NEWSLETTER 1
This is an experimental "newsletter" to further connect with the forum. Produced individually, it may bear a more personal (as opposed to collective) flavor and follow a different content structure each time.
PLOTKIN MMG
The North
This month, as we dig into Bill Plotkin's book, Wild Mind, we've been exploring one of the four facets of our horizontal wholeness (the Self): the North aka the Nurturing Generative Adult.
This facet is empathic, compassionate, courageous, competent, knowledgeable, productive, and able to provide genuine loving care and service to others and ourselves. With the resources of our North facet, we contribute our best and most creative parenting, collaborative leading, teaching, directing, producing, and healing. The Nurturing Generative Adult is a version of and draws from universal archetypes such as the Leader, the benevolent King or Queen, the spiritual or peaceful Warrior, and the mature and caring Mother and Father.
But what is the Self? Here's a map for you, illustrating Plotkin's nature-based map of the human psyche:
In short,
the Self (similar to but different to Jung's concept by the same name) is a bundle of innate resources all humans have in common, a single, integral whole that holds all the original capacities of our core humanness and encompasses both conscious and unconscious elements. The Self incorporates the four facets of our “horizontal” wholeness (mapped to the four cardinal directions), which exist at birth but only as possibilities that we may or may not learn to access, actualize, and embody.
The Self is not to be confused with
the Ego, which is the conscious self, the center of conscious self-awareness within the human psyche.
And if an immature Ego is often hijacked by/stuck in a fragmented/wounded perspective (our
subpersonalities or constellations of feelings, images, and behaviors that operate more or less independently from one another and often independently of our conscious selves, our Egos), a mature Ego or "3-D Ego" would be one blessed with some degree of conscious communion and integration with
Self,
Soul, and
Spirit.
Hence the goal of cultivating our facets of wholeness (a process called
Wholing), which also helps further tackle
Self-Healing, embracing our fragmentedness from an Ego rooted in the Self.
THE ERE LINK
In Wild Mind's chapter on the North facet of the Self, Plotkin mentions that:
Of the four windows of knowing [thinking, feeling, sensing and imagining], it is thinking that’s most closely partnered with the North facet of the Self, because the Nurturing Generative Adult depends on keen insight and clear planning in order to provide effective care and leadership. However, the specific mode of thinking that characterizes the North facet of the Self is heart-centered thinking, not the merely logical, analytical, deductive mode of thinking more common in the contemporary Western world. Heart-centered thinking is independent, creative, moral, and compassionate. It is “critical” in the sense that it reflectively questions assumptions, discerns hidden values, and considers the larger social and ecological context. Entirely distinct from the rote memorization commonly stressed in mainstream Western schools, heart-centered thinking is distinguished by an animated curiosity that leads to a constantly adjusting, in-depth knowledge of the environment, the human culture, and its individual members. The Nurturing Generative Adult is a compassionate systems thinker, understanding the patterns and dynamics that connect the interdependent members of the more-than-human community. The Self, by way of its North facet, possesses an avant-garde insight into how our current actions ripple across space and time to other places and future generations.
A comment made during our meeting was that, as ERE players, we're probably more accustomed than the average to adopting a systems theory/wholistic view in our thinking. Seeing problems/situations in their complexity, acknowledging ecological inter-relatedness and taking into account group/communication dynamics.
And while some North qualities may be a bit dormant, and the kind of thinking Plotkin speaks of adds an extra layer to the one most common in contemporary society, it is not necessarily the most foreign/uncultivated facet out there!
POEM
Sharing a poem that resonated with me from Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Hours, one of the suggested readings for a practice toward cultivating the North facet of the Self ("Love letters to the Mystery").
You, darkness, of whom I am born —
I love you more than the flame
that limits the world
to the circle it illumines
and excludes all the rest.
But the darkness embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me,
people, nations — just as they are.
It lets me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.
I believe in the night.
(Translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows)
WILD MIND, THE PODCAST
Ana Verzone dedicates four episodes of her podcast, Rebel Buddhist, for presenting Bill Plotkin's Wild Mind in her own extraverted way. I like how she bundles and discusses each of the four facets of wholeness (the Self) with their wounded parts/subpersonalities.
A good intro to Wild Mind, worth the listen if you're into podcasts and her style appeals to you.
Each episode is between 40 and 55 minutes long. Enjoy!
1.
Your Wild Mind – The North + Protectors
2.
Your Wild Mind – The South + Wounded Children
3.
Your Wild Mind – The East and Our Need to Escape
4.
Your Wild Mind – The West and Our Shadows
THE ESSAY: Who’s Up for Building a Cathedral?
Plotkin's recent essay "Who’s Up for Building a Cathedral? Ecocentric Human Development, the Hero’s Journey, and Cultural Regeneration" would make a great read in the context of an Emergent Renaissance Ecology perspective.
Shared for discussion with an addendum here:
viewtopic.php?p=276661#p276661
ECO-AWAKENING: AN INVITATION
In the thread
Project "Eco-Awakening": An Invitation", I've posted an invitation to participate, along with some of us, *in your own time*, to evoking Eco-awakening/cultivating our sense of ecological belonging, as a much relevant shift in consciousness and relatedness (from egocentricity to ecocentricity).