I have been rereading Emilie Conrad’s book, Life on Land: The History of Continuum.
I was very fortunate to be able to work with her in the 1980’s. She talks about the effect of pattern on the mind and body as opposed to complexity and matrix (“something within or from which something else originates, develops, or takes form” – Webster). Since the Industrial Revolution, we have become physically focused forward and have learned to do repetitive tasks. Patterning like this rigidifies the body and mind, disallowing fluidity and creativity. Since the Computer Revolution, we have added tasking in small spaces in front of the body which further rigidifies and narrows both the body and mind.
Since most folks aren’t interested in giving up the benefits of the Digital Age, we then need to balance its effects on the brain and body as best we can.
The best way to do this is to consciously choose events and activities which are not linear. Nothing in our bodies is linear. Yet running, working out in a gym, biking all involve linear, repetitive actions. This does build some aspects of the physical and mental body. What if you could experience yourself in 360 degrees with layers of complexity and involving all of you (physical, emotional, mental, and energetic)? What would that do for your health and beingness? Childhood play is the most obvious example of what this might look like. Good sex is another example.
How is your life man made and repetitive?
What activities bring magic, texture, and nuance to your life? What is play for you? The mind (and our culture) will fight anything “playful” as a waste of time which from the mind’s point of view it is. Our minds are linear. We can’t heal our bodies from our minds – we need to engage all of who we are. The body heals itself through rest and its own processes which are complex, layered, undulating, chaotic – not linear or patterned. If we are willing to listen, see, and feel beyond the patterned, man made world, the information we need and the healing is right there.
What does this have to do with the earth changes?
To paraphrase Einstein and others, the answer is not in the same energy field that the problem is in. Just as we can’t heal ourselves from our minds, we can not adapt to and work with climate change by just thinking. We have to explore what helps nature from nature’s point of view and you can’t do that from an unnatural, patterned awareness. If you are truly interested in working with the Earth rather than on the Earth, explore your own natural humanness. Explore some of the Shamanic traditions, talk with a farmer, spend more time outside the man made world. You don’t have to go anywhere, you have the awareness within: listen, smell, taste, breathe, watch, feel in the silences between the words in your mind.