“The interdependence of all life remains just a mental concept, without power to affect our attitudes and behaviors, unless it takes on some emotional reality. We need to feel it, and our capacity to feel is stunted, if we block out the pain within us over what is happening to our world.”
Deep Ecologist and Buddhist scholar, Dr. Joanna Macy whose teachings are called The Work that Reconnects:
- Our experience of moral pain for our world springs from our inter-connectedness with all beings, from which also arise our powers to act on their behalf. When we deny or repress our pain for the world, or view it as a private pathology, our power to take part in the healing of our world is diminished. Our capacity to respond to our own and others’ suffering can be unblocked.
- Unblocking occurs when our pain for the world is not only intellectually validated, but also experienced. Cognitive information about the crises we face is generally insufficient to mobilize us. But direct experience of our own deep emotional response can reveal our mutual belonging in the web of life, and free us to act.
- When we reconnect with life, by willingly enduring our pain for it, the mind retrieves its natural clarity. We experience not only our inter-connectedness in the Earth community, but also mental eagerness to match this experience with new paradigm thinking. Significant learnings occur as the individual re-orients to wider reaches of identity and self-interest.
- The experience of re-connection with the Earth community arouses desire to act on its behalf. As Earth’s self-healing powers take hold within us, we feel called to take part in the Great Turning. The steps we take can be modest ones, but they should involve some risk to our mental comfort, lest we remain caught in old, “safe” limits. Courage is a great teacher and bringer of joy.
The Work that Reconnects (WTR) is a series of practices and experiences used by communities to facilitate the restoring of the human community into a powerful and resilient force for positive change. It does this by creating a platform for the hearts of individuals to open, heal and find their power.
The sorrow, grief, and rage you feel is a measure of your humanity and your evolutionary maturity. As your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal.”
— Joanna Macy
