8/10 Practices Around Honouring Our Pain For The World

Joanna Tomkins introduces exercises to practice Honouring our Pain for the World, extracted from the book Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown. Honouring our Pain for the World is the second stage of the Spiral of the Work that Reconnects, explained in episode 6. || "And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy." — Khalil Gibran”

Transcript

The second stage of the spiral of the work that reconnects.

Fear of so-called negative thinking causes some people to resist this aspect of the work that reconnects,

For fear of judgment or of making things worse.

This concern usually comes from a misunderstanding of the new age adage,

We create our own reality.

And it results in a reluctance to see what is actually going on.

It is a kind of magical thinking that cuts off the feedback necessary to the system's healing.

This stage of the work that reconnects involves the following steps.

Acknowledging our pain for the world,

Validating it as a wholesome response,

Letting our self experience this pain,

Feeling okay about expressing it to others,

Recognizing how widely it is shared by others,

And understanding that it springs from our caring and connectedness.

Now I'm going to recite the best theory,

A poem by Joanna Macy,

Which grew out of a gathering of hundreds of peoples in Minnesota in 1981.

Participants were invited to call out the names of all endangered species they knew,

Which also included trees,

Plants,

And environments.

As I read the names,

Which are reduced to animals in this exercise,

It is easy to feel guilty as a human,

But this is not the point of the exercise.

Guilt tends to close us down.

Instead,

As each name is read,

I invite you to silently honor the beauty and wisdom of each unique,

Irreplaceable species.

This approach will help us to open to the grief that is in us.

Hot-tailed albatross,

Whooping crane,

Gray wolf,

Woodland caribou,

Hawksbill sea turtle,

Rhinoceros.

The list of endangered species grow longer every year.

With too many names to hold in our minds,

How do we honor the passing of life?

What funerals or farewells are appropriate?

Reed warbler,

Swallow-tailed butterfly,

Bighorn sheep,

Indian python,

Howler monkey,

Sperm whale,

Blue whale.

Dive me deep,

Brother whale,

In this time we have left.

Deep in our mother ocean where once I swam,

Gilled and finned,

The salt from those early seas still runs in my tears.

Tears aren't enough anymore.

Give me a song,

A song for a sadness too vast for my heart,

For a rage too wild for my throat.

Giant sable antelope,

Wyoming toad,

Polar bear,

Grizzly bear,

Brown bear,

Bactrian camel,

Nile crocodile,

Chinese alligator.

Ooz me,

Alligator,

In the mud once I came,

Belly me slow in the rich primordial soup,

Cradle of our molecules.

Let me wallow again before we drain your swamp and pave it over.

Gray bat,

Ocelot,

Pocket mouse,

Sockeye salmon,

Hawaiian goose,

Odwins girl.

Quick,

Lift off,

Sweep me high over the coast and out further out.

Don't land here,

Oil spills,

Coat the boat,

The beach,

Rocks,

Sea.

I cannot spread my wings glued with tar.

Fly me from what we have done,

Fly me far.

Golden parakeet,

West African ostrich,

Florida panther,

Galapagos penguin,

Imperial pheasant,

Mexican prairie dog.

Hide me in a hedgerow,

Badger.

Can't you find one?

Dig me a tunnel through leaf mold and roots under the trees that once defined our fields.

My heart is bulldozed and plowed over.

Borrow me a labyrinth deeper than longing.

Thick-billed parrot,

Blue pike,

Snow leopard,

Molokai thrush,

California condor,

Lotus blue butterfly.

Crawl me out of here,

Caterpillar.

Spin me a cocoon,

Wind me to sleep in a shroud of silk,

Where in patience my bones will dissolve.

I'll wait as long as all creation,

If only it will come again.

And I take wing.

Atlantic ridley sea turtle,

Coho salmon,

Helmeted hornbill,

Marine otter,

Humpback whale,

Steller sea lion,

Monk seal.

Swim me out beyond the ice flows mama.

Where are you?

Boots squeeze my ribs,

Clubs drum my fur.

The white world goes black with the taste of my blood.

Gibbon,

San Gazele,

Chinchilla,

Cheetah,

Asian elephant,

African elephant.

Sway me slowly through the jungle.

There still must be jungle somewhere.

My heart drips with green secrets.

Hose me down by the waterhole.

There is a buckshot in my hide.

Tell me old stories while you can remember.

Desert tortoise,

Crested ibis,

Hook-billed kite,

Mountain zebra,

Tibetan antelope,

Andrews frigate bird.

In the time when his world like ours was ending,

Noah had a list of the animals too.

We picture him standing by the gangplank,

Calling their names,

Checking them off on his scroll.

Now we are also checking them off.

Ivory-billed woodpecker,

Iron-endless river dolphin,

West Indian manatee,

Woodstalk.

We re-enact Noah's ancient drama,

But in reverse,

Like a film running backwards.

The animals exiting.

Ferret,

Gorilla,

Tiger,

Wolf.

Your tracks are growing fainter.

Wait,

Wait.

This is a hard time.

Don't leave us alone in a world we have wrecked.

I now invite you to name and to write in your notebook things you have noticed are disappearing from your world.

For example,

Clean beaches,

Birdsong,

Safe food,

Stars over cities,

Hope.

Then please read them out loud.

It is important to voice our pain and our care.

Between each naming,

You may clap your hands as if sounding a guillotine.

In the same way,

I was sounding the drum earlier on after each endangered species.

I now invite you to pause this reading while you proceed with the exercise.

Please pause now.

Now I'm going to recite the best theory,

A poem by Joanna Macy,

Which grew out of a gathering of hundreds of peoples in Minnesota in 1981.

Participants were invited to call out the names of all endangered species they knew,

Which also included trees,

Plants,

And environments.

As I read the names,

Which are reduced to animals in this exercise,

It is easy to feel guilty as a human,

But this is not the point of the exercise.

Guilt tends to close us down.

Instead,

As each name is read,

I invite you to silently honor the beauty and wisdom of each unique,

Irreplaceable species.

This approach will help us to open to the grief that is in us.

Basic to most spiritual traditions is the recognition that we are not separate,

Isolated entities,

But integral and organic parts of the vast web of life.

We can open to the pain of the world in confidence that it can neither shatter nor isolate us,

For we are not objects that can break.

We are resilient patterns within a vaster web of knowing.

Because we have been conditioned to view ourselves as separate,

Competitive,

And thus fragile entities,

We need to relearn this kind of resilience.

One way is to practice simple openness,

As in this exercise of breathing through,

Adapted from an ancient Buddhist meditation for developing compassion.

Using your eyes,

Focus attention on your breathing.

Don't try to breathe any special way,

Slow or long,

Just watch the breathing as it happens,

In and out.

Note the accompanying sensations at the nostrils or upper lip,

In the chest or abdomen,

Stay passive and alert,

Like a cat by a mouse hole.

As you watch the breath,

Note that it happens by itself,

Without your will,

Without your deciding each time to inhale,

Exhale.

It's as though you're being breathed,

Being breathed by life.

Just as everyone in this room,

In this city,

In this planet,

Is being breathed by life,

Sustained in a vast living,

Breathing web.

Now visualize your breath as a stream or ribbon of air.

See it flow up through your nose,

Down through your wine pipe and into your lungs.

Now from your lungs,

Take it through your heart.

Picture it flowing through your heart and out to reconnect with the larger web of life.

Let the breath stream as it passes through you and through your heart appear as one loop within that vast web,

Connecting you with it.

Now open your awareness to the suffering that is present in the world.

Drop for now all defenses and open to your knowledge of that suffering.

Let it come as concretely as you can,

Images of your fellow beings in pain and need,

In fear and isolation,

In prisons,

Hospitals,

Refugee camps.

No need to strain for these images,

They are present in you by virtue of our interbeing.

Relax and just let them surface the vast and countless hardships of our fellow humans and of our animal brothers and sisters as well as they swim the seas and fly the air of this planet.

Now breathe in the pain like granules on the stream of air up through your nose,

Down through your trachea,

Lungs and heart and out again into the world net.

You are asked to do nothing for now but let it pass through your heart.

Be sure that stream flows through and out again.

Don't hang on to the pain,

Surrender it for now to the healing resources of life's vast web.

With Shanti Deva the Buddhist saint we can say,

Let all sorrows ripen in me.

We help them ripen by passing them through our hearts,

Making good rich compost out of all that grief so we can learn from it,

Enhancing our larger collective knowing.

If no images or feelings arise and there is only blankness,

Grey and numb,

Breathe that through also.

That numbness is a very real part of our world and if what surfaces is not the pain of other beings so much as your own personal suffering,

Breathe that through too.

Your own anguish is an integral part of the grief of our world and arises with it.

Should you feel an ache in the chest,

A pressure in the rib cage as if the heart should break,

That is alright.

Your heart is not an object that can break but if it were,

They say the heart that breaks open can hold the whole universe.

Your heart is that large,

Trust it.

Now keep breathing,

Pause the recording and keep breathing,

Keep this loop going for as long as you feel comfortable,

As long as you wish.

Breathing through once we learn it becomes useful in daily life in the many situations that confront us with painful information.

By breathing through the bad news rather than bracing ourselves against it,

We can let it strengthen our sense of belonging in the larger web of being.

It helps us remain alert and open whether reading the news,

Receiving criticism or simply being present to a person who is suffering.

For activists and those dealing most directly with the problems of our time,

The practice helps prevent burnout.

It reminds us that both our pain and our power arise from our interconnectedness and it offers a healing measure of humility.

For when we accept our world's pain as the price of our caring,

It naturally flows into action without drama or self-righteousness.

After the first practice in which people express their pain for the world,

Joanna Macy likes to make the following observation,

Quote,

I want to call your attention to something.

Please observe how far the concerns you've just shared extend beyond your personal ego,

Beyond your individual needs and wants.

This says something very important about who and what you are.

It says you are capable of suffering with your world.

That capacity to suffer with is the literal meaning of compassion,

A central virtue in every spiritual tradition.

It says you are a compassionate being.

Another word for that in Buddhism is Bodhisattva.

So don't you apologize for the tears you shed or the rage you feel about what's happening to our living world.

They are just the other face of your belonging.

Thank you for listening.

This is Gaia speaking.