Nature and the divine

I used to frown at the rows of English elms that line my walk to work each morning through Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens, but somehow I have fallen in love with them.

These are foreign trees, I used to say to myself. They were planted in the 19th century in that European sensibility of the promenade – the stately arboreal avenue framing the weekend strolls of couples and families at leisure. Whatever was here originally – red gums, yellow box, grassy tussocks – had to give way to an imported Europeanness with little interest in the indigenous quality of the land.

My view of the English elms began to change on a sunny day last autumn. The 30-metre giants were clothed in yellow – a vast golden dress shimmering along their length in the sunshine. Whenever a breeze blew, curtains of gold leaves descended on the path, a drifting dazzle. A stranger walking in the opposite direction with his head craned upwards stopped in front of me. “Isn’t that amazing,” he said. I felt blessed to be in the presence of this ordinary, extraordinary sight, this vision from heaven.

Ever since, my respect for the elms and whoever planted them has increased. I’m interested in the craggy, furrowed grey bark. In the way the trunk splits into two main branches and how the leaves cascade in wisps down the tree, as if it wears them like a boa. My morning walks to work have new grace and meaning, though it is hard to explain how exactly. The English elms have presence and character, soul.

Every day people walk past those trees without appreciating them; they’re simply a backdrop to busy thoughts cocooned in busy lives. Then we wonder why we are out of balance with nature and perplexed about how the situation can be fixed. The answer is directly in front of us: it’s in how we live our lives, in the quality of attention and consciousness we give to all life. Only a full re-enchantment of nature, a full awareness of everything as being alive, can lead to human harmony with and within the natural world.

I think there are three fundamental steps in human realignment with nature: appreciation, kinship and spiritual grace. In the first, we are moved by nature’s beauty and quality but we are outsiders observing it. This tends to be the most common attitude: we go to nature for the scenery, for the chance to see animals in the wild, for the fun and enjoyment of the beach, for the walks through magnificent forest. It’s important we do this because our lives would be impoverished if we didn’t and the default position in our culture is an almost complete mental separation from nature – many people feel disconnected even in the midst of great wonder. However, though we are being moved in some way, we are as outsiders looking in. There is a gap between “us” and what we define as the “natural world”.

In the second stage, that of kinship, we move beyond the position of spectator to recognising a relationship between us and nature. Thankfully, this appears to be a growing trend. Scientists, at least at the intellectual level, are rapidly coming to the conclusion that all life is related and all life is interdependent. That means we have a responsibility to nurture and care for all living ecosystems. In the position of kinship there is an implicit understanding that we are bound up with nature; we feel its pleasure and pain as our own. The inflated human ego is brought back to a point at which it can appreciate commonality with other beings. Ancient Western and Indigenous cultures established kinship relations with plants and animals knowing that mutual care and responsibility was the order of the world, and that great harm would result if those ties were broken.

Aspects of spiritual grace, the third step, can be found in the earlier stages. At the level of appreciation, it is something mysterious: we can’t fully explain why we feel a certain sense of harmony or balance, why there is deep contentment or even why at times we may be moved to tears. Spirit is the animating dynamic of the universe and it moves through and is in everything. Spirit is oneness: when we are conscious of it, we recognise the unity of all things. All is one and there is no separation. Spiritual grace opens us to a relationship of true depth with nature where we are in touch with the deepest essence – we act to further all life. With the benefit of spiritual grace, we begin to open to the different levels of being, to the different stages at which life operates in us and in everything.

Nature can be the gateway to Spirit, but so can any other aspect of living. The point is the development of a level of consciousness that is receptive to and aware of Spirit; once this consciousness establishes and grows in an individual the divine is increasingly experienced as ever-present. The challenge is to create the conditions in one’s own life and personality for Spirit, then to bring that reality to concrete action in the world.

Myth and the message

I’m just an American boy, raised on MTV
And I’ve seen all those kids on the soda pop ads
But none of them looked like me.
So I started looking around, for a light out of the dim
And the first thing I heard that made sense was the word
Of Mohammed, peace be upon him.

So begins the song John Walker’s Blues, by the great American songwriter-musician Steve Earle. Written not long after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, it’s the tragic and somewhat defiant story of John Walker Lindh, a young Californian caught fighting for the Taliban.

When I first heard the song, I was electrified. Here was Earle, hardly before the dust had settled in the rubble of the twin towers, affirming the life of a man most Americans would have considered a terrorist conspirator and traitor. With its mournful “There’s no God but God” refrain in Arabic, John Walker’s Blues was banned by radio stations and its writer roundly condemned.

Despite the outrage, the song is a classic on many levels. It tells the story of a spiritual seeker-warrior poetically and evocatively, but without judgement. Like all great art, what is left unsaid carries the most power: Walker Lindh’s certainty and religious passion is little different from the American ideal and the reality of many Americans, only he has the misfortune of being on the wrong side. Earle is provocatively asking the listener to see themselves in his protagonist, to identify with the enemy, the other.

What the song also does, as indeed all storytelling can, is elevate its subject or “hero” to myth. Through the power of story, a person or event can rise above the mundane to a region of mind that is eternal. The everyday suddenly takes on greater, richer meaning. Walker Lindh is no longer a mere two-dimensional figure described in news reports, he is magically transformed into a presence in the collective consciousness and memory, his life given depth and meaning. Earle, as the artist, is spinning myth.

This occurs in all the arts. In Australia, one can think historically of the myths of the bush and its independent, resourceful people in the work of nationalist writers like Henry Lawson and “Banjo” Paterson and the painters of the Heidelberg School. We can see the process of mythmaking in Sidney Nolan’s distinctive paintings of the armoured outlaw Ned Kelly. And more recently, examples can be found in the celebration of ordinary lives and everyday struggles in the novels of Tim Winton and the songs of Paul Kelly, and in the Indigenous fight for dignity and survival in the lyrics of Archie Roach and Kev Carmody.

In all these examples the mythmaking process meets with contemporary reality: these are no fairytales from a bygone era. Myth is connected to the complexity and tensions of the here-and-now, bringing its light (and darkness) to bear in the everyday world.

Not all stories reach the heights of myth. To get there, a story must have a quality of inspiration and aspire to the archetypal dimension of life, to the inner patterns of things. In John Walker’s Blues, Earle is working with the archetypes of the warrior, the martyr and the spiritual seeker. These are ancient, deeply resonant images in the collective human psyche, and their evocation is powerful.

Though some myths are enriching and enlightening, others may be disturbing or aligned towards separativeness or evil. All myths, no matter what their quality, reveal the inner workings of the human spirit in any given time. They link strongly to the energies of the psyche.

In our materialistic culture, we would do well with a greater awareness of myth and the mythic dimension. This would allow us to see beyond the surface, and get a sense of the inner stories that individually and collectively we tell ourselves and that are being told. We may come to know ourselves better and act with greater maturity. Perhaps above all, a greater appreciation of myth is invigorating and revitalising: it connects us with soul and replenishes the soul quality of the world. It allows us to drink from the deep wells of life and enter spaces of consciousness we rarely access in everyday reality, creating channels for those spaces of depth into the world.

Grace and the clash of opposites

Central Queensland is a long, long way from central Melbourne. So long that you traverse a plenitude of landscapes and habitats – ranges and tablelands, grassland and scrub, forest and wetlands, reservoirs, snaking rivers, coastline. You also travel an enormous cultural journey before arriving at what is uniquely and quintessentially Rockhampton.

One Rockhampton taxi driver told me the town was booming because in the past 18 months the number of McDonald’s restaurants had doubled – from two to four. “Yeah, mate, we’ve got McDonald’s, Hungry Jacks, KFC, Red Rooster ... place is going good.” Another taxi driver – sharper than the first – welcomed the election of the conservative Abbott Government because it would mean more mining jobs for Rockhampton. More mines would mean more development in the town, with progress measured by the number of high-rise hotels that were likely to appear once it was awash with money.

The views of the two taxi drivers are a long way from my own. But they are also the veritable width of an open-cut coal mine from some other Queenslanders as well. My final destination on this holiday was an island off the central Queensland coast where a local couple run a small eco-lodge for tourists. Their lifestyle is simple: they live on wind and solar power, gather rainwater, earn a little money from the lodge and some fishing and oystering. They love the island and are strong protectors of its ecology. Their outlook is so different from the mainstream “develop and make money” (which really means “destroy and make money”) mentality as to seem almost from another planet.

After I returned from my trip, I wanted to make sense of it. How is it possible to navigate through all the dichotomies and polarities in our world, at a time when we need unity more than ever?

Maybe one aspect of the answer is grace. That is, an understanding and experience of the world and a way of living that’s beyond the friction and the hurly-burly of the poles and opposites.

For people who are sensitive, it is easy to fall into despair. For those at the frontlines of battles to protect the environment, there is burn out and the experience of feeling crushed by the enormousness of the forces of power and money. How do we maintain hope?

Grace is a strange kind of dance in which there is an implicit understanding of ego liberation. Attachment causes suffering, while life is purely and ultimately life – all else is human desire and aspiration, so much that is added on. Grace allows us to surf the natural rhythms of life, its ups and downs, with dignity and respect for ourselves and all others. It recognises and meets the opposites, but is not invested in them. It is from the realm of the eternal, yet it is able to participate fully in the material world.

With grace we rise above the opposites, not in denial of them or withdrawal, but in a movement towards a higher synthesis. We act in the world not for one side or another but for the greater good, which is ever-evolving. New forms appear as a result of the continuous creation of higher syntheses.

This might sound like so much theoretical mumbo jumbo if the evidence to support it was not all around us. I think of all the social and environmental advancements that have occurred in the past few hundred years – all have required some measure of grace, or the ability to go beyond the conflict of opposites and act for the greater good. And grace does not preclude taking a stand on an issue when that stand embodies a higher synthesis: Martin Luther King and Gandhi took firm positions while navigating beyond entrenched conflicts and dichotomies.

Unfortunately, there is nothing easy about maintaining grace – it needs constant work and attention. Its starting point is in the life of the individual, where a spirit of nurture towards oneself is required. Balance and reflection are equally important. To create the conditions in your own life builds the collective store of grace and creates a channel for it to act in the world.

I wonder how grace can inform the decisions that people make in central Queensland about development and the environment. Maybe there is a notion of “right livelihood” that needs to be cultivated in which jobs and money are tied to the environmental good. Perhaps it’s possible to ensure long-term livelihoods for people while protecting nature. I think this way of thinking avoids the entrenched positions of jobs vs. environment, which in our culture currently it is easy to fall into. Of course, there are vested interests who oppose more enlightened, graceful approaches. There is entrenched power, ignorance and greed. Nobody said it would be easy, this game of human evolution. Grace, when we have it, makes it all a little easier and sweeter.

The third point

I scribbled a short poem on the way to work the other day which I think succinctly captures something of the nature of life:                        

Joy terror joy terror terror joy joy joy joy terror joy

 joy joy joy terror terror joy terror joy terror terror

 terror joy joy terror joy terror joy terror joy terror
joy terror terror joy joy joy terror joy terror joy.

Nothing but the great, wild, inexaustible OMMM

In praise of otherness

The bush stone curlew is a bird like no other – none that I’ve encountered. Not colourful, like many other Australian birds, not especially pretty or graceful, not outstanding in any discernible way. What it lacks in superficial charm it makes up for in a kind of strange, engaging presence.

You first hear its cry – a sharp, mournful “wee-loo” as night sets. Then, if you are lucky as I was recently to be in an open-sided tent kitchen in the northern Australian bush, the curlew appears, almost on cue at about 7 o’clock, when dinner is ready.

A surprisingly large bird – a kind of mini-stork – it materialises out of the dark on hesitant, quiet feet. A grey and pale-coloured body with black streaks ends in an implausible short beak and big, doleful eyes. It slowly walked the perimeter of the kitchen, looking in for any scraps it would no doubt snaffle once the humans had finished and left.

Every night when I cooked, the siren of the bush stone curlew announced its presence somewhere in the she-oak scrub nearby. Then came the sight of the bird and its cautious long-legged stepping round the outside of the kitchen, its eyes, as if painted onto the body, always still.

I was reminded of the curlew when I came across a newspaper review of a book called Birds and People, by Mark Cocker and David Tipling. The book examines the relationship between birds and people, exploring the wonder birds have held for us over the millennia, the power of certain birds in our imagination, as well as the ways we have used and abused many species. One salient quote is mentioned: “Birds dwell at the heart of the human experience, furnishing us with an imaginative and symbolic resource that is as limitless as their fund of flesh and feathers.”

I mused on that quote and thought of the bush stone curlew. I first saw the bird only recently and I know practically nothing about it, but its strangeness and otherness were what struck me most. Perhaps the story of the curlew appears in local Aboriginal myth. Maybe its habits are well known to ornithologists, and ecologists have mapped out its role in the local environment. But I would wager that no matter how familiar you are with it, the bird would still be strange and other.

There’s something that we need to remind ourselves often in our inquisitive Western culture: the more we know, the greater the mystery. That is, as our understanding of reality grows, so too in proportion grows that which is unknown. It’s like opening the door to a room and noticing that there’s a door at the far end of it; opening that door reveals another room with a door, which opens into yet another ... and so on. At some point, the realisation dawns that there is a never-ending process of unfoldment going on attended by mystery, an uncertainty not only about what awaits behind the next door, but the meaning of the process itself.

An experience of otherness can be deeply humbling. Birds do indeed “dwell at the heart of human experience”, we have evolved with them and share a common ancestor many millions of years ago, but they are also other. They are another life form that exists in its own right independent of our needs and whatever uses we may want from them. An important paradox lies here: though all life is one, it is also multiple. Though at certain times and in certain states of consciousness we can experience the oneness of life, we must never lose sight of the various forms it can take, of the amazing multiplicity of vessels in which it is carried.

This is important because our culture has become intensely human-centred. Empowered by science and technology, we believe we control our destiny and that all other life should serve us. We are the masters of planet Earth. In ages past we were much more attuned to mystery – humble before the awesome nature of the divine and its manifestations all around us. Whether it was God or multiple gods or sacred groves, rocks or animals, we existed in relationship with other powerful beings or energies. Our own power was kept in some state of balance. Now, there seems no limit to the human capacity for mastery and domination.

The falsehood of absolute human power has become increasingly apparent in recent decades as we destroy life on Earth through rampant industrialisation, overpopulation and overconsumption; the more mastery we attain the more tenuous existence on the planet becomes, including for our own species. The truth is that we are not in control and never will be – the ultimate nature of power is quite beyond the human. If we are to live in balance, we must rediscover otherness as a dynamic reality in the universe. That means an acceptance of the unknown and the unknowable as a constant presence in human affairs and in everything. It also means a relationship of respect with that otherness.

I think again of that peculiar bird of the night, the bush stone curlew. In some sense it can never be known, never adequately categorised or catalogued, and perhaps never fully appreciated unless with an openness to mystery. But then, the same could be said for all that is best in life.

The revolutionary

I remember, I remember when my world was hardly grown,
The daughter of a dead, dull king ascended to the throne.
Though I was but a lad at school I saw it all with scorn,
The solemn, sacred emptiness, the monumental yawn ...

"On Her Silver Jubilee" by Leon Rosselson

The advantage of accumulating possessions over the years is that, when the time comes to sort through everything you have, certain long-forgotten gems are rediscovered. I made such a find the other day among a collection of old audio cassettes (yes, such things once existed) I was preparing to throw out. On one of them was the song “On Her Silver Jubilee” by the British folk musician Leon Rosselson.

The song is simply composed but brilliantly written, a scalding attack on the British monarchy moving between parody and irony and laced with disgust. Rosselson sings: Oh the magic of the monarchy, the mystery sublime/Growing gracefully and effortlessly richer all the time and The monarch walked her corgis behind the palace wall/Never once betraying what she felt or if she felt at all. He attacks the fawning of the press: The slime exuding daily from the sycophantic slugs and the nobility and high officials associated with royalty: All the swarms of bloated blowflies the majestic turd sustains. In the chorus, the Queen’s ordinariness, beyond all the hype and sycophancy, is made plain: She’s as poised as a picture, she’s a sight for all to see/With a glass cage around her on her silver jubilee/With a glass cage around her she feels free.

The song is, to my mind, a fairly potent distillation of what may be called the revolutionary spirit. It’s something that has been present, at least in Western culture, for more than 2000 years, perhaps originating with Spartacus’ slave revolt against Rome. It is an attitude of opposition to the fundamental structures of a society, a radical rejection of its basic tenets, its cherished ideals, values and priorities. Where the reformer seeks to replace one ruler with another, the revolutionary wants to overthrow the system that underpins the rulership. The aim of the revolutionary is systemic not piecemeal change.

And Rosselson’s song provides one of the defining features of the revolutionary: the ability to see and expose the truth of corrupt systems, to declare forthrightly that “the emperor has no clothes”. When most people are happy to accept the norms of the system, the revolutionary is defined by talking truth to power. The message is a shattering one of the reality of the situation.

The revolutionary appeared when the Western mind took on a certain amount of dualism. When monotheism arrived, in the form of the Zoroastrian and Jewish faiths, the absolute goodness of the universal God was balanced by an opposing force bent on destruction. The archetypal revolutionary was born – Satan. The one-sided bias of the Judeo-Christian tradition towards “goodness” and “light”, its inability to accept and integrate the dark side of human nature, meant violent upheaval and revolution were inevitable.

Once the vitality of the all-embracing Church of medieval times began to wane, revolution gained force and momentum. First and foremost, the Reformation tipped the old certainties of the Western world upside down; an incredibly wrenching upheaval, it was followed by decades of war between Catholics and Protestants. Then came revolution and civil war in England in the 17th century, the American and French revolutions in the 18th century, the Napoleonic wars and uprooting of the old monarchical order across Europe, the revolutionary wildfires of 1830 and 1848, the national liberation wars in Latin America and Haiti, the Paris Commune of 1871. And in the 20th century the scale of conflict increased dramatically, with revolutions and wars of global significance unleashing unprecedented levels of destruction and suffering.

Notwithstanding the romanticism that is attached to some revolutions and revolutionaries, systemic upheaval in recent centuries has not necessarily been about creating a better and more just world. Rather, the function of revolution has been to clear out the old and decaying structures and to bring a new balance and order. The revolutionary is a psychically necessary figure under any system that rigidly believes it is right and true. When a society is unable to reinvent itself as it needs, to revivify itself through the creative use of its potential, but continues upon an outworn track, the revolutionary is present as a marker for the future. He or she is necessary balance.

One of the more celebrated revolutionaries of the 20th century, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, said “the revolutionary is motivated by great feelings of love”. In this he marked a challenge for anyone under the power of the revolutionary archetype: love has to be at the core of their actions. The revolutionary’s oppositional stance means they are vulnerable to be captured by negativity and hatred. If the sweeping away of the old order is not to descend into a maelstrom of violence and destruction, as has repeatedly occurred through history, vision and action to create new forms has to be part of the revolutionary drive. The revolutionary is then as much a creator as he or she is a destroyer, helping to release and feed society’s generative tendencies. The new way is born and develops while the old is still in process, ripening until the time comes for it to take over organically.

As humanity evolves, there will be less need for the revolutionary. Conflict will still be present, but in the form of creative tension to spark the new into life and not in the manner of warfare. It all depends on how much self-knowledge we can bring to every human endeavour and how much goodwill – or love – we can muster. Eventually, though perhaps still some way into the future, the grace-filled evolutionary will carry as much power as the incendiary revolutionary once wielded.

The dark season

Like many people, I struggle in winter. Darkness finds us too early and lingers too late – on some days you wake in darkness, leave for work in darkness, return home in darkness. The cold and rattling wind restrict forays outdoors and force you back inside. An emotional gloominess sets in that seems to parallel nature’s own temperament.

In certain countries in winter, depression is a real problem. People drink to escape the reality of the moment or withdraw into strange and musty corners. Traditionally, winter is the season when the dead return to speak to the living, when the veil between the worlds is thinnest. It’s the season of witches’ Sabbaths, rituals that honour the unfathomable mystery and dark, gestational powers of nature. It’s also the time for recognising beginnings, as winter is the lowest point at which the cycle turns towards new growth and life. Christmas is such a celebration of birth. In Greek myth, Persephone, the goddess of the dead, was also the goddess of the life-giving earth.

Myths and rituals exist to contain and channel the energies of the mind and body; to create meaning out of the conditions of life. They bind an individual to a group or community and, if based in wisdom, they expand consciousness to embrace a larger sphere of life.

Human energetic, psychological reality is not separate from nature. We are an expression of nature and therefore there is no hard, defining line where we end and everything else begins. Life consists of ceaseless waves of forms and patterns, shaping and reshaping without end. As this is reality, it is only logical that what is outside is reflected within. When nature is dark and brooding, we brood too. When the tenor of the season is energy turned inwards, gestation and dormancy, this tends to be our pattern also. The earth cold and forbidding finds us in a similar state.

Though we are a part of nature, human consciousness has evolved beyond instinct and so we are able to act in ways that are not symbiotic with everything else around us. In us, nature takes a giant leap forward beyond simple, pure being in itself, to being that is conscious of itself. That said, and despite the power games and illusions of our technological society, we are never outside nature. It affects us regardless of what actions we choose in its midst. For instance, if we are intensely creative in a dark, wintry period, our creations will have the character and flavour of the time; if we open and embrace in mid-winter, what we say yes to will be affected by the patterns of the season.

A mature apprehension of nature in our time rubs up against the older tendency to differentiate and create human systems that aim to be separate from the natural world. We create vast “artificial” environments where nature is ordered and under our control. By doing this, we also tame and make artificial our own natures, subjecting the very depths of ourselves to human will. This is hugely problematic because human will only operates within the larger will of nature. We become out-of-step with ourselves and the life of the planet.

The vast industrial civilisation that is consuming the Earth runs to a 24/7 rhythm. Its ideal is that all of us are “switched on” and available, as consumers and workers, all of the time. It pays little heed to emotional ups and downs, to seasons, to the cycles of nature. And where it does, its aim is to exploit for private gain. In its vision humans are mere ciphers, mere servants for the only god it recognises, greed.

Our society demands a kind of flat, routine consciousness that lacks self-knowledge and subtle appreciation of what it means to be human. Opening to ourselves means opening to nature. Why should we not, in the depths of winter, work less? Or have more time with family and friends? Why not create spaces and opportunities for introspection, for individual and group self-analysis? Or support quiet, indoor healing? Could there be room again for rituals that celebrate and nurture the creative powers of the dark?

To be sure, there has been a revival of interest in recent times in ritual and creating meaningful connection with nature. This has often taken a neo-pagan or New Age character. I was privileged once to take part in a winter solstice observation inspired by the traditional Celtic festival, Samhain. In the conscious spiritual connection of human with nature through ritual, a mutual reinforcement occurs. We are enriched and revivified by integrating ourselves back to the source of our being, the earth, while nature is stimulated and enhanced in the creative potential of the evolving human.