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| People wandering off on their wandering exercises |
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| People working on their life maps and journals |
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| The Hyatt Tamaya Hotel and Sandia Mountains |
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| The arroyo during my "Baby Praise Wander" |
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| A tree noticed on the return from my "Baby Praise Wander" |
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| Sunrise |
Nature and the Human Soul Conference
Day 2, Jan 20th 2012 Friday
Bill Plotkin and Fr. Richard Rohr
Hyatt Tamaya, New Mexico
1,000 Attendees from around the world
My Notes and Musings
8am Bill Plotkin
Early Childhood
How do we welcome/support a newborn child in a way that they will grown into an authentic adult? - to increase the chance that they become themselves and are able to embody God or the mystery in their unique way?
Goal: to sustain/develop child's trust in self/family/community/world
Tasks: child doesn't have any tasks at this stage. The parents carry the tasks:
1) Preserve child's innocence (present centeredness)
2) Formation of intact, culturally viable, healthy ego. Acquire basics of language and social skills.
Parent's task is to balance these two tasks, which have a natural tension. Preserving and embracing child's natural wildness and curiosity, celebrate from infancy to age 4 or so, saying yes to needs (at this point there are no wants, infants only have needs)
How? Careful observation and mirroring of personal qualities. Infant receives the message "We see you! You belong here! We're glad you're here!"
"I, thou relationship to world"
To bring back in current life stage involves: Being purely, innocently present to the now, encouraged through meditation, yoga, dance, music which enhances your capacity to be present in all relationship.
Also, solitude in nature - outside the human -colonized environments, also expressive arts - working with materials, allowing to come through you (not with any intention to sell or impress) just, what wants to show up? Funnel through. What allure you? Apprenticing to own intuition. Hang out with infants and be present with.
Praise Walk Exercise: Praise each thing or place in nature that calls to you, out loud, drawing, etc. Embodying, not just appreciating, but praising. Be back in 45 minutes, by 9:30am. Then work with your life map anything to add to first life stage.
9:45am Richard Rohr
No one gets perfect mirroring. No parents know how to mirror perfectly. Wounding at the same time as mirroring. We're very vulnerable.
An unitiated parent still wants the child to mirror them!
We all carry an original wound. Unmet needs keep recurring in the 20's and 30's (affection, validation) Sometimes revert to childish acting where you then pass on your wound to another.
10am Bill Plotkin
Middle Childhood
Wonder
Book: "Living by Wonder" by Richard Lewis
Naming - the transition to having conscious self-awareness. We know what a name is at that time. There is often a really big dream that shows up around age 4 or 5. That becomes an essential key. If you are a parent, keep note of these dreams for your child. Do any of you remember a dream from that age?
Garden/explorer Stage 2
Goal: learn the givens of nature and culture
Tasks: balance gradually shifts from the parents to the child
1) learn enchantment of natural world and feel fully at home in it
2) Learn cultural ways of your people, necessary to learn one way of being human first in order to become fully human later.
Becoming at home in body, in our imaginations, and in our emotions. As much outdoor playtime as possible. People who had natural childhood and free playtime outside are those who find/see the metaphor they are during a vision fast/quest.
Book: "Last Child of the Woods" by Richard Luve, also Book: "Saving our child from Nature Deficit Disorder"
Discovering enchantment of human body. Imagination cultivated in childhood and onwards is the single most important faculty in the descent to soul later on. Imagination is rooted in nature play in childhood. "Imagination is nature" William Blake
Every emotion has a treasure in it. Each tells a child (and parents) about that child. Taught to celebrate all emotions and find the jewel in them.
How much were you as a child exposed to these dimensions of healthy culture? [an extraordinary amount. Especially imagination and out door play, that was my childhood]
Social practices - languages, how to celebrate, grieve, how do you support someone else in grieving? Prayer
Values - Children in stage 2 need to be taught values. Because they don't know what they are yet. Need to know what they are first before they can tinker with the values and make them their own later in life.
General knowledge: Computers and television do not aid in knowledge!, especially in stage 2. Stage 2 is not the time to teach a child how to save the world. First they must learn to love the world and feel at home in it and learn their relation to others. Important for children to learn history of their ancestors. Important for them to have an ethnic identity.
Mythology - stories that suggest reciprocal relationship with the world help us pose big questions, enlivening metaphors.
Cosmology - the big story of the world. Where did world come from?
Education in stage 2 - essential in and out of school to learn about the natural world. Thinking is only one way to know the world. The four windows of knowing are:
1) Thinking
2) Feeling (including emotions)
3) Senses (observation, sensing)
4) Imagination (most ignored and repressed in western society) Why? Because thats the one most essential to grow up. Why doesn't culture want you to grow up? Because its bad for business! Imagination is the way to find out what is real that thinking, feeling and sensing can never get us to.
[imagination is real and where it brings you is wonderful connection to the unseen]
Tools to bring you back here and complete unfinished tasks from this stage of life:
- multiday solo wandering
- Celebrating and cultivating imagination
- Apprenticing to dreams so they can work on you
- Creative writing, playing, gardening, dance, music, poetry, places to muse, basic crafts with hands
Exercise: Go for a walk/adventure as a 7 - 10 year old. Travel back in time to childhood. Sense as you did then. Feel as you did. Think as you did. Imagine as you did. Collect treasures. Draw. Let go of adult agenda. Pretend. Explore. Build. Observe. Wonder. Skip. Allow world to be new again. Bring a treasure back with you and share it and your experience with someone. Be back in 45 minutes.
[I lay in the leaves and looked up at the sky and rolled around and got covered in leaves. I tried to play an imaginary game with leaves and sticks. It was hard to believe in it like I did as a child. I looked around and spotted a perfect, white see shell or snail shell, the size of a grape. It was my treasure for the day. Where did it come from? I told the person I shared it with that it reminded me of a sea shell my dad gave me when I was 9, which I still have. Inside it is a note of appreciation of who I am and who I am becoming from him.]
12:15pm Richard Rohr
Its not what you say to your kids, but the energy you say it with. Your child will be excited about what you're excited about.
"Growing up is bad for business" We live in a culture, and sadly a church, that doesn't really want us to grow up.
Find what you can be excited about! Where your energy can naturally flow!
The western world is pretty ritually starved. No healing rituals for those coming out of war or out of middle childhood or out of any of the stages of life.
2:30pm Bill Plotkin
Robert Bly Poem: "One pice of Bad Information"
Stage 3 Early Adolescence, Thespian at the Oasis
"The whole world is a stage" especially applies to stage 3. Pscychological stage, usually begins between 10-13.
In this stage, we begin experiencing ourselves as members of a peer group (sex, society) that goes beyond nature and family. Puberty is the first passage where we're conscious of ourselves on both sides of the transition.
The parents are losing a dependent child, or a child actually. Instructions in sexual identity and puberty rights are extremely important.
There are 2 stages of adolescence between childhood and adulthood, stage 3 is early adolescence.
Goal: Fashion authentic social identity, social individuation, cultivating a unique social presence, becoming yourself socially. Discover that life is a kind of drama and we realize "Its up to me to cast myself in a role that feels good to me and that everyone else is doing the same" What role do we want to star in?
It is a stage that is most gender-differentiated in social roles. After stage 3, gender differentiation lessons because part of stage 4 involves cultivating the gender side that is weaker and balancing that out. Societal archetype for masculine: societal entrepreneur - emphasis on competition and achievement. Feminine societal archetype: Communal Gatherer - emphasis on direct care cooperation, the fleshing out of what already is, wants heart connection and warmth of relationship.
World becomes more personally constructed and chosen.
Task: To create secure and authentic social self that generates both social acceptance and self-approval. What parts of my persona are acceptable to peer group?
- value exploration and principles. Adult parent needs to say, "I enjoy/value how my life is. I see you becoming something different. I am proud of you"
- Emotional skills get more sophisticated, there are 4 phases of emotion:
1) Feel it, let it happen and run its course
2) Go inward, what was that about? What did it tell me about me and my values? (not to criticize self)
3) Action - how will I act on it to make the world or my relationship to the world and others better?
4) Illumination - step back and look at the whole cycle and say "Well, that was interesting. What did it teach me about begin human?"
-Art of conflict resolution.
- Status assigning skills - getting good at determining what place in peer group (friend, relationship, avoid) Not being too passive or too aggressive.
- sex and sexual relationships
- sustenance skills - how are you going to provide
- Studying of human/nature responsibility
People in a healthy society will not accept those that damage the web of life.
- Welcoming home the loyal soldier, a lot of inner critics and inner flatterers
Education
Book - "My name is Chelus and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization"
There is another passage often necessary in western culture, but that did not exist in indigenous culture. It is the passage, called awakening, from ego-centric early adolescence to eco-centric early adolescence. Not to be confused with the passage from early adolescence to late adolescence.
Choose one of these two exercises, do the first one if you can and are up for the challenge.
Exercise1 : Teenager Diad Walk - go for a walk with someone else you don't know. Tell each other about your teen years, first experiences. How well is your authentic self doing now? How are you with conflict resolution? Emotions? Sex? Relationships? How are these issues showing up now? 15 min. each.
Exercise 2: Wound Walk: Go out on land and let yourself be drawn to something that looks or feels wounded to you. Look at it very closely. Let your emotions flow. Tell it out loud about your own roundedness. Feel/sense/imagine your wound or roundedness. Make/create something for/with the wounded part, forgive, accept, hold that wounded part. Record any discoveries. 45 min. then meet with breakout group to share.
Musings: Amazing diad walk with a lady in her 60's. I knew I wanted to challenge myself to the died walk. But I knew I wanted an older woman for where I'm at in my comfort level. It was so incredible to share so much with a stranger and have her share with me. We had a connection and a lot of similar experiences to share. I learned some wisdom from her, which reaffirmed what I already knew: "Opening up to your wound and being able to live vulnerable to it is directly related to your bringing your gift into the world" "You do the best you can with the resources you have and next time you will have more resources and will do better" For me, I shared about desire for validation, appreciation, affirmation, wanting my intuition to be validated, when in reality, I am the one who validates and honors my own intuition. I also need to learn to live with not having my intuition validated by anyone else but me and opening myself to the vulnerability and criticism that may come with that. Learning to live with following my intuition regardless of how people respond to me, good or bad. That will allow me to be more present in relationship to others and the world. We also talked about how no mirroring is perfect and no wounds process is perfect either. I was still grateful to hear an honoring of my intuition from the lady I partnered with who left me with the words, "Its young people like you that give me hope for the world. You will have a good relationship and you will be able to raise a child to become an authentic adult."
5pm Bill Plotkin
He gave the current western growth stages (notice nothing beyond stage 3, yikes!)
Stage 1 - Obedience training and entitlement Training
Stage 2 - Primary socio economic training
Stage 3A - Conformity and rebellion
Stage 3B - Secession (well, I was hoping there would be another game, another way, but I guess tho is it and I've got to play getting a career and getting settled and moving up in the world)
Stage 3C - Capitulation (suppressing soul and inner voice)
Stage 3D - Management
Stage 3E - Pasture and Playtime (retirement)
Stage 3F - Failure (Grandma's failing again)
Lack of feeling a personal authenticity leads to a willingness to give up and play these roles. Role and impersonation (mask) in order to be socially accepted. Leads to an undermining of present-centeredness, which leads to a diminishment of wonder, which leads to not understanding our place in the more than human world, which diminishes the capacity for relationship with others and ourselves, which leads to a lack of presence.
How did we get here? This is the sacred wound of the human species. Yes. This is the only way it could happen.
The solution is to address the latest task of where you're at. The symptoms are there because of developmental business that calls to be addressed and worked beyond. Wildnernes therapy is a major solution.
Going back to the Awakening passage that seems to be a modern phenomenon of western culture.
What happens to a large group of westerners is a passage called Awakening from egocentric to ecocentric early adolescence in stage 3, where people cart addressing the unfinished business as if they just woke up realizing, "The American dream is something more like a nightmare - to work harder and make more money so I can buy more stuff" Awaking from the trama of industrial society. Moving from viewing the world as a collection of objects to viewing it as a communion of subjects as Thomas Berry puts it.
The awakening is often triggered by tragedy/loss, knocks us off sideways enough to take an objective look at where we are and what we've been aspiring too. Radically change their lives and move from ego to eco centric stage 3. Awakening is the passage westerners are most in need of, more even than the descent to soul.
In an ego-centric stage 3: Person believes or acts as if the goal in life is individual self-improvement and believes the capitalist society is sane. [thank my parents and God, I was never here]
In an eco-centric stage 3: person believes and acts as if self improvement isa means to an end, is in service to something greater, to serve the more than human world. The ego is not understood as the central character in life. The ego is seen as a member of vital community. Has not yet begun descent to soul and doesn't quite know yet what soul is. [this was where I was at, probably from 13 or so until 20, when I left home spiritually]
Bill says, a very small percentage of Americans, like the entire indigenous cultures, do not go through this awakening phase, does not exist for them. These are the ones who had lots of access to outdoor play in nature, imagination, and ignited adults raising them. When Bill asked for a raising of hands of who did not have to go through the "Western Awakening" very few people raised their hands. I did, but was shy to raise it all the way up because of how few people did! I was shocked. I know I never had to go through this awakening phase, but had never realized how lucky and rare this was until now. How lucky and rare to have access to nature and imagination and initiated parents that raised me to never believe from the start in the american dream or the industrial society climb, to know that that was false from a young age and to know that developing a relationship with the divine and following my own excitement, no matter where it led, was completely acceptable and encouraged in me from my parents. What an awful lot of gratitude I owe to them and my brook-side child hood home in Maine and to my undergraduate degree in Human Ecology, which stressed the exploration of relationship between humans and the environment and making that relationship better in whatever field you go into.
Stage 4 ego understands itself in service to the world.
A person in stage 3 doesn't understand what stage 4 is about, what the descent to soul is, but they may think they do. Analogy of a 9 year old not knowing what sex is, but thinking they do. [Haha, I had no idea what sex was at age 9 and did not presume to know. I knew that I would know later on when the time was right and I wasn't going to worry about it until then]
Awakening involves a type of dying to consumer culture agenda. An agenda we're all steeped in every day of our lives. A type of dying not necessary for those raised by initiated parents in eco-centric environments. Very few people don't have to go through this awakening. [I know that I didn't and don't have to go through this, because I never believed it and fell asleep. Boy, is it hard not to though!]
The passage from stage 3 to 4 is called Confirmation
Poem "The Journey" by Mary Oliver
"Must go out into the storm. It has your name on it. You know what you need to do."
You heard a new voice that you recognized as your own. "To save the life of your soul" That is enabling you to be born. The soul waters are flowing under your everyday life and one day, you will go down deep enough, through the opening your wound creates, down where there is an opening"
What is being confirmed? Mystery is doing the confirming. You hear call to spiritual adventure and you know it involves a descent. [Yes] You have healthily completed an adolescent identity [Yes]
The only purpose was to build it, not to live in it. [Yes] You've done well enough, have an adequate adolescence. You're ready for the descent to soul. A shift in the primary question - who am I beneath my social persona? Deeper. What is life really about? Beyond getting a job and establishing a primary relationship, traveling, raising a family, volunteering? What is it beyond? What for me is he difference between sex and romance? Between social network and real community? Between companion and real friend? Between job and real soul work? Between ambition and real vision for life? [I've been asking and searching these questions since mid-teens I think]
Most Americans have accepted having compensatory ambitions rather than a revelatory vision for life.
What is soul? Consciousness? To be fully human?
A large number of teenagers come up against these questions and they find no ignited adults or elders to guide them, so they bump off, maybe to return later in their early 20's late 20's or mid-life crisis, or not at all.
Marten Prechel Book [haha, I'm reading one of his books right now called "The Toe Bone and the Tooth" that my room mate recently let me borrow]
Confirmation is the shift in what your world is, what it means to be human. An utter mystery. Understood that ego is meant to be the servant of mystery!
"The shape that waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky" - David White
Dance. Express Unique relationship with Mystery what has been stirred in you?
Musings: At the end of today, I went back and did the stage 1 childhood/infant exercise, the praise one from yesterday. Yesterday, I was not up for doing it at the time and went back to my room for quiet and meditation instead. Today, on my own and with a greater chunk of time at my hands, I wandered pretty far out into an arroyo. I crossed through culvert (something I used to love doing as a child) and began to imagine myself as an infant, fully present to the world. My praising came in infant talk, no words, only sounds and chirps, like an animal, crawling and walking wobbly and unsteady. It was so much fun! I wanted to praise and gurgle at everything! When I crossed back through the culvert, I entered back into my own stage, but the presence of the infant carried with me for the rest of the night. In the hot tub and talking in the hotel room with people, I found myself, very alive and funny and amused with life.
Musings: At the end of today, I went back and did the stage 1 childhood/infant exercise, the praise one from yesterday. Yesterday, I was not up for doing it at the time and went back to my room for quiet and meditation instead. Today, on my own and with a greater chunk of time at my hands, I wandered pretty far out into an arroyo. I crossed through culvert (something I used to love doing as a child) and began to imagine myself as an infant, fully present to the world. My praising came in infant talk, no words, only sounds and chirps, like an animal, crawling and walking wobbly and unsteady. It was so much fun! I wanted to praise and gurgle at everything! When I crossed back through the culvert, I entered back into my own stage, but the presence of the infant carried with me for the rest of the night. In the hot tub and talking in the hotel room with people, I found myself, very alive and funny and amused with life.
