Project "Eco-Awakening": An Invitation [Plotkin MMG]

[OutOfTheBlue]

[Part I]

In this thread, I'd like to extend a public invitation, for anyone interested, to engage (along with some of us in the MMG) in evoking Eco-awakening, a major life passage that occurs when a post-pubescent person raised in an egocentric cultural environment has their first conscious and embodied experience of their innate membership in the Earth community and recognizes this membership as their primary place of belonging in the world (all other affiliations then becoming secondary, and in fact, derivative of their inherent participation in the more-than-human-world).

For those familiar with the Eco-Soulcentric Developmental Wheel (the eight-stage model of human development rooted in the cycles and qualities of the natural world, see diagram [JPG] and intro [PDF]) that Bill Plotkin introduced in Nature and the Human Soul, Eco-awakening represents a crucial addition.

In Nature and the Human Soul, Plotkin describes what human development might look like in an ecocentric "Life-Sustaining Society" and contasts it with what generally happens in our egocentric "Industrial Growth Society", which is, as he diagnoses, in a state of widespread developmental arrest, with most of its members stuck in an egocentric version of psychological early adolescence (or "pathoadolescence"). Eco-awakening would then be the early-adolescent transition from egocentrism to ecocentrism (and, in Plotkin's terminology, from the egocentric stage of "Conforming and Rebelling" to the ecocentric one of the "Oasis"[see stage 3 in the diagram]). According to Plotkin, this shift is necessary for anyone raised in an egocentric society to unlock the possibility of accessing further stages of ecocentric human development, including "true adulthood" (or second adulthood) after the passage of Soul Initiation.

It is worth nothing that Bill Plotkin's concept of Eco-awakening does not exist in a vacuum. In his own words:

Over the last few decades, what I call eco-awakening has been noted and discussed, in other terms, by a number of authors, including ecophilosophers, deep ecologists, and depth psychologists. As previously noted in this series of Musings, Thomas Berry wrote of “the re-enchantment with the earth as a living reality.” Ecophilosopher Joanna Macy speaks of “the greening of the self,” the expansion of our experienced circle of identity. The Norwegian philosopher and deep ecologist Arne Naess introduced the notion of an “ecological Self,” an identity that is “widened and deepened so that protection of free nature is felt and conceived of as protection of our very selves.” Depth psychologist James Hillman wrote of “a psyche the size of Earth.”

Additionally, in his paper "Ecopsychology: Where Does It Fit in Psychology in 2009?" the author, John Scull, suggests that:

The “unitive” experience of being an essential, interconnected part of a larger reality occupies the core of ecopsychology. While this “peak experience” of interdependence with the rest of the universe defies accurate verbal description, it has been reported often over many centuries in many cultures. David Abram and Andy Fisher, two of the most important writers in the field, have placed experience at the heart of ecopsychology, citing the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

That same paper notes the particular link between ecopsychology and (Jungian) depth psychology. In fact Bill Plotkin's work (at least in Nature and the Human Soul and Wild Mind) falls squarely within the new field of eco-depth psychology or depth-accented ecotherapy as he has also described it.

My curiosity is piqued. Where do I learn more?

I invite to read what Bill Plotkin has to say on Eco-awakening and its relevance in a seven-part series of blog posts/Musings: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7. These essentially reproduce the corresponding description of Eco-awakening from his last book, The Journey of Soul Initiation.

Below is also another, shorter description, presented by StarterCulture, if you'd like a foretaste and/or an additional take :

Eco-awakening (alternative shorter description)

Eco-awakening, a term coined by Bill Plotkin, is the awakening to the visceral and emotional knowing of your deep belonging to Earth. It is the sweet relief marking the end of the illusion-of-separation from “nature” and a re-membering yourself as part of the Earth community, no moreor less than every other creature. In fact, it could be said, it is the experience of knowing that each of us, yourself included, are Earth in human form.

Eco-awakening is a way of understanding and experiencing ourselves as intimately participatory in an ecosystem - and a call to act in ways of reciprocal relationship. It is not something that happens once and is finished. Nor is it a certificate or badge of having arrived anywhere. Within power-over culture, with its continuous demand of making something commodifiable and sellable, eco-awakening is absolutely of no value - in fact it is counter-cultural. At its essence it is a fundamental shift in world view and consciousness. It is in fact such a complete shift that it is often not possible to continue participating in what Joanna Macy calls ‘business-as-usual’. Rather than making us happier and better consumers or more successful entrepreneurs, eco-awakening has as its goal, the humbling force of true belonging.

It is a way of becoming regular sized, as Martin Shaw says. This way of finding our place as a human within the ecosystems of Earth, is a huge step towards shifting our way of participating in, or even stepping out of, the modern paradigm with all of its attendant horrors, extractive practices and mass scale suffering produced by those consuming, without giving back to either Earth or those working to make the products that are consumed.

In an ecosystem, no creature, plant, insect or being is out of place. Each fills an ecological niche receiving part or all of the physical bodies of others as food and, through its own body, giving itself, in part or whole, to another in the web as food. How might we, as a species, remember our place within the ecosystem of Earth and create cultures that are nourished by and nourishing to the ecosystem within which we live? Imagine that at scale. This is the potential and necessity of eco-awakening. It is a recognition of our place as a species within the web of life and a reciprocal relational way of being with the Wild Others that participates in the cycles of birth, death, decay, transformation, gestation and rebirth. This inner transformation of inter-belonging can only happen one person at a time, meaning it is simultaneously both deeply personal and essentially non-personal.

Eco-awakened adults are able to shift consciousness, hearing the dreams of trees, animals and stone. This might be what we mean when we say, remembering our original instructions as humans, meaning the way that humans are essentially and originally a part of the ecosystem within which we have lived and the ways of being and choices that are made arising out of that chthonic knowing - the deep knowing arising from being of a place. If our species survives the current socio-ecological collapse, in the future, eco-awakening holds the keys to us being renewed by, and as a culture, guided by, Earth’s dreaming.

At Starter Culture our approach to change sees eco-awakening as a vital component to consciously navigating this collapse and the deep cultural transformation inner-led change seeks to support. Without including embodied eco-awakening practices within our action plans and theories of change, we will continue to source our ways forward from the power-over consciousness that created our current crises.

Our deep longing is that humans will someday live into a time where eco-awakening is no longer necessary because our children will grow up knowing themselves as part of Earth. Imagine with us what that would mean? Human cultures would be reciprocally renewed in relationship to the ecosystem within which they are a vital part. Eco-awakening is the threshold to such a future, will you join us at the threshold?

Source: StarterCulture

PODCAST

Or would you rather listen to a podcast about it? We got you covered as well!

Eco-Belonging - awakening to our place in Earth Community

Wild Mind guides Bell Selkie Lovelock and Sara McFarland, speak about Eco-Awakening, or Eco-Belonging, which is the psychological, emotional, physical and spiritual remembering or awakening to the fact that we each are a part of Earth, are Earth and Water and Fire and Air and that all beings are our Kith, in reciprocal relatedness. Poetry, song, stories of our own Eco-Awakening and the wandering way of trying to put the ineffable into language that can only point to the Mystery which is at the center of Life and our place in the larger web. We talk about Descartes and mechanistic thinking versus thinking like a cosmos, Animas Valley Institute, Mary Oliver, Birdsong, Welsh words of place and the ancient ancestral knowing that each of us has in our bodies. Come along with us for an imaginal journey into the heart of belonging to Earth Community.

PARTICIPATION AND NEXT STEPS

I've read/listened to this and I'm in! Where do I sign up?

Eco-awakening describes a shift in world view and consciousness, a transition, the crossing of a threshold, but it is not simply "something that happens once and is finished, nor is it a certificate or badge of having arrived anywhere." Once that threshold is crossed, it marks a lasting change that manifests as a drive/call towards belonging more fully to the world and acting/participating in ways of reciprocal relationship.

But while Eco-awakening is a deeply personal transition, this thread can be a place where we discuss and share notes, experiences, readings, inspirations and invitations.

Towards the end of Plotkin's blog post series on Eco-Awakening (part 6), he offers some good hints on how one would go about if they wished to evoke that major life passage.

In part II of this post, we'll start looking in more detail into practices and experiences that might help in that regard (and share part II of the podcast that promises to discuss exactly that).

There will also be invitations for common readings and experiments.

Stay tuned! In the meantime, feel free to express interest and questions or discuss the above content and the concept of Eco-awakening.

[OutOfTheBlue]

As a first common experience, I invite you to watch the YouTube recording (duration: 1h) of the storytelling event: "Slip into your Bearskin and remember yourself home to Earth Community" and work with the invitations offered by Wild Mind guide Sara McFarland.

Share your findings here!

Here's the home page of the Storytelling events, explaining more about the relevance of storytelling towards inner-led cultural change: https://starterculture.net/storytelling ... al-change/

Slip into your Bearskin and remember yourself home to Earth Community

How might we slip out of our human skin and into the skin of bear, or tree, or falcon and return to the creatureliness of ourselves more alive and more wild? Some might say that at the heart of the ache and trauma that afflicts our world today is the misunderstanding that we are separate from life. The belief that all of life is either dead or dumb and that we are the only intelligent life on the planet and are therefore ordained to have dominion, is rooted in our modern culture. However, there is an older way, a way that the ancestors of each of us once knew, before the great forgetting, of recognising our being Earth, Water, Fire, Air and having breathed in particles of all the creatures that have ever lived and offer our breath to that great river. In this intimate relational experience of sentient agential interbeing, we rewild ourselves and awaken into a world that is interwoven with consciousness.

Bayo Akomolafe writes in his book These Wilds beyond our Fences, "Look how things sprout from other things. How nothing is itself all by itself - or without the contributions of other things. When you happen upon a flower, especially one whose otherworldly beauty and feminine fragility contrast sharply with its less endearing environment, you might treat it as this localised “thing”, as an object - one deserving of admiration - but an “object” nonetheless: removed, unique, separate and even audacious. What our linguistic conveniences blind us to is how that very flower is no more distinguishable from the dirt, the erratic weather, the traffic of pollen bearers that come from far off, the blazing sun, and even the occasional imprint from a boot worn by an uncharitable tourist, than a wave is distinguishable from the sea….

Perhaps we could say that the environment “flowers”. And all we would be hinting at is a “new” paradigm of thought- one that inaudibly recognises how everything is connected and how what we “really” are define notions of size, hues, grades of quality, origin and destiny.”

In this intimate relational experience of sentient agential interbeing, we rewild ourselves and awaken into a world that is interwoven with consciousness. This is the story of the journey of Eco-belonging, re-membering ourselves as part of Earth’s Community. This is paradigm shift from the inside out. Will you dare to slip out of your human skin and into the skin of Bear? The reimagined story of Bearskin awaits to help us do just that.

[Divandan]

I know I am late to join the MMG for this but thank you for sharing the post.

The 7 parts shared above will be a perfect reference for me. I couldn't tell which book was the best one to start with so I picked Wild Mind and am about 1/3 of the way through. I like it so far and have some basis to compare it to because I did IFS work earlier in the year. I am excited to get into some of the exercises as well.

[OutOfTheBlue]

I know I am late to join the MMG for this but thank you for sharing the post.

The 7 parts shared above will be a perfect reference for me. I couldn't tell which book was the best one to start with so I picked Wild Mind and am about 1/3 of the way through. I like it so far and have some basis to compare it to because I did IFS work earlier in the year. I am excited to get into some of the exercises as well.

Hello Divandan,

Glad to hear this! I think you've made a good choice picking up Wild Mind for a start. We're currently working our way through that book. Last meeting was on the South subs, and next up we will try something different, instead of going to the next chapter: we'll dedicate the monthly session to playing with the "council" practice (a type of sharing circle).

I don't know how things will pan out (will we take up another book next? etc.), but I expect that completing this cycle will take us least at three more meetings, beside the next one. So if Wild Mind resonates, it might be possible to join (I'll have to check with the group on our next meet). At any rate, don't hesitate to post on the Plotkin-related threads, will be happy to share/discuss here as well and help with your exploration.

I haven't dived much into IFS yet, but from what I've gathered, It's probably quite helpful to be coming from that angle. There are definitely similarities and possibility of combining these approaches or integrating IFS into Plotkin's holistic framework.

Re this specific thread on Eco-awakening, if after reading Plotkin's essay it sounds like something you'd like to pursue, I can post some more resources here. We've chosen to keep our focus on Wild Mind for now, but it is a worthwhile project and very aligned especially with cultivating the South facet (the Wild Indigenous One). Cheers!

[Divandan]

Thanks for sharing those articles; they were very good. This is my first exposure to him so I am trying to understand how the cardinal directions map to his developmental stages but thank you for confirming that Wild Mind is a good place to start.

Right now I am just reading Wild Mind from beginning to end to see the story he is trying to weave and then I am going to work through some of the exercises in the appendix. Depending on how long that takes, I might then switch over to the journey of the soul initiation. I am imagining his work builds upon itself and that the two books are complementary. I also agree that his work lines up perfectly with ERE, and something that he covered early in this book that keeps popping up on the forums here is the concept of interdependence. Very cool to continue finding the alignment between people's work and ideas.

Yes please post here any resources, and I will share my observations. I would be happy to join the group or perhaps the next iteration. Thanks!

[berrytwo]

Yes please post here any resources, and I will share my observations. I would be happy to join the group or perhaps the next iteration. Thanks!

Wanted to say Divandan, that there is a bit of a transition point in the group at the moment. We just finished the Wild Mind book and are taking a hiatus. There is talk of having a different structure for reading Nature and the Human Soul later this year. Maybe that would be a good time to check in?

[sodatrain]

Wanted to say Divandan, that there is a bit of a transition point in the group at the moment. We just finished the Wild Mind book and are taking a hiatus. There is talk of having a different structure for reading Nature and the Human Soul later this year. Maybe that would be a good time to check in?

Hi @Berrytwo - Just found this thread and it strikes me as interesting. Quick post to indicate my interest and to get the thread subscription. I'll read more of the resources you posted above in the next couple weeks.

It may be beyond my current Wheaton Level of thinking in the space, but it keeps coming up. So not sure if I'm a good fit, but wanted to express my interest and be aware of what may be happening as y'all finish the hiatus.

[OutOfTheBlue]

Evoking Eco-awakening:

[Part II]


Since there's been expressed interest, I'm sharing additional examples/ideas toward eco-awakening.

In the seven part essay by Bill Plotkin on the life-passage of Eco-awakening that I've shared in Part I (first post), at one point he writes:

Evoking Eco-Awakening: Attending to the Nature-Oriented Tasks of Childhood

How is the major life passage of eco-awakening evoked? The best way I know to frame the answer is to say that it’s done by addressing the incomplete developmental tasks of the two stages of healthy (ecocentric) childhood — the early-childhood stage I call the Nest and the middle-childhood stage I call the Garden. No one ever fully completes the developmental tasks of any stage of life, but the tasks of earlier stages can always be revisited later (and usually need to be).

He then offers a brief overview of the nature-oriented tasks discussed in his book Nature and the Human Soul for the stages of the Nest (early childhood) and the Garden (middle childhood). See the link of the heading above for the text.

In the PDF that we've shared internally with the MMG, after that article, the appendix included the relevant sections from the chapters on the Nest and the Garden in that book for revising these developmental tasks later in life.

So here goes:

APPENDIX (from NATURE AND THE HUMAN SOUL)

RE-EMBRACING INNOCENCE LATER IN LIFE [NEST]

Having grown up in an egocentric society, one day we wake up, perhaps in our twenties, thirties, or quite a bit later, suddenly and painfully mindful that our innocence disappeared many years earlier. Is it possible to regain what has been lost?

I am certain it is. We can, in fact, revisit the incomplete tasks of any earlier stage. The peculiar thing about working on the tasks of the Nest, however, is that in early childhood we never consciously worked on them at all. (Our parents did — or didn't.) Now, later in life, we get to invite innocence consciously, which makes this task look a lot different than it did in early childhood. Then the goal was to preserve someone else's innocence — innocence that had not yet been lost. Now the opportunity is to reclaim or re-embrace for ourselves what has at least partially disappeared. Here are seven practices for doing this in the Oasis or later: Meditation is a time-honored and cross-cultural method for re-embracing innocence. Innocence regained is experienced as radiant presence. Present-centeredness can be cultivated through the contemplative arts from any cultural tradition, including Christian contemplative prayer, Buddhist vipassana, the silence of Quaker meetings, or more physically active forms such as tai chi, qigong, and yoga.

In meditation, we practice fully inhabiting our experience right now just as it is. We practice non-attachment or non-clinging to particular memories or desires. To be non-attached to the past and future is to be here now. The more we practice, the better we get at it, and the more natural it is. The more present we become, the more our senses come alive — and our emotions and imagination, too. We occupy our lives, our loves, and our land more fully. We can wander more deeply into the world and are more likely to consciously encounter there the astounding mysteries of our own souls.

It should not be surprising that, in addition to its other benefits, meditation offers a path to rejuvenated innocence. Meditation, after all, is more generally understood as a means to cultivate our relationship to spirit or emptiness or the nondual. The portal to spirit resides in the East on the Wheel. Both the Nest and innocence also abide in the East. “Zen mind, beginner's mind.” Think of meditation masters you have known or read about — overflowing with a certain freshness, an innocence, yes?

Another proven resuscitator of innocence is solitude in nature. I mean full-bodied, multisensory, openhearted time in the wild in which you offer your attention fully and reverently to the land, the waters, and the sky and all that is alive in those kingdoms. You might wander on foot or skis or in a self-propelled boat, or sit very still for extended periods. The important thing is a joyful mindfulness to the wild world. Solitude in nature offers the opportunity “to fall in love outward,” as poet Robinson Jeffers puts it. Falling in love outward is, in essence, a contemplative art, an ecocentric one. Think of it as a nature-based variation of vipassana, the Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice in which awareness is constantly opened to what is present here and now, without attachment to past or future. Mindfulness in nature adds to vipassana the fact that you are attending to the fullness of the wild world, making it easier to be utterly here, now. You don't need to be someplace as wild as Alaska or southern Utah to do this. A nearby forest, streamside, or thicket works wonders. A city park or your backyard might do.

A third approach is the creative art process. Immerse yourself, for an hour or two at a time, in any of the arts. Previous experience unnecessary.
This is not about creating “works of art” for anyone's approval or admiration, including your own. It's about surrendering to what is immediately present — your art media and whatever impulses and feelings arise within you. Use familiar and unfamiliar media: drawing, painting, sculpting, collage, music, poetry, short stories, or dance. Drop each imagined goal as it arises and instead expand into being fully at home with yourself and the creative process. Apprentice yourself to your intuition. Let yourself be surprised by what color attracts you, or what sound, shape, emotion, texture, movement, image, or word. Say YES to it.
Innocence can also be rejuvenated through the kinds of psychotherapies and therapeutic practices that emphasize present-centeredness. In Gestalt therapy, for instance, the individual is steadily encouraged to experience his or her own feelings and behaviors in the here and now. Excessive focus on the past (memories) or on the future (plans) is considered an escape from your life, because your life happens only in the resent. Gestalt therapists insist that you express everything within your field of awareness and be in full relationship to that. Your past, future, or fantasies can be made present by dramatizing them, using gestures, postures, and speech.

Other therapies, too, offer exercises and practices for enhancing presence. These include psychosynthesis, existential therapy, focusing-oriented psychotherapy, sensory awareness, and the expressive arts therapies.

A fifth method for restoring innocence, one that you can use almost anytime and anywhere (but selectively), is to consciously enter social occasions as openly as you can. Drop expectations. Don't hang on to memories. Let go of desired outcomes. This, too, is a practice. The situation might be a committee meeting, a rendezvous with a friend or lover, a solo walk in a (safe enough) neighborhood, or a social gathering, a workshop, a museum. Practice being fully present. Let your senses come alive. Allow yourself to be utterly curious about everything. Grant yourself permission to be amused, saddened, horrified, ecstatic. Trust your own unknowing. Say and do whatever comes to mind — unless you are quite sure it'll get you into the kind of trouble you'd rather not be in. You might notice how, unintentionally, you begin to protect yourself physically, emotionally, or socially. If you can, let it go, relax. Practice innocent presence.

Yet another approach to re-embracing innocence is to get in the habit of reviewing your day to find one or two situations in which you could have been more innocent and present had you been more mindful. These are the moments that did not require the degree of vigilance and protectiveness you adopted. Imagine yourself re-entering those circumstances one at a time, this time entirely centered, open, and observant. Notice how the scene unfolds differently. Doing this review sensitizes your psyche to the possibility and blessing of innocence in your life. You rehearse the attitudes, moves, and faith implicit in full present-centeredness. The next day, you'll be more likely to recognize the opportunities for innocence as they occur.

My final suggestion is to hang out with infants! Why not sit at the feet of a master? When he's awake, let your little teacher (eighteen months or younger) lead the way in play. He'll show you how to be, as well as what to do. Get down on the carpet with him — just you and him. (If you are alienated from your innocence, you might feel ridiculous apprenticing to a baby while other people are watching you.) Let him teach you some games. When he falls asleep, you'll notice that he's no less a teacher of innocence. Take some deep breaths and immerse yourself in the miracle of his existence. Practice being present with his luminous presence — and yours. (For additional exercises for addressing the tasks of the Nest — or the Garden or Oasis —later in life, please visit www.natureandthehumansoul.com. The website also includes exercises that help you experience the qualities of each of the subsequent stages.)

What if we suddenly wake up and realize we were brought up egocentrically in an egocentric society? The good news is that healing, recovery, and deepening are fully available even for those of us whose early childhood went terribly wrong. We've just seen, for example, how, in the Oasis and beyond, we can restore our original innocence. And in the next chapter, we'll see what we can do if we missed out on one or more tasks of the Garden (middle childhood). As I suggested in chapter 1, addressing our developmental deficits — restoring our lost innocence, for example — may have considerably more benefits than attempting to directly suppress or eliminate disturbing symptoms such as tobacco or food cravings, insomnia, or a social phobia.

In addition to addressing our developmental deficits, we also have the opportunity to experientially explore our psychological wounds. Every one of these wounds, including those engendered by an egocentric family or culture, can serve as catalysts for our renaissance and soul discovery. Carl Jung was fond of reminding us that, to the soul, the wrong way is always the right way. As you'll see in the chapter on the Cocoon, our deepest wounds and our soul are intimately related. If we journey far enough into the inner landscapes of our wounds, we discover there the mysteries of destiny. So, too, in encountering our souls, we learn how our wounds are essential facilitators of our soul lives.

The important thing, but often the most difficult step in an egocentric society, is simply to wake up! If you're reading this book, more than likely something has already happened in your life to arouse you, whether in recent days or long ago. If there are sleepers in your life whom you love and who are beginning to stir, you might jostle them a bit. This book suggests some ways.

Once awakened, we begin to remember the call of the soul and the song of the world, and we suffer the immense grief and hope gifted by those revelations. Grounded there, we can re-root our lives in soul and nature

REAWAKENING WONDER LATER IN LIFE [GARDEN]

No matter how old we get or what stage we reach, we never grow out of our capacity for wonder. There's always, in life, infinite good cause for naïveté, curiosity, amazement, and exploration.

Yet, while reading this chapter, perhaps you've wondered how well your ability to truly wonder has survived. You might, in addition or instead, feel that you never, even in childhood, fully immersed yourself in the boundless enchantments of the natural world. The good news in both cases is that it's not too late. It never is. You can always devote yourself to the uncompleted tasks of previous developmental stages. Doing so strengthens the foundations of your current stage and enriches the possibilities of your unfolding life. In contemporary culture, most all of us have a good deal of unfinished business from middle childhood.

If you suspect this is true for you, here's what I recommend. Spend as much time as you can — either alone or with a pre-pubertal child — in wild or semi-wild places. A city park, woodlot, or garden will do. If and when you can, get out of the city and into less tame places. Make a regular habit of it. Learn the names of plants and animals, if you'd like, but more important, learn through your own senses their habits, stages or cycles of growth, habitats, and needs. Don't forget about the water-dwelling and air-roaming creatures, in addition to those that favor land. Also, through your own observations, what can you learn about rocks, about their geological origins, textures, and hardness? For the time being, don't consult books, and do filter out your ideas about these others’ “usefulness” or “non-usefulness” to humans. Get to know them on their own turf, instead. Observe them and respectfully interact with them with as much reverence and wonder as you can muster.

If you bring along a child, then once you arrive at your destination, let her bring you along. Let her set the pace and the focus. Get down to her level. It's your responsibility to keep the two of you safe enough, but other than that, let her be your role model, your guide to wonder and exploration.
Like a child, allow yourself to become a naturalist, something you'll find easy if you let yourself be curious. All humans are naturally naturalists. We humans evolved, after all, in the wild, and our survival and fulfillment-depended on our having the ability and desire to get to know our world fully and subtly. Genetically, you are still one of those humans.

Visit field, forest, wetland, desert, and ocean as often as you can. Offer your attention with care. If you like, keep a journal of what you discover.
Here is a solo exercise you can use to reawaken and deepen your innate, childlike sense of wonder in nature: Go for a walk in a park, a rural area, the seashore, or some other wild place. Find your pace, a rhythm, some balance. After five minutes or so, let yourself travel back in time to childhood. Remember how it felt in your body when you were a child, as young as five or as old as ten, to be small and energetic and limber and to be outside with plenty of time. Let your center of balance shift downward.

Allow yourself to walk like you did as the child you were, to see as you did, to feel as you did. Surrender your adult agenda. Look around, play in the sand, collect “treasures,” hide in small places and peer out, build a “nest,” draw with a piece of found charcoal, skip, talk to a tree, climb a tree, look down a hole. Explore, build, play. Go wild or be still. Allow the world to be new again. Take at least an hour to do this. A whole day would be better.

Let yourself be surprised by what happens. Bring a couple treasures back with you (physical things, if their extraction or absence would in no way harm that place, or perhaps a story, sound, song, gesture, or movement) and share their wonder with someone you trust. This last step is especially important.

Hand in hand with nature, the wilderness of your imagination is the other realm within which to reawaken wonder. If you don't enjoy a robust relationship with the imaginal, especially your deep imagination — your dreams, deep imagery, and visionary capacities — consider taking courses in dreamwork, imagery journeys, art, dance, music, or creative writing.

Here are some additional suggestions:
• Allow yourself to play again! Play the way an Explorer does. Skip.
• Build sand-castles. Play fort or tag. Learn to skateboard or ride a mountain bike.
• Immerse yourself in one or more expressive arts, playfully.
• Try new forms of movement or dance, including Authentic Movement or five rhythms1.
• Become a gardener with an emphasis on wonder and play.
• Read a book on the Universe Story and let yourself feel the astounding and bewildering imagination of the cosmos.[for instance, see Brian Swimme "The Journey of the Universe", a book/audiobook (https://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org) and also a 1h movie, the latter available (among other related videos) here: https://storyoftheuniverse.org/videos/. There are also three related Yale/Coursera courses on the subject]
• On a clear night, go to a place far from city lights (ideally with an Explorer), lay on the ground, gaze deeply into the sky, and wonder. Perhaps learn to use a telescope.
• Watch for synchronicities in this playful universe!
• Learn a new language, just for fun.
• Lose yourself in poetry.
• Do something that is totally new to you (eat new food, travel, visit museums, dance).
• Go to a children's museum or an amusement park.

---

I will conclude by adding the second part of the podcast I shared in the first post [Part I]:

StarterCulture - Eco- Belonging Awakening to our place in Earth Community Part 2

The second part of our Eco-Awakening conversation of belonging to Earth Community, with Bell Selkie Lovelock and Sara McFarland. In this episode, you’ll find an experiential invitation to deepen into your senses and encounter the wild others within and without. We speak about how to Eco-Awaken, how to experience ourselves as Earth and how to continue the practice of it in our daily lives. With poetry by William Stafford and Joy Harjo. Music by Tamsin Elliot

If you enjoy storytelling, Wild Mind guide Sara McFarland is revisiting stories as a way of experientially evoking inner-led cultural change. I've shared one storytelling episode in part I, here's the link for other stories as well: https://starterculture.net/storytelling ... al-change/

[OutOfTheBlue]

Hi @Berrytwo - Just found this thread and it strikes me as interesting. Quick post to indicate my interest and to get the thread subscription. I'll read more of the resources you posted above in the next couple weeks.

It may be beyond my current Wheaton Level of thinking in the space, but it keeps coming up. So not sure if I'm a good fit, but wanted to express my interest and be aware of what may be happening as y'all finish the hiatus.

Hey @sodatrain, thanks for expressing interest!

I've just updated the thread with PART II (see post above).

I don't know when or whether we will pick Plotkin up again *in a group format*, but if we do, it will likely be about Nature and the Human Soul. Reading that would be a prerequisite, so that could be a good place to start. It's also on one of the lists of the ERE-Wheaton levels [placeholder level 10!], if you need more motivation.

Project "Eco-awakening" was a side-quest/invitation of sorts in the MMG that we'd run in parallel with our exploring of the Wild Mind book. Please note that particular project hasn't really pickup in the group, as we since focused more exclusively on Wild Mind (although personally, I find it goes well with cultivating the South facet of the Self aka the Wild Indigenous One). If one reads or has read Nature and the Human Soul, though, Eco-awakening represents a crucial addition to the model of human development found in that book, and one that may be of high relevance here in EREland.

Personally, after dedicating many months to exploring in various directions intellectually and experientially from within a Plotkin framework, this search has organically led to a shift in frameworks (and I haven't yet found a way to well integrate Plotkin to that).

I'd love to contribute with some guidance for your Plotkin exploration, but what to share depends on "for whom and when", in other words, on where you are in this process. Could you share a bit more on that here?