 Hello everybody and welcome to another Deep Adaptation Forum Q&A. I'm Jim Bendell and joining me for our last Q&A of the year is Charles Eisenstein. So Charles is the author of a number of books, books I have actually read, The Ascent of Humanity and also Sacred Economics and The More Beautiful World, Our Hearts Now Is Possible and his new book, Climate A New Story, which is what is why we're going to be talking today. So what we're going to do is I'm going to chat to Charles for about 20 minutes and then throw it open to yourselves to complete an hour of Q&A with Charles. So I see lots of lots of faces, some familiar, some new. I'm really looking forward to this session. So Charles, hello and thank you for joining us. Hey Jim, good to be talking to you again. Yeah, it's good to see you. It's been, it's been a while. I think maybe Barcelona was the last time we met at one of your events there and we also had a lunch once before Trump was elected and you were telling me, yeah, it fits, it fits. It's going to get elected. And so here we are. We've just had an election in the UK, Boris Johnson being given a huge majority and do you think it also fits in terms of what's going on in the world? As the years go on, I know less and less. Right. I've actually been on a news fast for the last week. So I like the idea. I got to tell you the recent election in the UK is enough for me to think I need an immediate news fast. So yeah, I'm with you with that. So yeah, it's good because then, yeah, it's good to step back from the noise of what's happening and so should we dive in with questions more about climate because that's what I've been working on myself as well for more or less the last two years. Yeah. I have a feeling it's somehow going to circle back to Boris Johnson, but let's start with climate. Okay, let's see, let's see. So yeah, it's interesting that I mean, sustainability and the environmental crisis has always been something that I've been working on and that you've been working on and that when you came to the festival in the UK that I ran, it was also very much there. But the actually focusing on climate itself is and climate change and how that is what's happening and how that's part of a broader ecological crisis. This is something that I think neither you or I was explicitly talking about and we both have now, myself with deep adaptation since July 2018 and yourself with your new book. I was wondering if you could say, just to make sure everyone's on the same page here and understanding your work, say just very succinctly what your new story is on climate, what is the nature of our predicament beyond just looking at carbon emissions? Yeah. Okay, so the basic thesis of my book or at least the launching of it, the launch point of it, is what I call the living earth paradigm that says this planet is alive, its organs are things like soil, wetlands, forests, elephants, whales, sea turtles, plankton, insects and every ecosystem and every species on earth. Therefore, if we want and life creates the conditions for life to thrive, every species contributes to that. Therefore, when we destroy and degrade the ecosystems, when we eliminate apex predators, when we develop land, when we dam up rivers, when we degrade topsoil through industrial agriculture, when we clear cut forests, etc, etc, etc, we are destroying the basis of life. And if we keep doing that, the planet will die of organ failure. A lot of what we blame and so this is like, this is basically the cause of climate derangement is everything. It's not just one thing and that is really uncomfortable. So we take this, this deep rejection and protest against everything and we channel it on to something that fits into our customary solution templates, which would mean find one thing that's causing all of the problems and go to war against this one thing. In that mentality, we tend to blame a lot of things on greenhouse gases that I believe are actually being caused by organ degradation. So like flood drought cycles, for example, even when we destroy topsoil, it can no longer absorb the water. We get runoff, we get flooding and then there's no groundwater to be transpired by the trees to extend the rainy season to transport heat from the surface to the atmosphere, etc, etc. I'm not going to go into all the science here, but or not now. So basically, I think that what I call carbon fundamentalism or carbon accountancy, it's like almost an outlet for a consternation and a bewilderment and a helplessness and a rage and a despair that we then, oh, okay, here's the problem and here's the solution. But, you know, I think that even if we cut emissions to zero overnight, if we continue to strip mine and clear cut and exterminate and poison with pesticides and chemicals, etc, etc, and electromagnetic pollution and toxic waste and pharmaceutical residue and so on, the planet is still going to die a death of organ failure. And by the same token on the hopeful side, if we can heal, protect and heal and restore these damaged organs, then the planet will be resilient. And in fact, miracles of healing are possible when we align ourselves with the healing forces of nature and the basic tendency of nature toward wholeness, which is what we've been fighting for thousands of years. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, what I really appreciated about your perspective is that instinct for holism, instinct for systems thinking, instinct for looking at interconnectedness, and so that we don't just look at climate in terms of the air or, okay, we'll take into account the oceans as well. You actually see the whole biosphere as interconnected and being fully conscious of that. And then also how we have been living a story of separation, which helps us to sort of somehow legitimize or not even think about the way we treat each other and the planet, which, and if that doesn't shift, then we'll keep causing harm. So I really appreciated that holistic perspective, which therefore invites us out of the idea that, oh, climate change is just some annoying little side effect that we have to fix through technologies and through whatever, you know, some policies to reduce carbon emissions. So I've really appreciated that. What do you think are the risks or the dangers of when people are waking up to how scary climate change is right now, more so than ever before, but without really the mainstream discourse, mainstream media, or mainstream climate scientists really inviting the kind of holistic perspective that you've shared? What are the dangers of that? Thank you for that softball question. I think that the danger is that we jump into solutions out of a kind of an urgency and out of a partial understanding that actually make the situation worse. For example, biofuels. Today I'm going to talk to a Romanian activist who's pretty upset about the convoys of logging trucks taking Europe's last old growth forest to the woodchipping plant to be burned in converted coal plants that then get carbon credits for sustainable energy. So like biofuels taking over enormous tracts of land in Africa, Asia, and South America to convert the world into fuel or big hydro projects that are also draining like the last expanse of wetlands in Africa in the inner Niger delta to create so-called carbon neutral electricity or even like solar panels and electric vehicles and stuff. I was just reading about a silver mine in Mexico that covers 100 square kilometers that has just eaten into the mountains destroyed pretty much every living thing on those 100 square kilometers has a like several square kilometer waste pond surrounded by a wall 50 stories high to contain all of the toxic waste that then of course sinks into the groundwater table and the article I read said in order to produce enough silver to meet all of to convert fully to you know all fossil fuels we need 130 mines like that just for silver not to mention cobalt not to mention copper you know molybdenum etc. So that's a big challenge to the the eco-modern idea of progress and our ability to control nature in a way that means that we can fix this that's a huge mathematical challenge to that right and even if we could do it is that what we want to find some way to continue civilization as we have known it isn't our protest about that like even if we could continue powering it do we want to or or like this part of me that that kind of wants climate change to happen to rescue us to say now we have to change all the things that I've wanted to change which is our entire civilization now now maybe we have to change them I think that this is actually a false hope that we're going to be forced to change by survival because I think that the initiation that we're being offered is outside of valuing the earth for our own survival or our own well-being but to relate to it as a sacred being in and of itself. Interesting because a lot of people I think perhaps the the big shift in western understanding of climate change in the last couple of years is is that sense of personal vulnerability we've for those of us who've paid attention know that tens of millions even hundreds of millions of people are being very badly affected by disasters whether it's drought whether it's famine which are made worse by extreme weather and climate change but but they haven't themselves felt vulnerable that they didn't think that this would actually be threatening the food on their own table within the coming decade or at least within the coming few decades so I am wondering how that growing awareness is still marginal it's still quite niche but it's being it's spreading and also you know wildfires in in california and in australia is really ruining people's lives really bringing that sense close to home in the west that this is dangerous to us us being people in the west yeah I was interested in how you move from that if you can to this um place of reverence for nature this re-sacralization of nature and this wonder of being alive and of life and this desire to serve life and commune with life is it possible I think it's possible only by connecting people to experiences of beauty and loss because that's when opens the doorway back to love I was remembering recently one of the formative experiences I had in becoming an environmentalist or an earth lover I don't know what word I'm allowed to use now but I was with my family on a vacation to Yellowstone Park and my father and I hiked you know deep into the wilderness there and we came upon this and we came upon this pristine lake and we're a big pond and there were like three or four young men who there were these otters in the pond in the lake beautiful these beautiful otters and the three and four young men were amusing themselves by taking stones and hurling them into the lake to try to hit the otters and like my father couldn't these are big guys you know he wasn't gonna intervene and like the sense of helplessness and despair it wasn't because I made some self-interested calculation that this was somehow gonna harm me it was a feeling of of of alienation from the human species and and this anger and grief that had no easy target I mean I could hate these young men but eventually like you know why are they doing it you know what's what's what has cut us so cut us off from empathy that we can treat the world as a pile of as a play thing or a spectacle or a pile of instrumental things that's the origin of the problem and I don't think that more cleverly deploying what we see as natural resources is going to get anywhere near the root of the problem so I think that there's an imperative to connect people with love of earth and not to try to scare them into love because that's not how I came by it and I even though a lot of people say well you know I became concerned about climate change because of these threats to my own well-being I'm not sure if that's the truth maybe for some people it is but lived experience tells us as a collective that our well-being is fine that there's plenty of food that we can that technology can you know even if we ruin the soil we can grow it in hydroponics factories I met this guy who has devised ways to grow oysters that never have to be in the ocean like cathol's for oysters then there's the the meat cells that are grown in vats you know artificial meat like what if we continue down this path yeah I I think I was scared into love I think that my delving into the climate science in 2018 and having this sense of shock just at how bad this is how soon this is and how it's quite likely to affect those I love and know and the places I know and love and and me um I I think I did I did that that did sort of lead to a despair which meant that the only way out of it was was was was with love with openness with vulnerability um and quite a lot of people I've met who we then became involved in extinction rebellion also it's it's that the the fear and the grief transforming them through a period of despair but that still is a few people a few people who've managed to have the time to go into this and I do wonder what whether that's something that what's going to happen at a large scale the general public's waking up to vulnerability for themselves and their own societies and for me that's a that's an open question and I'm quite worried about it and that's quite quite a lot of the work I've been doing is sort of how can we help people to to to to see the possible worst but in a way that then doesn't lead to um uh the kind of response which is anger and blame which might make things worse and I was wondering about that with you because there are some angry earth lovers out there um Gretto is amazing but she also is very clear when she says to politicians I will not forgive you and I know from reading your book you're you're inviting us through this holistic perspective to it also sounds quite Taoist you know and and Buddhist in that as well or at least has some resonance with that that um well if I was had their life experience I might make the same decisions and so blame is is blame doesn't really take us anywhere as well I was wondering what your thoughts are on the rise of activism how it's fueled by anger how people do feel really angry at say politicians in COP 25 in Madrid right now not yeah they're seeing how bad things are and they're they're not seeming to manage to make a difference that would matter so there is that frustration and anger and blame and finger pointing I was wondering what you when you see that hear that from people how do you respond I think it's I think it's based on a misdiagnosis of the problem we we live in in various cultural stories that can hijack primal emotions like so a story hijacks grief and diverts it on to despair and paralysis a story hijacks anger and diverts it on to hatred and the story basically says that this is happening because of these bad people and therefore they present presents a false target and a false solution blueprint that if we could only tear down take down or or dominate those bad people and and put ourselves in their position then we would be able to make a better world but if you look at what happens if if a politician even does something as tepid as to increase fuel prices the result is instant riots and and civil unrest because people in society in in many places are just on the edge and they can't even they can't live their lives and pay more for fuel like the system I see the leaders as puppets and functionaries of a system and if you installed yourself in their position you might find that you can't actually do much different than they do not that there is nothing that a leader can do or nothing that anybody can do but I've come to understand it as as what's useful is to invite people to the edge of their courage what's the natural next step okay and perhaps anything that we could demand is not near enough which means that we don't actually know how to solve this problem not knowing how to solve the problem and or I would say knowing that we don't know how to solve the problem is a huge improvement over thinking that we know how to solve the problem by leveling our psychological force on the leaders I will never forgive you shame on you how could you yeah that's a false solution that pretends that they have a power that they do not have so it's it's politically futile I think okay so you would you would invite more creative thinking in say the extinction rebellion movement at the moment rather than going back with demands to government keep those but also think about something else we've seen this story before you you make demands that somebody cannot fulfill that automatically turns them into an adversary and then you end up you know pretty soon like the the this self-righteousness is justified by some act of police brutality and then the protests become about the protests and not about the issue anymore becomes about the the government response to it and are we justified and then the black block comes in and and it gets you know there's some segment of it that gets violent and then eventually the public is alienated from the movement this is what happened this has happened many many times and I don't I don't want to see this this profound energy of protest and of alienation from the the the way that the world has been to be diverted onto that on that one then what I want to ask because I know from your book and from our come from your previous work and our previous conversations that you have really sunk into this about wow well given that so many things don't work and we don't really know how to address a the myriad problems of which climate is one that come from humanity living in an age of separation so what will work or what might work now I know you have some ideas on that and yeah and you write about it on your blog I wonder if you could say what your what you think does or might work and also anything about your confidence on that or not whether it's more like you're sensing into it or whether you actually feel absolutely this is certain that this way that you believe in will work okay there's maybe I'll talk to two two different levels of it on one level it's to change the story the story of separation the story of the separate individual the story of good versus evil the story of human versus nature the story that holds full beingness in human beings alone and says that the world is just this complicated object but to move into a story of interbeing a story that understands earth as alive and even conscious and sacred that understands sacredness to be a property of matter not infused from the outside by spirit and not absent altogether not a mere human projection like to really come back to the world as a result of that this you know this sounds philosophical but it translates into very practical a very practical reordering of priorities for the environmental movement because when we understand this is what I referred to at the beginning earth as a living being then the most important thing becomes and for me this is the top priority I kind of ordered into four priorities so the top priority from this paradigm is to protect any remaining pristine ecosystems especially the amazon and the Congo rainforest which is being destroyed even faster than the amazon and any pristine ecosystem on earth because these are where Gaia's memory of health is still intact and if they can be preserved there will always be hope health can radiate back out from these refugia so and you know you can also look at that from a carbon perspective in terms of sequestration and so forth I think a more valuable perspective is the water perspective how the the big rainforests anchor the global water cycle and bring rain into the yeah yeah so so changing the story will also yeah help refocus priorities right so again that relates to what you're talking about the all the the sort of the organ failure of the planet so you but um but I'm also interested in in then when you're talking to a bunch of activists then what what is that or all people just ordinary people who want to align their lives with their values and their concern for the environment including how appalling climate change now looks what what's the I mean if I'm talking to people if they're in a if they're in like a policy conversation as in what should we do as a collective um that's a different conversation than what should I do personally so right now I'm kind of addressing the what should we do and therefore maybe if I'm politically active what should I do as a political citizen and so the those are the the four priorities are from that perspective and then I could also go into uh a more personal level for people who are not drawn to political action so do you do you want me to do the other three priorities or well I'm interested in particular in the in in some of your writings you talk about how um loving actions that have nothing obviously to do with the environment caring for a neighbor or a sick loved one uh I don't know if you say definitely or may have an impact uh on environmental conservation and that's that's uh for many people a real stretch of this idea of of non-separation and and and I was thinking if you could say that there's something about that and and how that and how that also maybe how that's landing with people and uh yeah yeah as a philosophy yeah so one way to approach that is to ask where where does our ecocidal civilization draw its energy from like what what why are we destroying all life on earth why what why are we we um focused on GDP and money and domination like where is this coming from why do people over consume what what's powering this is it that we're just bad or is it that there isn't there are deep unmet needs that are built into our society that then reach for the substitutes that are available through consumption and through domination like what's the what's the root cause of our entire way of life and I think that it is in part the story of who we are and the trauma that we have endured um living in the systems built on that story and therefore anything that we do that dissolves the story of separation anything that we do that meets the unmet needs for belonging for community for connection for meaning um anything that we do to meet these needs is going to recast our political vision it's going to um soften the craving for the substitutes for these needs if you have a deep experience of belonging and connection and intimacy you don't want to go shopping anymore you don't want a big house and a big car uh and and you don't need to go on exotic vacations across the world to um to to compensate for what's missing so we can see our world destroying ways as symptoms and then look for the causes and meet the causes and then like on an intuitive level I think that that we understand that for example a society that locks up its most vulnerable members exploits its most vulnerable members that uh dehumanizes vast swaths of the population will necessarily be a society that mistreats and denies and dehumanizes and and dismisses and exploits the most vulnerable places on earth and the most vulnerable beings on earth it's all part of the same matrix so if all the people that who hear of your work uh and read your book and so on um have the loving their own inner loving nature affirmed through hearing that and try to be more conscious about showing up in the world in every moment in with an open heart and and and not living that story of separation um how can that ripple either physically or metaphysically at sufficient scale and pace to um address our climate emergency or address the trashing of the Congo and the Amazon right now really and what if it can't does that matter I like to say that okay there's a lot of questions there um I don't know how it's going to happen I don't know how somebody's lonely work with homeless people or with prisoners or with dying people is going to change humanity's relationship to the biosphere quickly enough to avert further catastrophe I like to say that it's already too late and it's never too late both are true um I mean there's you know we live JB McKinnon the natural says we live in a 10% world less than 10% of the whales 10% of the fish 1% of the virgin forests in North America etc like it's already too late it's been a lot of extinction already and a lot of cultural extinction and a lot of human suffering and I think that we have a tendency to take the energy of urgency which is a yearning to align ourselves with our purpose on earth and translate that into hurry there's an appeal to you know 12 years or four years or whatever Guy McPherson saying now however many years till human extinction and we have to do something right now I have become skeptical of those of those narratives of especially runaway global warming narratives you know powered by methane feedback loops and all that kind of stuff I'm not ignorant of of those um paradigms but I've been around and following this issue since the 1980s I became aware of climate change in the mid-80s actually before I mean you know I was I was tuned into it a long time and and you know I remember the the predictions of you know Manhattan being under 50 feet of water you know by 2020 I remember you know predictions of snow-free winters you know an ice-free Arctic by 2013 etc etc I think that the I'm hesitant to invest too much trust into those scientific predictions and do you okay I mean there's just a lot of directions but I want to hold to the urgency that for me is present whether or not those predictions are true hmm it doesn't my my urgency does not depend on global warming even happening like I in fact I think we could I mean I don't know because I've I read both sides of the science and I've become adept at arguing both sides to the satisfaction of their partisans but I don't know like maybe the skeptics are right maybe the sun has a big impact maybe we're facing another ice age right I don't so you you believe there's a way of living as a way of letting go stories of separation there's a way of being fully connected with life in its fullness that that can be lived right now and if you were going to die tomorrow or die in 30 years and if the world was going to continue or blow up tomorrow that's true and real for you for you that the urgency is in fact rather than any predictions yes here's here's the thing here's the thing anything that we do in service to life is a prayer for life it's an alignment to a world that's becoming more and more alive anything that we do in service to death anything we do from a perception of the world as a thing is an imitation for the world to move more and more to death and I believe that these prayers are heard that there's a morphic field that ripples out from any choice that we make that operates in mysterious ways yeah and no act is wasted and this is we don't know whether it's it with the morphic field I mean it might it might not be wasted but it might not save this civilization or even might not save homo sapiens but it might constitute a ripple towards a magical loving connection wherever whenever I mean because when you're talking at that level it's it's but but I do think that civilization is going through a an initiation part of the and the initiation is into from childhood where we just play around with our gifts and take from the parent into adulthood where we enter a reciprocal relationship with the lover and we use our gifts for their true purpose which is service to life which is what all other species on earth do and all ecosystems do in addition to growing all trees also positively impact the forest the the fungi the bacteria all of them give a gift in addition to just surviving humanity is supposed to do that too if we are to become a mature species we we we enter the universal principle of life is in service to life does anyone ever said that maybe that is to assume progress and progress is part of the age of separation because it's moving into a linear concept of of of humanity and actually maybe you know civilization collapsing and and it and us passing away is is a possibility why do we need to think that there will be a something greater that humans are part of something why why do we need that sense of always going forward it's a very different conception of progress than we're used to progress has meant progress in the domination of all others but why need progress at all because why do we need to believe that there's a why can't why can't there be just amazing beauty and love amongst us all because the world's going to shit and then we all die out and that is totally divine and sacred as a process why do we need progress what why does that could happen yeah i'm just observing patterns patterns of coming of age patterns of an ecosystem reaching maturity and i'm seeing that humanity as a collective as a civilization has not reached its adulthood so we might fail to make it through this initiation in traditional cultures sometimes a young man would not pass his initiation as in the physical he might have died in the initiation and that would not be considered a failure if this crisis brings us to uh to love to interconnection to the elevation of beauty to compassion and we perish that's okay but i think that we have a lot of patterns of that with people facing terminal illness and yes having the most amazing loving experiences with with their family as as they face death but i also know that that what we believe to be possible is a very tiny uh narrow sector of what is actually possible and our understanding of possibility is based on what is fundamentally a newtonian story and a story of separation about how the world works but i have seen and heard first hand and many second hand and third hand stories of for example uh the woman in hong kong who was in organ failure stage four cancer going into a coma had a spiritual experience and was up from her bed three days later in a totally unexplainable healing if that can happen to a human body what's possible for the body politic what's possible for the ecological body and how does that how how do those things happen and how do we enter the reality in which those things happen part of the entrance into the reality is through our choices that declare who we are and what reality shall be therefore the the seemingly invisible choices are prayers that have unsuspected to power yes thank you well that's uh i thank also everyone who's been uh holding on with questions for charles i've kind of hogged uh more about that normally it was me it was me i wanted to have more time with you than i normally have with our guests so um i'm gonna hand over to uh people asking questions now we have one from Karen if you could say where any words you are and put your video on anyone who's asking a question we need you to have your video on otherwise things go blank on the video um Karen are you there what and uh Matthew why have we got Karen i've only got Karen showing up without any noise or anything okay let's move on then um instead uh harris okay have you got a question now please have your video and your audio one um yeah can you hear me yes very good yes okay um i'll try to make it brief and stick to the original question is it's fine and good and talk in framing the problem as a spiritual one but it's worth remembering that if we're going to take it to the spiritual dash philosophical it's taking us 2 000 years of christianity um 500 300 years of capitalism and 500 years of western science and we're at the situation where we are so um what is what are those prospects of changing this really quickly in less than you know three figures why not frame it as a social problem and that takes us back to them like in terms of democracy and protests isn't that more feasible that's a question yeah the problem is that our social systems our political institutions our economic institutions i mean that's something we haven't even talked about those are built on the the philosophical and spiritual story of separation and they reinforce the story of separation the story creates the system and the system creates the story so they're together they are a gestalt you know they're like a being that i believe is reaching it's reaching a it's senesce reaching its old age and becoming very fragile so the initiation i'm speaking of part of that is a process of breakdown a breakdown in our sense making the way that we make meaning about the world you know in the story and also a breakdown in the systems built atop that story every time that there is a um crisis like where the breakdown is starting to happen we have a choice do we accept this initiation do we let go of it or do we hold on to it a bit tighter and try to keep the thing going we will receive a series of invitations of this kind in the form of worsening crises so for me it is actually a political act to propagate a new story and to propagate the kinds of experiences that co-resonate with that story so that we no longer are so afraid of stepping into the new so that we're no longer so so desperate to cling on to what's familiar because we have another story about who we are and what the world could be and we have experiences that come from that story that tell us it's okay life could be even better we don't have to hold on anymore thank you so there's you know yeah thank you we have a question also from elizabeth about uh rituals of healing um matthew can you select uh elizabeth from matthew has to look through all the list and and turn on elizabeth's video and there we go elizabeth tangels hi oh thank you i live in wales west wales st david west wales so um we have a i'm thinking of a kind of recipe we have um this is a site of pilgrimage um it is also we have an abundance of holy wells here and i'm really thinking about how to create rituals including those that recipe um so we'll actually heal and make a difference to the abundance of the you know to encourage the abundance of the planet and to help people make changes as well so um yes i'm planning one of these um and uh so i'm kind of looking for ideas really uh of of how to well what to do i'd love to know your responses very big um ask yeah in my book i described a encounter i had with some dogon this ancient wisdom lineage from africa molly and uh i asked them about climate change and they said ha ha ha you westerners don't understand climate change at all you think that the cause is greenhouse gases but actually the cause is a disruption in the ceremonial covenant between humans and the rest of life and the planet and every time that you dig up artifacts that were put with the appropriate ceremonies at special places on the earth and move them to museums in new york and london you are causing untold disruption and when you cease doing the ceremonies and the places they are meant to be done you are causing confusion in the earth and no longer knows how to take care of us so you got to start you got to put the artifacts back and start doing ceremonies again this is difficult to translate into the ipcc report this there's a gulf between these two vast the different ways of understanding the earth but there's also a unifying point which is that whether you're talking about permaculture and regenerative agriculture which is the topic that jem wouldn't let me get into um but that was the number two priority regeneration or you're talking about earth shrines and ceremony they both come from a common source which is to see the earth as a being and to ask who are you what is your dream what do you want what's my right interaction with you to see them as a being and then to to to from that question like where do you think that indigenous rituals came from they came from a relationship they arise from an asking they don't say we made up our rituals they say we received our rituals we received our myths we received our knowledge to receive it you have to be in relationship to that which can give it and so maybe if you want to restore a sacred relationship to the land the first thing to do is simply to observe and to listen and not to to exclude those rituals that are part of modern technology like one of the rituals might be a compost heap or you know something that that the rational mind could accept and some of those rituals might be totally you know something that came to you in a dream and you have no idea why you should build your grape arbor with say sacred geometric proportions and why it needs to have crystals here here and here and why you have to do it on the full moon like you might have your your listening and observation might give you information that doesn't fit into a what we would call a rational framework but not to exclude those things either it's all coming from what what do you need how can I contribute to your livingness to your beauty land place water how can I contribute and and accepting all of the information that resonates with that intention that's where ceremony and shrine and and prayer comes from thank you a question now from Eric Garza please say where you are in the world Matthew you need to switch on find and switch on Eric yeah uh okay yeah Eric I'm in Burlington Vermont I think I've had Charles on my podcast a couple years ago um the question I was going to ask is well first of all grateful that you're kind of looking at this from a spiritual perspective and I've enjoyed reading a lot of your books what role do you think you know ancient trauma plays in maybe creating and perpetuating the story of separation um yeah I mean we all probably at this point understand how trauma is passed down genetically um through the generations and passed down culturally too those who are traumatized end up becoming perpetrators themselves and how the experience of trauma contributes and and justifies the story of separation it tells us yeah the world is a hostile place yeah we are amongst competitors who don't care about ourselves yeah there's no no trust there's no empathy so so they they are a result and a cause of the story of separation and they also impact the land where they happen they they cause great pain to the earth especially mass trauma concentration camps and sites of massacres and things like that um and that just I guess I I say that to validate all of our healing endeavors even when they don't seem to impact carbon dioxide levels in any measurable way in any way that you could trace a cause of link they're part of the uh they're part of the prayer of healing they're part of the return the reunion yeah I'm not sure I'm not yeah okay yeah I was wondering on that Charles about how does one a so I love this notion of actions as prayer uh and and just how we are in in our daily lives rather than just sitting and praying um but I also am aware of some philosophies of prayer where just prayers of petition like please god fix x or please divine mysterious force I don't understand fix y or heal my friend those are those are not in necessarily in surrender to the the mysterious unity and there's a sort of a way of saying I surrender to the mysterious unity and this is how I feel and this is what I wish and if it is to be please may it be that sort of balance between surrender and request I want to just with that in mind how how does one live a prayer of of of serving serving life rather than death rather than death in in one's actions and choices okay if you really mean what you say when you pray if it is meant to be that there be healing then when the moment comes for you to contribute to that if you meant it then you will take that opportunity so you could look at prayers of petition actually as prayers of alignment and preparation as a declaration to unify yourself with the world that you are praying for when and maybe if you pray for you know a certain person's healing maybe you will have an opportunity like if you prayed for that and then the next day they call and say hey I really need you know some some chicken broth can you come and bring it over you say no no no I already prayed for your healing I'm not going to do that like it probably wasn't a sincere prayer yeah I haven't met anyone so but but so you might be called upon to actually align your actions with what you said you wanted but maybe you won't maybe this person's across the world but maybe the next day or the next week or the next year you have an opportunity to serve somebody else's healing and in a way they're kind of a proxy because you're not only praying for one person's healing you're you're wanting a healed world so basically a prayer is a declaration of what the world shall be and who you want to be in that world and the the alignment of our actions with that tell us if we really meant the prayer or not all right thank you um we'll go to Betty now uh Betty please say where we're in the world you're joining us from and then ask Charles your question um hi I'm in London oops um I'm seeing Brennan Smith but can you hear me yeah yes very well um I'm in Cheltenham in the UK and um yeah what I find most frustrating at the moment is that I'm just constantly aware of the fact that whatever I do just by existing in this world in this society I contribute to the problem there is no way around it every time I turn the heating on every time I switch the light on every time I have a shower every time I go to the supermarket and buy food I'm contributing to the problem and it how do I reconcile with that that's my question thank you yeah so I guess I'm curious what um where the pain of that recognition is coming from one place that it can come from is like it dissolves any idea that we have that that we're a good person because look what I'm doing and and that's not really why we're here though to be a good person we're here to serve from wherever we've been placed to serve the to serve life which now means the healing of the planet and the healing of society as best we are able given where we have been placed so for me like okay let's talk about contributing to the problem I mean here we are communicating over the internet and I don't know if you've looked into the uh you know energy and resources associated with even having a video conference call but we are in this moment um drawing on earth's health in order to have this conversation the reason that I'm doing it is because I believe that these conversations are part of the healing I'm not going to try to perform a calculation that say that the good outweighs the harm because that would only be possible if we could quantify both good and harm and that would that would mean that we know how the the healing is going to happen but we don't know we have to be guided by something else we have to be guided by our impulses that come through our connection to what we love and care about sometimes those impulses do not make sense in a metrics mindset in a point of view of quantifying benefits and costs but what else are we going to listen to so just as I don't know Greta Thunberg says I will never forgive you I'd like to offer the opposite where does forgiveness come from forgiveness is not an act of indulgence forgiveness comes from recognizing the totality of somebody's circumstances to forgive another is to say yeah now that I understand I know that I may have done what you did if I were in your shoes forgiveness happens when it's not even necessary because you understand where it's coming from and the same is true of forgiveness of self that yeah in these circumstances I I mean yeah I could conceivably go off into the woods and and live in a little hut and and subside subsist off of roots and berries or some and have a zero carbon impact but is that really going to help the world how do I know what is going to help the world I don't think that the story that we've inherited provides the answer to that and we said we're offered substitutes for the answer some kind of carbon arithmetic or something like that or some kind of ethical calculus that that attempts to answer the question what is the right thing to do and I don't think that that navigation system is reliable anymore so for me it's not about minimizing harm it's about attunement to what is in service to life whatever form that's taken it might take the form of flying to see my mother who's alien who has cancer I cannot justify that in terms of carbon she's going to die anyway what impact is that going to have on the future but there's something in me that knows that this is actually really significant and that is coming that air flight is coming from a very different place than the air travel that might come from an ambition or an unmet need that really wants to be met by community and belonging and intimacy but instead I'm you know flying off to Disneyland it's coming from a different place and and this is part of ending the war on nature is to end the war on the self and end the war on desire and to trust that if we really tune into our desires our impulses then we will be tuning into our true purpose which is to serve life on earth thank you well and we've had an hour to go the child but before we end our call I wanted to ask you a little bit about deep adaptation so this is uh everyone who's joined you today is a member of the professions network of the the deep adaptation forum and we haven't talked before about it but it's it's it's a philosophy premised on the expectation of quite imminent societal collapse in many parts of the world so people who join the forum see that a societal collapse is either inevitable likely or already unfolding and they wish to engage with each other actively curiously compassionately and creatively positively from that premise rather than seeing it as a premise which is uh late inviting apathy or uh is about defeat or is about a mean view of human nature or possibility who's like what is if if you take that what is what is where where can creativity go after that so we often talk about enabling loving responses to that predicament and um and it's been an incredible experience for me seeing how much courage people have to actually say yeah I think this is a future and I one of I want to stay engaged to try and reduce harm to support meaning making and find joy and give us as best chances we've got for whatever could uh whatever kind of human society and whatever kind of natural world can be sustained I was thinking have you has this come across your uh path and what are your thoughts on that that framing yeah uh I it has because I I do kind of you know stay in touch with your work I think that that what you're doing is valuable whether or not societal collapse is imminent and if it takes the perception of societal collapse to to push people past the veil of normalcy into an extraordinary intention then that's great um and paradoxically it may be um that it may exactly be letting go of any hope that we're going to avoid collapse that will enable us to avoid collapse because what has to happen to avoid collapse is exactly the kind of thing that you're talking about the um awakening of of love and and the finding of joy and service without any guarantee that it's ever going to make a difference can't remember the exact words you used but yeah it's it's that's good to hear that because it's what I'm seeing is that that people are thinking wow I realize so much of the story of self the ways I conform and have conformed my whole life because of this deep and unconscious respect and acceptance of this society its values what it tells me to believe in what it tells me to aspire to what it tells me to be afraid of and that collapses that's what's collapsing for people and therefore that they're finding a new fearlessness to to put love and truth first in in the present moment come what may uh now not everyone will respond in that way and obviously I'm concerned and that you know obviously some people can respond in ways which are tell me where to run tell me where's the gun uh let's stop those refugees coming and and that kind of typical prepper response but I'm finding with the adaptation space there's more of that um what you've just described that that that uh the veil of normalcy goes and people ask deep questions about what's truly important in their life yeah the typical prepper response creates exactly what it's afraid of it is totally like how do I survive how you know it's about me separate from the world and that energizes the template and the morphic field of me against the world of separation it creates what it what it what it fears and it sounds like you're not really coming from fear you're using this possibility or maybe you see it as a likelihood or a certainty as a gateway to the morphic field of interbeing truth and love and that deactivates the various collapsed and Armageddon timelines yeah well we uh it certainly uh feels uh the right kind of conversations for me to be having um it's been quite a surprise the explosion of interest uh yeah and wonderful to see that people are not then immediately going for the typical prepper attitude but staying curious staying compassionate uh and creative child for the record very much oh let's say for the record like I I do think that um we are facing as a society profound breakdowns in you know four years so we're back to Boris not necessary yeah that's right back before us you know when when you see it coming you hold on a little tighter that's one of that's part of the letting go process actually is to hold on a little tighter tighter to try to make America great again to try to make to make the old normal come back it's part of the process uh and a fairly late stage of the process so maybe it's a good thing but yeah but I just wanted to say that that collapse may not look anything like we think it looks like and I am quite certain that that it doesn't necessarily mean billions of casualties although that is a possibility as well but I don't have more time to spend with you on that I believe in the more beautiful collapse our hearts know is possible yeah cheers thanks Charles and thanks everyone else for joining and sorry for those people who couldn't ask questions but I hope you found this useful and uh yeah I hope to meet up again one day Charles and person thank you very much definitely bye bye yep bye bye thank you