Written by: Amanda Feaver, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
What a strange time we’re living through. Climate change is significantly impacting our lives and our collective psychological and spiritual well-being. So what might wisdom look like in an age like this?
We are off course, human family. We can feel it in our bodies, in our nation-states, in the air we breathe. Ecosystems that took millions of years to evolve are unraveling; we are at the beginning of mass extinction, and what will emerge is anyone’s guess. The community of Earth beings, which once included humans, has become dominated by humans, and as it turns out, that wasn’t the most life-giving path for us to choose. It’s difficult for us to look at the reality in front of us because, at our core, we know that life on this planet is deeply threatened, and we’re afraid. It’s difficult for us to look at the reality in front of us because we recognize our participation in practices of harm and destruction. It’s difficult for us to look at the reality in front of us because most of us avoid paying attention to death in any way we can. We were born into and continue to build a civilization of extraction and mindless consumption instead of regeneration and contentment, a civilization of objectification instead of deep relationality with the world around us. We have taken the wisdom of humans who came before us, the wisdom of the more-than-human world all around us, the wisdom of our own bodies, and we have traded it for a narrative of unlimited economic growth, which is to say, a narrative that denies decline and death.
We didn’t necessarily agree to this, but we have rarely pushed back or even known how to. And in our collective awakening to the world we now occupy, we either dismiss the situation or race to find new technologies that we hope will stop the rapid decline of balanced life. But the situation is unraveling, and while decline and death can sometimes be delayed, they cannot be solved. How did we forget that impermanence is woven into everything? In an age of unmitigated extraction, rapid technological advancement, and a collective terror of the loss we’re facing, I find myself asking how we might cultivate wise vision for what lies ahead.
Wisdom is available to us...and we have to seek it out. Here are a few things I’ve come to believe. First, wisdom always looks at what is; it tells the truth about the situation at hand, looking it straight in the eye. If we can’t tell ourselves the truth about the terrain we’re on, there is no life-giving way forward. Second, wisdom is compassionate, it doesn’t condemn, and it doesn’t avoid. It has a steady gaze, unhurried and fully present. It understands how we got here; it holds our fear and terror and trauma and self-absorption with love...and it invites us to grow.
Healing the human-Earth relationship is not a work that will be done overnight; it is not a work that we will collectively finish in our lifetime. The situation is dire, but as contradictory as it sounds, we need to slow down. The soul of the Earth moves at a different pace than we do. It is ever evolving, ever creating; it does not stop, it is not hurried, it is not late. The Earth is a never-ending flow of relationships: cycles of life and death, decline and regeneration, destruction and resurrection. If we can’t slow down, we won’t be able to see clearly; we won’t be able to listen. And listen we must. We live in an age where the logical mind is worshiped, and intuitive knowing has been pushed aside; this is not to anyone’s benefit. There is an invitation to return to our collective wisdom, to the intuitive knowing we have as members of this planet. We must start asking the Earth what it wants; it will tell us if we are willing to hear. This is communion, participation in life that is greater than us. There are adaptive species and ecosystems everywhere we look; there are regenerative models of life all around us and inside us. The way forward is here, and it may not be what we first expect.
We have to compassionately tell ourselves the truth about the situation we’ve created. This won’t be easy, but there is no regenerative way forward without truth. We must grieve for the destruction done and for how we have participated in the objectification and overconsumption of life on this planet. Life is immeasurably more valuable than the products that can be fashioned from it; when did we forget that? We must practice cultivating new visions of what’s possible for the Earth and all its beings. We must unlearn narratives of superiority, hierarchy, and objectification and adopt narratives of membership, relationally, and the sacredness of all. This will take time, but I can’t think of any better work.
We are waking up to the path in front of us, and it will be a difficult path to walk, full of challenges we cannot anticipate, but also full of beauty we never noticed before, and quite possibly a collective courage we don’t yet know we possess.
We must widen our gaze and see the more-than-human world; we must look far down the road and consider the lives of beings coming after us; we must act today and tomorrow and the day after that on their behalf. The road ahead will not be easy; we know that. And the narratives that brought us here will not be sufficient to move us into a holistically thriving future. One thing I know: Life wants to live. She may go dormant; she may crawl deep into the underworld and fall asleep for a winter or for a hundred years. But at some point, she will break through the cracks in the pavement; she will break through the cracks in our ideologies; she will break through the cracks in our systems; she will emerge with newness, wooing us to come with her. And really, where else would we want to go?
My hope rests in this: we are not alone. As Thomas Berry, the father of Deep Ecology, says, this planet is “a community of subjects.” Life everywhere is trying to move this glorious story forward, and we get to participate. So may wisdom light our way; may we plant trees that will bear fruit past our lifetime; may we fall in love with soil and rivers and ferns and magpies; may we bury literal and metaphorical seeds that will one day wake up and germinate into new life generations from now; may we find delight in watching butterflies dance and children play and crocuses prophesy the coming spring; may we expand into the songs of life inside us and all around us. We can do complex and beautiful things. We are alive. Right now. We won’t always be. What a gift.
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Amanda Feaver, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Amanda Feaver lives nestled between the ocean and the mountains of the Pacific Northwest in the United States. She is a climate-aware psychotherapist. Her work focuses on regenerative relationships between humans and regenerative relationships between humans and the more-than-human world. She draws from the principles of Attachment theory, Deep Ecology, and Permaculture and is inspired by wisdom teachings across many traditions. Amanda believes that for people to expand into a full experience of living, we must collectively reawaken to our belonging within the community of all beings on this planet. Nothing makes her happier than healthy soil and deeply resilient ecosystems.
Amanda co-founded a daily text subscription service designed to help members attune and expand amidst their busy lives. You can find out more at cosmicyou.life.
