Here is a talk given by Cindy Aulby to the particpants in CAH's Earth Hour candlelight vigil, held at St David's Park, Hobart on 26th March 2011.
You can learn more about Cindy at her website www.journeytotheheart.com.au
Green Heartedness
Sea
Shepherd’s captain Paul Watson talks about our planet like a ship – On this
ship, there’s the crew and there’s the passengers. We’re the passengers. The
trees and worms and bacteria are the crew. We need the planet and we need the
crew to survive, but neither need us. We can’t do life without them, and yet
they can do it beautifully without us.
I
know you’re reading this because you’re aware that we have been unwise and
ungrateful passengers. We’re like disaffected disgruntled kids on a train –
graffiti-ing, tearing up the seats, breaking windows and eventually taking off
the wheels and bits of the necessary workings so the train is reduced to
rubble. You know we’ve taken too much with no thought to the consequences, and
that the situation is looking very grim.
And
the fact that you ARE reading this suggests that you will do your best to be a
big part of the solution, rather than unconsciously creating more of a problem.
So
I’m not about to discuss the incredibly complicated problem we have created. My
hope is to plant some seeds in you and around you that will grow you, nourish
you and help you to stay inspired and hopeful, whilst meeting head-on the
critical work we must do.
As
I thought about how I might support our motivation and inspiration, I thought
about some of the extraordinary activists who have inspired me and what they
seem to do that works. People like Bob Brown, Christine Milne, the Dalai Lama,
Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus Christ – how do or did they keep on going? How do they
stay so wise and reasonable, so effective and so healthy in themselves?
This
question suggested a foundation to me that I’ll call Green Heartedness. My
question then is what would it mean to be Green Hearted? What will we do
differently when we’ve evolved to the point where we no longer deplete the self
or the planet, and when we can effectively support health in everything we do.
We
would respect and value all life
equally. The planet, all of it – from her deep core, through her dense and
ancient rocks, her oceans, her millions of life forms, her atmosphere, and all
of her people. It includes you – the one life form that you are primarily
responsible for looking after. Do you offer your Self the reverence and respect
which you offer the forests, the oceans, the planet?
I
think holding one’s self with this level of respect is the basis of integrity.
We're mostly familiar with this term meaning that you'll do what you say you
will. Integrity also means the quality or condition of being whole
or undivided. Completeness. This is one of the core concepts of green-ness …
that nature will find it’s own balance when allowed it’s wholeness. We trust
that nature has the wisdom it needs in order to be whole and healthy, and we
know that it loses it’s integrity when we mess with it. Imagine if you could
trust your own nature with this integral state, knowing that you in fact lack
nothing – you are complete, perfect, uninjured, hole, entire.
When
I seek insight to what my activist mentors embody, what we might learn from
them, this integrity stands out. These are people who trust themselves, who
honour their passions and live undivided from who they are. They walk their
talk. They somehow manage to apply the big principles to the details of their
own lives.
I
haven’t had the honour of asking these mentors, so I’m intuiting and sensing
here. I look at Bob Brown, and I see his devoted love of nature. In all his
political work and all the different issues he’s stood by, is the land he
loves. In among it he’s taken thousands of photographs of the earth, from
mountains to plants to water. He clearly gives himself the time to replenish – to be in the environments he
loves and allow them to nourish him, to feed him, to inspire him. He comes
always from a place of kindness, even when he's determinedly opposing someone.
He's respectful, sure and strong.
When
I see the Dalai Lama, I see someone who knows himself deeply. His devotion has
taken him inside himself. It’s here that he’s truly understood the human
struggles for power and conquest, the human conditions of loss, of anger and
pain and fear. Then what he gives to the struggle is a compassion and wisdom
that we cannot help but listen to and respect. When I was young and hot-headed,
it seemed to me that loving the enemy was a sell-out, that it must condone
their unjust behaviour. The Dalai Lama has opened another way – that compassion
enables deep clarity, even in opposition (maybe especially in
opposition), at the same time as
strengthening rightness and truth. The Dalai Lama’s integrity shines – he
maintains a deep trust in him self and what he knows to be true.
None
of the inspiring activists I mentioned are acting from ego. Each appears to me
to be so in their integrity that there is no need to use their position to be
popular, to gain power or prestige, no need for political wheeling and dealing.
So
what can we learn here? What does integrity ask of you? What would wholeness,
completeness suggest?
I
reckon if we all honoured our selves, we would no longer be satisfied with the
bandaid solutions that consumerism offers. If we were no longer satisfied with
feeding the soul on trinkets and new sparkling things, we might ask the deeper
questions. What is it I really need when retail therapy calls? Listening more
deeply would tell us what the soul really wants – and generally it is not a
trinket, but connection, creative flow, loving, laughter.
Consumerism
would fizzle out. Instead we would be singing together, growing and eating
nutritious food, dancing, making love, making beautiful and creative things and
giving more than we take.
If
we truly honoured our selves, we might allow the truth of all the wise ones who
have gone before us – that, as Victor Frankl puts it: “love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire …
that the salvation of man is through love and in love.”
What
this means in action is huge - big enough to take up ten magazines! But think
about it … what sort of world would you live in if you were to make all of your
decisions from a place of love rather than from fear.
This
means love for yourself, primarily. From this flows all else.
You
would listen to your beautifully accurate internal guidance system. You would
learn its language and follow its wisdom. As you practice, you will develop a
trust – you’ll rest when you need to, you’ll eat well. You’ll consult your
deeper knowing when you need to make decisions about where you put your energy,
how to be more effective. You’ll give others the same respect. You’ll give
yourself time and space for nature
to nourish you and to teach you.
Many
active people forget to do this – it can feel like navel gazing and self
indulgence to focus on yourself when the big picture needs our attention so
very desperately. However, thinking about green heartedness has shown me again
and again that the people who are incredibly effective in the long term, the
people who command respect even in opposition, are those who manage to come
from a place of wholeness. They are undivided. They come from their centre.
How
we think and what we focus on has an immense impact, not only on the inside,
but also to those around us. It can be heartbreaking to maintain a constant
awareness of what’s wrong – like living in a dense cloud, that shows no light
through it. That’s when it’s so important to stop, nourish and replenish
yourself. Be in nature, let Gaia hold your hand for a while. Focus inward and
listen to what your true self is telling you. And do as you’re told!
Then
come back to your work. Stay centred. When you start to lose your centre, stop!
It might only take a minute. Breathe. Come back to yourself. Because you are
inextricably connected to this wondrous planet, and through your inner
experience, you will find what you need in order to continue. You will find
that you put into practice other core green principles:
~
Environmental protection: protecting the environment inside you and the one you
create for those around you. When you take more from yourself than you put back
in, you create burnout – giving that which is not authentically yours to
give. When you give authentically, from loving self care, you will not exhaust
yourself or burn out.
~
Non-violence: stop the violence you do to your self. Be attentive to the ways
that you speak to yourself, the ways you care for yourself. It is a kind of
violence to your self when you don’t eat properly, when you run yourself ragged
and refuse to rest, when you ignore your internal guidance. Tend to your own
needs.
Green
heartedness means acting from this deep personal integrity, and letting our big
work in the world be inspired and nourished by it.
