 Welcome back, everyone, to our next session. This is Andy Gerbage, the president of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness. We are midway through our third and final day here for our 39th annual conference on sea change, life worlds and ecological upheaval, our first ever fully virtual conference. And we thank you all so much for taking this journey with us and helping build a container and interactive digital liminal space where we can all come together and have these really, really important kinds of connections and discussions that are gonna shape the way we interact with one another and interact with the changing world that we currently inhabit. I'm speaking to you today. I'd like to start with a land acknowledgement like we have with that recession from a place now referred to as Portland, Oregon. It rests on the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Chinook, Tualatin Kalapua, Malala and many other tribes and bands. As the original caretakers of this land, we wish to begin by acknowledging their presence, their dignity, their continued struggle for respect for restoration and for reparations. I am here today because they were here first. I'm here today in this capacity in this very space because they were first displaced from it. It's our hope as an organization to do our part to continue a dialogue towards healing and actually beginning a process of reparation for those communities. And this panel and this discussion, excuse me, this discussion and interact experiential has as much or more to do with that is anything else through the rest of our programming for the previous three days. A couple of quick announcements and then we'll be on to John. We are in an open Zoom meeting format. And so you've been in webinars and then you've also been in the meeting format. So we're in the Zoom format that most of you are used to being in. And so we would ask that you would mute yourself so we don't interrupt the flow of John's presentation. There's gonna be time for interaction. There's gonna be time for talking. So we'd ask that you have yourself on mute. It helps with bandwidth. If you have your camera turned off too, but there's gonna be a time for sharing and a time for interaction. And John's gonna let you know when that is. We would also ask that you turn your chat window on as soon as possible because we're gonna be sharing things with you in the chat as an organization relating to this session and the future sessions for the rest of today. John's going to be sharing things with you in the chat that he wants us to respond to and as prompts for our discussion. And you're gonna use that as a space to share with one another and ask questions and share thoughts with John and with the rest of the group. So please get that chat window open and ready to interact with two more announcements and then we will move over to Mark to introduce John. You have a live transcript button at the bottom of your screen. If you need or are helped by the presence of a live transcript of subtitles, you can click that button and turn subtitles on. It is Zoom's AI transcript service. And so it isn't perfect. It hits at about 90% accuracy. And so if you find that distracting, you don't have to turn it on. But if it's helpful to you, it is there. And since we are in a Zoom meeting and not in the webinar, all of you have access to your name. You can go, if you click on the participants, you'll see a list of the participants. You can find yourself. If you click that more button, you can change your name. We ask that you leave it as close as possible, if not exact to the name you're registered with so we can sort of monitor who's in the space. And if you feel moved to do so, you can see some folks have already done it. You can add your preferred pronouns to your name. That is by no means a requirement, but it makes the space more welcoming, more inviting and a little more inclusive. Okay, with that, I'm going to turn things over to our program coordinator, Mark Flanagan. I'm excited about this session. I'll say this in the last session that we had on embodied ecologies, engaging the world through self. Mark asked a question to the panelists. What have you learned in all of your work and your decades of work and research in your fields that can help equip us to be fully present and thrive in this world that we're in of ecological collapse and upheaval and outcomes that we can't even necessarily fully anticipate yet. And I think that was such a great question to always ask academics, but it was especially a great question in terms of leading in to this session because as I read about what John's up to, it seems to be the very thing that we need to be asking. And so I'm excited to turn it over to Mark who's going to introduce John Parker now. Thank you, Andy. One of the things I love about the SAC conferences is that you're exposed to new consciousness expanding practices. One of those practices has been land acknowledgments. That's not something that I had been aware of. And I want to just take a moment to acknowledge the land of Georgia where there's been much oppression and harvesting of native communities through things like the Trail of Tears and slave trade that happened on Savannah coast. So I just wanted to take that moment to acknowledge that. Another thing that I love about SAC conferences, which I was talking to John about before everyone has come in, is the experiential side. And this is something that in happy hours we talk about, we remember the experientials. And so I'm so excited for this topic. This is something that I have been doing my personal life to greater and lesser degrees and would love to hear John's insights into this contemplative community organizing, intentional organizing of communities using consciousness-based activities. So I am so pleased to introduce Mr. John Parker. Workshop facilitator John Dempsey Parker is a community organizer, applied anthropologist and consultant focusing on civic engineering and community organizing, collaborative and cooperative spaces, leadership, spiritual activism and cultural healing and community-based economic development for cultural survival, integrity and resilience. More on John can be found at johndempseyparker.org. We'll be sure to post that link. And John will be speaking about contemplative community organizing. So I'll let him introduce the topic and explain, but we're so grateful to have you here and look forward to participating. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Andy. And thanks for all the folks that I don't know who sort of framed all this up for us. And thanks for a very engaging conference of the last number of days. And the last session was just amazing. Thank you to Mark, Cassandra and Susan in particular with your offering and the discussion. And I hope that we chose to have this in a Zoom meeting format so that it would be interactive after I'd given an initial orientation and grounding and a sharing from my context and background. And again, the things I'll be sharing are frameworks, things we can sort of reference and bounce off of. I do have a couple of dogs on the road and they may say something every now and then. Their names are Phoenix and Maverick. This is a multi-species session. Welcome, everyone. It's really good to see you. Thanks for the opportunity to share. I look forward to our time together. My name is John Dempsey Parker. I live in two places, the urban Piedmont of North Carolina in the Neuse River Basin and in the Albemarle-Panelika watershed. That's Okonichi, Saponia and Catawaland with and among other regional indigenous neighbors. I also live in New Orleans on the Mississippi watershed, also known as Bobancha, which is a Choctaw word, meaning the place of many tongues. The many indigenous neighbors in the New Orleans area in Bobancha includes the Choctaw, the Chinamacha, the Biloxi, the Act of Taka Ashik, the Okola Pisa, the Usha, the Chawusha, the Bayogala, the Chapatulis and perhaps others whose names have been forgotten or erased. And today I'm beaming in from Bobancha. For context and background, as Mark mentioned, I'm a consultant, community organizer and applied anthropologist. And since 2016, I've seen your fellow at the Institute for Emerging Issues at NC State University. My ongoing work and our project team at the Institute focuses on supporting community leaders and faith communities with their community engagement, organizing and development initiatives, specifically nurturing civic engagement, cross-cultural, multi-faith and cross-sector partnerships, including public policy advocacy and mutual learning through issue-oriented and place-based networks and community collaborations. In short, we're nurturing and supporting local leaders who are engaged and adaptive, strengthening community resources, diverse collaborative networks and local anchor organizations. That's not the focus of this presentation and this offering, but I'm happy to share more if there are questions that you would like to ask. Since the last millennium, I've worked alongside a multicultural and intergenerational network of veterans of this Southern freedom movement or what some call the civil rights struggle of the 1960s primarily, my relationships are from folks who were active in the 60s and later. Faith-based activists and pastors rooted in the social justice and liberation theology traditions, progressive nonprofits, coalition stakeholders and leaders within the Moral Monday Movement and the four-year-old Newer Poor People's Campaign, which many people know it has roots in the work of the original Poor People's Campaign from the 60s. I've worked in community development finance, community economic development, nonprofit management, small business and social entrepreneurship as well as cooperative and solidarity economics initiatives in urban, rural and tribal communities, primarily in the US South. My early work was in health and wellness strategies, natural medicines and shamanistic practices. I've been a student of the world religions and wisdom traditions and the intersections of spiritualities, philosophies, ecology and other sciences since I was a teenager in rural North Carolina. In addition to training and applied cultural and medical anthropology, I also have a graduate degree in Divinity, training as a liberation theologian and pastor and experience in hospital movement chaplaincy. And I'm also a longtime Zen Buddhism practitioner. Ultimately, I aim from a vocational efforts to support and strengthen intergenerational, multicultural, multiracial, decolonizing and abolitionist organizing for racial, economic and environmental justice towards collective liberation. This next piece I offer as a contemplative grounding, an orientation and a reminder. Having your cameras on actually creates warmth in this particular format and honors those in attendance and the mutual learning enterprise, even if you're not looking directly at the screen. However, please practice self-care. This has been a multi-day conference and do what you need to do. We know that many of you are juggling multiple priorities. I hope you've bought a pen and paper and a journal or a sketch pad during this session. I look forward to whatever dialogue that we can cultivate. Everyone here is a teacher and a learner. None of us have it all figured out. Our views and knowledge are always incomplete. We've all got blind spots and concerns. There's always more to learn and there are things we cannot fully know and we need each other. Many of us have many hats with multiple roles and identities. So please be explicit and contextualize where you're coming from with your comments and questions. And I don't think many of us here are mind readers, although some of you that I've heard from possibly have some tendencies to be good mind readers. Invite us to be in dialogue, question one another as well as your own assumptions. Offer patience and compassion with one another and let's keep our hearts and minds open. But I know with this crowd, I don't need to say that. Let's be open to surprises and learn something that doesn't easily align with our already existing viewpoints and ideas. Honoring the global ethic of the Parliament of the World's Religions, the Charter of Compassion and the Earth Charter in solidarity with social forum organizers within the Global Justice Movement, the New Poor People's Campaign, Indigenous Healers and Water Protectors and in the spirit of the ideals of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Indigenous Seven Generation Philosophy. And to honor and with gratitude to my family, three teenage children and my partner Helen Regis, my spirit brother Calvin Allen and my teammates at the Institute, friends at the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Neighborhood Story Project and the Bulbancha Collective in New Orleans, close Lumbee spirit friends Kim and Christina, Cherokee Holy Friend Allison, I now share my public comments. I'm committed to nurturing a reverence for life's abundance, wonder and emergence, resting in the fact that life is awakened, interconnected and full of wisdom, committed to an economics rooted in solidarity, justice, fairness and cooperation and committed to a relationship with and care for Mother Earth, committed to non-violence, tolerance at a minimum, kindness, honesty, conflict engagement and truthfulness, committed to work in collaborations for equity and cultural healing and against privilege, exploitation, marginalization, structural violence and misuses of power. Finally, I'm also committed to equal rights and cooperative partnerships with all peoples, cultivating generosity, hospitality and friendliness and affirming the dignity worth and unrealized potential of everyone. Together I hope we'll bring our full selves to our work and use our energy for healing and thriving for ourselves and our loved ones, Mother Earth, humanity and all beings. Together, I hope we'll pay attention to and help cultivate what has heart, nurtures creativity, imagination, fruitfulness and greater wholeness, what actually nurtures and gives life. All of this takes much practice, ongoing practice. I believe our hardest work is to understand one another, work together, care for one another, discover our own power and develop a sense of mutual learning and belonging. Ideally, we're sharing ourselves well, amplifying and multiplying our mutual learning for the benefit of others. Thank you again for this opportunity. From what I've seen and what I've heard, you all are amazing cultural workers. Now I'll offer two frameworks for our time together and I'm gonna drop these in the chat. One is the Tree of Contemplative Practices, which came out around 2010. I say that to say that it's been around for a while. Many of you have probably seen it. I offer it though because I found that it's consistently been an easy and workable framework for discussion. And again, it's a framework for discussion, hopefully again that we can work through together and sort of talk through. The second one, which I'm also gonna drop in just a minute at the same time, is something from the Building Movement Projects. It's a worksheet. Primarily I want you to kind of check out the graphic and the definitions, but it's called Mapping Our Roles in a Social Change Ecosystem. Again, it's a piece for reference. It sort of frames out roles that are a little more not connected necessarily to our jobs, but more towards our vocations in terms of the larger work that we have to do, what Mark was calling the Great Work, and ways that we might manifest our energies and talents for the benefit of others. So I'm gonna take a minute and put those in the chat right now. I just wanted to use this opportunity. Thank you, John, just to jump back in. I wanted to clarify, would you like participants to share a video? Only if they feel comfortable. Yeah, I mean, it's not necessary. Again, one of the things that I love about Zoom because we're able to see each other, I don't, sometimes the constant staring directly at the screen can be tough. So whatever makes sense for folks. Although when you do have a comment or a question that you wanna share, I would love to see your face so we can sort of have a dialogue in that manner. So in the chat, I've dropped the tree of contemplative practices. If you wanna pull that up on your own screen, I'll also try to drop the photo of the tree or share the photo of the tree in a little bit if that's more helpful to people. The second one, again, is from the Building Movement Project, Social Change Ecosystem Map. And I wanna go through the tree first. And this is kind of part of the time when we'll start to have some dialogue with folks. Go through the tree first. We're gonna kind of run through the tree and orient people around the tree and then hear what people have to say. And then after we spend some time with the tree, I want us to actually look at the other piece from the Building Movement Project. And again, I like pulling from other folks that have spent a lot of time and teamwork to pull things together. I don't necessarily feel like it's necessary to center anything I might pull together necessarily for the purpose of this. I spend a lot of time in my work with my team sort of convening conversations on a weekly basis. And particularly during the pandemic, we've had a lot of open space, zooms with community leaders and pastors and from a variety of traditions. We do those weekly as well as have workshops on a variety of topics every week. And at least in North Carolina where a lot of this work is based, we have about 400 pastors that were connected to on a regular basis, many of which are just trying to sort of hold it together, if you will. In the midst of the pandemic, many of them are dealing with divided cultures, if you will, within their communities. If we think about politics, right now, of course, we're trying to deal with a lot of disinformation around what's going on with the vaccine and also the challenges of trying to figure out when folks can gather face to face. I know there's a lot of diversity of beliefs around all of the things that are happening and have been happening for centuries, not to mention even understanding kind of what is the right historical perspective to come from. And so for a lot of the folks that we're working with, they're not just necessarily dealing with and working alongside people who already agree with them. They're working alongside people who maybe need some support and don't believe the same things. And so a lot of the work that we do is actually providing some counsel and even just some support or a listening ear to people who are in many ways essential workers and frontline community workers and spiritual leaders. So for those of you who have the tree sort of pulled up, you'll see that the tree itself is structured around seven large branches. And the roots of the tree are labeled and I'm also a big fan of changing the words. If you have other words that you prefer to use that are synonyms and are better words for you, if you actually go to the site that I dropped in the chat, there's actually a version of the tree that's blank that you can download and label and use for yourself. So the roots of the tree are connected in terms of talking about things, in terms of communion, connection and awareness as the root of these spiritual practices. And then the seven large branches, as you see have smaller branches and out in the smaller branches, there are examples of practices. And again, sometimes people look at this tree and they think that these are the only practices. I think that you know, as well as I do, that there's many, many, thank you, a plethora of examples of practices that can kind of come off of this tree. Now, why do I use the tree? So to me, when I talk to people around whether they're, they call them spiritual practices or whether they call them contemplative practices or even if they might frame it in terms of self-care, what I actually believe is the fact that when I talk to people, they may be doing two or three things that may fall in some of these larger branches, but they're not doing something in all the seven areas. And so what I want people to really encourage people to do is explore what they may have done in their early life, explore things they've done, they do now and actually see where they actually might not be doing something. So for example, in terms of, and I'm gonna come back to each one of these in a minute, but if we jump up to movement, a lot of us might be sitting on our butts a lot more because we're in front of the screen. Although many of you know, and you may be like me, that you've spent a whole lot more time outside during the pandemic, right? I've got a couple of dogs that I walk every morning and afternoon, so at a minimum, they're taking me outside, right? And so I just wanna encourage folks to sort of be open to thinking about what is it they're actually doing in these seven areas? So I'm gonna walk through the seven areas as an overview, even though I know you can read it, but I'm gonna put a word to it. I'm happy to share what I'm doing in these spaces, but I don't think that's necessary for this particular discussion. I would love to hear from y'all. So in terms of ritual and cyclical practices, they give examples such as a personal retreat space, where are you actually spending quiet time and ceremonies or rituals based on your own cultural spiritual traditions. So for some, what you might call a traditional church worship can fall actually into that category. If you're actually doing something on a regular basis, like a tech study that could fall in this areas. There are also a number of activities that touch on more than one of these larger branches. Also just to the left of that are stillness and generative practices. Stillness obviously has to do with things like meditation, silence, or when my children were small, quiet time. Then there was generative practices, which may be things that we do that actually generate and create other things. For many folks, an example would be visualizations, letio divina, which some of you may not be familiar with, but it's basically reading a text multiple times and seeing what words or themes gravitate to you at that particular time. For many people that do group meditation, sometimes the discussion that comes out of group meditation may be a generative time. Further up the tree, you've got movement, and creative practices, which of course include music and singing. We also have had some sonic experiences during this conference. That would be an example of that as well. You see that journaling is mentioned as creative. Wholeheartedly recommend that there's, I guess I would just say that journaling is sort of one of those things that I think many of us either do kind of already automatically, but I can tell you that I've met many a person who actually had never thought about journaling. And if anything, our anthropological training or our personalities have caused a lot of us to run around all the time with extra pieces of paper in our pockets and never leave the house without a pen. I wanna mention that at the top of the tree are activist and relational practices. Is it surprising to any of you that activists and relational are at the top of the tree? The part of the tree that gets hit by the most weather. The part of the tree that is actually whipped around when there are storms. These two areas closely aligned also are also the place where there can be a lot of drama and conflict, if you will. So there are practices related to our relations and then there are a variety of practices related to what could fall under activism. I wanna note that the author and the artist has put pilgrimage as an example in the activist. And I think pilgrimage is an example of one of those practices that actually could connect to some of the other branches as well, depending on your experience and your perspective. So at this point, I would love to hear from those of you who are in attendance about things that you're doing in any of these seven areas or things that you realized that maybe you did years ago, that you're realizing that maybe that was an example and something that you dropped because life or habits or the pandemic has gotten in your way of doing some things. Or if you have an example of something that's been creative that you've adapted to the time of the pandemic, I think that would be interesting for folks to hear as well. And with that, I'm gonna mute myself and see what you all have to bring into the space. This tree is awesome and it reminds me of what Ken Weber talks about when he talks about integral transformative practices like something each of the four quadrants of human development. I don't know if that influences at all, but just it makes me think about like, you got your emotional piece, you got your relational, your somatic, your cognitive. So anyway, that's what this reminds me of. Yeah, that's great, Mark. I actually don't know Ken's influence on this particular tree itself, but obviously as a prolific scholar and philosopher, he's got a lot to bring to this conversation. But I also know that one of the reasons I start with the tree is that it's an easy on ramp, right? For some of these discussions, some of the stuff that we were talking about in the last panel, some of us might jump in over our heads really quickly in that. And some of us who maybe haven't heard or what you might call the general public has to be facilitated and introduced into some of these more complex topics in ways. Ken's not for the lighthearted in the beginner, but for sure has a lot to contribute. And I'm not gonna respond necessarily to every particular point. Mark, I'm glad you're here. That was really enjoyed your talk in the last session. So I, can you hear me? Is my mic on? Okay, yeah, that's the classic start. So I really appreciate this. And part of the work that I have engaged in along with Kumar, who some of you got to meet in happy hour last night, but it's to try to find a space where you can engage with ideas, philosophies, activities in a somewhat nonpartisan way that is almost like an open form, like an open inquiry into things. And so we started doing what we called coffee philosophy and politics, which was essentially a group of my friends and his friends who we brought together and their friends we invited them to have dialogues. We had a different leader that we used a random number generator to choose a topic to lead on. And the rules were you couldn't lead if this was your first meeting, but then after that you'd be entered into this kind of pool. So it was a way to try to preserve and move ideas through this group of people that we've just collected with. But we responded to some of the things we were seeing on social media where essentially you curate your social media to match your framework or mindset where essentially you're not engaging with other points of view. So to be more explicit with recent divergence in politics with the Trump era and then the response to that Black Lives Matter very polarizing things to some individuals who would then go back into their corners. But what we found or at least I'm kind of taking this to a different level and this is where I became excited about your work in this discussion here is how to find a way to more explicitly engage in perhaps dialogue with other people from different spectrums maybe different and opposite worldviews in a way that you can tolerate that disagreement. And I guess the best thing that I have come up with so far and this is where I'm asking for feedback or I'm love to hear what other people's work is doing in the community and kind of incorporates my own thoughts is essentially providing ground rules where in order to participate in this space you need to engage in good faith and you need to not be disrespectful but we tolerate a lot of different worldviews and that can be that can be a difficult space to maintain because so for example, we're streaming right now on the Twitch politics channel politics on Twitch tends to be very polarized it gets viewers, the spaces that are less well attended are kind of the moderate spaces or maybe moderate is not a great view or because moderate can have its negative connotations as well but a kind of neutral standpoint where those ideas can intermingle with one another because to address some larger issues that I've seen that have come up various ways throughout this conference is how do we deal with the kind of rising schism in our ecology that's becoming more and more present every day, I'm in Georgia and farming's getting a lot better down here we almost don't have a winter that's I guess a positive it's something that's changing right for me as a farmer, as a gardener I'm trying to engage in that but that doesn't mean there's all these different things and so how do we engage with one another without condemning one another and ripping each other's throats out I think I hope that makes sense but yeah so anyways, I'm sorry that was long but I really appreciate everyone being here I'd love to get feedback No, that was great I would love to hear other people's response to you Mark before I jump in there is a lot going on in communities and across the country and folks that are trying to find that that third way if you will have dialogue folks that wanna contribute from their perspective to Mark's questioning query I don't know if this is the inquiry but what's been coming up for me is a lot of times I feel I don't have my feet on the ground enough or boots, what is the thing? Boots on the ground or something like that because I tend to gather like-minded people from around the planet of all different cultures and races and religions but they're still like-minded and we share in contributing a book and I have an or on a conference and a panel and I've done a lot of this through the years and yet at the same time I have difficulty in areas like I have said a whole lot in the last couple of years that I don't particularly want to try to communicate with intense fundamentalists or people that would think it is okay to put children in prisons and take them away from their parents I don't find a meeting ground so how do we deal with that? That's a great question I would love to say something about that in a little bit others that wanna put something in the middle of the room or in Andy's living room as I've been talking about this conference is sort of like we've all been hanging out in Andy's living room the last few days. You're all welcome here and I just want, I like you I don't wanna say much because I really just wanna be here to amplify and facilitate other folks talking and I'm dropping stuff in the chat but I will say this to what Sharon said because it's something we all struggle with but I think when we were in the gather Q&A yesterday and we got called to account a little bit for this because Sanjay the director was really able to say none of us really exist in this us versus them we might not directly be the ones advocating for putting kids in cages but the choices I make at the grocery store in the Starbucks coffee the planters I take around the world make me a part of a system of oppression whether I want to be or not and so that dividing line between myself and Trump is really a dotted line not a solid one is how I tend to look at it and so what I try to do is start from a place of a recognition of my participation in these systems of depletion and when to go and oppression and how that eats at my own soul how I come from a trajectory of that but how I'm also a person filled with love and light and redemptive qualities and I suppose that almost like a five band or a 10 band EQ maybe this person on this other side of this barrier because of their culture and their upbringing and their perspective might have that dialed a little more base a little more trouble than me and I'm not suggesting that someone who openly advocates putting children in camps just has more base on their EQ than I understand what Sharon is saying there's this huge dividing line between folks who seem to openly not care at all for the other and those who devoted their life to it but at the end of the day I think we're all closer to being in the same cauldron than not and so again I go back to what I've been saying this whole conference which is that fundamental awareness from the Upanishads taught Vamasi thou art that and when I look at Trump and I go thou art that it's hard for me to realize that I'm that that I am him too and I don't like sitting with that but the more I do the more I can start to feel my roots dig into the ground and the more I can start to sense the ways that I'm not Trump emerging and being nourished and being called forth and activated as well so I don't know if that's an answer but that's a contribution here and thank you Sharon and thank you Mark and for John for putting that together I have something to build on that or maybe it's a different take my thoughts are how this translates into communities is around like three basic principles one is resonance the second is coherence and the third is discernment and by that I mean that there are a lot of for lack of a better word vibrational frequencies or states of awareness or identity complexes out there and I keep coming back to the theme that we can't necessarily fix all that but what we can do is create pockets of coherent resonant discernment that becomes so magnetically attractive and evolutionarily compelling that they start to draw people because they're seeing success and abundance and prosperity and thriving in those pockets away from some of these more painful some scaric states of consciousness so I don't necessarily think it's valuable to enter into dialogue with people that have really negative points of view but I do think it's very valuable to create examples of ways in which you're thriving doing the things on this tree with other people and that that then starts to attract people in a sort of an evolutionary attractor way and this is classically what's called the sad sangha or the community of the holy the group of people who have come together to share common practices with each other and then create basically a vibrational attunement that then becomes a resonant attractor for those that are drawn into that field and over time, my thought is enough of these then become the new basis of the culture but we're fighting now with a lot of discordant frequencies and I just don't think you can fight all these battles you just got to create coherence around something and build from that so that's my response to this. No, that's great, Mark. I would definitely hear that and just a few things to throw in and just see what others have to say in the same vein there's a lot happening in what I would call the traditional civic political party space about trying to get what they call red and blues to talk to one another and what's difficult, I think that we all agree with that when we vote for somebody we generally rarely agree 100% with the candidates platform but we agree more with that one than with the other person, right? And I think the thing that gets difficult is that you still have to pick somebody at the end of the day if you're gonna vote and so for years we've talked about it in terms of the lesser of two evils and I mean the reality of it is I think many of us probably have friends and colleagues that have different political beliefs than we do they might not be what we would call an extremist on the other side but their relationships that we have where we may differ on a few issues whatever those might be and we're still friends with those folks like we can be in the same room with them and we can actually agree to disagree on some things and I think in terms of the work that I've been engaged with at the local level when you see people in the grocery store or you have to deal with them on a local level there's a certain amount of tolerance of diverse viewpoints that you can deal with and you sort of work it out in the civic space when you get to the issues and I guess to me I think what's been really fascinating when you look at the rescue package that was just passed in Congress where all the Republicans for example did not support it there was a question of well where's the bipartisanship and if you heard the dialogue they said well the bipartisanship is at the ground like the states and the mayors and the American public largely was in support of the package even though it's good but in many cases it's not it wasn't everything that the progressives for example wanted but there's other things that are gonna be proposed later the reality of it is this idea of oh it's bipartisan because the public wants it and the mayors want it regardless of political party that's actually an interesting negotiating argument just because the Republicans in Congress didn't support it they're the ones that are beholden to the money game to get reelected the next time around that's where some of them that are scared about what's gonna happen to them in the next two or four years in terms of the money that's gonna go against them if they support a package that's supported by the administration that it puts their future in jeopardy so does that mean they're for the American people? Does that mean they're for their constituents? Or does that mean that it's political survival from a financial perspective? So I think those are the kinds of things that people have to reckon with and I think a lot of people who might politically defend what folks are doing and trying to not support the package are not necessarily looking at things from a full and complete perspective and I guess I would also say that we have to have these conversations in ways that even if folks disagree with what I just said for example, that we can actually have some dialogue about the greatness of it all and where it actually is. Some colleagues of mine that do a lot of racial equity training make the argument for example, that trying to improve the racial equity in your institution or university doesn't have anything to do with politics and yet you know as well as I do that there will be people who will disagree with that that racial equity work within organizations and to try to improve the fairness and the equity in institutions is a political matter and I would say it's a both and ultimately I think most of us here would agree that it's an issue of being human and trying to you know as Grace Lee Boggs from Detroit said often before she passed that the quest in the 21st century is actually for us to try to be more human beings and I think that which is maybe one stage away from the deep ecology approach that we heard about in our last session but I think it's a noble one to bring people into the conversation. So Mark, I really love your coffee politics and philosophy circles and that's the kind of thing that we could all kind of do at our neighborhood level. Julie just put something in the chat. Julie, do you wanna share orally what you said or a version of it? Okay, she can't unmute so she says on smaller more local levels like community councils and small communities she's found that working out those differences in ways to address diverse viewpoints can be very difficult and contentious. Involvement in political processes can have benefits on wellbeing in a different way than engaging with state or national politics. Oh no, for sure. I guess one example I would give for North Carolina is that there's a foothills county called Transylvania County and in that town, in that county there's a town called Brevard. It's largely, it's primarily a white community with a small group of BIPOC folks that live in the area and they've developed a network that is civically engaged, politically diverse, multiracial to the extent that it is multiracial. They've got a very active NAACP chapter which is actually primarily white, by the way and their local college and hospital are in the mix in terms of creating civic space. This last election in November solidified a radical right county commission despite all of the civic energy to try to improve the health and wellbeing of the community. And when I spoke to a number of the leaders after November and for example, they've been trying to create dialogue across multiple viewpoints in their local weekly print newspaper because that's the thing that people are actually picking up on where they can actually engage in multiple viewpoints. I asked my friends and colleagues there, I'm like, so how do you take the last election? And they say, we're gonna dance with the people who wanna dance. We're not gonna worry about not being engaged. We're gonna actually ramp up our dialogue and engagement and we really are gonna continue to invite everybody. We're gonna advocate for the issues that are important to us and they just believe that over time, things will shift. Now, there's a question of how realistic that viewpoint is but it's certainly optimistic and I think is a good testament to the wellbeing of the people who are actually engaged. And from their perspective, not engaging even if the county commissioners are against the kind of cultural change that they're trying to promote with their community work and dialogues, not being engaged actually would be them not sort of acting out and connecting with their values. But Julie, I hear you wholeheartedly. And there was actually, I mean, I don't think any of us are Facebook friends but I just posted an article on Facebook. I think it was yesterday or the day before and that was an interview with Cornell West which I think many of you know and basically talked about the fatigue that many folks who are sort of always pushing for change and always kind of pushing the envelope, the sort of the fatigue on the spirit that occurs if you're always pushing and pushing. And that, again, that's why we need what Mark described, our community of the holy. And unfortunately right now in the pandemic many of us have been disconnected from some of our usual people that might fall into our community of holy but I hope that many of us have discovered new friends along the way. Again, I'm gonna put myself on mute for a minute and hear what others have to say and contribute into this dialogue. And if people wanna share examples of practices from these seven areas or things they've rediscovered for themselves, they'd be most welcome. In a little bit, we'll transition to the other piece and this isn't a linear thing. We're gonna keep cycling around. So even if we move on to the other piece we can certainly come back to this. I have a question. Can I, am I heard? Mm-hmm, yep. Okay, since I turned off the air thing to the TV I can't see the things that I would normally see but when I look at this tree I'm reminded that it doesn't have anything to say about shadow work, which Carl Jung pointed out is one of the most important pieces of human life. And so I'm wondering how that's addressed. No, I mean, I think that's great. I would actually, this is where the tree again is not a perfect piece but I think just to your point like where I would put shadow work might be in the generative. Branch, it could probably go in multiple branches. And in many cases, I think shadow work comes out in our relationships. So you could put shadow work in that relational space as well. And maybe shadow work could be a challenge to the roots of the tree as well. But I think that's an example of where like I encourage people to print out a blank version of the tree and try to populate it in that regard. But that's a really great point. I'll talk to the folks at the Center from Contemplative Mind and Society and see where they may have dropped in where they might be thinking shadow work might fit. But to me, it fits wherever you think it might fit. I think not including it is a good point. And I'd like to say that, I think that ritual practice is important here. I think we cultivate this kind of skill set and integrate it into our lives. I think what Julie and Sharon and Mark, I look for patterns in what people are saying. And Mark we're saying is that we have to really, we only have so much energy. We only have so much psychic space and we only have so much time. And to give it into every fight with a person on Facebook to give it into every person who supports aspects of say the previous administration or some of these draconian policies we see affecting communities of color and indigenous communities to try to sit and break bread with somebody who clearly has such hostility towards women's sovereignty and indigenous sovereignty. These aren't really fruitful or productive uses of our psychic space, our energy and our time. But at the same time, I think if we're looking to identify ourselves in opposition to the other that we're gonna see more of these chasms that often exist because there's a kind of hard other and a soft other. And there are people that are different than I am in their orientation, but that I still have enough in common with that we can, if we're really looking to find some commonality in our being with which to build community. And then there's those folks who like many of you have pointed out, there's no hope in interacting with. And then the second component of cultivating this thing that Mark said, these pockets of resistance where people can see you thriving and the religious traditions have always said this is the best kind of evangelism when other folks are like, hey, what's going on over there, right? And so Sharon's books, when you see these books written by women who have come from Buddhist background and Muslim background and Egyptian background and Islamic as well and Christian backgrounds and pagan backgrounds, but they're all speaking in one accord that that's arresting to see from the outside, hey, what's going on? But those folks like, I didn't know that Buddhist and Christian and Jewish women could speak in one voice and still maintain their own like specific cultural approaches. And so there's an attractor quality to the production of those books that works as a sort of if not an antidote that it works to deaden or at least speak against this noise that pushes against all of those things that you say you're standing for. And so I guess what I'm trying to say is we have to kind of cultivate and I looked at a guy like Mark Shagoy and who's a peace loving warrior, right? And we have to kind of what fights do we want to engage in? What fights do we not want to engage in with me? I'm always in a fight against my own lack of belief that I can ascend and do better. And so the reason I don't spend time going, you know, Trump is so awful is because I can rest on my laurels at that point because I can feel good about myself because I'm not as bad as Trump. And I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna feel like, oh, at least I'm not as bad as Trump. I wanna look at how I'm moving through the world and move with more grace, with more compassion and more life affirming conscious awareness. And if I spend too much time on the depleted notion of my quote unquote enemy, then I take energy away from that kind of rigorous self-examination. If that makes any sense, I'm not sure. Loving these comments so far. Yeah, that resonates, Andrew. I mean, it's like playing to your strengths with it versus trying to fix all the weaknesses. You know, it's like, you only have so much time and energy on the planet. I think we've risks, you know, so first of all, I wanna preface that spiritual work and this kind of contemplative practices, it's already giving me insight into how to carry this forward into some darker areas. So I'm not of the Jewish faith, but something that I heard from, I have a lot of Jewish friends and they repeat spiritual mantras. But the idea of bringing dark or light to darkness as being something that is, or the idea of bodhisattva or something to that accord as being higher than a sort of enlightenment and not having that depletion at the same time. So in my professional life, I'm a social worker. I also do psychotherapy. And so it's very, it's sometimes very easy to get sucked into battling with those forces as you're saying, Mark, and just continually abutting against an unjust healthcare system or people's lack of access to resources or discrimination of black and people of color, black persons and people of color in medical spaces. It's, you know, you wanna get, so I find myself sometimes being egoic or like I wanna get into that fight, you know? And that's depleting. At the same time, I think there is something that's worthwhile and continually drawn back into these spaces of, so in college, I was, I participated in sustained dialogue, which was a sort of a kind of this engagement with all different kinds of views, but with some kind of parameters so that you aren't engaging with people who don't respect human rights, right? Or, but in the same token, so Cassandra Cassie White, my thesis advisor dropped in there that there's all sorts of advice, examples of people, the particularly, so Daryl Davis and others engaging with folks who are radically hateful, you know? And the idea that Gandhi standing up to oppression in a way that is militant, but nonviolent. So, you know, finding a way to balance those forces because it can be depleting and it can be, right? You're wasting all your energy. Why not cultivate these spheres? And so finding a way to bring in some more branches of these trees, I think can be sustaining to other arms that might be, I don't know, a budding against more negativity in a way, hope that makes sense. Yeah, it does. I mean, you know, others may have ideas about this, but I always think that balance is sort of, is not, balance is like a goal that can never be reached, you know? And so there's like a, there's a tacking, if you will, if you think about a boat, there's like a tacking back and forth. And I just think that as we've discussed about our separation between ourselves and others doesn't really exist. I also believe that the inner and the outer work is essentially the same relational work and that we do have to think about how we balance our inner work and our outer work. And Thomas Merton talked about this in his writings about how basically if activists get pulled into too much work, we can actually, even in our quest for non-violence, we can actually be committing violence against ourselves if we're actually doing it in unhealthy ways. That's very simple, but again, I like trying to frame things in a way that like folks can kind of get into the, feel like they get invited into a conversation that they can speak to. Yeah, I'm interested to hear from others and other topics and just how this relates to your personal experience. And for folks that are kind of like thinking about the, maybe we can stay with this and we can also come back to it. I wanna, if our techs would help a little bit in terms of pulling up the graphic from the next piece, that would be one less thing, but here's the mapping our roles in the social change ecosystem. And again, it's an incomplete graphic for the purposes of having a conversation. Again, if you go to this page, you can download a worksheet, you can download it for yourself. But what I wanna point to is that this isn't your traditional, these aren't your traditional roles. So if you could scroll down to the graphic, there you go, in the middle are some rooted values of equity, liberation, justice and solidarity. I think we could add other words to the circle, but there are these types of roles that are defined on another page, but I think most of us here can define these for ourselves. And the reality of it is is some of these roles are situational. Some of these roles are actually more tied to our vocational work. And for those of you who are here, I mean, I do see the people who are in attendance and particularly our speakers as cultural warriors. Some of you may not see yourselves as spiritual warriors, but in many ways, you're cultural warriors and that in many of us have probably multiple hats and multiple roles that might be articulated in these outer circles. And you can see those for yourselves. And these are roles that we might have part of our weeks or in certain stages of our lives. For sure when I was, I had to do elder care with my mother after my father passed for about four years. And so I had to definitely bring in a caregiving role and eventually a hospice orientation to the work that I was doing with my mother while also balancing being a caregiver as a parent to three children, right? And so there's, we take on those roles at different times in our life when we need to step up and step into a role that we may not necessarily have to do throughout our whole life. Obviously many storytellers, many guides, many healers in this space. But just again, wanted to throw that out as something, this was created by a team of activists that work nationally and internationally on areas of social change. And wanted to offer this up as another visual that in many ways can be in conversation with the tree as could the Ken Wilber quadrant that Mark offered earlier. And as others are digesting that particular visual we can continue to take this conversation where we need to take it. And my intuition tells me even though I don't know the leader of our next session but I've been excited for three days now about the Hippity-Hoppity session because my belief is that that will give us another perspective into the work as well. Yes, absolutely. And just for everyone that Hippity-Hoppity session. So a lot of people have been asking what this is. And so it's actually, it's presented by Carrie Miller from JFK University. So it's like this in this discussion here it's another experiential so it'll be something unique to the presenter. But from what I understand it's gonna be partial poem so partial text analysis per personal relation to that and then kind of a meditation or an embodiment. So it's kind of an integration of a lot of things we've been talking about. But I'd love to hear from others. We have very rare opportunities to engage in sustained talk. So if somebody has a topic or something even from the conference or something that you wanna bring into this we love there's so much wisdom in this room and that has been generally here. So if anyone would like to discuss anything or this sparks anything and anyone's fine would love to hear that. Hello. Hello. Well, that's not working. I think we have you in two, do you have two computers on there? Yeah, I do. Okay, you might need to mute one. But your echo is pretty awesome. They're impressive. They're a Galgameshian Thor like. Thanks for your thanks Mark, appreciate you. You're on mute Daniel. Is that better? Yes. That's great. Okay. What strikes me about this is that I don't see myself in any of these categories. No, on the tree. I mean, when I was a kid I used to love to climb trees that would have put me up into the top. But I didn't see anything there. I don't do any of those things. Are you talking about this tree? Yes. Well, yeah. I couldn't find myself there. And I can't find myself in the little circles either. Or the circles. These guys. And maybe I'm a builder. I make things. I'm constantly making things. But that's not what we're really talking about here. I mean, I made a moxon vise last week. Anybody know what that is? The very cool vise. If you're a woodworker man, it's the best. It's terrific. There's something that was invented in about 1600 or something like that. It's cool vise. But, I mean, I'm an analyst. I'm a researcher. I'm a builder. Wonderful storyteller. Visionary. I work hard at storytelling. Yes, I do. Whenever I write something. I can tell you about it. It's not so much true anymore. I mean, I'm getting, I can't really do that kind of work much anymore. It's really, I look sometimes at stuff that I did 20 years ago. I say, how the hell did you do that? I mean, how did you put that all together? And I just, well, that was then, this is now. I can't walk a dog anymore. I had a, I got a dog six months ago. I had to give him away. I just couldn't, I mean, 50 feet, 50 steps or maybe a hundred in my back is killing me. I gotta quit. So I also guess that probably the primary, primary quality about what I am is I'm retired. I'm out of this fight. I mean, I vote, but I don't try to convince anybody to change their mind about anything anymore. You know, and part of what I'm hearing, and I don't, we don't know each other, but I mean, I also heard if I looked at the tree, and it sounds like particularly when you're woodworking or you're crafting or you're building, that that's a creative practice. And so part of it is like, how do you develop wellness for yourself? Something that some of us do that is also not on the tree is cooking. Is what? Cooking. I cook. Yeah. I do cook. Yeah. So gardening is not necessarily on here. And so for those of us who are gardeners and cooks, that's part of the contemplative work. Oh, that's a beautiful bowl, Daniel. It's gorgeous. That's just on my desk and holds some appointments and things. I don't know. It is, this bit here is hard to do. That's an inlay of a piece of wire. Which then you run the machine again, the lathe again, and you take off the outside so that it's now it's just half a wire. And it's only about a millimeter thick, but it's really pretty cool. So, you know, I do that. I give those away all the time. Many, many, but I got them all in the mantle piece in my living room there. I kind of take them as sort of piece offerings. Remember me, keep me in your thoughts. Yeah. I mean, you know, one of my, you know, particularly with you gifting things to other people, that's depending on the receiver, that's a, that could be a point of healing, right? Yes, I agree. Thanks for having me. So, I guess what I want to say is something, Margaret, where are you? Oh, go ahead. Oh, I think you're muted, Margaret. Okay. Okay, that explains. I heard you, I saw your mouth, I'm sorry, I thought. Thanks. I have a hard time at any rate knowing with Zoom conference, things went to interject and when it's the right moment, but listening to Daniel and looking at this ecosystem map and then also thinking about the other one, something, and I'm not sure which, which labels that this could fall under, or even if this is included in everything that they say, but for me, something that's very, very, very powerful is presence, that the person isn't necessarily doing something, they're not saying something, that's not what's important. They can be cooking, they can be cleaning the house, they can be walking, they can be sitting, but it's being present. And I think that we can all agree, possibly some people that are more socially isolated during this pandemic, the power of presence and how much that this can change dynamics simply by providing a presence. And so I'm sensing from Daniela and I don't know your life or... What is that? The little pot full of pencils, those styluses. You know, I can't do that sort of thumb typing that children can't, you know? I mean, that takes it, there's a certain area in the brain that does that and mine is used up, but it's amusing. I hope it's amusing, it's kind of funny. It is, yeah. The little pot that failed, but I use it, so it hasn't failed, I guess. That is really fun. That is really fun. I'm curious looking at the tree and the map if anyone is struck by where's presence and providing a certain type of presence where that might fit in on these visuals. I think that's a great insight Margaret and that presence to me is providing open heart space. One of the first meetings I went to in a SAC meeting, I don't know, 10 years ago maybe. So Diane was president at that time and she was holding a certain position in the room and I came up to her because we had just met. How are you doing? And she said, I'm holding space. She could sense there was some off energy within a conference and she was just like, it's taking a lot of energy to hold this space and to provide a safe, and she was essentially holding us in a motherly embrace, but also energetically and aware. To me, I was, hey Diane, but I could feel it at a different level. So my conscious mind was like, okay, hi Diane, we're gonna be doing anything. That space and that presence allowed for other things to unfold. So I really appreciate that insight. And yeah, I think for at least what I was able to experience with you last night, Dan Daniel, is that presence in that storytelling. For me, that's how I experienced it. And so that's going to ripple out into the metaverse, the space, the digital space. So I think that's maybe one way that this tree is intersecting with other trees, right? And how this connects back to personal practice or Gertrion. One of the, one thing that is, that's very interesting about trees that people have discovered recently, although it's something that everybody sort of knows is if you walk into a thickly wooded area, you have big old oak trees, like there is kind of right about there about a quarter mile from here. And if you look, the trees don't, the trees are all a little bit apart from one another. There's always a foot or two between these trees and they grow that way. They grow so that they don't intrude on one another. Have you seen this book? Entangled Life. Tangled Life. It's primarily about the fungi that live under the ground that keep all the trees connected. The beautiful book, man. I just devoured this book. It was so, so cool. But the thing that was really interesting is that one of the things that that fungal network does is it helps the trees to not intrude on one another, to keep their space. I've seen some photographs. I saw some in science magazine a couple of weeks ago. I don't remember how they had taken this, maybe from a drone, but you could see the tops of these trees and this little spaces between them. It was just, these are huge trees, 100 years old, 200 year old trees keeping their space. Really amazing. One of my favorite imagery, can you hear me? Is this? Yes. One of my favorite imagery and has been an inspiration for I think the last decade or so is the spacing of trees. Because if you look at human air sacs all throughout the lung, it's spaced in that way. But we have like tissue that's surrounding it and for trees, they're just, they're branching based on Fibonacci, right? Natural kind of. Yes. Iterative spaces that are branching out and so are we. And so for me, that's just a reminder, right? What Andy was saying, that you are, we are embodied in the world. And that's I think a wonderful connection with ecology, at least for me that you bringing that up just kind of jarred something in my psyche that has been a proud part of my life. And I was always wondering how to imagine that or paint that, but I was always kind of falling short. But anyways, I think that's a wonderful way to kind of wrap up and kind of integrate a lot of these thoughts of individual work that are touching one another but also embodied outside and within. And so we're winding down this space and we have just a few minutes left, about four or so. But I just wanted to open the space if anyone wanted to say anything in closing or other thoughts, people just wanted to reflect on and wanted to provide that space before we kind of closed down and moved on to a brief break for dinner and then on to Hippity Hoppity, right? In about half an hour. So I want to provide that space right now. Can I say that it's really been great meeting all you people? Yes, absolutely. That's been quite a trip and I've really enjoyed it. We thank you for sticking with it and getting through the technology barrier. Well, the technology, I don't know, be mine. At the same time we were able to connect and we may not have been able to have that. Funding is also difficult to get to travel and go different spaces. Yeah, that's true. If you want to acknowledge too, this is probably the lowest carbon footprint that we've had and we've reached the most amount of people, maybe over close to 100, more than that, 150 total participants if you combine the Twitch viewership and space. So the movie was to die for. Yeah, the movie was incredible. So many great different parts of that. So I think we'll use this now as a space that just kind of closed down and was John wanting to give that a seat. I just have another comment. I think the point that this conversation reveals is again, trying to provide imperfect framework for us to be able to have conversation. And I very much think that presence is integrated in a number of the branches and number of the circles connected to the roots of the tree. But the point is the exploration happens through this kind of conversation. And for the back and forth with Daniel and the offerings from others, Margaret and others, as we begin to know one another better, we begin to see where things start to align and land for one another. I guess I want to offer one more thing really quickly in a few seconds and then see if others have other closing thoughts. But I've really enjoyed this time together. I would invite further dialogue, a relationship if you will, if you'd like to connect later. I think a lot of us were taken with Amanda Gorman's poem, The Hill We Climb at the Inauguration. And she was in an interview a couple of weeks ago and when she was asked about that particular poem, she said that she has three things that she's been asking people while she's talking about sort of her role in the Inauguration. She asks three questions. Whose shoulders do you stand on? And it's a call to learn the truth about the past, their failures and successes. The second question is, for what do you stand for? What's your story within the story of your community and the story of the world? And then how are you acting or how do you want to act? How are you authoring a new chapter, rebuilding, reconciling or recovering? And I guess to me, offering a story. And to me, those are very simple everyday questions that I think it's important to sort of bring into the circle to bring into each other's and to hear each other's conversations and to just be in the engagement. And as a younger person who offered that poem for the nation, I think a lot of people were, it was the right thing to hear at the right time. So, am I not, am I doing some other stuff to say? Beautiful, thank you so much, John. Thank you for facilitating this space. Thank you for everyone who participated in this panel. This has been recorded and so this will be available. I know I'll be watching it back and other panels throughout this will also be recorded. Stay tuned for information on how to get that. So we'll give you some space to go, take care of your biological functions, go get some sunlight or do your thing, water your plants. And then we'll be back in about half an hour for Hippity Hoppity, we're all gonna experience it together. And then we'll have also an opportunity and just an invitation. If any of this was appealing to you or you feel like you want to participate in Anthropology of Consciousness Living Board, we'd love to have you at the Anthropology of Consciousness Business Meeting. It's at the end of the day. We invite your participation. We are always accepting board members and other people who would like to contribute to this space. We're volunteer. So this is all a work of love and you can see some work in pain that is in it but it's ultimately for this, for creating this kind of space. So we would love to have you that but we will let, we will thank John mutually and yes, we will see you soon. So thank you so much. Thank you, John.