 I'm Professor Jim Berndell and welcome to another deep adaptation Q&A. This month my guest is Sean Kelly, he's a professor of philosophy cosmology and consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He's author of a book called Coming Home, The Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Era, and more recently has written a couple of books, one on hope and one on planetary initiation, which I hope we're going to hear about. Sean, I don't know if you know this, Sean, you were the first person to reach out to me after the deep adaptation paper came out, so it came out at the end of July 2018 and you wrote to me early August I think, and yeah I really appreciated that because immediately you were inviting me into conversations about the the the deepest questions that this outlook, this realization meant, and I was very much in a place of, some people might call it spiritual transformation, but there was a lot of angst and a lot of confusion, and it was wonderful when you reached out, so Sean, thank you for joining us this morning from California. Thank you. By learning where you are. Oh well it's lovely, the first light has just broken through, and with some long awaited rain, it probably won't be very much, but it's it's suspicious for our call. Yeah, I actually right before our call I searched my send folder for that first email to you. I was trying to remember when it was exactly, and it was in actually in January, sorry, July, July of 2018, and I had no idea I was the first, but I remember so well being struck by your paper and feeling this this inner prompting to reach out to you in gratitude and solidarity, and you know I thought it was such a courageous thing for you to to do at the time, and I immediately recognized you as a, well as a brother and a colleague I thought at least, and my intuition was confirmed by how you graciously responded to me, and the rest is history as they say. Yes, yes, and it was clear from that email I received from you that you had already done a lot of your own work in looking at this and going deep into what it might mean for humanity to have destroyed the biosphere as we have and to be facing such a terrible future, and so you were it was clear that you were drawing on spiritual philosophies and practices that to help you with that, and that was really what resonated with me, I needed to have those kinds of conversations then and still do, so I suppose my first question would be for you would be how what is your your philosophy spiritually and how how and your practices and how is that helping for you to stay present to the full emotional pain, the full confusing turbulence that we're seeing already and that we know is going to get worse? Yeah, well I guess there are several strands of what could be called my you know my spiritual life, my spiritual practice. I was raised a Catholic and although I fell away from the church at puberty coinciding with my initiation into psychedelics at age 13, so that was you know opened up a whole other area of direct experience of non-ordinary states of consciousness and particularly the immediate experience of the world as alive that in fact there is no no such thing as empty space, every every particle and every space between the particle is somehow alive and charged and radiant with with spirit, so I had that direct experience as a teenager and I had had other experiences I guess going back to the death of my father at seven of the just an immediate intuitive certainty about the soul you might say, but then of course you know I also became an adult embedded in a culture where spirit is a non-entity, where the only thing that matters is money power, money and power basically, and you know so but so the Christian symbols remained important for me particularly the idea of God or the divine present in the historical process that there is some kind of that the whole story the cosmos as a whole is being held by the divine in some way so that stayed meaningful to me but then Buddhism in particular I was introduced to Buddhism and that has become an essential strand of my spiritual DNA as well through its analysis of the of our predicament in terms of the universality of suffering the causes of suffering the three poisons of delusion or ignorance and hate and greed and so on but also it's a root teaching of interbeing and of the fluid integral nature of of of our reality which has been very sustaining for me so those are the main strands I guess as well as a daily Qigong meditation practice but you know the the real basis of it though is is so much simpler because I remember when I was hospitalized for a kidney operation for kidney stone once many years ago 30 years ago and such intense pain for for days and days all of the spiritual traditions in that most intense pain sort of fell away and the only thing that mattered was that there was somebody that came to see me even though I couldn't stand their presence for very long because it was too painful but the simple fact of knowing that somebody loved me and that there was love taunt on me in that moment was the only thing that really mattered in the sense that the simple fact of love for the possibility of love so that has remained the bedrock and everything else is is a gift as well but in the way of elaboration yeah I know thank you for that reminder of course because we can all talk about religions and ancient wisdoms and various practices but but it's it's important to retune into the fact it's it's about love and the reason I'm asking you about this is because some people think there's going to be a spiritual renaissance as more people feel like these are somewhat apocalyptic times and some people point to that almost like the silver lining of collapse of industrial civilization that we're going to wake up from those delusions um but I'm wondering do you think that's likely and what might help with that but also what could be going wrong with that kind of renaissance in times that feel apocalyptic to some people yeah well several many people several scholars for instance in in my area of religious studies and compared to philosophy have said that we're we have for a while now been witnessing a second axial age so-called I mean the first axial age about 2,500 years ago was when all the great world religions and western philosophy was born when in the buddha and Mahavira and Lao Tzu and Confucius and so on Socrates Plato they all popped up basically within a century of each other not knowing of each other's existence and that gave birth to the main world religious traditions well we seem to be in a second axial age now the difference between the first and the second is that we sort of have the possibility of knowing now that there's a planetary transformation going on and that knowledge actually is essential to that knowledge is that this new awakening is a planetary awakening that we have become conscious in a way that we could never have become conscious before that we share a common origin we share a common destiny as children as it were of Gaia of earth this this living planet that is part of you know 13.6 billion year ongoing evolutionary mystery so this is the second axial age but as you say it's happening in paradoxically in the context of seemingly imminent collapse and the unraveling of complex life itself which is contributing to this spiritual rebirth but as you know is also creating opportunities for further delusion and panic and hatred and the three poisons so I think they're all arising together and perhaps that's not an accident you know that that the the ignorance and the hatred and the greed are going to be foils as it were or fuel for the work we need to do and for cultivating of wisdom and compassion so it sounds like quite a lot so the people that you're in your field are describing this moment in that way a second axial age and yeah is it going to be is this going to somehow lead humanity into a new state of consciousness and a new civilization or not or don't we know or is there going to be a lot of everything good and evil as a result of this process how do you see this yeah yeah what I'm following I yeah I um well it depends you know there are moments and in a way it's these moments match I think my personality and probably you know human personality in general which is not as monolithic as we would like often like to think you know I am I'm actually several people in this body I mean I don't suffer from multiple personality disorder but there are many centers of me and some of them feel are you know locked in despair and panic at at what feel what I feel is coming others are still able at least occasionally now it's rare have some kind of hope that we can make it through and transition to what some of my colleagues are calling ecological civilization I know you're aware of of the people that I'm talking about it's a beautiful beautiful dream of rebirth of our civilization in a sustainable mode so these two coexist in me but if I'm honest with myself the the little island of hope the part of me or yeah the sub self that is still living on this little island of hope is seeing this island shrink more and more and more and so there's there's the island of despair which is growing but there's also another sort of I'm looking at least and citing occasionally a mainland which is which is somewhere between or other than hope and despair so a third way beyond hope and despair which is not in a way is is suspending the question of whether or not we'll make it to some promised land or whether we can avert avert the the catastrophe that that you know seems to be living and with that mainland insight do you feel motivation to engage in the world to either reduce harm or create joy is there motivation because you've talked about a form of hope which rests on a story of some kind of transformation you've also talked about a place of despair but is that this other place you've talked about where you suspend that question where does that leave you in terms of motivation to act engage in the world yeah well if I could yeah if I could speak sort of metaphorically but again this this this the glimpses I've had of this mainland is a place where all of our actions uh don't simply disappear into a kind of the void of the past but are are sort of eternally eternally flowering plants as it were or there are there are occasions that that that uh that keep on going as as it were so what I do now and in the next moment and what I did yesterday is not just gone it's it's it's somehow present eternally so um when I when I intuit that I realized that wow the what I could do to ease suffering matters infinitely it matters eternally what I could do to bring forth love or joy or compassion matters in the moment certainly but one of the reasons why it matters in that moment is that it matters eternally this is this is an intuition that I have or said otherwise if we don't like to think in terms of eternity I believe that certain values like compassion solidarity love are intrinsic have intrinsic value and in a sense infinite value regardless of how they turn out or regardless of you know what what flows from them um so in that sense uh yeah I am motivated uh I mean I feel I'm falling short of course of what I feel like maybe could do or should do but uh that for me is a wonderful and natural extension of the notion of there only being the present moment like like there is no tomorrow because when it comes it's today uh and it's like an eternal a sense of an eternal present um and I can see there's quite a lot of both ancient wisdom but also contemporary physics that one can draw on to talk about that sense of an eternal present and everything matters forever feeling um and each action each thought so I'm it's interesting then that um with that in mind what meaningful activism might look like today um and there's quite a bit of discussion in the deep adaptation field generally and in the forums platforms in particular about inner work versus outer work if there is such a binary um and really I think that plays into this idea of engaged spirituality and and it's sort of the the rubber hits the road on this one to the extent do we care about and prioritize social justice and not just helping each other feel a bit better with our fear vulnerability grief but also how we help each other look at ourselves and our complicity and whether we can do more to reduce harm ease suffering I think you said so I was interested in yeah for you what feels right uh uh for activism now if you have a an anticipation of collapse or your witnessing collapse or beginning to experience it what does activism look yeah well for this I'm I'm uh always re-inspired by our our mutual beloved friend Joanna Macy's reminder that in the in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition there's no such thing as individual salvation and this arises of course from the the insight and the experience of our radical interbeing that uh that we we can only artificially draw a line or or cut the bonds that that constitute each of us as in fact as a a single complex living being which you know what you could call the cosmos or more locally we could call it this living planet or humanity wherever you want to draw that sort of boundary so uh you know if if in fact that is true and I can only speak from my own experience that I have experienced it as true then uh I can't work on my own enlightenment or salvation or awakening without simultaneously caring for and acting on behalf of the other who's suffering I behold and um so that yeah and of course this is why you know wisdom and compassion always go together or in the Christian tradition works and and grace so uh yeah to me it's just inconceivable to to not be active on behalf of our brothers and sisters human especially of course but also other than human um it's inconceivable and if I see somebody's engaged in in a on a path that that does not recognize that I see it as delusion and I try to see it with compassion as well but it's a form of delusion to me and you live in California and I I know that I'm Michelle Foucault the sociologist wrote about the Californian cult of the self and sort of almost like a hyper-individualist reworking of ancient wisdom and spiritual traditions where the bliss seeking and the self-actualization those parts remain but not this engaged compassion uh as much and I'm wondering um is that is that something you're seeing the same as before or more of and what do we do call it out I think you just said that you wouldn't you see it as delusion and you forgive it you're compassionate to it and is there anything that we we we can do to invite people to be practicing a more engaged spirituality as things get more difficult well I am encouraged to see that at least in the students who come to the program where I've been teaching for the last 23 years um the philosophy cosmology and consciousness program that um you know the the students have always been interested in inner transformation and then expansion of consciousness but they are all uh now very aware of the the existential threat that we face I mean they were generally before but now it's like universal they are all uh um committed to social justice social transformation they're they're quite radical politically most of them not not universally but um so I'm encouraged that that all all of the people that I see now uh in in the Bay Area not all but more and more who are committed to and interested in personal transformation and spirituality are simultaneously aware of and committed to uh transformation in the social and political realm of course they they tend to think that the way to do that is through transformation of consciousness they they tend to be more introverted in that sense focusing on worldviews but it but it's encouraging I think so um you know there are exceptions there are I occasionally meet people who are convinced that all we need to do is change our worldview or change our consciousness and um yes change our attention the whole lore of attraction idea we manifest what we focus on and therefore if we're worried about climate change and collapse we're making it happen um how do you respond yeah um well if they're saying as Richard Tarnas my colleague here in the program likes to say worldviews create worlds and uh I believe that in our program is actually that's one of the premises of our program and you know I think it's true worldviews do create worlds and however worlds create worldviews when we know that the people people's minds personalities and behaviors are conditioned and structured by the real relations uh social political economic relations that they're born into and are embedded within so um we need to work simultaneously on on uh transforming the world that we're in acting in the world as we work on our consciousness the two are to separate the two is itself a form of delusion once again so that's sort of how I approach it but yeah I don't have much sympathy for law of attraction kind of discourse uh now I see I see I understand it and I can see how for some people it's maybe therapeutic to uh to um focus on the good and the positive I mean we know that medically that there are some people William James studied this over a century ago in the varieties of religious experience where he talked about two types of personality and spirituality the healthy mind that he called it and and the six old the healthy minded at the time he was looking at the whole new thought movement in the united states which was really the precursor of the new age movement so there's a long tradition particularly in this country of uh this idea that our consciousness uh creates reality and um you know for some people that attitude actually works in terms of let's say physical health or or um or psychological mood and so on so there is therapeutic value to it and it can become a form of delusion and denial uh in in the social context I think yeah if it leads to people to think that the poor are poor because they haven't self-actualized or um and then they start to ignore structural prejudice and oppression and so forth yeah thank you Sean so I'm just going to say uh we we do welcome questions um uh for Sean please send them to um Matthew who's named himself questions here please and I will select some we're gonna have a question from Sandra in a minute but just to give you a moment Sandra um Sean can you tell us what the main um the main message of your latest book is and tell us the title so we know what where to look for it okay and well the title is becoming Gaia and the subtitle uh is on the threshold of planetary initiation ah so that's the title should be out actually next month with any luck there might be an announcement before then hopefully on the solstice um and you know it is um the theme I guess is the one that we've been talking about uh second actual age you might say the nature of a second actual age uh around the core idea of a transformation not only of human consciousness but of the the the layer of consciousness of Gaia or the earth uh itself Gaia herself I mean the Gaia has not only has a kind of geosphere of the the hard elements and the biosphere um and an atmosphere but it also has a thought sphere or a consciousness sphere a noosphere as Théardre Chardin called it and this noosphere of the planet is undergoing a radical transformation in the form of a turning in from from consciousness to self-consciousness so Gaia herself is awakening to herself through the human is the basic idea now and I believe that Gaia has her own sentience her own soul nature that was there prior to the human and in a sense will always be there but but the human that has evolved out of Gaia human is not other than Gaia human is just a mode of Gaia so through the human Gaia is waking up to herself and that's the other side of the humans waking up possibly at least potentially humans are waking up to themselves as members of this living planet that we call Gaia so that's the main theme the other part is that this waking up is happening as and by means of an initiation which involves like all initiations a near-death experience uh and um a collective or planetary near-death experience and that it may very well be that the initiation will not succeed unless uh well first of all we don't know what success means and that don't mean that that that everything will be all right and we'll transition to an ecological civilization but if the transformation of consciousness is to succeed it may very well be like in all initiations that enough of us need to really open ourselves fully to the presence of death and and what it means for for the transformation to happen so anyway that's the main theme I'm wondering it sounds to like it resonates with the work of Thomas Berry and also that the movement that calls itself conscious evolution would you would you say that it does or are there some distinctions in how you see this it definitely resonates with uh and so Thomas Berry who collaborated for many years with Brian Swim uh who's a dear friend and colleague in the same program where I teach yeah I draw from their work uh in this book I guess the difference would be that um at least Thomas and Brian to a certain extent although I think it's maybe changing believed that um that there was still a real fighting chance that we could transition to what they called an ecozoic civilization was their term for an ecological civilization um I'm not you know part of me feels that that's not going to happen the third way is that I'm suspending altogether the question of whether or not that can happen and just focusing on what needs to be done and what what is uh what is worthwhile doing now what we need to do regardless of outcome so there's that difference with with Thomas and possibly with Brian the conscious evolution yeah uh although I believe my sense is that the conscious evolution people are still pretty much uh at least until recently have been committed to this idea of also a greater probability of some kind of successful transition to a to a new world and um perhaps also a greater emphasis on the positive nature of like the nature of positive thinking I see yeah what's your what's your sense Jim um my simple answer is I don't know I do think that it sounds like it's it's maintaining a form of anthropocentrism yet also embracing into being so um I just don't know whether we're so special hmm I mean according to our brain power and the way we understand life then clearly we are particularly unique it seems but I've reached that point of of not really knowing and I and I wonder whether there might be a bit less you know what might come from a full of embrace of the idea um so we're nothing particularly special like we're not some higher stage of consciousness of Gaia understanding itself and I don't argue that because I just don't know but um I find that interesting um yeah yeah no that's that's such an important question yeah and you know of course there's no way of proving any of this uh but you know one thing seems clear is that whatever we believe around that question it is humans uh our human behavior and our presence on the planet which is determining the fate of all other species on the planet uh and you know it's the whole idea of the Anthropocene so we all of us now are the first humans ever to live in the birth of a new geological age I mean we have to try to take that in we humans now us in this virtual room are the first humans ever to live during the birth of a new geological age and not that many species get through a shift in the what the geological age you know that's right and the thing is I'm out yeah and this new geological age the name of it is the age of the human the Anthropocene okay yeah but we we came up with that though that's right but I bet you the dolphins and all the other our siblings are probably saying yeah you know this this is their moment and I wonder what they're going to do with it sort of thing because because we're what what they do uh is going to determine our fate so willy-nilly we live in in the age of where human agency has become a planetary as Thomas Barry and Brian Swanson say a macro phase power I quite like the idea that we're living in an age that whatever an intelligent species that decides to label periods of geological history just whatever they decide to call this it'll be related to there being a lot of radioactive waste and plastic in this in this part of the geological record so I'm I'm gonna ask Sandra to ask a question of Sean and also if you could say unmute yourself please Sandra and also say where you're where you're joining us from and ask after Sandra Towne has a question I'm not hearing anything Sandra you need to unmute you're still not unmuting um I can't oh there we go yeah we are here with us hello I'm speaking from Zagreb in Croatia um a long long years I did try to enter into the different aspects of teaching of esoteric let's say Islam through the Sufi teaching and through Christians teachings and through let's say Buddhist teaching I'm familiar and the the question which I would like to ask not to enter too much into that very deep and special field is what do you how do you feel the place in this particular moment when we are now humans uh where is the place of the rituals for example today is Saint Lucia Saint Sveta Lucia and I'm sure you know uh that it's uh Lucia is light so it's a celebration of light and it can be seen that symbol in many levels as a folklore or as an incredibly deep link with the world of symbols and which lead us to the more subtle capacities if we did cultivate it so I did put seed do you say seeds from what we do bread what's the name of the Jito I'm not sure what's the English though no no uh kernels or what seeds seeds and so it's it's a ritual and it will it will grow 12 days till Noel what's the name of Christmas and if each day we will represent one month so there is some kind of projection spiritually possible and I would like to know what do you think about rituals right well um I think they're they hold great power and it's uh it's um tragic that so many people have lost any connection with living ritual traditions uh I mean I remember how powerful the the Catholic mass was to me as a child uh for instance and um no since then I've been able to experience many other kinds of ritual and you know we we need uh we need to rethink some of the old older rituals um and create new ones you know for instance uh Joanne and Macy and Matthew Fox once at uh Finthorne College over Easter did a reinvented or created a new ritual with the stations of the cross but where each station of the cross was a a uh an embodiment of the suffering of some aspect of our living earth you know for some animal suffering and and so there was a procession you could walk together with your uh with other people embodied and and uh pay witness to and suffer with uh the rest of the beings uh on our on our living earth and so this this was a way of rethinking the archetypal theme of of the passion that Christians uh celebrate at Easter so the suffering of the God and and its rebirth so there are many possibilities for rethinking reimagining the older rituals and of course um there are many rituals we can draw from from uh earth-based traditions from indigenous traditions and they're being created all the time so yes it's very important and I I need more of it in my own life actually I what rituals do you have in your own life at the moment yeah well I mean my my I guess my my own rituals are sort of my daily practice in the park where I you know I I practice uh Chinese internal martial arts and uh and the standing form of standing qigong and so on which is ritual it's ritualized and I but um yeah I don't have that many I mean I I occasionally go to uh to uh very occasionally now hardly at all but to Christian Catholic or Anglican masses because that ritual is still very meaningful to me um some you know some I mean there are rituals we do in in the work that we connects um there's you know the council of all beings there's a building a cairn of mourning there there are different rituals that we we do in that context but um not enough I need more more ritual for sure yes um so I might have a ritual of just picking up my phone and going on the deep adaptation facebook group like every day I don't but I don't know if that counts as a practice or actually just a an addiction I need to do something about all right we have a question from um from I don't know how to pronounce your name town tell us where how to pronounce it and where you're where you're speaking from and you've you look at you've got a few questions or comments please just choose one thanks they're all related so I'll I'll try to put it into one so um on facebook I and other places I've connected with a number of groups but the one I'm most fascinated with the last week or so or the glass bead game people and some came to talk to my um media shamans group and basically what they did they just started off after we did a check in with speaking as if they were from 40 years in the future 10 years in the future just speaking as if they were so the first person cost it oh it's so interesting so this is the kind of group that spawned what changed the world and created what we have now um because it seems like it's crucial going back to some of what you were saying Sean that people have not an unrealistic oh everyone's going to reach integral level and it'll all be fine but that they need instead of the zombie movies and the apocalyptic movies they need visions of of what really is possible from here realistically and that ties in with the Jean Gibson um I think idea of ever present origin that future past and present are all unfolded and the future influences us and we influence it so that this is one way to consciously do that um and it's play you know that's why that one group is the glass bead game because it's play and play is crucial interesting yeah what's your thoughts on that Sean yeah well thank you uh yeah first of all I love the glass bead game but in terms of the um the exercise you're speaking of I was introduced to that through Joanna Macy and the work that reconnects where uh it's a key part of the work uh and where we get as Joanna puts it we get to exercise our moral imagination uh in a playful but simultaneously serious way a playfully serious or a seriously playful way where we allow ourselves to uh yeah to um or we allow the future beings to speak through us by simply allowing that it may be so right so we suspend the critical mind uh and um allow that to happen so yeah it's crucial it's crucial and um especially if we can truly suspend any expectation of what that future might might be uh and possibly recognize that you know there there are multiple futures uh if if you want to think of uh of uh you know be inspired by contemporary physics or not and to allow any one of these multiple futures to speak to us because we don't know which one we need to hear from the most uh so um yeah just allow them to speak so so yeah I wasn't aware that there were other groups doing this but um if you haven't already you might want to to uh check out Joanna's work and the work that we connect where that's a central part of the of the practice and the rituals we do together yeah I found it very helpful and have integrated some of the work that reconnects in my own teaching and a facilitation on deep adaptation uh we have a question from Jill in Ambleside who actually attended one of the retreats um I did in England yes thank you well uh I was just thinking that you both you Jen and you Sean you have a um in a way a public platform and um which I wondered when you talk about changing consciousness and so on in my world I find if I don't go on deep adaptation every day um I find very few people that I can speak to about this uh very few people who are anticipating collapse very few people who have any glimpse of that at all and I find myself even in relation to my own sons who have more children I find myself very reluctant to to speak about this to put it forward um so I was just wondering how you are either of you um meet this what to me is a is a dilemma uh I I feel my lack of courage I feel my detectiveness towards other people I I I suppose sometimes I doubt variability to shoulder this or to face it or I don't know if they have the resources I take I find myself taking on that position um in place of them in a way and then it feels to me that I lack courage in some way so I'm really interested to hear what your experience is on a personal level when you don't have a public platform and you're not putting out a paper or lecturing to students and that which you might did you want to go ahead Jen and and respond I'm I'm happy to too but I'm also no no I mean thank you Jill for including me in the question but but I it's a question for Sean and then I'll comment after okay well yes Jill thank you for that um you know it's it's hard it's somewhat it sounds like uh you're in the situation of the ancient mariner if you know that that poem probably my favorite poem in the English language um you know and we're reluctant to grab the young person on their way to the wedding feast who who's only hearing the music playing in the background uh to grab them and say you know there was a ship and to tell them this tale um but we feel compelled to do there's there's no way out of this dilemma really except at least in my experience um I've learned to uh to recognize when it's not helpful for one to to to bring it up if somebody is simply doesn't have the resources if if you sense they're just going to fall into dissociation for instance then it's probably not helpful to to share it with them but there may be times where you sense that it's worth the risk and so in other words it's it's a question of discernment and of skillful means of whether to bring it up and uh if so how to bring it up but in the cases where it sounds like you just don't have the the opportunity to bring it up then thankfully there is something like the deep adaptation community where at least virtually we can be in touch and support each other um no I don't know what more to say other than I I feel with you I hear you and I I'm I too have been a voice crying in the wilderness for for many years but there are less there are more and more of us now so um hopefully you're feeling more community than than you were even a while ago yeah thanks for that Sean um uh in my own life are are I I need a break from this work and the emotional toll uh of of holding other people in their turning towards this and the the shock and the grief and the fear so for my own mental well-being I'm not telling everyone I know about my perspective on the future or the near future or the work I do um however I don't hide it either so if they ask me I say or if they've seen something on my facebook wall and they ask me I tell them um but yeah I've I've um and I think what Sean said as well I realized that um if some people don't don't have the um our support or support around them to talk and engage then um just this this information this information can't really fit um in their in their worldview but also in their daily life their daily media diet and their conversations with people they just so um so I it's for me it's still an open question about how do we invite more people to um consider the outlook that many of us share um with while also looking out looking out after ourselves because because it is you know you want to be fully present to someone else's pain if you're bringing them such difficult information otherwise you're just being numb or callous and you don't want to do that so therefore it's a big thing so we've got to be careful looking after ourselves as well um so we have time for just one last question um Jay uh please unmute yourself oh you are unmuted well done thank you um thank you everyone it's been a joy today um my question is about consciousness and from childhood really I felt the need to advocate for looking at um the world um with an appreciation of consciousnesses other than our own particularly animals but sure in your comments about um you know remembering to contextualize our experience in terms of Gaia I was a really welcome that reminder um it feels to me very much that our um quick and ready assumption that our consciousness is superior you know people always so quick to say um we're at the top of the the kind of pyramid in terms of animal consciousness I would gently question that I would say oh really um I mean yes we can do lots of scientific experiments of the behavior of animals and see how we can you know give them various stimuli and see how they respond but we can barely understand human consciousness as well as I hope we want one day can so how then can we jump to this massive conclusion that our consciousness is superior and how can we possibly hope to appreciate what the consciousness of a non-human animal or a tree is I'm thinking for example of tree communities where tree tree communities know when a tree is sick and they're re nutrients um so I guess my question is you know in light of I I believe that this perception is part partly what has got us to the the problems that we're experiencing today this kind of arrogant assumption of superiority so I guess my question is any thoughts on um on that the the extent to which it's a great question Jay thank you for that well first of all I would say that um you know we are animals uh we are not other than animals we are Gaia we are not other than Gaia I would say that um and um I I'm totally with you that uh anthropocentrism but I would say a malignant anthropocentrism is at the root of our of Gaia's ills um but I feel that there's another kind of anthropocentrism I mean dolphins are dolphin centric we cannot help but be anthropocentric we we we are Gaia from the point of view of of human consciousness and so for me the question is how can I how can I deepen into my Gaianthropic as I call it so I prefer the idea of a Gaianthropocene instead of the Anthropocene so where the human the human potential is precisely that to awaken to itself as a living member of Gaia and um you know one of the the the signs of that potential is that humans can they don't always but they can care for and mourn let's say the passing of a whole species we don't know that other animals do that and we know that elephants mourn the passing of their own their own species we know that dogs and other animals mourn other beings but but humans have the potential at least imperfectly realized it's true to care for the whole community of being and actually to put that whole community above their own welfare right uh we haven't done that yet but I but I see that as the real potential the deeper potential of the human as a as a true member of Gaia but thank you for that that question yeah thank you Jay and thanks for the answer Sean so Sean we've come to the the end and I just want to say it was um over 14 months ago I think you agreed to do this Q&A and that was because we put them together as a series which we launched during a deep adaptation forum crowdfund um and so we've now come to the end of that series so Sean thank you for agreeing to that um and for your support in general for the deep adaptation forum um for those of you who want to support the forum it it's grown since then and has a core team of about four or five people and hundreds of volunteers many of you on the call or the volunteers uh and it seeks to provide lots of support and conversation of all kinds all for free so um please uh if you go to deepadaptation.info there's a new website for the forum and you can also find a Patreon link if you feel moved to support it um I'm no longer working with the core team and um uh but I'm participating as Sean is on what's called the holding group 14 of us um to provide provide sort of strategic uh support for the core team so that's the end of my series of Q&As for the deep adaptation forum and we'll see we'll see what happens next if you're interested in the ones in the past um go to my youtube channel um so just type my name jen bendell into youtube and you'll see it's quite a lot now probably over 18 maybe 20 interviews so Sean it was a lovely way to finish this series of Q&As so thank you very much thank you is my honor and thank you all for coming today thank you everybody um and uh bye bye yeah be well