The Yin-Yang of Life

Spiritual work has many expressions that go beyond religious ministries and the power of prayer. Consider catastrophes and human generosity that ranges from monetary donations to showing up in person, when possible, to give physical and emotional help, whether through professional or volunteer services, and fundraisers.

Most recently, in Canada, we have the first July 21st charity run undertaken by citizens and visitors in eastern Québec, along the route of the inexcusable runaway train carrying crude oil, which derailed and exploded, causing death and destruction in of Lac Mégantic. Also, of course, have been the platoons of volunteers in several locations to help victims in western Canada after record-breaking Alberta floods.

Other expressions of `spiritual work’ can be more challenging, for these reasons. They involve forms of nonviolent citizen protest pitted against environmentally-threatening activities that, first of all, divide the regional communities affected and , secondly, get reduced by the news media to “activism,” usually in the reductive, pejorative sense.

In this second case, mediocre news reporters, who attempt to look “objective,” undermine the deeper truths that concerned citizens try to expose. Such reporters quote misguided, if not corrupt, politicians who try to diminish such citizens not simply as “protesters” yet, moreover, by labels such as “interfering outsiders,” foreigners,” and who sometimes invoke, abusively, the attention-getting “terrorist” label.

Another activity in public protest to characterize as `spiritual work’ is the unseen, thus generally unheralded, deep and complex research to which concerned citizens dedicate themselves for months, if not years, on end. They do so to discover and expose the more important facts about industrial decisions that endanger life.

These citizens feel compelled to do so, when confronted with self-serving political power-holders who abdicate their own moral responsibility to carry out relevant scientific and medical research that is independent from the mutual self-interests held by certain corporate interests and such willfully ignorant politicians.

To be clear, I am not referring to all forms of activism as spiritual work. The human condition is complex, and so are the motivations within the human heart that can be conflicted about what actually is compelling a person toward public protest.

Our world today is moving through a major transition, at multiple levels, in which several aspects of a person’s life can be in upheaval, even without natural disasters, political revolutions that become extended with no predictable outcome in sight, or the inevitable industrial catastrophes caused by arrogance and negligence.

As readers familiar with my blog posts already know, I regularly refer to the `sacred feminine’ as a thread that weaves through much of my writing. The sacred feminine is grounded in the life force within each of us as well as within all forms of life on this planet.

Essential today is to know what we must protect, what we must “stand for” more than what we stand against, and to do so from a place of love and caring, rather than from hate and anger.

Taking a position from our “Higher Self,” from which we manifest our higher – namely, spiritual – qualities such as love, compassion, humility, gratitude, grace and more, is the ground on which a human being needs to stand in order to carry out `spiritual work.’ The further aspect is that these higher qualities are expressed from an innate recognition of relationship.

Ultimately, what really matters about being alive is how we take care of each other and the planetary life that sustains our life, not only now yet for the future generations to come. Acting now, however, is imperative in order to safeguard the children today and the children to come.

That is why much of my time this year is dedicated to doing scientific and related research, and prepare interventions to fight against the first of two proposed deep geological repositories (DGRs) to bury radioactive nuclear waste. Please see blog post “Do You Know Where You Live? May I Suggest – A Bioregion” about this issue.

I also explained in that post why I am writing fewer blog posts, because such research is taking most of my time. Nor can I look for paying work, while committed in a volunteer capacity, as a caring community member, to prepare written and oral interventions.

Please know as well that writing a blog is not a hobby, but instead one way for me to contribute educationally to the wider world. Donations, therefore, are appreciated, and needed, to cover basic living expenses.

A public hearing will be held for a month this autumn, beginning mid-September. The Joint Review Panel (JPR) on this proposed nuclear waste dump project has accepted my submission outline; hence, allowing me to contribute a 30-minute oral intervention. However, I must deliver the detailed written paper for a mid-August deadline, with extra days given if I choose to add visual images.

So, this is going to be a long, hot summer in more ways than one. After sweating through the previous week-long horrid, sleepless heat wave, in my rough yet darling century-old farmhouse, I am trying not to fry my brain.

For I am exploring thousands of pages of documents, both from the nuclear industry and also seeking independent literature from which I can glean opposing scientific views, to illustrate why a DGR is fraught with uncertainties.

This intellectual exercise, by the way, relates to my previous post titled “Internet’s Impact on Brain – What You Need to Know.” In that post, I emphasized the value of taking opportunities to enjoy natural environments, which allow a person to be present to the moment at a soul level while also developing the brain’s capacity for contemplation.

Interwoven with such a holistic perspective is the very real, and very practical, need to develop the brain in order to build the capacity to investigate and comprehend a lot of information at deep levels. Doing so is essential when a person chooses the task to organize complex facts and present a case to argue against dangerous, industrial activities, particularly ones in which risks to human and environmental well-being will continue.

To be equipped to address the high stakes of our time, and participate in decision-making that impacts on the quality of life of our planet, we, as planetary citizens, are called to take responsibility to become well-informed, in order to make wise choices and to be clear about what we stand for.

Wherever you live, what is it that you stand for, and how are you preparing to protect what you cherish?

Comic moments in life are an essential antidote to tragic events unfolding relentlessly around us. Recalling such serendipitous moments also lightens a heart that may weigh heavy from life’s challenges. That is why a smile brightens my face just in telling you about the showdown, in miniature, on my front stoop one sunny afternoon between a grass snake and a praying mantis.

It was fascinating to watch, as I came full stop a few feet away. A tiny praying mantis was poised, eye-ball to eye-ball, with the much larger snake for what seemed like a long time. I figured the former would be a nice appetizer for the latter. But, who would think? The praying mantis merely jerked its head forward threateningly, and the snake backed off, slithering off my stoop into the garden.

Bearing witness to the wonders of Nature is a delightful practice to relax the mind. Doing so also exercises our higher qualities, such as patience and being present in the moment, that help us become more fully developed as human beings. That is why the credo to “slow down and smell the flowers” truly is not a frivolous piece of advice but, on the contrary, a piece of wisdom to take to heart. Even your brain will thank you.

Deeply gratifying is to have the wisdom of my own quest for inner and outer balance in recent years verified by the scientific evidence presented in The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (2011) by Nicholas Carr. A Pulitzer Prize Finalist, this book’s importance also is evident in reviews such as Slate magazine Michael Agger’s referral to it as nothing less than “Silent Spring for the literary mind.”

Indeed, the technologies upon which we have come to rely are filled with paradox. Not for the first time do I find myself ambivalent in writing a blog that will entice readers to concentrate their gaze, and stay engaged long enough to read through my philosophical musings. In doing so, my hope is to inspire thoughtful reflection.

At times, however, I want to implore you to turn off whatever computer, iPad, smart phone or other gadget into which you have plugged your mind. Leave the techie toys at home or the office, find a park or a wood or a beach, and linger for a while. Open your mind and soul to the ambience of a natural environment.

Tune in to your body, physical senses and feelings, through visceral interactions in real time and real space. Allow the poetry of your soul to awaken. Discover contemplation.

As for me, I feel blessed to have my computer positioned beside a large picture window that overlooks a wealth of countryside greenery. In these summer days I listen to the birdsong of the barn swallows who come and go frequently to their nest under the eaves above this window, and take delight in bumblebees dancing on the flowers.

Here’s a question to reflect upon. Given the Internet’s ubiquitous presence in our lives, professionally and personally: How are you creating your inner and outer balance?

To help us understand better our enchantment with the ever-evolving `intellectual technology’ called the Internet, The Shallows author Nicholas Carr describes the trajectory of a computerized world that began more than a half century ago.

He also confesses to his own enchantment and efforts to negotiate digital tools, so predominant in all our lives, and essential for his livelihood. The impetus to write this book was seeded in his quest to discover what’s been going on inside his own head:

“The deeper I dug into the science of neuroplasticity and the progress of intellectual technology, the clearer it became that the Internet’s import and influence can be judged only when viewed in the fuller context of intellectual history. As revolutionary as it may be, the Net is best understood as the latest in a long series of tools that have helped mold the human mind” [Carr, 2011, p. 115].

Nicholas Carr is a fabulous storyteller. His book can appeal to an audience wide and diverse, as he walks us through centuries as far back as ancient Greece, ranging from the thoughts of Socrates to the thoughts and “feelings” of supercomputer Hal, a key character in Stanley Kubrick’s prophetic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In other words, Carr relates history through the disparate personalities of major thinkers and creators, showing how and why particular choices happened, up to and including Hal’s disquieting symbolic role, which is to provoke us to pay attention to who and what we are becoming, as human beings, through our particular choices.

The yin-yang of Carr’s storytelling style is quite brilliant. On the one hand, he delves into the minutiae of tiny details in the lives of historic personalities, in regard to how they variously grumbled, yet coped with, technological changes in their respective eras.

On the other hand, Carr presents the breadth of conflicting views on the multi-layered benefits vis à vis the pitfalls. In the best tradition of good journalism, he equips the reader to make up his or her own mind, more fully aware in negotiating daily sojourns onto the Internet, known to us intimately as `the Net’ or `the Web.’

The Shallows‘ ultimate purpose, regardless, is to take us on a journey that helps us be more receptive to what the latest science now can tell us, about the Internet’s impact on our brains as individuals, and collectively, as societal cultures.

Carr characterizes, metaphorically, how online searches and search engines’ pathways fleetingly direct our attention to “snippets of text…while providing little incentive for taking in the [written] work as a whole. We don’t see the forest when we search the Web. We don’t even see the trees. We see twigs and leaves” [p. 91].

Consider what Carr suggests above. If I sprinkled my usual array of hyperlinks through this post, would you be bouncing out and hopping all over the Internet like an `energizer bunny,’ maybe or maybe not hopping back to finish reading this post, grazing on small, disconnected morsels of information, back and forth?

My intention, when I do insert hyperlinks, is not to please Google but, much more importantly, to provide deeper and more expansive understanding to my readers. My assumption has been that folks would read through my whole post and, only then, might follow up – to learn more – by checking out the content in my offered hyperlinks.

But, regrettably, according to Carr, uninterrupted linear reading of a narrative is being replaced, increasingly, by an online reading habit that merely scans a page and is very attracted to any distraction such as hyperlinks. Oh dear.

The author declares: “The news is even more disturbing than I had suspected. dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, educators, and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when we go online we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning” [p. 115-16].

In his chapter “The Church of Google,” Carr outlines Google co-founder Larry Page’s view that the human brain does not just act like a computer – a popular notion that Carr challenges – but instead is a computer, “an extreme view,” says Carr. He expounds on how Google’s vision largely is based on Page’s vision, a vision influenced by Page’s father, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence.

Carr next explains why the `brain as computer’ metaphor is basically incorrect, as a fallacy “built on reductive assumptions.” I urge you to read The Shallows, because my post cannot do justice to the important insights that Carr gives us to think about.

Choices cannot be made, wisely, unless we equip ourselves with awareness first. Will we choose to further develop habits of Internet use that fragment the mind, reduce our capacity to focus and concentrate, and thereby sabotage our intellectual potential for deep creative and original thinking so essential to address our uncertain present and future?

Carr, ultimately, calls us to value what makes us human. He cites Joseph Weisenbaum, a computer scientist labelled a heretic by artificial intelligence believers, close to 40 years ago, in writing that what makes us human is “what is least computable about us – the connections between our mind and our body, the experiences that shape our memory and our thinking, our capacity for emotion and empathy” [p. 207].

What powerfully resonates with me about the message in The Shallows is how we, as a human species, may be forfeiting the possibility of transforming our consciousness to create a more caring world, unless we question the Internet’s influence upon us.

Nicholas Carr’s hope resides in an anti-Net backlash, a hope reinforced by the large number of responses from “young people.” Carr then points out: “Net culture isn’t youth culture; its mainstream culture.” Provocatively, he adds: “What are Facebook and Google but giant institutions, arms of the new Establishment? What are smartphones if not high-tech leashes?…Some kind of rebellion seems in order” [p. 227].

Humour, as I suggested at the beginning of this post, has a vital role in our lives. In dealing with the serious issue of getting lost in “the shallows,” treat yourself to a chuckle by seeing perhaps your own Internet dilemma mirrored in the hilarious animated short video “What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.”

I had my eyes opened to the ethos of a traditionally subsistent Aboriginal way of life, an ethos that withstood Western religious, political and economic interference, during a 1987 winter trip to Canada’s Yukon Territory. An elder in the Teslin community of the Tlingit First Nation explained a significant fact. His people would be able to survive – even if the global economic system collapsed – because he and other individuals of his generation practiced, and taught to younger generations, timeless survival practices on how to live on the land interdependently with other species.

Last week, on CBC-TV’s The National, an `Only in Canada’ segment highlighted a Dene First Nation elder in the Northwest Territories (NWT) conducting a camp that teaches practices on how to survive. These skills are essential to access the plant and animal resources suitably, to protect the biodiversity of life in Canada’s north. His camp is one among several similar `on the land learning’ cultural camps in the NWT.

This Dene elder shares his knowledge with school children across cultures. In witnessing his gentle modesty, he offers a wonderful example of an intertwined spiritual and practical wisdom embedded in the traditional culture of Aboriginal people that deserves the respect, and attention, of other cultures, in Canada and globally.

We all can learn from his example. The reason is, the increased frequency of disasters caused by extreme weather events demonstrates that no nation of people on any continent can feel assured any longer that its population will be spared from natural catastrophes, or not be affected simply by the decline in global biological diversity.

An imperative for our time is to understand the basic principles of “biodiversity,” in order to rethink human lifestyles based on economic development that is ecologically harmful. We either can choose to change consumer habits that cause harm and help to lesson the planetary impacts. Alternatively, and inevitably, we will be forced to do so by the forces of Nature.

Even school children can understand biodiversity, if and when schools include curricula with outdoors, and related, experiential activities. Biodiversity has various definitions. Here is one definition, from the Biodiversity Education and Awareness website in Ontario:

“Simply put, biodiversity is life in all its variety: over 14 million species found from mountain top to deep-sea vent. But it is much more. Those species connect, and interact. Those interactions create communities and systems, and those systems provide goods and services such as oxygen production, pollination, water filtration and storage, pest control, food production, carbon storage and erosion control. Again, simply put, biodiversity anchors nature’s life support system.”

The most recent large extreme weather disaster, covered by news media in Canada for more than a week, has been a massive flooding through large areas of Alberta – the extent unique in Alberta’s known historic record. TV news videos have portrayed the immense force of water and its destructive path, initiated by extreme rainfall, which transformed tiny creeks into torrential rivers to alter everything in the ecosystems through which they flowed.

Understandably, mainstream news stories tend to focus on human drama and conflict. Therefore, we bear witness to the lives of more than a hundred thousand Albertans, not just in the City of Calgary yet, as well, in a number of small communities, who have lost homes, the artifacts of family history and entire community infrastructures. These folks, economically – and psychologically – now must rebuild a new ground floor of life and a new vision for the future.

The 2008 book Sustaining Life: how Human Health Depends on Biodiversity is co-authored and co-edited by Aaron Bernstein, M.D. and Nobel Laureate Eric Chivian. A talk given by Dr. Chivian on this topic is freely available to watch on the online Vimeo network. Below is one image from a diagram series in their book, available to study on NovaMind‘s website:

The unfolding human trauma in Alberta, meanwhile, is steadily being exposed layer by layer. To be fair, therefore, it is too early for the other shoe to drop – the long term environmental consequences of such extensive Alberta flooding. Almost nowhere on the internet could I find news stories pertaining to the multi-faceted environmental reality, which will further alter the lives of thousands of Albertans in ways not yet visible, but imminent regardless.

One notable exception, as a source of insight regarding Alberta’s environmental plight, has been interviews with Dr. John Pomeroy, who holds a Canada research chair in water resources and climate change at the University of Saskatchewan.

The Canadian Press, for example, interviewed Dr. Pomeroy from his field research station in the flooded mountain community of Canmore. Pomeroy personally witnessed how an entire mountainside collapsed nearby, when mountain streams morphed into torrents. He explains the wider impacts on biodiversity:

“Even if the climate stayed exactly the same and we just had regular precipitation events in the future, the way the watersheds translate rainfall and snowfall into stream flow is going to be different now.
“The channels are different… They need to be remapped… .
“Those changes are likely to force plants and animals that live in the watershed to change as well. Some may not make it.
“Trout, for example, need pebbly river bottom to spawn. The Bow River has swallowed so much silt that the river’s famous trout fishery may be threatened.”
… Climate change models predict heavier rains, more precipitation falling as rain instead of snow and rain falling on top of snow – all of which favour more flooding, said Pomeroy.

What is worse, future extreme flooding in Alberta potentially could cause a catastrophe as well in Canada’s Northern Mackenzie River Basin.

To demonstrate how far flung extreme weather events affect more than one large bioregion, an article on the Desmog Canada website provided the following insight:

“Record flooding in the heart of the Alberta tar sands dramatically illustrates their threat to Canada’s `Serengeti,’ the Mackenzie River Basin. Only days before this week’s flooding in Fort McMurray, a panel of international science experts warned that the nearly 200 square kilometres of toxic wastewater lakes near rivers like the Athabasca pose a direct threat to one of the world’s most important ecosystems.”

An excellent map attached to the above article illustrates the interlocking river basin that could enable this environmental threat:

Whatever your opinion about Alberta’s tar sands, and regardless of one’s position on climate change, this visual image presents to us a physical truth of environmental vulnerability that cannot be denied. In view of such stark evidence, such large-scale extractive industrial activities must be rethought.

Very timely is a report recently published by the Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy that elaborates on protecting the Mackenzie River Basin because of the global importance in regard to the biodiversity of this watershed. An article published by ScienceDaily provides the report’s eight principle findings and conclusions.

In this historic moment of extreme weather globally, we need to use our intelligence as a human family, and transcend nation state as well as party politics, to figure out the ways that we can share ecologically-based perspectives. We sorely need to move beyond denial, and figure out suitable lifestyles to minimize if possible, and to negotiate when necessary, extreme events and their consequences around the planet because they are interrelated.

As planetary citizens we must take ownership of our individual and collective responsibility to protect the biodiversity that sustains a human existence worth experiencing, an existence to preserve that is blessed with health, dignity and beauty.

We are never too old to revive our innate childlike wonder. The world of Nature can be a most powerful voice that resonates in our body and our feelings, to remind us that we are biological beings whose health is enhanced by our direct encounters with natural environments. Indeed, we sorely need that reminding. For we live in a time of extraordinary paradox: on the one hand, growing alienation from Nature and even each other as social beings while at the same time, conversely and blessedly, life-affirming and inter-folding global movements are gaining momentum to re-engage human relationship with Nature as well as with our own inner life.

Ecological literacy, I suggest,, is at the core of these movements, as a timely expression of transformative learning. Elsewhere I have cited spiritual psychologist Tom Yeomans who points out: “Transformative learning begins in your body and your feelings.” Indeed, transformative learning is personal to each individual, in accordance with his or her willingness to be receptive to the opportunities offered throughout life.

`Transformative moments’ happen in our lives unanticipated and not even sought (at least, not consciously) when we can let down our defenses and the human tendency for control, so that we instead can pay attention with all of our physical senses and a fearless heart to what is happening around us.

When we engage holistically, through allowing the flow of our energy to interconnect with our environment – emotionally, physically, spiritually, as well as intellectually – our innate “natural” inner ways of knowing deepen and expand.

`Ecology‘ comes from the Greek words “house” and “study of.” Defined as “the scientific study of interactions among organisms and their environment,” we also can say that ecology is a study of the house of life, because it maps relationships among all forms of life at all levels, from molecules to processes that span the entire planet.

Understanding these multi-layered relationships enables us to become ecologically literate. The attainment of any form of literacy is a process through time. Ecological literacy, therefore, is a type of insight that accumulates along life’s journey, simply by engaging with the multitude of life forms in the natural world through lived experience, beyond mere intellectual pursuits.

The ultimate vision for ecologically literate societies is to be sustainable societies which do not destroy the natural environments on which they depend.

Wetlands, for example, represent one of the most important life support systems in the natural environment. Here is a beautiful photograph by Dave Ross ©.

Ecological literacy truly begins in our body and our feelings, when we gift ourselves with time spent in natural environments. This awakening can happen within any person at any age. No formal education is necessary to appreciate our planetary world, up close and personal. What is essential, however, is a willingness accompanied by grace and humility, to recognize how much we can learn from Nature.

The arts vicariously can present images and stories of Nature to us, in our roles as creators and/or audiences, to offer transformative moments. Yet, here again, the arts do so by touching not the analytical mind but rather, foremost, the human heart and soul.

Physicist Fritjof Capra, Founding Director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in California, is one of the pioneers in `living systems theory’ as applied to ecology. Capra’s message in his books, lectures and courses, is to encourage all of us to take a holistic approach to life and seek deeper understanding about what sustains it.

In doing so, he also has emphasized why Western science must abandon conventional linear thought and the mechanistic views of Descartes, most particularly in his book The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems (1997).

Another visionary of ecological literacy is David W. Orr, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College, in Ohio. More than twenty years ago, he authored the ground-breaking book Ecological Learning: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (1992).

What Capra and Orr respectively present to us is a vision that calls upon nothing less than the evolution of human consciousness. The number one ingredient to respond to this call is, caring.

The first steps in shifting consciousness simply require each of us to care, and to reflect, wherever we live – city, suburb or countryside – about the ways in which our attitudes toward, and interactions with, Nature, protect and restore or, carelessly, cause harm.

And consider why does the phenomenon “nature-deficit disorder” even exist? I am not alone when I declare that children are being overly pathologized these days by many psychiatrists. Regardless, when journalist/author Richard Louv coined this specific “disorder,” I believe he did so to be provocative in order to motivate people to take action to challenge this phenomenon. The need to do so is evident in the growing international movement to reconnect children with Nature, partly inspired by Louv’s books.

I can suggest one possible reason why this phenomenon has developed. At an alternative education conference 20 years ago in Colorado, as a presenter, I also attended other workshops. One special program offered by outdoor educators introduced inner city youth to natural environments. I was astounded at the reason why: to counter the phenomenon of that time, that many of America’s urban youth were fearful of the “wilderness.”

Such youth – the youth who never had opportunities to spend time in Nature – would be among some parents of today’s even more disenfranchised children – disenfranchised by technological enchantment that diverts energy away from the development of an innate biological, and experiential, awareness how the pulse of our human life force interacts with that of the earth.

Both Capra and Orr have contributed so much to present and future generations. They both are actively engaging the youth and children. Orr, for example, characterizes some of his work as connecting young people back to an `ecological wisdom.’ I will speak more about the work of Orr and Capra, and ecological literacy, in future blog posts.

I now would like to close this blog post with the words of a beautiful soul and wise woman, who was a visionary of her time, Rachel Carson. She once wrote:

“Those who dwell, as scientists, or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”

Across generations, we can choose healing and renewal through encounters with the world of Nature, or choose to be indifferent. Always know that awakening to possibility is a choice available to us, every day.