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The Sacred Balance

11/22/2019

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PEGI EYERS

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Moving into Elderhood can be an exciting time.  I’m finding that volumes of learning, research and life experience (all those decades~!) are fitting together with a clarity that evaded me before.  Each stage of life brings extraordinary gifts, but pausing at the plateau of “growing old” can be rich with appreciation. (Breathe~!  Stay humble, and don’t forget to stretch.) Cutting through the distractions and materialism of modern life, I’ve been blessed with direct transmissions from the land, in forms that fit into categories of enchantivism (weaving together our personal mythologies with the magic of the wild), animism, ecopsychology, ancient knowing and plant spirit medicine. Next to the land itself, teachings from Indigenous Elders, knowledge holders, Wise Souls and activists have been my greatest mentors and mentors.
 
Whether our primary work is in social justice, direct action, spiritual growth, wilderness quests, ceremony, rites of passage or connecting to the Ancestors, the threads of right relationship can be woven into everything we do.  Starting with our own minds and hearts, our mission is to unpack what doesn’t really belong to us, which are those thoughts and behaviors we have accumulated from exposure to Euro-Empire. Establishing right relationship with ourselves and healing our inner process (our “neurodecolonization”) can be an incredible challenge, when we are still navigating through the white hetero-patriarchal capitalist overculture.  We have been separated from the external world, there are strict boundaries around the way we think, feel and sense, and with the emphasis on the “head” rather than the heart, our knowledge is supposed to come from intellectual prowess and cognitive ability.  Too much thinking!  We have been taught to ignore our intuition, and the incredible amount of wisdom we receive from our own bodies.

To aid us with our inner transformation, Indigenous Knowledge (IK) from diverse sources teach us other important ways of knowing that have been left out of the equation. The Anlo-Ewe of Africa hold a concept of seselelame,[1] or wisdom “perceived through the sensations of the body.”   A wide range of psychic, intuitive, kinesthetic, sexual and emotional sensations & feelings are all examples of seselelame.  So much of what we know about the world can be felt in the inner realms, and understood by internal knowing~!  There are no boundaries between the self and nature in Indigenous and pre-colonial worldviews, and this vital intra-connection is on the rise again today.   We are channels for energy, and we have always been in the flow!


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As informed by the timeless and multicultural model of the “medicine wheel,” I have noticed that we move through the roles of Warrior, Visionary, Healer and Teacher on a regular basis.[2] In the north, the warrior is the leader, where we take a stand and engage with the issues that matter; in the east, we live in our authenticity and express our truth as visionaries and seers;  in the south we pay attention to the knowledge of our heart for the benefit of all beings;  and finally in the west, we are open to both spontaneity and wisdom, and pass these teachings and epiphanies on to others. Each direction has a special energy that is integral to the whole, and as we move through the cycle we continue to refine the aspects of each role. 
 
Also sourced from the “medicine wheel” or “four directions” framework found in both ancient and modern societies, assigning aspects of the human experience to the four quarters, or quadrants, is an important foundation we can embrace as a life-long practice.  Watching the youth of today struggle, and folks of all ages and demographics experience trauma, distress and alienation, it is empowering to know that balance, or right relationship, can be achieved by understanding the emotional, mental, physical and spiritual aspects of self.   

Shifting or weaving through the four quadrants is not an exact discipline - sometimes circumstances are beyond our control - and yet it is comforting to know that other potentials and possibilities exist.  When we find ourselves dwelling too long in emotional territory, we can try to use our critical thinking skills and sort out the variables, and when we are over-intellectualizing, we can pause for bodily regimes and pleasures.  With time and skill, we may find that some of our thoughts or feelings may not be mental or emotional disturbances at all, but prompts from our own inner mystic, or the innate spiritual potential for myth, magic and meaning we all hold.  Our “higher selves” guide our heart, our heart is informed by our mind and vice versa, and the natural sensate wisdom of our bodies is our unfailing guide.  
 
As we look beyond our own empowerment and healing, we can focus on moving from the “Me” to the “We” - and look to right relationship and sacred balance with our kinship groups and the Ancestors. We have ancient models to follow, and yet it is simplistic to suggest we can renounce ourselves completely as modern people~! We are moving both forward and back, and as we consider the beauty and timelessness of pre-colonial worldviews, many themes and lifeways[3] can be encouraged and embraced, both for ourselves and Earth Community. 


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The Earth Our Mother
The world is a place of sacred mystery, and our relationship with the world is rooted in a profound respect for the land and all life.  Humans are not above creation but part of it, and we flourish within the boundaries of the Sacred Circle. We are informed by the land and our bonds to a particular landscape, and in this animist universe we are connected to the plants, creatures, elements and earth spirits that dwell there.  The love of the land and our community is the only true wealth we have - we are part of the Earth and the Earth is part of us.
 
Patterns of Ancestral Mind
By reclaiming our place within (not above) Earth Community we organically find ourselves practicing a cyclical thinking that is based on spirit connectivity, natural processes, creativity and peace, rather than singularity, ownership or dominance. When we are physically grounded and embodied our restless mind fades, and we find ourselves vibrant and present in a field of mindfulness and awareness.  We perceive time as a spiral, and are more connected and empathic with others. Our learning is experiential, as we are empowered to acquire knowledge at our own pace in our own way, and our overall self-identity is based on experience and self-reflection. Belonging to earth-emergent community allows us to hold an “everyday” sense of mystery, wonder and awe, and our intelligences are combined to fulfill our holistic potential as a “true human being.”  With ancestral or ecocentric mind as the foundation, both the individual and the collective is able to integrate self-discovery, wisdom and responsibility.
 
Reciprocity with the Land and Each Other
Our existence is sustained by expressions of gratitude such as ceremony and prayer, as we unconditionally give thanks for all life and the elements that make life possible.  We are in a symbiotic relationship with the Earth, as everything we need to live a good life comes from the land, and our activities are intertwined with the seasons and cycles of nature. When we embody these principles and have respect for all beings through ceremony and prayer, the cosmic balance is upheld and restored, and the survival of the community ongoing. The reciprocity of maintaining good relationships with each other and all beings is a shared collective value, and our Elders and mentors teach us and model to us the virtues of wisdom, bravery, generosity and selflessness that guide us in these interactions.  It is our responsibility to hold the role of our teachers in the highest regard, and to ensure that the generations following us also become Wise Elders, and continue to pass on their values and wisdom.


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Reclaiming and practicing ancient ways of knowing hold great promise for navigating our most difficult passages and life transitions, either alone or with guides and mentors. Surrounded by narcissism and other forms of infantalization, trained to compete and embrace the “cult of the individual” over the needs of the collective, we continue to be impacted by Empire.  And yet, as modernists, let’s not be too hard on ourselves~!  Learning to relinquish our western thinking and put the “we” ahead of “me” that is at the heart of decolonization is an ongoing (and life-long) process.  By reclaiming the inner life, the wisdom of the body, the magical and the mysterious, ancestor veneration and the cycles of life, we are finding holistic patterns, and building earth-rooted identity.  And cultivating right relationship with ourselves and others allows us to join the worldwide circle of ecocentric knowledge traditions, through our “Unity in Diversity.”   In the end, these are the ethics that will translate into sustainable societies and well-being for all, as we maintain the sacred balance of Earth Community for generations yet to come.


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NOTES
[1] Kathryn Linn Geurts, Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community, University of California Press, 2002
[2] Angeles Arrien, The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer, and Visionary,  HarperOne, 1993
[3] Pegi Eyers, Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, Stone Circle Press, 2016



This essay originally appeared in "Right Relations" ~ Confluence Journal  Volume III, Issue 4, Winter 2018 published by Youth Passageways.
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.    
​Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon

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Uncolonizing the “Bounty of the Land” Narratives

10/26/2019

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Earth Ritual by PEGI EYERS


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Through the lens of shifting baseline syndrome, we take for granted that Turtle Island is divided into grids, and the landscape “norm” is rolling farmland interspersed with woodlands and streams - fecund “green zones” at the corners where property lines meet. GMO crops like wheat, soybeans and corn are grown with ruthless methods of monoculture and industrial machinery, and “livestock” is utterly controlled from birth to the slaughterhouse ride.

And yet the beauty of Earth Community is still a constant, with the perfect blue sky, swirling clouds, wildflowers, towering trees, ancient watersheds, geoforms, and natural species diversity that surrounds the “family farm.” In the summer of 2019, many elements - both “positive” and “negative” - were part of my ritual honoring of the land, and the creation of a “nature found” mandala on the floor of a 100-year-old semi-collapsed barn – the same type found all over the Americas. 

The beams that built the barn at Stone Circle Farm are from old-growth pines and hemlocks  - a few over 80 feet long - the same trees that covered Turtle Island at the time of contact.  In a couple of short centuries the forests have been over-consumed by Empire, and many species are now on the endangered list.  And yet it is comforting to know that the predator and prey relationship still reigns supreme, as evidenced by bones found in the outlier pasture where a hapless cow fell to the coyotes - the same pack I hear howling nearby most nights in the darkest hours.

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Earth Mandala ~ Cow Bones, GMO Wheat and Chicory

I have not yet determined if the GMO “franken-wheat” that is so lovely to look at carries an archetypal plant spirit, but I like to think it's possible. And the purple flowers of the chicory touch my heart, as even the tiniest plant subject to the “necessary” colonial practice of “lawn mowing” will still bloom and flower, in an attempt to re-seed and flourish itself.

What this mandala represents for me, is a poignant reminder of the original elements on Turtle Island that continue to co-exist with the Anglo-Colonial overlay. But the overall system is totally unsustainable, built on planned obsolescence, and has morphed into the life-threatening reality of climate disaster and massive change today. What was the purpose of Settler-Colonialism anyway?  A couple of decades of happiness and wealth?  Living the illusion of a "good life" for a chosen few, before it all collapses into ruin? Just like the poor old barn on the family farm.



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ANCIENT SPIRIT RISING ~
EARTH RITUAL
Earth Art by Pegi Eyers for
Land {Culture} Climate
Hosted by Youth Passageways


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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.   
​Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon


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We Live in a Death Culture

10/19/2019

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PEGI EYERS

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Datlamen B.C. Watershed Clearcut, Photo © Garth Lenz

The wilderness is supposed to be a place of unfathomable mystery, rich with the sacred enigmas of life that are precious and unique to this particular planet. Places of refuge, places of inspiration, places of pristine air, swirling moisture, soil and "natura naturans" - places where our hearts open to the love that dwells in the center of all creation. Places that a million other creatures and species call home, and beings that exist on the periphery of our human senses like earth spirits and mythological figures as old as time.  Offering endless shades of green and the ancient grounding of earth tones, the wilderness is home to a million forms of cohesive and flourishing lifeforms. Grandmother trees impart their wisdom; the animal rustlings in the understory - large and small - model the values of eternal loyalties to kin; the golden spiral is found in timeless patterns such as the tender shoots of a fern; and the birds fly in mummerations so beautiful we are on fire in the presence of so much joy. Nourishment for body and soul, the wilderness holds us all in a green embrace, and is the only place where we are truly human.

And yet instead of cracking open in the presence of so much love, what does the patriarchal-colonial-capitalist apparatus do? Annihilate the wilderness in an act of ecocide so evil, it's a wonder our species can look each other in the eye. And yet here we are - removed from the land and wondering why we are so unhappy and uneasy - as our wilderness soul-home is obliterated for lumber, paper, and livestock forage. To monetize and destroy, one must hate, and the hatred of nature in the colonized psyche is the most lethal wound the world has ever known. RIGHT NOW as we face climate disaster and massive change, we must stand again in the love and worship of the wilderness. Or Earth Community, (including us) will not survive the ecocide the [so-called] "civilized" mind has created.


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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, decolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community. 
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon

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Customary Law

10/4/2019

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PEGI EYERS

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“Decolonization is as much a process as a goal. It requires a profound re-centring of Indigenous worldviews in our movements for political liberation, social transformation, renewed cultural kinships, and the development of an economic system that serves rather than threatens our collective life on this planet.”[1]

Tslagi/Algonquin activist and scholar Robert Lovelace, in conjunction with the Great Lakes Commons Initiative [2] has developed an excellent decolonization framework situated within the landscapes of the Great Lakes, with the mandate to move into an ecological-based society that is in symbiotic interaction with dynamic, living ecosystems. At the beginning of his presentation "The Architecture of a Decolonized Society: Reindigenizing the Self, Community and Environment," [3] Lovelace identifies the embedded racism and unsustainability of corporate capitalism.

Locke, Kant and the other early designers of capitalist theory failed to see any limitations, failed to see the fragility of nature, failed to see that the land and all beings have intrinsic rights, failed to see the consequences of the domestication of labour, and certainly failed to see the side effects of pollution in the economic paradigm they promoted. Our current political boundaries were created to serve a system of colonial settlement, resource extraction and industrial manufacture, and in the decolonization process Lovelace counsels us to pay attention to our local watersheds and biomes above all, and to reconfigure our governance systems to restore ecological balance.

Obviously, we have had enough of capitalism (!) and in these times of challenge and change, we need to study how the language, governance and social relations of Indigenous Knowledge fit perfectly into local ecosystems. Recognizing that a diversity of Indigenous societies are the “norm” within the landscapes of Turtle Island, it is possible to emulate the health and holism of the Indigenous worldview today, and also moving forward into the future. All the aspects of life we need to consider in our rejection of Empire are determined by, or reinforced by, our interaction with the local environment, and the use of energy, food security, diplomacy, trade, defensive boundaries, customary law [4] and the checks and balances of population levels are all physically defined by the existing watersheds and ecotones of our territory.

Adopting an Indigenous worldview means living lighter on the land, and building a society in which the ideal is to “never consume more than can be replenished in a particular ecosystem, and don’t expend more energy than what can be replaced by what is consumed.”[Lovelace]  Setting these physical boundaries in place will naturally give rise to our own unique cultural expressions, rituals, ceremonies, dances, songs, poetry, stories and art, in short, a thriving ecodigenous tradition incorporating elements from our own ancestral traditions as appropriate, and in syncretisation with the local landbase. With our love for the Earth as our common ground anything is possible, and as Robert Lovelace suggests, being Indigenous to place is achieved “when the human and ecosystem activity support and enhance one another.”[Lovelace]



NOTES
[1] Nick Montgomery, “Monstrous Settlers: Zombies, Demons, and Angels,” Cultivating Alternatives to the Dominant Order (blog), 17/01/2013
[2] The Great Lakes Commons Initiative is “an effort to declare and live the Great Lakes as a commons, a protected bioregion and a public trust.” On the Commons www.onthecommons.org
[3] Robert Lovelace (Tslagi/Algonquin), The Architecture of a Decolonized Society: Reindigenizing the Self, Community and Environment, presentation, Kawartha World Issues Centre (KWIC), Trent University, Peterborough, ON, January 18, 2013
[4] Customary Law is the cornerstone of Indigenous culture(s) and human rights, and legal approaches for the protection of Indigenous Knowledge should be grounded in customary laws and practices. Ideally, customary law should exist next to national legal systems, and the recognition of customary law is key to regulating the use and protection of Traditional Knowledge.

RESOURCES
Customary Law and Traditional Knowledge - WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization)
   www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_tk_7.pdf


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ANCIENT SPIRIT RISING
With 410 pages, full colour, extensive notes, live links and exhaustive references, the  Ancient Spirit Rising eBook is “A Compendium for Change!”  

Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon

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Earth Love

6/24/2019

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Pegi Eyers

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“The ecological crisis is deepening our love for the Earth. We are being called to love more fully, and to express our love in more powerful, visionary and effective ways.”[1]  Drew Dellinger
 
“The holiest words I’ve ever read or thought or sung or prayed, were praises, praises for the world. And if I die tomorrow may the last words that I know, be praises, praises for the world”[2]   Jennifer Berezan


In times of massive change, our most important task must be to bond with the land, to revere nature again as our Ancestors did, and to see ourselves as part of this thin and fragile biosphere, Our Earth, the source of all life and our spiritual home. The love of the land has always been central to our most cherished dreams and memories, and if we delve far enough below the surface of the modern mechanistic overlay, we will find that Gaia has been patiently waiting for us to return. As Frances Weller says, “We miss the world and the world misses us.”[3]  By interacting with the Earth through our eco-mind and human senses, our hearts naturally open to a space of unconditional love - full of gratitude for nature’s abundance, and for the gift of life itself.  When we experience the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures that are nature’s enchantment, we naturally realign with the fascination and magic of "naturans” - our luxuriant green world, the kingdom of the plant spirits, and the intrinsic harmony of natural law.
                                                   
Of course, in a humancentric society, there is a huge lack of knowledge about the natural world, and the human/nature separation is painfully extreme, leading to callous attitudes and misguided fears.  “We cannot win the battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature - for we will not fight to save what we do not love.”[4] (Stephen Jay Gould)  Educating ourselves on the landforms, plants, trees, creatures and seasonal patterns in our local ecosystem is a life-long undertaking, and in the meantime, there is so much to love in the natural world.

Graceful horizon lines, stalwart trees, soft breezes shaking the seed pods, animal tracks, sinewy snake tracings, endless variations in leaf and stone, patterns in sprout and decay, feathered shade and bird song all speak to the senses, and we can hear the charm and delight of the creatures endlessly calling their names. Are we listening? What are they telling us? When we hear the voices of Earth Community, we become transfixed by the many distinct expressions of beauty, spirit and practicality, and we also learn that Mother Earth is suffering from our disregard and disrespect. If we hold the ethics of care for all life, the best way to restore balance and peace with the Earth is to feel her, know her, listen to her, be open to her gifts, and ultimately, to love Her. Entering the “timeless time”  of ancestral mind is an excellent way to bond with nature, revere nature, and with love, express the earth-honoring ceremonies that align us with The Sacred that dwells in ourselves, all beings and the natural world.


“The earth is boundless love, a profound source of joy – the earth is humankind’s great educator.”  Daisetz Suzuki
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If we don’t experience nature fully, how are we going to love nature, and if we don’t love nature how are we going to respect and protect Her? Love the land! Go out to the natural places, transmit your love to Mother Earth and all the different spirits, elements and creatures, and practice gentleness with yourself and the land. Both the macrocosm and microcosm of Gaia are sentient in countless unique ways, and Her response to your biophilia, reverence and positive energy may surprise you.  As re-earthing, ecomystic and animist practices confirm, nature spirituality can give rise to ecstatic experiences, and the ability to see into the soul of things that matter.  We are but a humble part of Earth Community, and if human beings started to worship the trees, plants, animals, birds, insects and elements as the “supreme divine beings” of the universe, industrial civilization would probably collapse overnight~! To revere the elements, creatures and landforms of nature as sacred and inviolable divinities might be just the turnaround this monotheistic patriarchal system requires.
 

A wonderful practice to adopt is “Earth Blessing” - the recognition that spirit flows through the land, the elements and all beings, that our entire Earth Community is  sacred,  and that each  moment  is a  gift of vitality and joy. The essence of love is found everywhere in nature, and love is the ultimate vibratory field for the plant kingdom, the kinship of the creatures, the nurturing power of the feminine, and elements such as the water. Blessing and being blessed, expressing our wonder and gratitude for nature and the regenerative life force with song, chant, drumming, prayer and reflection, creates an atmosphere of celebration and love between us and the non-human world. By evoking the spiritual realms, and acknowledging the sacred in ourselves and the land, we are expressing a powerful force of unconditional love that empowers all of our connections in Earth Community.    

“Elders, poets and philosophers in all cultures, including our own, have expressed a similar sense of brotherhood or sisterhood, of mutual compassion and common interest with the rest of the living world - a relationship that can only be described as love.  It's source is ‘fellow-feeling’ - the knowledge that we are, like all other forms of life, Children of the Earth and members of the same family.”[5]   David Suzuki
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Our search for belonging and all things external is the result of our rift from nature. Yet we have the capacity to heal from this disconnect, to “be love” and express a daily appreciation for life, for the food that nourishes us, and for the ecotones where we live. The Earth is part of us, linked to us body and soul, and by spending time in nature we become re-rooted in place, and preserve that timeless bond, or spiritual ecology, at the forefront of our lives. Loving the earth means to cherish wild nature above all, and to honour the sacred elements of earth, water, air and fire. To embrace the Great Heart in nature is to locate an ancestral worldview immersed in the land just waiting to be rekindled, and to be enveloped in The Sacred during the seasonal cycles and daily round of our lives.  Nurturing our own hope and positivity is essential, as we return to right relationship with the earth’s sacred body (of which we are a part).
 
Loving the Earth with a fierce devotion may mean that we view the damage being done to nature as attacks on our own family and kinship group. The despair and rage we feel as witnesses to terracide, animal exploitation and the everyday callous disregard for the land can be channelled into creating awareness, resistance efforts, the earth rights movement, and by rejecting the numbing and destructive values of Empire. “Fighting for our survival in the 21st century is less about defeating the  aggression of  an external  enemy than it is about finding new ways to love the land.”[6] (Taiaiake Alfred) By opening our hearts to the Earth in our thoughts, words, actions and cultural life we find sacred purpose in the co-creation of an earth-honoring society, and restore much-needed balance. Our re-enchantment with the natural world is essential for devoting ourselves to eco-activism, environmental healing, earth restoration and rewilding, and the future rests with us!



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 To the woman in the earth,
 Who is my first and ever beloved.
 Whose smiles and rages and storms and weepings
 And tremblings and lashings and eruptions
 And ripenings and witherings and musings
 Are my life, my terror,
 My thought, my wild joy
 And all of beauty I ever want to know.
 Who takes me into her after every journeying,
 Who is my source, my end, and my obsession.

 Paula Gunn Allen



EARTH LOVE is an excerpt from the award-winning book Ancient Spirit Rising:
Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community
by Pegi Eyers
 

NOTES
[1] Drew Dellinger, “Study Guide,” Occupy Love: Revolution of the Heart, Dir. Velcrow Ripper, Fierce Love Films, 2013  www.occupylove.org
[2] Jennifer Berezan, Praises for the World Song and Chant,  SOCAN/ASCAP, Edge of Wonder Records, 2002   www.edgeofwonder.com
[3] Francis Weller, “Five Gates of Grief,” Robert Bly’s Minnesota Men’s Conference, November 4, 2013 
[4] Stephen Jay Gould, Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010
[5] David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature, Greystone Books, 2007
[6] Taiaiake Alfred, “Opening Words,” Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence and Protection of Indigenous Nations, Leanne Simpson (editor), Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2008



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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon


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The Green Burial Movement: In Conversation With Emma Restall Orr

6/17/2019

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Interview by Pegi Eyers

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Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Reserve ~ photo © Emma Restall Orr

Emma Restall Orr is a spiritual teacher and priestess. As former head of the international Druid Network, Chief of the Order of the Yew, and Joint Chief of the British Druid Order, she was a spokesperson for British Druidry for several decades and appeared in a wide variety of TV programs, including Pagan's Progress, Secrets of the Stones, Lost Civilizations, The Unexplained and The Real Merlin, among others. In 2004, she founded Honouring the Ancient Dead, an advocacy group working for the respectful treatment of ancient human remains. The group also speaks out regarding the Stonehenge Visitor Centre and other displays that include or interpret ancestral human remains. Her current focus is Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground, part of the growing movement towards natural, woodland and green burial grounds in Britain. Her most recent book, The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature was published by Moon Books in 2012. My interview with Emma Restall Orr was conducted via email in 2013.

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Pegi Eyers
You are best known for work in Druidry, but you are now concentrating on another project. How did your work in both Druidry and the repatriation of ancient human remains lead to your interest in the green burial movement, and the opening of Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Preserve?

Emma Restall Orr
Sun Rising is an expression of the practical ethics I feel are fundamental to my spirituality, my religion, to my understanding of both Druidry and animism. It can take a lifetime to grasp and hone our ethics, and to work out just how those ethics do indeed play out in every decision that we make, but if we don't make every effort to walk our talk, we are effectively without ethics: our spiritual beliefs are, literally, valueless.

When my fourteen years of full-time motherhood drew to a close, I needed to forge the next step of my life, and the challenge I set myself was to create a project that was as close to 100% ethical as is possible within the heart of our Western culture. This meant creating a viable business that offered something essential, that left behind more of value than it consumed, that was both environmentally and socially sound. Sun Rising is that project. By providing a simple funeral service, I offer families and individuals an affordable, beautiful and very personal alternative to the funeral industry, which is all too often a profiteering racket without genuine care. In our sixteen acres, we are creating a nature reserve within which people can be buried in peace and serenity, in wildflower meadows or with a tree planted on the gravfe. Such a place of peace allows many the courage to die with grace, releasing themselves into its tranquillity. It is a profoundly healing place.

The landscape here has a great deal of history — Saxon, Roman and older. Being in such serenity, one can feel the ancestors, one can almost hear the songs of our people in the breeze, feeling ourselves walking upon their paths, watching the sun setting just as they did for millennia. It is a place where we can lose the overlays of chronology, and feel utterly connected within the timeless unity of nature in itself.

Of course there are many ways of walking our talk; that a burial ground was my choice is perhaps simply an expression of my Plutonic soul. I feel comfortable amidst trauma where others are not, I am familiar with pain and death. I am utterly incompetent at small talk, but I can sit with the dying for days and can work with individuals shattered by grief. It is an important part of growing into and through our human "self to understand just what, who, how we are as individuals, and to utilize our particular qualities to the best of our abilities. This is how we make our ancestors proud, and offer something to our descendants that is of real value.


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Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Reserve

Pegi Eyers
What a beautiful affirmation of how being connected to nature allows for the overlay of past and present. Sun Rising is unusual in that it is both a burial ground and a nature reserve — how did this green vision come to be?

Emma Restall Orr
Yes, the overlay of past and present, and indeed future potential, is fascinating to me. Searching for communion with deity as and within nature, in part what I am striving to understanding is what nature is in itself, in other words, not through the filters and veils of our human and individual perception. My explorations, in line with various other mystics, philosophers and seekers, is that time is a construct of that perception, and not inherent within nature as we perceive it. A religious practice based on such a belief inspires us to work in ways that integrate past, present and future.

With respect to Sun Rising, there was both spiritual vision and very practical elements that guided us to create a site that was both burial ground and nature reserve. Practically speaking, we believe that in a century, a well-established nature reserve is likely to be an exceedingly precious haven within an overpopulated and overdeveloped landscape. We have hares breeding, lapwings nesting, owls and orchids on our ever- growing species list, which is wonderful to witness.

Spiritually, our vision is entirely commonsensical: nature heals. Whether we are facing our own death, coping with a loved one's immanent dying, stupefied with the shock of their death, or standing in the storms and floodwaters of grief, the song of the skylark lifts something within us. The dance of butterflies over wildflower meadow offers a moment's relief. The breaking open of soft green leaf buds reminds us that life renews itself even after the harshest of winters. I find an immeasurable strength in nature.

Pegi Eyers
Can you speak about the popularity of the green burial movement in the UK and how Sun Rising fits into this movement?

Emma Restall Orr
The green burial movement began in Britain almost twenty years ago, and there are now over fifty dedicated natural burial grounds. A natural burial ground offers a beauty that attunes with folk who tend their gardens and watch the birds, who run in the hills and wander the woodlands. It is also good for people who want the absolute simplicity of a good farewell. At a natural burial ground, you can create an exquisitely beautiful funeral for very little expense, with no funeral directors, no hearse, no pretension, just the family and the bird-song, giving thanks and saying goodbye.


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Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Reserve

Pegi Eyers
Can you describe the natural means and methods that are associated with green burials?

Emma Restall Orr
First of all, we encourage burial, not cremation. Crematoria use massive amounts of fossil fuels every day to incinerate our dead. Whatever your religious tradition, there is no ethical foundation for using those resources so wastefully.

We also encourage the use of ethically-made coffins and shrouds. Probably the best we offer is a woven willow coffin made from English-grown willow. These coffins are not within everyone's price range (around $1000), so we have less expensive alternatives as well. The latter are wonderful for creative families to personalize: grandchildren paint on them, families and friends write messages and prayers all over them.

Of course, we don't require that a coffin at all: the eco-purist can be buried in an organic hemp shroud, sheet or woollen blanket. What we don't allow is chipboard wood-veneer coffins, plastic linings or handles, coffins that can cost many thousands of dollars. Furthermore, we don't permit the burial of embalmed bodies: there is no good reason to embalm a loved one, other than to line the pockets of the funeral directors.

Burial — as opposed to cremation — recaptures the carbon stored in our body. If we bury without embalming in simple, ethically-made coffins, we are making much less of a damaging impact on the earth with our death.

Pegi Eyers
What has been most rewarding for you, as you attend to the crossing-over process?

Emma Restall Orr
Perhaps the most important is the reward of knowing that we have been of service. It is an extraordinary honor to accompany someone through the last period of their living, facilitating the peaceful release that allows for what we might call a "good death." What I have gained for myself is harder to express, but it has something to do with the recognition of mortality, and the need to live consciously, moment-by-moment. I know more than ever that it is not worth arguing or losing relationships with people I value, because sometimes fate does not allow us the time to mend those ruptures. It is worth working hard to solve our inner conflicts and find ways to enjoy life, because there is no point in struggling so that "one day we'll be okay," when that day may never come.


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Sun Rising Coffin Bier

Pegi Eyers
How can we incorporate the awareness of mortality into our spiritual practice?

Emma Restall Orr
It is important to allow death to be a part of our lives. The death of a loved one is far more traumatic in families and communities where death is kept away from the hearth and home and not spoken of at all. Losing someone in such a situation means that those involved suddenly find themselves in wholly unfamiliar territory, and are prone to needing others to step in and take control. As a result, they are likely to feel disempowered by their experience, and grieving process becomes far harder than it need be.

How do we allow death to be a more comfortable part of our lives? Talking about the ancestors is important, beginning with parents or grandparents. Keeping alive the memories and teachings we shared and gained from being a part of their lives allows us to keep open the possibility of talking about their death, how we miss them and grieve for them. Being aware of the ancestors whose lives, whose skills and needs shaped the landscape around us, is another way of remembering the ancestors.

At Samhain in my family, we remember the dead, and also think of our own death. We review our Wills and update information that will aid those who have to tidy up our lives should we die during the coming year. We consciously think about our own dying.

There are many ways that we can more directly engage with the energies of death and release. There are many gods who embody the processes of dying, of death, of existence beyond death, and of the dead. There are named gods from various pantheons and forces and beings whose presence we may feel but whose names we may never know. Working with these gods can be helpful. But to be honest, there are not many who need to have such a close connection with death.

Pegi Eyers
What do you believe about life after death?

Emma Restall Orr
Over a quarter-century, I've been in conversation with people of many different traditions: learning, seeking deity, engaging in ritual, meditation and visioning and working with death. Over that time I have become increasingly uncomfortable with metaphysical dualism: the idea that mind and matter are different sorts of stuff, and that the soul/ spirit resides in the body and that at death that mind (soul) flies free to be elsewhere.

This idea is deeply embedded in modern materialism, in which the soul or mind is dismissed as an illusion, a mere epiphenemenon of the brain. Metaphysical dualism is an extension of the principles of anthropocentric dualism, a system that devalues nonhuman nature.

I do not believe in the perpetual existence of the soul in any way that perceives "soul" as a coherent individual entity that is separable from matter. I see each apparently-separate form as integral to the whole, from the tiniest particles of being to the totality of the universe. All of it is in the perpetual process of cohering into emergence, and dissolving back into formlessness, within the minded wholeness of nature. On that basis, there is a cycling within the vast becoming of nature, but it is not one we can call "reincarnation of the soul."


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Emma Restall Orr

Pegi Eyers
Your recent book The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature is focused on a contemporary resurgence of an animist worldview. How can this transformative perspective be disseminated?

Emma Restall Orr
The animist perceives subjects where the non-animist perceives merely objects. I call myself a radical animist: to me, the very category of "thing" is questionable. Since consumer culture is based upon the exploitation of things, animism poses a serious challenge to it.

If every part of nature is populated by subjects, each of which has a right to thrive no more or less than we ourselves do, how do we survive? Every decision we make must be made with an awareness of the impact we have on those around us, out of respect for the other's right to exist and thrive.

The answer lies in the dissemination of peaceful inspiration. I have found that I am more likely to get someone's attention, and change their attitude towards nature if they can feel my soul as peaceful. Finding that peace — through the dissolution of self in natural integration — is the core of my spiritual practice.
 
Pegi Eyers
Thank you so much Emma, it has been indeed a pleasure. The Ancestors must be very proud of you!


Emma Restall Orr www.emmarestallorr.org
 
Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Reserve, Tysoe U.K. (near Stratford upon Avon)  https://sunrising.co.uk

This interview originally appeared in Witches and Pagans Magazine #28. 

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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
​​Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon


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Letters to the Earth

4/12/2019

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On April 15, 2019 "Letters to the Earth" were read at events around the world. Hosted by Extinction Rebellion and @CultureDeclares, this was an opportunity  to think beyond the human narrative and bear witness to the climate and ecological emergency.  How does this existential threat affect the way we wish to live our lives, and the action that we take? Written to or from the Earth, future or past generations, those who hold positions of power and influence, or to other species, this is my contribution.    #LettersToTheEarth 
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Pegi Eyers 

Dear Mother Earth ~

Humanity is not a monolith, but a very large group of us decided to move away from your embrace long ago. Why any human collective would want to become alienated from our other-than-human relatives in Earth Community, and leave the sacred circle of Indigenous Society is a mystery, and a mistake of the highest order. Without the reciprocity we had always known, the misguided among us broke natural laws and built vast civilizations misusing your elements, minerals, metals, mountains, forests, plants, watersheds and animal labour.

Without any care or respect for the well-being of the natural world, artificial cities were created by domination, greed, waste, ecocide and plunder. And as the insatiability of all this urbanity continued to attack Indigenous people and the land, the agenda of the Colonizer led to more abuse from fantasies like the endless growth paradigm, and dangerous new forms of industry and technology. Today, the dark engines of our destructive civilization have culminated in a worldwide Empire that encircles us like a snare, and continues to shape human reality. And yet, here at the 11th hour, millions of us are waking up to the impossibility of believing in the lies, and we are acknowledging that the systems of capitalism and endless growth are not compatible with the life-generating design and natural systems of the planet.

Dear Mother Earth, please know that many of us have never stopped loving you, being embedded in you, and knowing you as Sacred and the source of all life. We now see that there are countless ways the living magic and primal matrix of the Sacred Earth Mysteries are returning to our lives, in the shape of things, the ancient shadows and the hidden meanings. The eternal Indigenous archetypes that weave natural law into human life continue to arise, and are showing up RIGHT NOW in profound expressions of resilience, resistance, and the return to Earth Community. Beyond the toxicity of the rectangular-steel flatline, concrete-girded industrial world, the truth of the tribal human soul and the touch of the tribal human hand continue to manifest, and guiding forces are already in place for the collective recovery of our Ancient Spirit and eco-selves.

Because of you, Our Beloved Earth, we continue to access a deep well of ancestral knowing, and your Web of Life continues to sustain all beings with the everlasting restoration of healing and new growth. And even though some humans among us accept the illusion of separation from the natural world, please know that the earth-emergent ones are awake and aware, and ready to embrace your harmonic intelligence once again. Dear Earth, as your Great Heart continues to thrive, please do not give up on us.



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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon​

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I Walked and Walked

4/3/2019

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PEGI EYERS

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I walked and walked until I was "me" no longer.

The runoff sluice glistening and tinkling through farmer’s fields
became my right arm,
the sprouts on dead branches my fingers,
the abandoned field – slowly rewilding – my face,
the vultures overhead tracing the cloud lines
– my hair,
the faded straw bale my spine,
the circle in front of the grandfather tree delineated by tractors
   
– my belly,
the mandala of ferns my breasts,
the maple buds flung half-way down 
the clay driveway my
buoyant left leg,
the dancing sky my ice-blue eyes,
the dog on the leash
– my scars from surgeries long gone,
the layers of birdsong my teeth for sweet grinding,
the fallen spruce boughs – still green – my splintered right leg,
the catnip in luscious clusters my toes in the sand,
the blackbird swooping in circles my lungs,
the deer track winding through bracken my left arm,
and the bones of the land, once living flowers and trees
   
– my heart.


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04/27/2020
Otonabee Watershed, Ontario, Canada

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Art © Andreas Lie

Writer and visual artist Pegi Eyers is the author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community. She lives in the countryside on the outskirts of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory (Peterborough, Canada) on a hilltop with views reaching for miles in all directions. 
ASR is Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon ~

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Sacred Tears

4/2/2019

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PEGI EYERS

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The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton is a spectacular novel replete with fairy tales, and in one story by the "Authoress" Eliza Makepeace, the tears of a Princess heals a wounded fawn. "The Princess knelt by the fawn and so great was her distress at witnessing his pain that she began to weep over his body, and the truth and light from her tears caused his wound to heal." (Page 99)

In our contemporary lives, who hasn't cried buckets over the pain or death of a loved one, and wished for healing or revival to occur? What interests me is the stirring of a long-lost ancestral memory, and a deeply-felt potential for magic. Perhaps one of our animist pre-colonial human abilities was to evoke healing or revival with our beautiful and sacred tears.

Does anyone know of any other myths, narratives or fairy tales that focus on this miracle? I would be very interested to hear from other sources. Last summer when my landlord cut down a beautiful young Poplar tree for no reason, within the hour I had also fallen to the ground, and was keening and sobbing at the site of this senseless murder. For me, each tree has a soul and a personality, and is the embodiment of natura - the perennial love and joy of the green world, freely given to all.

I mourn the loss of trees more than any other living being. So imagine my surprise when the next spring multiple shoots had sprung up around the base of the fallen tree. Of course this is a natural growth process that happens all the time, but what if (!!??) my tears, keening and deep grief contributed to the healing and revival of my beautiful kindred spirit the tree? How deep is the magic in our souls?


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With gratitude for these responses on social media ~

Joyce Anna Belle last spring my neighbors cut down a perfectly healthy, probably 75 year-old pine tree just because it "littered their yard with needles." I cried at the pointless loss.....later that evening I wandered over to the side fence and found the remnants of a new bird's nest.....the sobs that welled up came from such a deeply primal place as I carried the nest and small stray bough to place on my altar.....where it sits and is honored still. I completely understand your love of trees - they have shown me so much, and taught me so many nameless things.

Arielle Kaph I had a tree out in my backyard. I’d sit outside often. The tree started singing. Like whale songs but woody. Then the same tree species in the next door neighbour’s backyard started singing too. They’d sing back and forth to each other for about two weeks. Then suddenly there was an enormous crash sound. I ran out - the tree had fallen over taking out fences. It had died. I felt honored to be listening to the tree songs, as what they said I don’t know. I cried, it was such an incredible experience, one I don’t think I will ever experience again. But I will never forget them singing to each other.  Bless.

Nathalie Frickey In "The Miller's Daughter" she weeps over her amputated hands so they are cleaned, and the devil cannot take her. And in a version of Rapunzel she cries over the prince's blind eyes, and they heal. Those are the ones I can remember offhand. Interesting topic!

Pegi Eyers Thank you so much for these gems Nathalie Frickey ~! I have a huge interest in collecting narratives like these from now on.


Leilani Navar Yes, Rapunzel is who came to mind for me too. Your question is a deep one - can our grief heal someone? Bring new life? In the stories, tears restore what was lost, but in our day-to-day life, perhaps its more like this tree, that our tears are supporting the next birth.
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Pegi Eyers is the author of  "Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community," an award-winning book that explores strategies for intercultural competency, healing our relationships with Turtle Island First Nations, uncolonization, recovering an ecocentric worldview, rewilding, creating a sustainable future and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.
Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon

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Taking Issue With "We Are All One"

12/17/2018

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PEGI EYERS


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Since the early beginnings of the hippie era, teachings have appeared from diverse sources (including the prophecy of Indigenous elders), that emphasize the message of a collective movement toward world peace and harmony - a unified consciousness or “One” - and that the qualities of kindness and compassion will be integral to the survival of our species.
 
“As we move into the future we will work, laugh, play, study, vote - to renew democracy and renew the lives of all.  The new mestizaje is the joyous birth of a new humanity. No more barriers, no more racism. The past will not be forgotten but will be blended into the new bodies and cultures that will emerge out of our coming together not in battle or conquest, as in the days of old, but in Love, which is the only force that can unite us without destroying us. That is the way to world peace and harmony, and we struggle, dream and work for that future.”[1]  Virgilio Elizondo
 
The concept of  the "One” can refer to a “unified consciousness” either within or without, and can be examined from different angles. The great mystery traditions and literary canons worldwide confirm that humanity shares knowledge of the “One,” a vibratory field that connects all things, a place of universal love and enlightened rapport with the Divine. Alternatively described as “the cosmic unity of One energy,” “cosmic consciousness,” “the unmanifested absolute,” the Over-soul,  Indra’s Jewels, “the mind of God,” “The Word,” “the music of the spheres,” the Tao, shizen (Japan), the Akashic Records, “the unified field,” “the field of compassion,”  “the universal essence,” “the source,” “pure being,” “the global brain,” “the holographic realm,” “the conscious universe,” “the great chain of being,” Gnosis, Logos, Unio Mystica, uBuntu, “embracing all that is,” “a unity of being that underlies everything,” “the frequency domain,” “the power of creativity that supports all life,” “zero-point field” or the primordial OM, this field of energy is found in the inner worlds of human awareness and our core being, which aligns with the invisible realms and outer worlds of tangible form.

Variations of the “unified consciousness” can be reached by opening the heart, prayer, fasting, visioning, dreaming, drumming, focused intent, magical workings, “in the zone” creative or athletic pursuits, yoga, and meditation practice. I have experienced the “One” many times myself, in dreams, meditation, reverie, focused creativity and times of intense illness.  There is no doubt that this multi-level, multidimensional state exists and is within reach, and has been accessible throughout human existence. Many versions of the indigenous “shamanic journey” enter this layered space for healing, spiritual guidance and problem-solving on behalf of the tribal group.  However, the contemporary use of language is inadequate to describe the “One,” and better lexicon choices may be “matrix” or “web.”  


The term “oneness” is also problematic in that it assumes a universality to human experience, whereas there are utterly endless ways to experience, interpret and assign cultural meaning and cosmologies to the web. “Oneness” also implies that accessing the matrix tends to be a communal activity with a group of people (which can happen) but when fully examined, experiences are often of a solitary nature.  
                                                                                                                  “Spirituality started to emerge from within us, rising up in each person like a great tide of love, inspiration and Oneness with the source of our being, activating  us by  the  millions.  I  felt  the  great  light  that  the mystics speak of radiating outward from within us all. Then in a flash, I felt all people on Earth, and the Earth itself, being healed spontaneously.  In that moment of revelation, I felt waves of unconditional love for the whole planetary body and all Earth-life spreading through millions of us.”[2]  Barbara Marx Hubbard
 
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The contemporary movement toward universal unity, “Oneness,” “The Law of One,” “One Spirit,” “One Mind,” “One Vision,” “One Energy,” “One Blood,” “One People,” “One World,” “One Tribe” or “Unitribe” is emerging from all directions - multifaith theology, perennialism, New Age spirituality, noetic philosophy, alternative lifestyles, pop culture and yes, even Turtle Island Indigenous Knowledge. Manifesting today as the collective impulse toward a global consciousness, the “One” implies an ideal and utopian coming together of humankind in love energy, mutual cooperation, harmony and peace.

Contributing to this ideology is the work of scholar and visionary Joseph Campbell, who as a beloved “change agent” created the opening for many contemporary seekers to embrace the spiritual life and “follow their bliss.” Campbell promoted the idea that the mythology from any cultural tradition could be seen as an aspect of the universal “One Myth” or “monomyth.” Now critiqued as an over-simplification, and the “profoundest flaw in mythological thinking,”[3] this kind of reductionism leads to the breaking down of cultural diversity, and also allows for the normalization of cultural appropriation.  Being immersed in the ethics of  Eurocentric patriarchal scholarship, Joseph Campbell could not see that the specific religious property and/or spiritual practices unique to each cultural group should be preserved, not stripped of ethnographic context. Diversity should be the priority, not universalism, and contrary to the popular “One” meme, “all religions are not different paths up the same mountain – they’re different paths up different mountains.”[4] (John Beckett)
 
From mythology to the study of the human mind, the new philosophy of Noetics, metaphysic theory and contemporary quantum science have all suggested that the interaction of human thought and the connectivity of our belief systems (known as the “noosphere”) can actually impact the biosphere, pointing to a form of shared consciousness. Many visionaries claim that 2012 was the beginning of a new era for humanity, as we evolve into a group consciousness more in alignment with universal law and focused on unconditional love, “which does not judge, exclude nor adhere to one perception.”[5] (Jan Porter)  The ethereal idea of a Golden Age for humanity does seem to have taken root, and many believe that it is possible to emulate the way of the universal mind, the “One” beyond all physical limits. Variations on the “One” meme promote a “new dimensional shift,” an “evolutionary transition,” a “quantum leap forward,” and a “new world dawning” for both humanity and the planet itself. But, as the exalted concept of the “One” continues to find popular usage, we need to bring clarification and examine it from a more grounded perspective.
 
“One Tribe” or the “One” should not mean coming together in a uniform monoculture or some kind of “global order.”  All beings are subject to the laws of nature which stress that species diversity works better  than homogeneity,  and that  diversity  is  essential  to  a  healthy ecosystem. This principle applies to the human community as well (however much we have distanced ourselves from nature), and diversity is the keystone to healthy, thriving human populations. Traditional Indigenous societies were well aware of this natural law and established the clan system, also putting taboos in place to prohibit marriage within one’s extended family. Today, it is extremely important for us to develop an appreciation for cultural diversity, and a tolerance for different peoples, stories and sensibilities. But if in actual fact humanity did come together into “One Tribe,” it would spell the end of us.  As Daniel Quinn says in “The Story of B,” “a multiplicity of tribes and cultural groups in diversity has worked for millions of years and hopefully it will continue for millions more.”[6]


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For further clarification, those in the spiritual community may want to re-examine their over-use of the meme “We Are One,” as it could, on some level, be associated with or linked to secular thinking i.e. the neoliberal globalization that perpetuates the hegemony of Empire, colonization and capitalist control. The current push toward globalization actually promotes inequality between cultures and nation-states by applying unrealistic undemocratic standards of homogenous economic exchange, and denies the importance of locally-rooted culture, which naturally gives rise to a healthy diversity of Indigenous Knowledge and ancestral wisdom systems.
 
It is also troubling when we notice that the neo-liberal concept of “inclusivity” and the contemporary meme of “Oneness” is led by a majority of privileged white people, some very wealthy, suggesting yet another form of white hegemony, or perspectivism. It is mostly the dominant society that promotes universality, and white people are leading the charge, making sense of the interrelations for “One,” interpreting it for everyone else, and moving us all forward into a utopian future.  Also, as Ward Churchill points out, the overuse of the Lakota expression “mitakuye oyasin” (we are all related) and the “One” meme by New Age capitalism allows for cultural appropriation. “We are all related, we are all the same, which means we are entitled to anything of yours we want.”[7]  The beautiful illusions that the “love and light crowd” hold dear come from a place of privilege, which makes it easy to ignore their shared history with the disenfranchaised, and to deny any accountability for their white racism.  In reality, the “One” concept may work for the privileged, but it is hard to imagine marginalized groups having the agency to pursue the interconnectivity of “Oneness” with the oppressor, while engaged in counter-racism work, resistance, and daily survival.  What an insult it must be for people of colour to hear “We Are One” coming from the dominant society that is the source of their unrelenting oppression!
 
“You asserting to me, especially in the face of me critiquing your privilege and racism, that you consider ‘all people equal’ and that you ‘treat all people the same,’ denies my experience, and affirms to me your complicity in white supremacy. We do not have an equal experience of the world, and your supposed equal treatment can never be experienced equally.”[8]  harshbrowns
 
To reinforce the “One” vision it is easy to find obvious similarities and commonalities between cultural groups, but this is hardly the point.  Perhaps it is only people devoid of spirituality that need to find similarities between cultural traditions to buttress their own miniscule understanding and practice of holistic ancestral thinking.  Beyond a basic knowledge of and respect for the sacred keystones in other Indigenous groups, I have noticed that First Nations folks do not indulge in comparative multifaith theory, and it may be a good idea to examine why.  Knowing they already have ancestral alignment with their own traditional knowledge, they embody the tools and treasures of their own specific worldview and Indigenous Knowledge, or are in the process of unpacking them.  Why call yourself a member of the “Rainbow Tribe” when you already belong to a specific First Nation, the Michi Saagiig Nishhaabeg
, for example?  Fortunately, the more appropriate memes of  “Different Yet All One” or “Unity in Diversity” are gaining currency, which is also in accord with the phrase “All Nations, All Faiths, One Prayer.”[9] as put forth by Chief Arvol Looking Horse.
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​Perhaps the utopian dream that the world will someday exist in peace and love is just more magical thinking, as there is another aspect of natural law that avows our entire existence to hinge on the balance of opposing forces. Beyond any cultural understanding, interpretation, worldview or philosophy, natural law states that by default, the introduction of any concept automatically summons its opposite.  As Pagan leader Selena Fox says, “harmony is not the absence of conflict, but the balance of forces.”[10] 

And, despite what New Age philosophy advises, the Americas are not going to mystically “wake up” one fine morning.  There is no “Oneness” in the quotidian world right now and no amount of ethereal prayer, visualization or wishful thinking is going to make it so. The way that the concept of the “One” continues to be touted by the spiritual community as a philosophic solution to every problem of human life allows spiritual seekers to disassociate themselves from any type of meaningful activism, resistance or political activity. “What changes culture is legislation, regardless of how much one pleads for divine intervention.”[11] Derek Beres

Parroting over and over that “We Are All One” allows the “spiritually enlightened” to imagine that this is already the case, and enables the privileged majority to ignore the activism “in the street,” “on the ground” or at the grassroots level that would create the conditions for equality or the metaphysics of  unity to actually unfold.  The most reprehensible aspect of New Age thinking is spiritual bypassing, or the refusal to look at uncomfortable realities (“only focus on the positive – by examining the negative you add more negative!”) which implies a serious level of solipsistic self-deception, and encourages the indulgent behavior of living in a fantasy world.  Overlooking the human rights struggles of our fellow humans is morally wrong, and what spiritual seekers perceive to be a move toward enlightenment in the collectivity of the “One” is actually the position of a coward, who has no interest in confronting injustice, or engaging with the reality of serious social issues beyond their cocoon of privilege.
 
“What I want to criticize are not New Age practices - some of which strike me as possibly beneficial, others as grossly counterfeit - but the way New Age notions discourage engagement with social problems and political realities.”[12] Michael Parenti
 
It can also be argued that members of the Settler Society should clean their own house first, by claiming their ethnic karma and becoming accountable to the oppressed peoples of Turtle Island. Equity comes before equality, and placing ourselves behind First Nations peoples in a subordinate position that propels the most oppressed forward is the only solution. Follow the Turtle! Working toward real change by being responsible for our white privilege and serving to end racism in the real world are the steps we need to take before we begin to think about such abstract and colorblind concepts as “Oneness.”  
 

“There will be no social justice, no anti-racism, no feminist emancipation, no liberation of any kind for anybody on this continent unless aboriginal people win their demand for self-determination.”[13]  Sunera Thobani
 
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​“
The most misused phrases among self-proclaimed ‘allies’ of indigenous peoples are ‘we are all related’, ‘all my relations’, and ‘we are all one.’  Most often it seems to mean ‘we are all the same’ - a mantra used to sidestep the discomfort of discussing colonialism, and the fact that there are those who suffer from colonialism, and those who benefit.”[14]  Barbara Low
 
“I am a little bit tired of all my non-POC friends posting the endless feel-good ‘We Are One’ memes, while they never lift a finger to change the status quo, which they benefit from every single day.  I have a handful of friends who realize the price of their privilege and walk their talk, and are true allies in making change, but literally, it's a handful.  In my experience, the ‘love and light’ brigade tend to be very hyper-focused on their own personal growth while rarely extending that effort to the greater community. Only privileged people can afford to be that way. Some of us have to deal with the reality of ‘what is’ on a daily basis, and no, it's not unicorns and rainbows.”[15] 
Juliana K'abal-Xok

 
“By denying the spiritual and political autonomy of native people, the New Age rainbow people subvert whatever good intentions they may have about multicultural community. What gets created is multicultural white middle- class dominance in yet another form.”[16]   Myke Johnson
 
“I call on white people to admit that the Rainbow Nation is a myth, and until we truly are able to recognize the humanity of all people, we cannot claim to be post-racist.”[17]  Gillian Schutte

"We are many, not just one. And, that's where all our beauty, power and sacredness lies. The same eagerness to conflate all spiritual realities into one all-devouring "God," obliterating any other possible vision in order to place every human under control, is now being adopted at the cultural level. Because our faceless, insipid modern pseudo-culture is in fact unable to acknowledge, respect and treasure differences. Because it's anonymous face just fears to look at the face of anything that is otherness." [
18] Giovanna Rodda

When white people say “unite,” they mean “beneath us.” [19] Kitanya Harrison

As I see it, the true danger in practicing the consciousness of the “One” is to ignore or bypass what is precious and sacred about the specific place and community where we are actually living.  At the core of the Indigenous Knowledge common to all human groups is a revered focus on the environment, plants, creatures, cycles and elements of nature in our homelands, not on gratuitously importing other things that are pleasing. The “One” principle may work on an etheric level, but like angelic visitations, extraterrestrial assistance, starseed messages, galactic guidance, planetary alignments, “ascension” and other lofty New Age beliefs, it reinforces an abstract, vertical spirituality away from and separate from the Earth, instead of promoting a horizontal vision which encompasses the Earth, our one beautiful and precious home.  

According to eco-visionary David Abram, New Age thinking and scientific reductionism share the same misguided principles that separate us from the land. “New Age spiritualities abandon nature entirely, inviting their adherents to focus their intuitions upon non-material energies and disincarnate beings assumed to operate in an a-physical dimension, pulling the strings of our reality and arranging earthly events according to an order that lies elsewhere, behind the scenes.  Commonly reckoned to be at odds with one another, conventional over-reductive science and New Age spiritualities actually fortify one another in their detachment from the Earth, one of them reducing sensible nature to an object with scant room for sentience and creativity, the other projecting all creativity into a supernatural dimension beyond all bodily ken.”[20]
 
In a society detached from nature, popular claims such as “the purpose of human life is the pursuit of happiness” can be seen as more liberal navel-gazing, and I also take issue with the New Age concept of “evolving to a higher state,” as I feel it to be a hubristic and delusional goal focused entirely on humancentric objectives, with an arrogant disregard for the human place in creation. We don't need a new and more enlightened way to inhabit the earth - Indigenous cultures (including our own in Old Europe) existed comfortably and sustainably on the planet for millennia, exactly the way human beings are supposed to be living. We already have an honourable niche within the circle of all life, and it is supercilious to suggest that we transcend it, or place ourselves above or beside the interconnected web. It is our responsibility to use our human intelligence in service to that network, and to embody reverence in our relationships  with  the  more-than-human world.   

It is not about  the narrow confines of the self, our shadowplay with other human beings, our imaginary connection to a “divinity” outside the earth’s sphere, or our incestuous interactions with our own linear concerns, creations or technological wizardry.  Clearly we have lost our respect  for other beings and the natural world, the very elements that give rise to life itself, so how can anyone claim that humanity is “evolving to a higher state?” It seems to me that the moment we step outside of the Sacred Circle, give up our connection to the Earth and our humility in the face of the Great Mystery, and start to dominate and control creation, we immediately lose any potential to actualize a spiritual existence.


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“We have to stop with the idea of creating peace on earth and begin with creating peace with Mother Earth. We have tried the first alternative for thousands of years and look where that has led us - now is the time of the Original Ways, the Native Ways.”[21]  Tiokasin Ghosthorse  
 
As we move away from the alienation that was imposed on us by the scientific paradigm, we become empowered to reconnect to the land and the cycles of life, and to engage in the recovery of our essential eco-self and ancestral knowledge.  An important part of our practice is to reflect on the love and harmony between people, and to honor the unique diversity that is the human experience. All beings are distinctly separate but forever connected in the Circle of Life and Earth Community, and we would do well to embrace our “Unity in Diversity.”  Perhaps there is a groundswell of consciousness that is birthing the next cycle of our collective human journey, but if our communities evolve into tribes, may our spiritual practices reflect our “Oneness” with nature and our beloved landscape, the place we call home.
 
“What many people – even spiritually alert people – seem to miss is that we are all creatures of this earth, this planet, this biosphere.  And there’s no escaping this condition.  Wisdom is epi-phenomenal to life on the Earth - any claim to wisdom that doesn’t make us more cognizant of our relationship to trees, insects, dirt and water, is probably a false claim.  This is not to say that there’s nothing ‘transcendent,’ but that whatever ‘transcends’ our earthly condition must be rooted – like a Great Oak, Ash or Willow Tree – in Air, Fire, Water and Stone.”[22]   Montague Whitsel
​

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NOTES
[1]  Virgilio Elizondo, “The Sacred in the Latino Experience,” Americanos: Latino Life in the United States, by Edward James Olmos, Lea Ybarra, Manuel Monterrey and Carlos Fuentes, Little, Brown and Company, 1999 
[2] Barbara Marx Hubbard claims that the planetary birth epiphany she experienced in 1992 signaled the “next turn on the spiral of evolution, the planetary shift, the birth of a new Earth and a new universal humanity.”  From Birth 2012 and Beyond: Humanity’s Great Shift to the Age of Conscious Evolution, Shift Books, 2012
[3] According to Robert Ellwood “a tendency to think in generic terms of people or races is undoubtedly the profoundest flaw in mythological thinking.” The Politics of Myth: A Study of C.G. Jung, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell, SUNY Press, 1999
[4]  John Beckett, “Unfortunate Effects of Joseph Campbell,” Under the Ancient Oaks: Musings of a Pagan, Druid and Unitarian Universalist (blog), March 2, 2014  (www.patheos.com)   
[5] Personal communication, Rev. Jan Porter, author and Spiritualist Minister, 2011  (www.inspiredsoulworks.com)
[6] Daniel Quinn, The Story of B: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, Bantam, 1997
[7]  Ward Churchill, Indians are Us?  Between the Lines, 1984
[8]  “Good White Person,” harshbrowns, (blog), September 13, 2011
(http://harshbrowns.wordpress.com)
[9] Statement in solidarity with the Idle No More movement by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, NDN News - Daily Headlines in Indian Country, December 31, 2012
[10]  Selena Fox, transcript, Pagan Spirit Gathering Press Conference re: Dianic Rituals and Transgender Inclusion, June 2012.   (www.selenafox.com)
[11] Derek Beres, “Why Marianne Williamson Needs To Face Reality,” Yoga Brains, 2012
[12] Michael Parenti, “The New Age Mythology,” Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America, St. Martin's Press, 1994
[13]  Sunera Thobani, speech at the conference “Women’s Resistance: From Victimization to Criminalization,” 2001, Herizons Magazine, Winter 2002  (www.herizons.ca)
[14]  Barbara Low (Mi'kmaq), Facebook comment, 2013
[15]  Juliana K'abal-Xok (Mayan), Facebook comment, 2013
[16]  Myke Johnson, “Wanting to be Indian: When Spiritual Searching Turns into Cultural Theft,” Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory and Practice, 2011  (https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com)
[17]  Gillian Schutte, “Dear White People,” Thought Leader, Mail & Guardian Online Network, 2013.  (www.thoughtleader.co.za)
[18]  Giovanna Rodda, Facebook comment, 2020

[19]  Kitanya Harrison,"When Feminism Dovetails with White Supremacy: Are We Truly Equal if there is a Pecking Order of Privilege?" ZORA on Medium, October 9, 2018  (https://bit.ly/2UUP3SJ)
[20]  David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, Vintage Books, 2011 
[21] Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Cheyenne River, Itazipco/Mnicoujou and Oglala Lakota) Facebook comment, January 2013
[22] Montague Whitsel, Wellsprings of the Deer: A Contemporary Celtic Spirituality, 1stBooks, 2002



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Pegi Eyers is the author of  Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community, an award-winning book that explores strategies for  social justice, uncolonization, ethnocultural identity, building land-emergent community & resilience in times of massive change.  
​Available from Stone Circle Press or Amazon
 



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    ~ BLOG ~
    Ancient
    Spirit
    ​Rising

    Pegi Eyers

    Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community


    ஜ
    The recovery of our ancestral roots, and the promotion of social justice & environmental activism as interwoven with our spiritual life. Engaging with the interface between Turtle Island First Nations and the Settler Society, rejecting Empire and embodying the paradigm shift to ecocentric society.





    Ancient Spirit Rising
    is the recipient of a
    2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award
    in the Current Events/ Social Change category!
     

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    ARCHIVES

    Oceans Divide Us

    ​Ancestral Motherline ~ Guided Meditation


    ​The Life Force: Restoring Sacred Myth
    ​

    Eco-Soul

    Shifting Borderlands of Tame and Wild

    ​Earth First 

    The World of Small

    Resilience, Renewal and Love

    European Roots ~ A Call for Leadership

    Settler Re-landing: Reclaiming Patterns of Connection

    Waeccan Means to "Wake Up"

    Initiation Now: Rethinking the World as Alive

    Dangerous Women

    Ancient Covenant

    "Earthing" in the Garden

    The Promise of Ecopsychology

    Kinomagewapkong ~ The Teaching Rocks

    The Ecomystic Experience

    Controversies in the Ancestral Arts

    The Sacred Balance

    Uncolonizing the “Bounty of the Land” Narratives

    We Live in a Death Culture

    Customary Law

    Earth Love


    The Green Burial Movement: In Conversation With Emma Restall Orr

    Letters to the Earth

    I Walked and Walked

    Sacred Tears

    Taking Issue With "We Are All One"

    Dear Greenmantle ~ Review Rebuttal

    Finding Our Long-Lost Ancestral Traditions

    Ancestor Quilt

    Our Struggles Are Not the Same

    Ally Mistakes - Oops ~!

    Love from the Earth

    The Problem with Far-Away Ecotherapy and Nature Connection Retreats

    Earth-Emergent in the City

    Voices of Earth ~ Archaic Whispers

    Good Allies 
     

    Song of the Ancestors

    Decolonization ~ Meaning What Exactly?

    Animism Unbound

    More Settler-Colonialism: Boomers and the Rez (True Story)

    What is Cultural Appropriation?

    The Story Behind the Story

    Cultural Appropriation in Goddess Spirituality and Matriarchal Studies

    Climate Disaster & Massive Change 

    We Are the Ancestors of the Future

    Earth Mother Magic

    True Reconciliation Requires Restitution 

    Are White People Indigenous?

    Full Disclosure/My Positionality on New Age!

    Allyship and Solidarity with First Nations

    First Nations on Ancestral Connection

    Pagan Values - "Know Thyself" 

    Welcome to Stone Circle Press!

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