Having been a therapist for over twelve years, one of the reasons I find the healing subculture usually really... what is it exactly... boring? Uninteresting? Ah, lifeless!
Lifeless, because it only talks about humans and our systems. It still treats all other lifeforms and landscapes as hollow props and dead backdrops to our oh-so-important healing journey. This is our odyssey and, of course, without a doubt, will end in our triumph, our certain victory.
Right?
And yet the most profound, truly mind-melting, animist-infused experiences I've had were when I fully felt the emotions - the pain, the horror, the raw terror, but also the untamed love - around the very real collective circumstances we're in. I’m talking about circumstances like the possibility of nuclear war, human extinction, unthinkable abuse of prisoners by the state, and godlike power in the hands of psychopaths.
Connecting with these emotions broke down my self-absorbed human supremacy complex. I had to face deeply uncomfortable truths and realities, and power that was far beyond the reach and limits of my personal identity.
Those experiences freed me from a species-level narcissism that is unquestioned in our society.
And what revealed itself was a planet laced with a sentience that was far more enlivening than any private, human-obsessed healing could ever be.
It nestled me into the great arc of deep time in a way that made me feel that I truly belonged, and that I was genuinely loved. I saw that this capitalist nightmare could never offer me anything better than being fully engaged in the unfolding of life for its own sake.
Not in some glorified spiritual dissociation, but in this very corporeal existence. Shamelessly animal, hackles raised, razor talons digging into a great tree's bark, my nose to the wind to catch the scent of whomever might roam nearby. I could feel an ancient power that was inherent in life itself.
This, this, this is better than anything I could have ever dreamed of: to be this creature alive on this planet, and to know my role in the arc of deep time as I know my own bones in my body.
Our ecological niche as human beings, our role in the web of life, is to be the gardener, the janitor, the custodian. We are the one who's presence and tending causes life to spill out in a thousand manifest forms in all directions. Each of us must then discover our own ecological niche, to learn exactly how we each play that role in our communities, at this time.
We can then feel ourselves embedded within a transgenerational project that will extend far beyond our individual lifetimes.
I have tasted that kind of aliveness, and I'll tell you, there's nothing better.
Transgenerational projects
