Notes #2 from Joanna Macy
“Dangers to their survival move living systems to evolve. When feedback tells them — and continues to tell them — that their old forms and behaviors have become dysfunctional, they respond by changing. They adapt to such challenges, as we saw in the third property of systems, by seeking and incorporating more appropriate norms. They search for values and goals which allow them to navigate in more varied conditions, with wider connections. Since its norms are the system’s internal code or organizing principle, this process — which Ervin Lazlo calls ‘exploratory self-reorganization’ — is a kind of temporary limbo. To the mind it can be very disorienting. Psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski names it ‘positive disintegration.’ It can feel like dying… Bereft of self-confidence and old coping strategies, we may feel that we and our world are falling apart. Sometimes we panic and shut down; sometimes in desperation we get mean and turn on each other…
To let ourselves feel anguish and disorientation as we open our awareness to global suffering is a part of our spiritual ripening. Mystics speak of the ‘dark night of the soul.’ Brave enough to let go of our accustomed assurances and allow old mental comforts and conformities to fall away, they stand naked to the unknown. They let the processes which their minds could not encompass work through them. Out of darkness, the new is born.”
~ Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World
Notes #1 from Joanna Macy
“The Choice for a Sustainable World: We can choose life. Dire predictions notwithstanding, we can still act to ensure a livable world. It is crucial that we know this: we can meet our needs without destroying our life-support system. We have the technical knowledge and means of communication to do that… To choose life means to build a life-sustaining society. ‘A sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without jeopardizing the prospects of future generations,’ according to Lester Brown of Worldwatch Institute.”
“Now, in our time, these three rivers - anguish for our world, scientific breakthroughs, and ancestral teachings— flow together. From the confluence of these rivers we drink. We awaken to what we once knew: we are alive in a living Earth, source of all we are and can achieve. Despite our conditioning by the industrial society of the last two centuries, we want to name, once again, this world as holy.
These insights and experiences are absolutely necessary to free us from the grip of the Industrial Growth Society. They offer us nobler goals and deeper pleasures. They help us redefine our wealth and our worth. The reorganization of our perceptions liberates us from illusions about what we need to own and what our place is in the order of things…. This shift in our sense of identity will be life-saving in the sociopolitical and ecological traumas that lie before us.”
~ Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World
