On Sacrifice

Since Anzac Day last month, the remembrance of the war dead of Australia and New Zealand, I’ve been thinking about the notion of sacrifice.

In the context of war, sacrifice is seen as a laudable goal. Men, and now some women, risk their lives to “protect” their country from an external foe. The sacrifice is linked to high ideals like freedom and democracy. The welfare of the community is set upon the actions and service of those who go to war, and to die in that service is “the ultimate sacrifice”.

There is something about that idea of sacrifice that, in the 21^st century, seems lifeless and worn out. For instance, each war has underlying issues that are usually missing in public consciousness. World War I was essentially a clash of empires over territory and resources. World War II, despite the high note of stopping fascism, was about self-interest and control – as seen in the vast American and Soviet post-war spheres of influence. In recent years the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been fought largely to maintain Western geopolitical and economic domination.    

The idea of sacrifice has been a tool of propaganda to obscure the real causes of war and to fudge the complexity and complicity of all sides in conflict. We project our inner demons onto an external enemy, seeing ourselves as blameless, selfless heroes while the other is cast as menacing and evil. It must be said that some enemies, like the Nazis and al-Qaeda, were and are evil. But what of the millions killed by “our” side in the various wars? The firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo; the nuclear horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the obliterated villages of Vietnam; the thousands dead from the US invasion of Iraq, the drone strikes on Pakistani and Afghan civilians. At the heart of warfare is the desire for power and an inability to see yourself in a fellow human being.

Sacrifice, in its best sense, is not a tool for someone else’s gain or for our own in any literal, material way. It is about giving something up so that the bigger, fuller Life can be advanced; to support the creative work of soul in the world. When parents sacrifice their time and interests for their children, helping them to grow and learn, it is not just the individual child who benefits but the evolving Life essence they embody. Humanity and Life more broadly are furthered. Sacrifice is about letting go of the narrow, restrictive bounds of ego to fulfil greater purpose, in the knowledge that we are more than disconnected, isolated selves.

In David Tacey’s book Edge of the Sacred: Jung, Psyche, Earth the author mounts a powerful argument for sacrifice as a tool of advancement in the specific Australian context. The attachment to rationality and masculinity that have been the bedrock of Australia’s history and culture have to be let go, he says, so that we can develop a genuine relationship with the land. Listening and dialogue with nature requires an opening to our own depths, to archetypal forces resonant in us and in the land. Aboriginal people relate to these forces through subtle appreciation and Dreaming myths.

Sacrifice, it needs to be said, is not about destroying the ego. It is not about selfless action where the personality is repressed. There is a balance that is struck between gain and loss that only the individual can truly judge. For instance, “If I take this challenging job, will the overall benefit to my life and the lives of others be worth it?” The test is whether soul or greater purpose is advanced. As an example, looking back on my own life, I think of my six years as a part-time journalist at The Age newspaper in Melbourne. Though for a long time I struggled with the work and the work environment, the stability of a job and good pay provided a platform to focus on inner development. I can also say that I gave up a career as a journalist to pursue my life’s calling as a writer; the sacrifice being the loss of a lucrative, socially sanctioned path for a precarious but spiritually meaningful one.

It seems the idea of sacrifice will continue to be misunderstood and misapplied until there is sufficient social development, enough soul penetration of the mass psyche, for a turn away from ego and towards true meaning. Then there will be an understanding that sacrifice entails no loss at all, its fruits infinite and joyful.      

Sun Dance at Mario's Cafe

Mario's Cafe is a landmark in Melbourne's alternative, coffee-drenched Brunswick Street strip. It's been there an eternity, a warm and stable presence amid the busy street life. This poem, Sundance at Mario's, is a contrast to its generally amiable and nonchalant air.

Some dance at Mario’s

Some squat in a corner

Some poke at their linguini

or stab at their scotch fillet

Some pray at Mario’s

Some drink from its bowl of evanescence

Some mutter through clenched pink fingers

while others wait for a better god

Some laugh at Mario’s

Some bellies jiggle

Some lipstick moves

as a prelude to lesser things

Some hold court at Mario’s

Some boast or bluster

Some sink in their seat

with vague and watery eyes

while outside the earth flies

                                the earth flies

Mindfulness

People-watching is a fascinating pastime. Living and working in the city gives you plentiful opportunity to gaze, admire and be perplexed. 

It gives me delight to see the pretty faces of women – on a tram in the morning or coming out of the underground train station as I pass by, or in back lane cafes at lunchtime. 

One day recently it struck me there was a little more to this people watching than I had supposed. Over many years of admiring women, it occurred to me that I was really only looking at one face. It was the ideal of beauty underneath the multitude of variations, the form of the rose beyond the variety of colour, shape and smell. In the language of depth psychology, I was looking at the archetypal Goddess, or a reflection of my own anima. 

It reminded me of something Joseph Campbell wrote in his book, Myths to Live By. In describing the way humans see life, he uses the image of a ceiling with many light bulbs pouring forth light. One could choose, as is typical for most of us most of the time, to focus on the individual bulbs. Or, one could see and appreciate the animating light that all have in common, that makes all the vessels essentially one.

In modern Western society we tend to see ourselves, each other and the world as discreet and largely disconnected forms. Seeing the shared Life signifies spiritual awakening, a calling to deeper and more fulfilling experience, to what is truly important in life. Despite the way we think and act most of the time, sometimes people demonstrate the underlying non-dual reality. I think of those who risk their lives heroically to save others – there’s an implicit recognition that all life is one.

Such recognition could be called “mindfulness” or “looking with eyes that see”. It leads to a kind of pattern thinking. Tending a garden, we acknowledge and celebrate the diversity of plants, soil, water and micro-organisms, but we also connect with the pulsating Life that all the elements share, that is the core. We are drawn to the archetypal experience and meaning of Garden. Cooking dinner, we prepare various items of food through a number of methods, but we are also engaged in Creation and the food is a sacrament to the continuation of Life. It is an act of joy and love.

Religious ritual has through human history been the means by which consciousness is elevated. Yet in the West organised religion has been dying a slow death, its vitality lost behind dogma and the glorification of particular deities and saviours. Nowadays it is up to the individual, linking with fellow travellers, to find their own way along the spiritual path.

How do you cultivate mindfulness? I think the first step is validation of non-dual reality. Existence is not a random and meaningless set of acts – everything is alive with meaning, though the meaning might often escape us. Such things as dreams, coincidences and the imagination must be taken seriously and given their rightful and honoured place in our lives and in the world at large. The metaphoric and poetic has to be restored in value equal to the rational and scientific. I think meditation is also important here – the act and ability to be aware of ourselves fully in the present moment. Out of the silence we enter in meditation, those parts of our personality hidden behind our everyday persona emerge. We also become aware of the infinite that lies beyond the personality. The more conscious we become of the patterns underneath surface reality, the richer, ultimately, our lives become.  

What is Truly of Value

The following was published in Earth Song Journal this month. It’s a brief tale of an adventure 11 years ago.

One day in February 2001, a park in Melbourne’s north disappeared with a brief flourish of bureaucratic pens.

Nobody mourned it that day. The local council mentioned its demise in passing in a media release, and said it would ask the State Government for compensation. That was that. The Whittlesea Gardens, a windswept 19 hectares of public open space in Lalor, was finished.

At the time I was working as a reporter on the local newspaper, The Whittlesea Post. I was young and keen to make a difference in the community. The ensuing fight to save the gardens was my chief highlight in an 11-year career as a journalist on suburban newspapers and The Age, and an inspiring example of a community’s determination to rescue its treasured ground.

The Whittlesea Gardens will never feature on a list of Melbourne’s attractions, but to people in Lalor it’s a welcome break from roads, concrete and brick veneer; a place where the mind can wander, kids play and dogs roam. Ironbark and box trees are scattered across the landscape, there are rises with native shrubs and a lake where coots gently bob and cormorants preen on the water’s edge.  

Yet in February 2001 this suburban sanctuary was to make way for the Craigieburn bypass, a 17-kilometre section of freeway connecting the Hume Highway with the Western Ring Road. For years before the go-ahead announcement, the bypass was strongly opposed by people concerned about damage to the Merri Creek. The campaigners were mostly from the inner suburbs while locals living near the path of the freeway, many from non-English speaking backgrounds, were barely aware of it.

That is, until the Whittlesea Council mentioned, buried in its media release congratulating the government on the freeway (for its “economic benefits”), the death of the gardens. The Whittlesea Post stepped up to the plate. My editor, a man with a strong sense of compassion, was happy for me to take up the cudgel against authority in the typical way of the journalist. While the government and the council were patting each other on the back, we splashed “Gardens at Risk” on the front page of the paper, alerting people to the coming bulldozers. 

It worked. A fortnight later, shocked residents started an anti-freeway campaign. Led by Erkan, a young Turkish man, and his sister Tina, they organised a petition and began ringing local councillors and the State MP demanding to know what was going on. The Post ran a front-page story on the campaign with a separate profile on Erkan. “If they build the bypass here, I will be opening my back door and looking at a big wall – instead of the beautiful gardens,” Erkan was quoted as saying. “I don’t want to stop progress, but progress doesn’t have to roll over us.” 

By early April, People of Whittlesea Refusing Entry, as the anti-freeway group called itself, had chalked up several fiery community meetings and presented its petition with 1700 signatures to the government. Whittlesea Council now decided it would lobby to have the path of the freeway moved 300 metres to save the gardens. I well remember one abusive phone call from a government media staffer who berated me for writing negative stories, not balancing my coverage with the freeway’s economic benefits.

Ultimately the people won, sort of. In August the Federal Government, which was funding the bypass and had final say on it, decided to change the route as recommended by the council. The fact that a federal election was coming that year probably played a part. Erkan and the other residents were glad their precious gardens were saved, though still unhappy with the freeway. As environmentalists pointed out, Merri Creek grasslands would be destroyed whatever the freeway’s path. 

What does it take to save a park? Obviously, it requires organisation and leadership. It entails having a voice, speaking out and confronting authority; it means doggedness and determination. But perhaps the less tangible and often less articulated factors play the greatest part: a mix of fear and love. Fear of the modern economic, industrial machine – a kind of amoral monster that exists to expand and in whose path ultimately stand nature and communities. And love, which enlarges awareness beyond the immediate needs of the individual, allowing us to see what is truly of value.

 

     

Seeds of Simplicity

We live in a crossroads time. While the old order decays, lurching through economic, social and ecological crises, the seeds of the new age are being sown. I like to think that simplicity and sustainability will be two of the watchwords for the coming time, and find it heartening that so many people are embracing life that’s more in tune with the planet and their humble part in its great journey of evolution. I see it in something as simple as the explosion of people riding bicycles in my home city, Melbourne. Often we think that the small things we do are nothing at all, so missing the big picture. In reality, everything has meaning, every act large or small is purposeful and contributes to the whole – a spiritual orientation allows us to see this.

Two local writers who carry the torch for simplicity and sustainability are Michael Green and Greg Foyster. I commend their work as we bring forth the new world: http://www.michaelbgreen.com.au/ and http://www.simplelives.com.au/

And recently a local artist called Dale Cox came to my attention. I'm inspired by his depth of vision on the relationship between nature and humanity: http://www.dalecox.com.au/

And, finally, a gem of an interview with American author and thinker Richard Tarnas on Understanding Our Moment in History: http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/tarnas.html

     

More than Shades of Grey - a Journey into the Nature of Freedom

I submitted the following memoir essay last year to the Griffith Review for its issue, "Such is Life: Life Stories". It didn't make it into the magazine, but I think still has merit.

My first few years were a colourless melange of images – a kind of papier mache world of greyness; the colour of falling dust in an empty room.  I can vaguely picture the flat we lived in, my kindergarten, the strictness of the teachers and the grim faces of the other children. There were long lines of people in the street and walls with ubiquitous pictures of stern-faced officials. It wasn’t all bad – I remember moments of joy tobogganing down a frozen slope in winter, the smell of pine woods in summer, the warm and reassuring waft of my mother’s cooking. Somehow, though, an insipid flatness seemed to penetrate everything.   

When I was six the greyness lifted; rose like morning mist and parted into shreds under the torch of the sun. I was with my parents on a train that had just crossed the border into Austria from Czechoslovakia, from behind the Iron Curtain into the “free” West.  We were refugees, Jews, fleeing the Soviet Union.  

It was January 1977 and travelling from eastern Europe to the West was like peeling off a shroud across the brain. Even at the age of six I could feel it. As the train puffed into the outskirts of Vienna, it was the colour that amazed me. The colour! Even in the middle of winter in Austria there was colour, shape, difference, variety. To a young boy fascinated by cars and used to the four or five makes in the Soviet Union, which were a shade of nothing, the Austrian cars were a riot of colours, shapes and curves.

The Soviet Union was a country controlled by fear with a political/economic system equivalent to a chain around the neck of every person living there. A work colleague who in the late 1980s visited the place we left, Kiev, had one word to describe it: “miserable”. His job as a photographer was to follow the children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster after they returned home from a charity-sponsored stay in Australia. In Kiev, the nearest city to Chernobyl, he found endless food queues and a dour and mostly sullen population.

Nowadays the Soviet Union, or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), is consigned to the “failed experiments” section of the dustbin of history. Then it was a behemoth with more than one hundred nationalities under a rigid communist ideology policed at the point of a gun; a creaking industrial giant that could barely feed its own people, pouring what wealth it had into an arms race with its capitalist foe, the USA.

The Russian philosopher Alexander Zinoviev coined the term “homo sovieticus” to describe the kind of person created by the communist system. That person had to deal with a grinding life of material shortages, official hostility and corruption, and a cultural blandness and uniformity that stifled creativity.  As a result there was an almost bovine mentality of resignation to the troubles of life.

I had internalised this in my short six years on the earth; that’s why everything from the train seemed a wonder, remarkably alive and different.  In the 1970s and 1980s, Jews were practically the only people to permanently leave the Soviet Union. As a result of pressure from the US and Jewish welfare organisations during a thaw in the Cold War, Jews were allowed to migrate to Israel. Yet many chose not to go there, ending up in America, Canada, Australia or New Zealand.

Our journey began at a tiny place called Chop on the Soviet border with Czechoslovakia. The train station was probably bigger than the town itself and, like in so many scenes of refugees across the world, was filled to bursting with a nervous and expectant throng, suitcases everywhere and the cries of children. The place was patrolled by soldiers with rifles, and each family was allowed to take out of the country no more than $US100 in currency. Bags were stuffed with coral necklaces, cheap cameras and other trinkets that could be sold somewhere en route. In the middle of the night our train arrived. There was an almighty rush to board. Despite having tickets, the platform attendant told us the train was full, and with chaos around us my father pulled out a bottle of vodka from somewhere and shoved it into the attendant’s hands. On the train we were crammed into a compartment with another family, my mother and I on one berth and my dad sleeping on the suitcases.  

We were only a few days in Vienna, but the impression was tremendous. There was a dazzling variety of food in the supermarkets, a seemingly endless supply of goods in the shops. It was a cornucopia of plenty for people who had known only queues and the meagre basics. 

From Austria the next stop was Italy. We were among thousands who waited for months to receive permission and visas for the final leg of the journey, awaiting eagerly the chance to start life anew, to prove we could be worthy citizens of the “liberated” West.

What is freedom? To this day my parents say they decided to leave because they hated the communist political system. There was no freedom of speech and no quarter given to the individual. Migrating to Australia was the fresh start: happiness found in well-paid work, family life and home ownership.

Grateful as we were to find refuge, the liberation was only partial. For my parents, the end of the journey was a life in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. In their minds, redemption was about living the typical life everybody was supposed to have. By the time I could think critically, I rebelled. I hated the lifelessness of suburbia and its vapid routines of work and consumption. At the age of 19 my struggle was to find meaning – and I knew there were other quiet lives of desperation being lived behind the illusory curtain of stability, the white noise of weekend lawn mowers and ever-flickering TV sets.

In my late teens I wanted to make sense of my family’s journey to freedom. I wondered if freedom was more than the ability to openly speak your mind and live a comfortable material existence. Was it more than simply a release from harsh social constraints? Could it be something to do with an inner experience of fulfilment not reliant on external social conditions?

The 20^th century psychologist and social theorist, Erich Fromm, in his book The Fear of Freedom (Routledge, 2001), made a distinction between “freedom from” and “freedom to” in his attempt to understand why so many people supported authoritarian regimes like those of Nazi Germany.  Fromm argued that submission to such regimes was a retreat into a false security as a result of social upheaval and uncertainty; it represented a psychological escape from personal responsibility – a delegation of authority to the state that rightfully belonged to the individual. For him, true freedom was about making choices from a whole and integrated personality – “freedom to” being an active orientation of a person to live a meaningful life with creative social interaction.

There is a correlation to Fromm’s work in Viktor Frankl’s classic Man’s Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2006). The essence of what it is to be human, according to Frankl, ultimately lies within the heart of every person and cannot be dictated by society. It is up to the individual to live from a centre of authenticity within. A former inmate at Auschwitz, Frankl had seen and experienced horrific brutality yet maintained a core of dignity: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”   

When I discovered the works of Fromm, Frankl and other writers who blended social critique with psychological insight, it was as if a key had clicked in a lock. Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were extreme examples with which to make a point about the nature of freedom, yet it was clear to me that submission to external social norms was still primary everywhere. In the contemporary West “the economy” is god, material wealth the primary goal to which people’s energy is harnessed. Individuals are conditioned to be materialistic and ego-centred to feed the all-important engine of economic growth. The constant psychological bombardment of advertising, which creates an endless stream of artificial wants and desires, ensures most people are in step with the program of consumption.

If freedom is an orientation from the inner self, then trying to find meaning in external objects is not simply illusory but potentially highly damaging. In Australia, high rates of depression, alcoholism and other addictions, youth alienation and suicide are signs of a tattered social fabric. There is an existential chasm at the root of our society which no amount of material wealth or consumption will fill. With the decline of organised religion, Western culture is blind to the inner world of spirit and meaning, so individuals take the inner journey without its support, often haphazardly and with a degree of suffering.       

From the time I left home at the age of 21, my path was one of self-discovery. At university I found a passion for left-wing politics and through my 20s was a committed activist in grassroots movements for peace, protection of the environment and the rights of trade unions. I wanted to make a difference – to reach out from the atomised and lonely self that I felt was my endowment from society and embrace the world. I meditated, trained in martial arts and discussed politics and spirituality with friends and fellow travellers.

The fire of my idealism continued to burn through work in community radio, which led to a career in journalism and the eventual realisation, many years later, that I was a writer.

All of my experiences have helped shape a still-evolving inner structure at the core of which is a simple hunger for life – in all its depth, variety and mystery. Along the way I’ve been blessed with teachers and mentors without whom I could not have made the journey. The American mythologist Joseph Campbell once said that people weren’t searching for meaning in life, but rather the “experience of being alive”.

I returned to Kiev, now in the independent Ukraine, for the first time in 2006. The place had undergone an enormous and rapid transition to capitalism, and every street and square that once bore a communist name now had one celebrating Ukrainian independence and nationhood. Yet though the old economic and political order had toppled, the psyche of the people seemed largely unchanged. Everything had changed, yet everything remained the same.

There was more than a trace of the old animal survival mentality in the way people jostled like cattle on packed suburban trains, cursing one another; more than a glimpse of homo sovieticus in the rudeness and slow service of shop attendants. And though the fruits of capitalism were everywhere in the heart of the city – in the smart facades of banks and the sharp suits and expensive clothes of the nouveau riche, the vast majority of people lived on meagre incomes in suburbs of shabby tenement blocks.

I wondered where the spark of life was in the minds of the people. The so-called Orange Revolution had occurred not long before where the result of a rigged general election was overturned by mass protest and political pressure, and a stirring from the deep freeze of communism was palpable. In front of the parliament building, small numbers of people still camped and protested. Yet real change seemed an achingly slow trickle.

In most people I spoke to there was a deep powerlessness and resignation. When one family friend complained about the poor state of housing and the senseless bureaucracy attached with getting anything done, I asked her why she didn’t join with others and push for change. The response was a dull stare. More dull stares came my way from other people. If a robust and socially engaged populace is the product of a healthy civil society, then it was clear that strong institutions independent of the ruling elite were virtually non-existent in Ukraine.      

 In my despair I wrote a poem inspired by Yeats’ The Second Coming, imagining the waves of physical and ideological invasions Kiev had endured in its history, culminating in the present hegemony of Western-inspired capitalism. It was like a foreign body had settled and was feeding on a dull and credulous population. As in Yeats’ poem, I pictured the next Beast, the next invader, moving its thighs and rising from the expanse of the Dnieper River that cuts through Kiev.  

As I sat in the plane about to fly out of the city, images poured forth of that frosty morning at the age of six when colour announced itself to me in the world outside. What had I learnt in the years since? The glow of life, if it is to have any permanence, any depth, must come from within outwards. Perhaps some of the colour that I had seen out the window had now made its way into my own life. Maybe I no longer was simply observing it as an awe-struck passenger, but blending my own individual palate.

Cleaning Up

A black sock, a capped syringe, a hub cap, an old jumper – these are some of the things I made acquaintance with last Sunday. And there was some plastic too – endless shreds of plastic bags and bits of bottles.

I and about half a dozen other keen souls spent two hours picking up rubbish along the Darebin Creek in Melbourne as part of Clean Up Australia Day. The experience gives you insight into our throwaway society and why essentially, despite years of environmental warnings, we still don’t value the planet. It also shows how small groups of people continue to respect and nurture the earth year after year in unassuming ways.   

As I and my partner unwrapped the plastic that had twirled around a sheoak, joggers and power walkers passed by barely looking in our direction. For something as important as cleaning up the detritus of society so that nature can live, there were precious few of us doing it. I wondered why. But for a couple of pamphlets I’d seen by the creek, I wouldn’t have known Clean Up Australia Day was on. I hadn’t seen anything about it in the media. The Clean Up Australia organisers have said there were 591,400 volunteers across the country this year – that’s great, but there need to be a lot more. Why aren’t masses of people involved in looking after our parks and bush? Why is it not made compulsory for everybody, once a year, to clean up their patch? Think global, act local.

As a society we’ve improved immensely since the appalling times of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries when industrial and household waste was routinely dumped into rivers and creeks. Nowadays natural areas are preserved and maintained, with taxpayer dollars, to a certain level of health. But to see the miles of plastic tangled up in tree branches, the cans, bottles and Styrofoam cups washed up in the creek, is to realise we have a long way still to go. The truth is that urbanisation is a barrier for most people caring for the environment. Most of us living in the city are psychologically disconnected from the natural processes of earth, air and water. We are typically not involved in rearing the plants and animals we eat – we don’t know how to look after soil so that it’s productive, how the balance of clean air and water supports all the organisms necessary for life. We live in a bubble, buying from supermarkets as if our sustenance came like manna from heaven. And the waste created by our lifestyle simply piles up in landfill and is washed into waterways to find its way into the ocean.

Most of us don’t truly inhabit the place where we live. How many people can name the trees and other plants in their neighbourhood? How many people would know, for instance, what medicinal or other properties they might have? The solution is to metaphorically de-urbanise the city; to reconnect with the processes of nature so that we are conscious of our part in the great web of relationships that is life; to rediscover place and be responsible participants in our environment, not tourists or passive consumers. Some people are engaged in this rediscovery – many local environment groups have been quietly working for years; there are Transition Town groups which try to integrate communities with their local environments; there are people involved in permaculture and community gardens; even the proliferation of farmers’ markets is a sign of a greater respect and desire for locality. The shift is happening, but still at the edges.   

One simple but powerful step forward in mainstream society would be container deposit legislation. The federal Environment Department estimated in 2010 that 10 billion plastic and glass bottles are sold each year in Australia. If 10 cents could be retrieved for every bottle across the country and not just in South Australia and the Northern Territory, it would go some way to reducing the enormous volume of litter. In Victoria while in opposition, the Coalition said it would introduce container deposit laws, but now in government it has backed away. It shows that the quantum leap from the consciousness of local environment groups to society at large has not yet been made, otherwise politicians would have acted decisively on the issue. Cleaning up Australia is a long work in progress and it starts with each of us getting our hands dirty for the land we love.