Weavers’ team for the Work That Reconnects Network created these vision statements to guide us in the coming year. They are written in present tense because that’s a best practice for visioning and setting intentions. Some of these intentions have already come to be; others have yet to bear fruit, but we hold them all in our hearts and minds as we continue our work together as weavers in the Network.
International Diversity
The Work That Reconnects Network is an international resource that provides support and inspiration for and collaborates with WTR facilitators from all areas of the world.
We are strongly committed to deepening communication and collaboration among people of different backgrounds and cultures. With a deep bow to the sacredness of each person and the life paths we each walk, we make time to invest in the hard conversations, growth and learning that support our shared work together, which is informed and strengthened by these differences.
Our core team of Weavers includes representatives from many regions of the international Work That Reconnects community with a diversity of race, country, language, culture, gender, age, and ability.
As an organization devoted to dismantling oppression, we dedicate a portion of our revenue and programing to uplifting historically marginalized members of the WTR worldwide community.
Quality of Core Team
Our diverse core team of 9-13 members prioritizes skillful collaboration and is dedicated to continual team and leadership development.
We engage in our shared work with enthusiasm, creativity and joy. We hold our work in a sacred manner and support it with Work That Reconnects practice, ceremony and reverence for mystery, guided by Gaia. We prioritize personal wellness and self-care for all of our team members and honor the humanity, dignity and personal needs of each person on the team.
When the time is right, we will gather together in person to connect with each other, hug, share food and swim together in a beautiful body of water.
Organizational Maturity
In 2022, the Work That Reconnects Network continues to grow into a new level of organizational maturity, as we welcome new core team members, create an Advisory Council and expand our organizational structure to include more dynamic involvement, feedback and collaboration with a wider spectrum of the global Work That Reconnects community. We are evolving an effective governance model which provides clear pathways for input and decision making from our global community.
This new structure is articulated in a beautifully diagramed organizational map that is, in itself, a piece of art. It is clear, inspiring and orients us deeply to our shared mission. This visual representation of our organization is presented clearly on our website along with clear explanations and navigable calls to action.
The result of this work is more clarity in how we are perceived in the world, a greater sense of inclusion and involvement within the Work That Reconnects global community and a greater ability to reach out to and attract those who can truly benefit from this Work.
Community Engagement / Network Weaving
The Network provides an engaging and supportive network for all of our Facilitator Members, uplifting their work and facilitating connections for them within the Work That Reconnects community. New facilitators are welcomed with celebration and a warm embrace, invoking the feeling that they’ve stepped over a threshold and have arrived home.
Most of the WTR facilitators in the world actively participate in Network activities and projects, contribute resources and content, and support the Network financially as they are able.
There are Work That Reconnects Communities of Practice in each area of the world that meet regularly and work on supporting local facilitators. They have a clear path of communication and collaboration with the Core Team of the Network and feel that they are integral parts of the global WTR community.
The Network facilitates active network weaving to connect facilitators with similar interests or skill sets so they can collaborate. The Network also intentionally weaves WTR into the mainstream business-as-usual world (educational institutions, governments, mental and physical health care institutions and the corporate world) as well as extending further into activist communities and the progressive world.
The Network begins to establish professional relationships with partner organizations who are serving the Great Turning in various ways. We uplift their work to our Network and seek ways to develop mutual support.
Resources and Support
The Network provides a wide range of resources, support and platforms for connection to WTR facilitators and WTR enthusiasts around the world, based in a highly functional website that is beautiful, easy to use and has room to grow.
The website provides excellent resources for facilitators, including tools and training to support their work, an ever-expanding library of practices and resources, marketing materials and techniques for working with different populations.
The Network hosts a vibrant and engaging interactive forum for facilitators and community members to meet on a regular basis to exchange tools and resources and connect with each other on their own terms.
The Network-hosted Webinar and Cafe Program is thriving and provides high quality educational content to our community with frequent Facilitator Member events and several high profile fundraiser events per year.
The Network also hosts a series of ceremonial/ritual events each year that provides a space for our community to come together to grieve, celebrate and commune with the sacred, perhaps moving through the spiral once a year.
The Network hosts an annual online global multilingual gathering for our Facilitator Members and Communities of Practice with a line up of different speakers, a variety of sessions for different areas of interest/focus and breakouts for geographical areas and for areas of interest.
In 2022, the Network develops a new program that connects qualified Facilitator Members with opportunities to facilitate WTR experiences for our Partner Organizations and their teams.
Financial Ease and Health
The Work That Reconnects Network is supported by a robust and diversified array of income streams and enjoys a sense of financial abundance and flexibility. What we need to operate and serve the WTR global community flows in easily, with integrity and is given joyfully.
We are able to expand paid staff hours and provide a stipend for members of the Core Team of Weavers. We are guided by sound and creative budgeting, planning and visualizing that meet the growing needs and desires of the Network.
We continue to develop relationships with private donors who happily support our work, cultivate relationships with foundations that begin to provide an ongoing portion of our annual budget, increase our membership and community-based monthly donations, develop paid programs that are widely attended and integrate passive income streams through the website.
The Weavers Team: Constance Washburn, Helen Sui, Kathleen Rude, Paula Hendrick and Network Coordinators Silvia Di Blasio, Jo delAmor, and Frieda Nixdorf. Molly Brown helped compose these vision statements before her retirement from the team on March 31, 2022. Weavers’ biographical descriptions and photos here: https://workthatreconnects.org/network/
Note: Due to website limitations, poem line breaks will not be right on all screens, particularly narrow ones. To see the poet’s intended version, please click the Print Friendly button. Or try turning your phone or tablet to landscape orientation.
8. snow-covered earth such silence still divine presence echoes immortal migrants all life sustained darkness comes suffering touches us again and again there is pain there in the midst of such harsh barrenness a cardinal framed in the glass red light calling away despair eternal promise everything changes and ends
9. autumn ending leaves like fallen soldiers manmade hard hearts fighting battles on this once sacred ground all killing done now dirt upon dirt covers all signs of death memory tamped down ways to not remember the disappeared dying faces longing to be seen one lone warrior lives comes home to the hills seeking refuge seeking a place to surrender the ground where hope remains and souls surrender
10. here and there across and down treasure uncovered remnants of ancient ways not buried deep enough excavated they surface objects that say some part of me lived here before reincarnated ancestors give me breath urge me—live again return to familiar ground hear our lost people speak
22.
sometimes falling rain carries memories of betrayal there in the woods where she was not meant to be too young she believes in her right to be free in her body free from harm believing nature a wilderness she can enter be solaced believing the power that there be sacred place that there can be atonement now she returns with no fear facing the past ready to risk knowing these woods now hold beauty and danger
bell hooks (1952-2021) was the author of more than thirty books, including Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism, named by Publishers Weekly as one of the twenty most influential women’s books of the last twenty years.
Note: Due to website limitations, poem line breaks will not be right on all screens, particularly narrow ones. To see the poet’s intended version, please click the Print Friendly button. Or try turning your phone or tablet to landscape orientation.
This cultural emergency calls for cultural emergence, A breaking through, a breaking free, Of cultures of isms and schisms, Of gun culture, war culture, rape culture, fear culture, Greed culture, waste culture, chemical culture, Of corporations controlling our culture, Polluting our culture. Peeling back the layers of oil smothering our culture, Can we connect our roots into the Earth And reach out to fellow beings and show our care? Can we cultivate a Responsibility culture, Friendship culture, Kindness culture, Justice culture, Safety culture, Peace culture, A culture of innovation, resilience and hope?/ Can we name and create the culture we want? A visionary, regenerative culture? Can we shift our priorities, phobias, patterns, Parameters, opinions, assumptions? Can we bend or bury our beliefs? Will we?
Will we reflect, connect, Respect the collective. Direct our objections To the system That promotes disconnection. Challenge not blame, Name and reframe, Shift our perspective to gain a directive That allows us to be receptive To the interconnected web Vibrating with every step.
Disrupt the pattern To awaken and challenge And begin to unravel cords of conditioning To release the story And create space for visioning, Allowing the possibility of the seemingly impossible To motivate and invigorate The genius inside of us. Activate and initiate, Appreciate and celebrate, Collaborate and participate To co-create and facilitate The desire to germinate And take control of our fate, Moving away from this state
Of emergency Into a state of cultural emergence Where we use emergence to support emergence, With the divergence and convergence of minds Creating designs With the intelligence of co-operating hearts To give us a start On this path Of empowerment.
To bring fulfillment And deep nourishment
It takes commitment To trusting the process And opening to osmosis Of the mystical and magical To be alchemical With the mathematical For practical and logical Action and reaction, To bring connection And emerge the solutions For manifestation Of personal and global transformation.
Note: Cultural Emergence is a project to develop a toolkit, community and movement for positive cultural evolution. The framing of Cultural Emergence was birthed through a collaboration between Looby Macnamara and Jon Young. This poem started the journey. The Cultural Emergence toolkit weaves together cultural awareness, systems thinking, permaculture design and deep nature connection. Looby is a trained Work That Reconnects facilitator and this work has been woven into the toolkit. In 2020 Looby released her book Cultural Emergence – a toolkit for transforming ourselves and the world. This poem is published here and originally in 2016 in her book Strands of Infinity: Poetry to Reconnect.
Looby Macnamara‘s latest book, Cultural Emergence shares a pioneering toolkit for regeneration and transformation. Looby has been teaching permaculture for nearly 20 years. During this time she has been a pioneer of personal and social permaculture, authoring the first book globally to focus on the peoplecare ethic People & Permaculture. Looby is also author of 7 Ways to Think Differently and Strands of Infinity. She runs Applewood Permaculture Centre in the UK with her partner Chris Evans. She is also one of the partners of the European Mother Nature project, empowering mothers. Looby has been an active member of the permaculture community, and was a chairperson of the Permaculture Association and is a senior diploma tutor.
For more about Cultural Emergence, Looby’s books, videos, podcasts and courses see www.cultural-emergence.com
The global scenario of the collapse of the socio-ecological health of places and the breakdown of complex social systems is, in some ways, a projection of the devastation of our internal landscapes mirroring what we, as a western society, must urgently look at within and among ourselves.
Without recognizing personal and collective pain and overcoming the association between success and invulnerability, we will be little able to make significant internal and systemic transformations. They are interdependent and begin to take root in reality when they overcome the barrier of superficiality.
We need to admit that we are hurt and find braver ways to deal with our wounds.
Going beyond compliance
In the West, our parents and grandparents generations were encouraged to hide their problems from friends and family. Almost no one talked about abuse of power, neglect and abandonment, emotional dependence, psychological disorders, etc., although these occurred in many homes and communities.
Forced to fester under the guise of social status, these problems have morphed into intergenerational wounds and constrained enormous potential for creativity and innovation. But now many young people are taking on the task of dealing with the hidden traumas handed down through countless generations. We are no longer willing to sacrifice our lives and ideals as many of our parents and grandparents did for living in a context where conformity was desirable.
The change in posture from indifference and control to care is the bridge we must cross towards overcoming patriarchy.
The reason for so much avoidance of the realization that some scenarios of personal and social life were emotional conflict zones is that it requires emotional resilience, openness to pain, empathy and care. Moving through pain is possible when we stand as an empathic witness beside it. The change in posture from indifference and control to care is the bridge we must cross towards overcoming patriarchy.
It represents the reinsertion of feeling as part of the human condition and the possibility of reaching the core of the converging crises that threaten the planet and humanity. Touching pain, being with it and moving through it is the turning point that will make it possible to elevate humanity from the condition of enemies of oneself, of others and of nature to healthy participants in the web of life.
The effect of patriarchy
For Gabor Maté (2008), a physician specializing in childhood development and trauma, the attempt to escape pain is what creates the most pain. Due to our inability to bear pain and, at the same time, remain open to the experience, we build protective mechanisms, shelve emotions and condemn vulnerability. We start to defend ourselves from the circumstances that weaken us because we want to avoid the memory of impotence from the shocks of pain. But with compulsory avoidance we begin to replicate, collectively and at all times, our personal wound.
The automatism in avoiding pain and difficult emotions is due to the validity of patriarchy as the modus operandi of the society of industrial growth.
The automatism in avoiding pain and difficult emotions is due to the validity of patriarchy as the modus operandi of the society of industrial growth. There is a mindset, which is cause and effect of the survival of patriarchy, that overemphasizes self-improvement, competition, domination, and the “go ahead at all costs” philosophy. Since we were born, this worldview has been present in our neural circuits, restricting our responses to challenges.
In the face of any sign of pain, the nervous system leads the body and mind to the defense response. So, when not worked through, our wounds keep us stuck in self-preservation mode—the emotional fight-or-flight state. Thus we spend our days busy defending ourselves against life. The energy spent on pain relief or on the automatic defense response compromises the development of inherent potentials.
As we dissociate ourselves from the world around us or try to control everything and everyone through rationality, reactivity and aggressiveness, we become a traumatized species that specializes in creating trauma around us. Wounds left unanswered dampen the inner impulses that guide us toward the expression of the authentic vision we would like to share with the world and toward gentle, collaborative participation in our collectivities.
But the point is that everyday big and small problems open up symptoms of deep wounds that are potential gateways to perception and transformation. Admitting this is the height of personal responsibility, a mark of emotional maturity and the possible way to promote human evolution. When enough of us do this, humanity will be transformed.
The critical mass quest
Rupert Sheldrake (1996), biochemist and doctor of biology, postulated in the 1980s a hypothesis about how living beings learn and acquire new behaviors. He found that when a behavior is repeated enough times, it forms a morphic field with a cumulative memory based on what happened in the past. Morphic fields are structures that span space-time and shape physical forms and behaviors.
Everything, living and non-living beings, is associated with a specific morphic field that makes a system function as such, that is, as an integrated whole rather than a jumble of parts. Unlike gravitational and electromagnetic fields that transmit energy, morphic fields transmit information so that the knowledge acquired and aggregated by an individual becomes a collective asset that is shared by all individuals in that system.
Morphic resonance, the name of Sheldrake’s theory, demonstrates that a change in a species behavior occurs when a critical mass is reached. Critical mass is the required number of individuals that need to adhere to a particular habit in order for the behavior of the entire species to change. Thus, he explains how new patterns of behavior can emerge and, with that, how the nature of species, including humans, can change.
This means that the culture of a collective of people changes when enough people change their behavior. This process begins with the unimaginable being done by some and repeated by others until a critical number of people make the change and this new behavior becomes the pattern of how we act and, consequently, of who we are. This is how human behavior change happens: we repeat behavior motivated by a principle or value enough times until, suddenly, we become what we do.
Any legitimate form of activism must go hand in hand with the understanding that our personal pain and the Earth’s pain are closely related and play a decisive role in the way things turn out
.That is why we need more and more people who are experts in their own trauma in order to prevent them from gaining collective proportions and resulting in the limitations and misfortunes we witness on a daily basis. Any legitimate form of activism must go hand in hand with the understanding that our personal pain and the Earth’s pain are closely related and play a decisive role in the way things turn out. Without this recognition, our personal and professional initiatives, although well intentioned, will continue to be fragmented, superficial, unsustainable and, at times, unethical.
Within trauma are competencies that we need to recover in order to respond to present challenges. Through the elaboration of trauma, personal and collective intelligence and power cease to be at the service of self-preservation and are directed towards self-fulfillment. Taking care of our personal miseries is a condition for acting responsibly in the world. In doing so, we act out of authentic participation and committed service to the most beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
Welcoming the pain
Going through trauma and embracing pain makes us more able to see reality for what it is and to be more honest with ourselves. This makes it possible for the individual to anchor his view of the world without excuses and defenses. Thus, existential anxiety is replaced by a sense of trust in ourselves and in life.
It takes willingness to be present with your pain without judging yourself for feeling fear, anger, sadness, guilt, shame and all the emotions that the mind translates as negative experiences. The moralizing judgment that emerges along with these emotions has to do with mistaken beliefs related to feeling like “if I didn’t feel this, I wouldn’t suffer” and “my dark aspect is shameful”. From them derive a herculean effort to avoid emotion and isolate oneself from experience. The result is a dulling of the ability to feel.
We nurture these beliefs because we, human beings, had to dampen emotional pain to bear it when we didn’t have enough resources to face it. At times, the expression of our emotions may have resulted in unwanted results and loss of affection. Emotions have become undesirable because, in these cases, they have kept us from fulfilling our needs and desires. But fear of emotions is unwarranted because it is beliefs and attitudes related to them that make them unpalatable. No matter how destructive they look, they can be metabolized and composted.
Replacing protection patterns with connection patterns
Trauma compromises our ability to engage with one another, replacing patterns of connection with patterns of protection.
By rebuking emotions they remain inappropriate and destructive in the subconscious causing us to run away from experiences. According to behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges (2017), trauma compromises our ability to engage with one another, replacing patterns of connection with patterns of protection. It is a paradoxical isolation. Inhibition and isolation as a protective measure against exposure does not prevent what we fear and makes us lose the potential of life that we could access if we did not refuse involvement and flee the experience.
We realize that true security comes from living from the raw, open, real core of presence within us.
The price to pay for emotional overprotection is too much. Blocking the ability to feel pain also blocks access to pleasure. Though it may not seem like it, pain is a life-giving experience. It releases pent-up energy and dulled creativity. Without attachment or aversion to emotions, feeling them is life-giving and liberating. Listening to emotional pain gives birth to the understanding that we are beyond any disconcerting emotion and, no matter what, we are alive and, in the end, that’s what matters most. We realize that true security comes from living from the raw, open, real core of presence within us.
This radical integrity is the necessary foundation for building a life in the service of a society that celebrates life. Metabolizing the pain itself makes us anchor a more potent level of truth. In doing so, we put our originality and eccentricity at the service of the world. The clogged channels and wounds related to broken bonds become the portals to realizing a deeper, indestructible bond that connects us to everything and everyone.
It is a paradox that by coming into contact with the pain of separation we have the chance to experience our inseparability from the world. Facing pain doesn’t annihilate us as the ego supposed. On the contrary, it creates a new relationship with life. From separate and disconnected we have come to feel deeply interrelated. With the relinquishment of masks, defenses and justifications, we enjoy the incredible pleasure of being intimate, open and vulnerable to life.
Collective healing is in supporting each other on this path. It’s worth it because we stop seeing life as an overlay of traumas and realize its exuberance and preciousness. We see connections more than oppositions and adversity begins to look like adventures. Each challenge can present itself as an opportunity to make different choices from those made so far. By learning to take care of ourselves, we become more available to others, expanding our sense of empathy and our circles of affection.
Some guidelines to make friendship with pain
There are many scientific approaches and ancient wisdom traditions that offer ways to embrace pain. As facilitators of Work That Reconnects, it is important to know and experience some of them in order to discover how they can support our work with facilitation of groups and difficult emotions. From my experience with phenomenologically based psychological approaches and trauma studies, I have come to realize that an interesting path of coping with emotional pain involves:
Curiosity to investigate the hidden meanings of events
Reverence for the truth of phenomena (internal and external world)
Admit whatever happened without resizing or fantasizing
Perceiving adaptive defenses and cognitive biases
Stop the dramatic telling of outdated stories
Embrace shame and practice self-compassion
Remain open and choose to be real and authentic
These simple guidelines can be found in many of these ways and perhaps, I hope, inspire us to search for effective practices and perspectives to do our work of compassionately witnessing personal pain and the pain of the world.
References
Maté, G. (2008). In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction. Knopf Canada.
Porges, S. W. (2017). The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe. W. W. Norton & Company.
Sheldrake, R. (1996). The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance. Piaget Institute.
Juliana Mota Diniz
Juliana Mota Diniz is Brazilian and has translated her essay from its original Portuguese. She is a social scientist with emphasis on anthropology, co-founder of the Institute for Regenerative Development (IDR), and a facilitator of Gaia Education and Work That Reconnects. She has academic and practical experience related to traditional knowledge systems, socio-biodiversity, ethnodevelopment and decolonization. Based on phenomenology, ecophilosophy, and regeneration, she combines her anthropological and holistic experience to facilitate personal and collective learning and transformation that promotes planetary health and protects the Earth’s biocultural memory.
Juliana participated in the first WTR training in Brazil, in 2019 under the guidance of Ádrian Vilaseñor Galarza. WTR is one of the foundations of her personal and professional practice. She considers it an honor to offer this essay as a contribution to WTR.
Strands of Infinity: Poetry to Reconnect
Silvia Di Blasio works supporting various organizations and projects including the 
