Apr/May 2001
Energy
Crisis or greed crisis?
Jackie alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
US
Science And Technology Policy
A New Century, A New Framework
Jill Chopyak
An
Ounce Of Precaution: The "Precautionary Principle" Versus "Risk
Management"
Donella
Meadows
The
Pain of the World Passes Through Us
Gaea Yudron, MRET
Plastic
Softeners in Food & Water Linked to Reproductive Disorders
Rachel’s Bi-weekly
Political money: Like A Big Water Balloon by John Darling
Congress:
The Real Pros At Quid Pro Quo
Arianna Huffington
Citizen
Protests Continue: Worldwide Opposition
Kayla M. Starr
Fiddling
While Rome Burns
Blair Bobier
These
Mountains & Rivers as Home:
The Work of the Siskiyou Field Institute
Let
the Children Move
Jon Bredal, MA
Breastfeeding:
A Simple Choice
Pamela Jorrick
Monthly Prayer by Peter Moore
The
Future of Energy Medicine
Richard Gordon
Shock:
How It Limits Our Lives, What We Can Do About It
Peggy Rubin
Cosmic Calendar by Salina Rain
The
Pain of the World Passes Through Us
Gaea Yudron, MRET
In
the deserts of the heart let the healing fountain start.
- W.H. Auden
Have you ever taken one of those tests which rates your level of stress? The test asks if you have gone through any one of a number of experiences that are considered stressful, such as moving, the death of someone close to you, a divorce, losing your job, undergoing a severe illness, etc. The factors that make us feel bad on an individual level are well-mapped. They have become socially acceptable and we are free to talk about them. People understand these parameters.
Other, more global and transpersonal levels of our stress are still not generally acknowledged, and no one has created a stress test about them. I’m speaking of the stress of living in this particular era, which is a unique and difficult, even dangerous, time. The pain of the world looms large in our era, and we are well-informed about it. We know about wars and atrocities in all parts of the globe. We know about the displacement and shock of traditional peoples forced to confront the modern way of life. We know about epidemics, school murders, kidnappings, hostages, a litany of torments of human and other beings both near and far.
Each of us, even if we choose not to read or listen to the news, are naturally privy to this information, because we are alive right now, and the stuff comes through to us in the air of the times. We know about global warming. Frogs with too many legs. Natural places, species of living creatures, and a natural pace of life which is being widely destroyed and supplanted by something else, something whose pulse is differently paced, athwart the older slower rhythms of life. We all know this.
Each of you reading
this article has your own version of the Earth grief we share at this point
in time, and if we spoke of it together—talking of dear places we love
which have been lost, covered over, built upon, or leveled down to meet the
borders of the status quo, the ways of life we and others can no longer live
in those places, creatures which are now gone—we would realize as a body
of people how firmly committed our culture is to denying our deep feelings
about these losses, and how perhaps we without even
thinking of it, have gone along with that.
According to statisticians, the number of people who are depressed has doubled since World War II. Considering the way of life we are living, this is not surprising. Depression is a natural response to the levels of individual and planetary stress we all experience. As Joanna Macy points out in her new book, Coming Back to Life, we don’t talk about our bereavement over what is happening to the Earth for a variety of reasons: We don’t want to seem morbid; we don’t want to upset other people; we have been trained in the American virtue of at least appearing to be very happy, and to loyally keep pace in the workforce. The result of this is that millions of us resort to antidepressants to push everything disturbing down while we struggle to keep up with the hectic pace of life. While I am no fan of the medical-industrial establishment, I also recognize that antidepressants can be a beginning step in moving through the hopelessness of depression.
Ultimately, though, with or without medication, the pain of the world and one’s own pain will not magically vanish. Both must be engaged with, mined, smelted, and distilled for their essential lessons. We are after all not haphazardly dropped here to this time and place. We have some connection to what is occurring in our community and on Earth, or we would not be here. By living now we have the opportunity to deepen our understanding, and to be of service in whatever ways are natural to us.
I have found the Tibetan Buddhist meditation called Tonglen, or taking and sending, helpful in working with both personal and global suffering. Practising Tonglen is simple, and can be done anywhere. On the inbreath, imagine breathing in whatever pain or suffering you have encountered, whether it is your own, in your family, or across the globe, as a dark cloud. Then as you breathe out, imagine all your own happiness, gifts, virtue, health, and abundance is given to others in the form of light. This practice seems quite simple, yet it is very profound and can be used any time you think of or encounter something painful.
I also recommend Joanna Macy’s new book, Corning Back to Life, which contains many tools and practices for working creatively with the pain of the world and one’s own pain. Dealing with depression and Earth sorrow may be a lot of work, but it appears to be the work that millions of us are called to do. Maybe it’s like a long stretch of spiritual black earth that awaits plowing and planting, or some mysterious underground caverns that hold secrets we must discover and bring back to the surface of our ordinary lives. Depression and grief may help us get the body learning to turn lead into gold, or at least learning to get the lead out!
In a sense, depression matches the unbalanced energy of environmental destruction, global corporations, lifestyles divorced from Nature, and the enshrinement of materialism and money. What if more of us chose to cultivate joy as an evolutionary act, as a revolutionary act, as an antidote to hopelessness and materialism? Along the way, consider taking some organically grown hypericum (tincture is very good) to raise your spirits naturally, get some acupuncture to stimulate your seratonin levels and bring your mood up. Try smiling from inside, being grateful, accepting and opening up to whatever you are feeling. Imagine that everyone you see is an old friend you love, learn to blink out whatever is underneath or within the depression with rapid eye therapy. Go into Nature. Remember yourself. This life is a gift.
Gaea Yudron, MREF, is an author and certified rapid eye therapist based in Ashland. She can be reached at yudron@hotmail.com or at (541)482-3762.
