## Metadata - Author: [[Joanna Macy, Molly Young Brown]] - Full Title: Coming Back to Life - Category: #books ## Highlights - The insights and experiences that enable us to make this shift may arise from grief for our world that contradicts illusions of the separate and isolated self. Or they may arise from breakthroughs in science, such as quantum physics and systems theory. Or we may find ourselves inspired by the wisdom traditions of native peoples and mystical voices in the major religions; we hearken to their teachings as to some half-forgotten song that reminds us again that our world is a sacred whole in which we have a sacred mission. Now, in our time, these three rivers — anguish for our world, scientific breakthroughs and ancestral teachings — flow together. From the confluence of these rivers we drink. We awaken to what we once knew: we are alive in a living Earth, the source of all we are and can achieve. Despite our conditioning by the industrial society of the last two centuries, we want to name, once again, this world as holy. ([Location 1106](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1106)) - This shift in our sense of identity will be lifesaving in the socio-political and ecological traumas that lie before us. All honest forecasts are for very rough weather ahead. As distant markets and supplies dry up, financial institutions collapse and climate-induced disasters multiply, the shock waves washing over us could tumble us into fear and chaos. The realizations we make in the third dimension of the Great Turning save us from succumbing to either panic or paralysis. They help us resist the temptation to stick our heads in the sand. They help us withstand the temptation to turn on each other, finding scapegoats on whom to vent our fear and rage. When we know and revere the wholeness of life, we can stay alert and steady. We know there is no individual salvation. We join hands to find the ways the world self-heals. ([Location 1189](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1189)) - Resistance to painful information on the grounds that we cannot do anything about it springs less from powerlessness (as measured by our capacity to effect change) than from the fear of feeling powerless. The predominant model of self in Western culture —”I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul”4 — discourages us from confronting issues for which we have no immediate solutions. We feel that we ought to be in charge of our existence and to have all the answers. And so we tend to shrink the sphere of our attention to those areas that we believe we can directly control. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the smaller our sphere of attention, the smaller our sphere of influence. ([Location 1373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1373)) - You can hold yourself back from the suffering of the world: this is something you are free to do… But perhaps precisely this holding back is the only suffering you might be able to avoid. — Franz Kafka ([Location 1432](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1432)) - The instinct for self-preservation, recognized as the most powerful drive in the biological realm, is essential to the preservation of our species and the ongoingness of life. In the ancient Hindu chakra system, this drive is identified with the base chakra or muladhara. It represents and feeds our instinctual nature, source of our claim on life itself. To be afraid to look at and respond to that which threatens all life constitutes a blocking of the muladhara, cutting off primal intelligence and energies essential to survival. This chakra not only represents a last line of defense in the protection of life, but it also feeds the erotic currents of our days and years. Opening the base chakra — and thereby our full will to live — means opening ourselves to the repressed tears and rage of our pain for the world. ([Location 1455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1455)) - To be cut off from this root chakra robs us of our birthright to deep ecstatic connections within the web of life. Without Eros, our lives become more desiccated and robotic, even as we dream up robots to serve us. This loss of Eros has led to a flourishing of pornography in which we pathetically try to revitalize our sexual natures in contrived and trivializing ways. The frustration of so basic an urge can lead to violence as well. ([Location 1462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1462)) - When the erotic drive is weak, we pay less respect to the aesthetic dimension of life. No longer seeing the arts as essential, we use them for embellishment and display of wealth, and we cut support and funding for art, music and drama in our schools and communities. ([Location 1466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1466)) - At the same time, we see a desperate pursuit of pleasure and short-term gratification in our culture today. There seems to be a new hedonism in the consumption of goods, entertainment, sex, alcohol. This hedonism derives from more than sheer appetite. Its frantic quality does not reflect a healthy lust for life so much as the contrary: the absence of — and yearning for — a truly erotic connection to life. ([Location 1468](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1468)) - We don’t break free from denial and repression by gritting our teeth and trying to be nobler, braver citizens. We don’t retrieve our passion for life, our wild, innate creative intelligence, by scolding ourselves and soldiering on with a stiff upper lip. That model of heroic behavior belongs to the worldview that gave us the Industrial Growth Society. ([Location 1500](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1500)) - The worldview emerging now lets us behold anew and experience afresh the web of life in which we exist. It opens us to the vast intelligence of life’s self-organizing powers, which have brought us forth from interstellar gases and primordial seas. It brings us to a larger identity in which to cradle and transcend our ego-identified fears. It lets us honor our pain for the world as a gateway into deep participation in the world’s self-healing. The group work of the last four decades that this book describes is based on this worldview. More basic to the Great Turning than any ideas we hold is the act of courage and love we make together when we dare to see our world as it is. ([Location 1507](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1507)) - If you put God outside and set him vis-à-vis his creation and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. As you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against … other social units, other races and the brutes and vegetables.               If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. ([Location 1561](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1561)) - In contrast to hierarchies of control familiar to organizations in which rule is imposed from above, in nested hierarchies (sometimes called holonarchies) order tends to arise from below, as well as be summoned or inspired by its larger context. ([Location 1614](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1614)) - The mechanistic view of reality separated substance from process, self from other, mind from matter. In the systems perspective, these dichotomies no longer hold. What appeared to be separate and self-existent entities are now seen as interdependent and interwoven. What had appeared to be other can be equally construed as a concomitant of self, like a fellow-cell in the neural patterns of a larger body. What we had been taught to dismiss as mere feelings are responses to our world no less valid than rational constructs. Sensations, emotions, intuitions, concepts all condition each other, each a way of apprehending the relationships that weave our world. ([Location 1619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1619)) - What does it mean or matter to be interdependent with all Earthly life? In exploring this question, deep ecology arose, both as a philosophy and a movement. Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, a mountain climber and scholar of Gandhi, coined the term in the 1970s. ([Location 1656](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1656)) - Deep Ecology, or biocentrism, is a law of nature that exists independently of whether humans recognize it or not …. And the failure of modern society to acknowledge this — as we attempt to subordinate all of nature to human use — has lead us to the brink of collapse of the Earth’s life support systems …. Biocentrism is ancient native wisdom …, but in the context of today’s industrial society, biocentrism is profoundly revolutionary, challenging the system to its core. — Judi Bari, forest activist ([Location 1662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1662)) - “I am protecting the rainforest” develops to “I am part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking.” What a relief then! The thousands of years of imagined separation are over and we begin to recall our true nature. The change is a spiritual one, sometimes referred to as deep ecology. ([Location 1681](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1681)) - “With sufficient all-sided maturity” we not only move on from ego to a social self and a metaphysical self, but an ecological self as well. Through widening circles of identification, we vastly extend the boundaries of our self-interest, and enhance our joy and meaning in life. A welcome and significant feature of this concept is the way it transcends the need to sermonize about our moral responsibilities. When we assumed that we were essentially separate, we called people to be altruistic — that is to favor the other (alter in Latin) more than the self (ego in Latin). This is not only philosophically unsound from the perspective of deep ecology, but it is also ineffective. ([Location 1687](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1687)) - We call on the spirit of Gaia … . Awaken in us a sense of who we truly are: tiny ephemeral blossoms on the Tree of Life. Make the purposes and destiny of that tree our own purpose and destiny. — John ([Location 1701](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1701)) - Mere purposive rationality unaided by such phenomena as art, religion, dream and the like, is necessarily pathogenic and destructive of life … its virulence springs specifically from the circumstance that life depends upon interlocking circuits of contingency, while consciousness can see only short arcs of such circuits as human purpose may direct. — Gregory Bateson ([Location 1720](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1720)) - Within the vast panoply of Hindu traditions are stories, practices and devotional songs that train the imagination to see the irrepressible vitality at the core of existence. ([Location 1759](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1759)) - Buddhist teachings and practices, deriving from our connectivity with all life, help us experience the world in terms of process rather than in terms of things to grasp or reject. ([Location 1767](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1767)) - The Buddha Dharma provides images of interconnectedness and models for a life of action. From Mahayana Buddhism comes the Jewel Net of Indra, a polycentric vision of reality in which each being at each node in the vast net of everything is a gem reflecting all the other gems. As in the holographic model presented by contemporary science, each part contains the whole. ([Location 1771](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1771)) - The bodhisattva, the Buddhist hero figure, is one who deeply comprehends the dependent co-arising of all things. This one knows that there is no private salvation and therefore turns back from the gates of nirvana to reenter samsara (the world of suffering) again and again, until every being, every blade of grass, is enlightened. The choice to act for the sake of all beings — that intention known as bodhichitta — arises naturally when we open to our mutual belonging. ([Location 1774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1774)) - So as many a sage has pointed out: however dire the circumstances we find ourselves in, we can always choose our response. The power of choice is our nobility, our refuge. In both systems theory and Buddhism, choice-making is seen as definitive of the self. We discover who we are in our choices. ([Location 1818](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1818)) - If … the metaphor of an organism can be applied to humankind, we can imagine a collective movement that would protect, repair, and restore that organism’s capacity to endure when threatened. Specifically, the shared activity of hundreds or thousands of nonprofit organizations can be seen as humanity’s immune response to toxins like political corruption, economic disease, and ecological degradation. — Paul Hawken ([Location 1878](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1878)) - The exertion of greater force can certainly serve to defend oneself and others, but that function is one of protection, not to be confused with the kind of power that generates new forms, behaviors and potentials. That capacity emerges with and functions through relationship. We can call it power with or synergy. ([Location 1903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1903)) - As life-forms evolve in complexity and intelligence, they shed their armor in order to grow sensitive, vulnerable protuberances — like lips, tongues, ears, eyeballs, noses, fingertips — the better to sense and respond, the better to connect in the web of life and weave it further. ([Location 1910](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1910)) - To the social system, power over is dysfunctional because it inhibits diversity and feedback; by obstructing self-organizing processes, it fosters entropy or systemic disintegration. To the powerholders themselves, it is like a suit of armor: it restricts vision and movement. Narrowing awareness and maneuverability, it cuts them off from fuller and freer participation in life. They have fewer options for action and fewer sources of joy, except to grasp for more of what represents power to them. ([Location 1914](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1914)) - Power with or synergy is not a property one can own, but a process one engages in. ([Location 1918](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1918)) - Like the brain, society is a cybernetic system which only functions well with unhampered flows of information. That is how our mind-bodies work. When you put your hand on a hot stove, you rapidly withdraw it because feedback tells you your fingers are burning. You wouldn’t know that if you began censoring your body’s reports. ([Location 1924](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1924)) - Any system that consistently suppresses feedback — closing its perceptions to the results of its behavior — is committing suicide. ([Location 1933](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1933)) - When we make common cause on behalf of the Earth community, we open not only to the needs of others, but also to their abilities and gifts. It is a good thing that power with is not a personal property, because, frankly, none of us alone possesses all the courage and intelligence, strength and endurance, required for the Great Turning. And none of us needs to possess them, or dredge them up out of some private storehouse. The resources we need are present within the web of life that interconnects us. ([Location 1955](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1955)) - The weaving of new connections brings new responses and new possibilities into play. In the process, we can feel sustained — and are sustained — by currents of power arising from our solidarity. ([Location 1960](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=1960)) - In bringing the Work That Reconnects into publicly traded corporations, let us be clear that it threatens their operating codes in these ways: 1.   It helps people to tell the truth about what they see, know and feel is happening to their world. It opens feedback channels and legitimizes questions of conscience. ([Location 2165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=2165)) - The group helps us to sustain the gaze. ([Location 2195](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=2195)) - The social codes against the voicing of our feelings about what is happening in our world must be particularly punitive and effective in corralling men …. The corporate/ industrial/war machine could never abide a population of men with intact emotional feedback loops. I saw that words like “feelings” or “pain” set-off the social codes alarm system …. Use “speaking the truth” instead. This is a kind of call to arms to masculine energy and bypasses the codes about “sharing feelings.” ([Location 2324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00LDYEX4Q&location=2324))