COUNCIL OF ALL BEINGS

EMAIL TO GET ON MAILING LIST FOR WORKSHOPS
"When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world." - John Muir
 

What Is A Council of All Beings?

Council of All Beings is a sharing tool developed by John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming and Arne Naess to help us humans find a way back to an unbreakable connection between us and the natural world. It is a gathering with others to explore your/our life within the natural world through the voices of plants, animals and other natural elements so that we can begin the process of healing.

Read "Thinking Like a Mountain, Towards a Council of All Beings"
Deep Ecology is a philosophy of nature which sees the environmental crisis as a symptom of a psychological or spiritual ailment which afflicts modern humanity.

We are enveloped by the illusion of separation from nature, by anthropocentrism or human centeredness.

Deep ecology critiques the idea that we are the crown of creation, the measure of all being. That the world is a pyramid with humanity rightly on top, merely a resource, and that nature has instrumental value only.
John Seed
Arne Naess: "If reality is experienced by the ecological Self, our behaviour naturally and beautifully follows norms of strict environmental ethics. We certainly need to hear about our ethical shortcomings from time to time, but we change more easily through encouragement and a deepened perception of reality and our own self, that is, through a deepened realism. How that is to be brought about is too large a question for me to deal with here. But it will clearly be more a question of community therapy than community science: we must find and develop therapies which heal our relations with the widest community, that of all living beings." (footnote Vl)


"Create and nurture community based on respect for each other, Nature and responsible stewardship of our land."

**********************

"When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world." - John Muir
 

Research has shown that unless we find a way to regularly practice our deep ecology, the new and fragile consciousness fades back into the logic of the eddy and we remain trapped inside a skin encapsulated ego floating helpless towards the abyss.

The ideas of interconnectedness and participation may remain, but in the absence of the experience they are sterile.

These things are explored in community. We need to find or create a "sangha" of kindred spirits (as all spiritual traditions have recognized). We need to find opportunities to meet - on solstices, equinoxes, under the full moon, in deep ecology workshops or on-line to build these vital support systems into our lives.

In such ways, whilst swirling in the midst of the vast eddy, we may remain aligned to the flow.

 

May you find your way back to reconnecting with Gaia, our natural home.