The climate emergency, at its heart, is a spiritual emergency. Unless we learn to fall in love with the wonder and beauty of the Earth, and no longer see it simply as a resource to be exploited, then the outlook seems bleak. As the world’s Indigenous peoples and wisdom traditions have also known for millennia, recognising the deep interconnectedness and mutual dependence of all life is also critical to our future. UK author and long-time meditator Jim Green has developed a new online course, ‘Contemplating Earth’,* which argues that it is in opening to the contemplative consciousness that unites each of us with one another and with the Earth itself that we will learn, in the depths of our shared being, how to act wisely and to live well for the good of all. The following is the introduction to the course.
In the second season of Mad Men, the award-winning drama series about the life of advertising executives in the early 1960s, there is a celebrated and poignant scene. Don Draper - the alpha-male adman - is in the New York State countryside with his family. They have come for a picnic. The scene is idyllic: beautiful wife, successful and handsome businessman, two children contentedly playing. After lying lazily and happily in the peaceful sunshine, the parents decide they had better get going to beat the traffic returning to the city. They pack up all the picnic equipment: hampers, cool-boxes, hats, toys. Don hurls his half-empty beer-can into the distance; his wife Betty picks up and shakes off all the plastic wrappers, paper, bottles and cardboard from the picnic rug onto the grass. They slowly go up the bank and get into their giant, gas-guzzling 1962 Cadillac Coupe DeVille. It pulls away and exits the frame, leaving the camera and us looking at the detritus of their picnic, widely scattered beneath the trees where the family has taken their rest.
It’s an arresting image and provides a kind of visual shorthand for humanity’s recent relationship with the Earth – the planet we live on, the ground beneath our feet and everything that depends on the health of that ground. ‘Recent’ we can understand as referring to the booming post-World War Two culture of the West where consumerism was installed as the dominant belief system that shaped everybody’s lives. People like Don Draper sold you commodities that promised satisfaction and happiness, either fleeting or lifelong, and when you were finished with them, or they no longer worked, you threw them away. And not at the recycling centre, not even in a trash can, because an essential part of this particular dream – the one that millions of Don Drapers sold and bought for so long – was that there was an infinite supply of everything and that the Earth itself was, by default, an infinitely extendable trash can. The effect of this dream was to instil a belief (one that people didn’t even know they had – the most dangerous kind) that there were no consequences for your actions. Certainly not in terms of humanity’s relationship with “the natural world”, let alone the planet. Nothing would come back to bite you; you lived, essentially, in a world that was free of karma. There were no boundaries, no restrictions and no limits to a very particular kind of growth: economic growth for American individuals, American families, American cities, the entire United States of America and everyone who aspired to be like them – which soon was the rest of the Western world, and then, quite quickly, pretty much the whole of the world.
But it’s neither helpful nor accurate to scapegoat the USA, even though that nation was for a long time the egregious cheerleader for a way of life that elevated consumption and personal satisfaction – at the expense of everything else – as the ultimate good. We could, after all, also understand ‘recent’ as referring to that period of humanity’s history inaugurated by what we have called the Industrial Revolution, beginning around the middle of the eighteenth century. This radical transformation of the way that goods were made and sold – and of the way in which those who made them worked and lived – happened to manifest first in Britain, spreading then to Europe and to North America. The mindset of the Industrial Revolution – a fundamental assumption that scientifically-based technological progress could only be a good thing – arose from, or gave birth to (probably both), the perception that the Earth is essentially a gravel pit or a hardware store. It is merely a resource and a trading post, where the promises of more comfortable lives are sold, where profits are made and no housekeeping needs to be done.
We miss the point, though, if we set out to ‘blame’ what has gone so obviously and horribly wrong in humanity’s relationship with Earth simply on an evolutionary growth-surge such as the Industrial Revolution or on any particular nation, race or set of historical ideas. Bearing in mind the ages of the Universe and the Earth (about 14 billion and 4.5 billion years respectively) we could, of course, continue to extend that ‘recent’ back to the beginning of what is known as the Modern period of history, around the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the globe itself was circumnavigated for the first time and the so-called New World encountered the old one. This was a time clearly characterised by exploration and ‘discovery’, inspired by the early stirrings of the scientific method. What was discovered, though, was not worlds simply to be marvelled at or learned from but, first and foremost, to be conquered, possessed and exploited.
Again, it’s not the ‘fault’ of the Portuguese, the Spanish or the Italians that these attitudes to the Earth and those they found living on ‘new’ parts of it were acted out with such destructive consequences. They just happened to be there, at that time, driven by incomplete and mistaken ideas – ideas that seemed to them so complete and so right as they lived them out. Some part of humanity’s consciousness has always been commandeered by the desire to dominate, to exploit, to treat their fellow beings, the natural world, the Earth and – crucially – themselves as objects rather than living entities. Over the course of millennia some cultures have done better than others in recognising and tempering that destructive tendency running deep in the human condition, but it has now caught up with us in such a way that it can no longer be ignored, or shelved until we dream up another way of trying to live less short-sighted, self-centred and poisonous lives. This time, the destruction inevitably folded into the acting out of our unchecked impulses will have to be addressed on a scale and at a level far wider and far more radical than ever before if we are not to destroy the balance of all life on Earth and, of course, ourselves into the bargain.
We now live at a time when – because of the damaging effect and extent of our technological powers – we can no longer live in a fantasy world where we can do what we like and get away with it, or pretend that it has no consequences. The consequences are now all around us, increasingly present and unignorable in our daily lives. We are living with the results of what we have done for far too long, living on the Earth in a kind of self-destructive trance. I am writing this introduction on the day that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its sixth Assessment Report (9th August, 2021). What it tells us is stark, incontrovertible and urgent. There is now no question but that human activity is continuing to damage the climate in unprecedented and catastrophic ways. There is every likelihood that in the next two decades average global temperatures will rise by more than the 1.5 degrees centigrade agreed in Paris in 2015, bringing widespread extreme weather, devastation of land and sea, even the potential collapse of civilization. BUT, the report also insists, there is still – just about – the possibility of mitigating the worst effects if humanity acts collectively, wisely and immediately. We can pull ourselves, and the rest of the planet with us, back from the brink.
The extraordinary quality of our present moment is that, as a species, as a human cultural community and as individuals, we are being offered a glimpse of our true situation. More than a glimpse – it is staring at us plainly in the face. The information we are getting is not ‘just’ about the fact that we are about to wreck and extinguish most of the exquisite and irreplaceable life forms on the planet (including ourselves), nor simply that we have been building up to this for many, many years. Because of the urgency and totality of the situation, what is now available for us to really know and act on – perhaps for the first time - is the truth about our lives on Earth: that our perceived needs, our constructed desires and fantasies are not at the centre of the real, creative life of the planet or of the mysteriously expanding universe. They are not even at the centre of our true selves. Voices from the unfolding wisdom traditions of the world have been telling us for millennia: to escape from the forces of violence, destruction and death that constantly threaten to rule the world, we must wean ourselves off the demands of our fierce egos and live as well as we can in full openness to the real needs of the Other – our human neighbours, our brother and sister birds and animals, mother Earth herself. This is how we join in with Life, and Life in all its fullness. The evidence of what happens when we ignore this simple and fundamental wisdom is now all around us. It is as if the Earth herself has taken over as the great teacher from all those who have up to now spoken on her behalf, reminding us of who we are and how to live. The Earth’s cry now shows us the way – as directly as possible: we must live wisely (which simply means lovingly) or we shall all perish together.
Will humanity act now? What will it do? What will we do? What will you do now? ‘We’ have ignored so many previous warnings, protected by our default magical thinking: if there are to be any consequences of living selfishly and unwisely, they will happen to someone else, someplace else, at some other time – not here and now, not to me and to all of us. It’s fitting and ironic that one of the most arresting ‘recent’ warnings about our situation was published in 1962 – the same year that Don Draper bought his Cadillac and had his environmentally unfriendly picnic. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring warned of the deadly effects of pesticides (DDT in particular) on wildlife and the entire environment. Her book was widely read and is partly credited by many with launching the modern environmental movement. But Don Draper wouldn’t have read it. He, or one of his many colleagues, would have been too busy advising DuPont, Monsanto, Velsicol or any of the other chemical giants who fought back viciously against Carson’s findings with fierce lobbying, legal threats and savage media campaigns. This was the beginning of the great ignoring of the truths we were being told – an ignoring carried on even today by fossil fuel interests, certain political parties, even some entire nations.
Nevertheless, it remains true that this is a unique moment in human history, in the development of human consciousness and in the unfolding story of the Earth. It’s a moment that you and I are privileged to share in. The question is overwhelmingly simple. Will we act wisely? Will we take the opportunity to come of age – as people and as a species - and stop behaving like an irresponsible adolescent or, worse still, a cynical criminal? In a way, it’s a straight choice between two types of growth: the unfettered and destructive expansion of the economic dream, or the movement into a conscious and attentive maturity that awaits us as the next step in our evolutionary journey.
This course shares the profound insight of Albert Einstein: that no problem can be fixed by the same level of consciousness that created it. What underpins these Lessons and Topics is a conviction (one that it hopes to share with you) that it is only by steadfastly opening to the contemplative consciousness that unites each of us with one another and with the Earth itself that we will learn, in the depths of our shared being, how to act wisely and to live well.
The popular (mis)understanding of contemplation is that it involves paying targeted attention to a particular object or idea - a kind of patient and lovingly mystified scrutiny of something. The practice of contemplation itself teaches us that it is nothing like this. It has been described by some as the suspension of the distancing subject-object relationship in favour of a simple and silent participation in a loving “community of subjects.” It is the experience of wordless, open-hearted intimacy and presence. We can learn to contemplate from each other, from great teachers, from indigenous people, from children and from animals. The teachers of this life-as-prayer and prayer-as-life are all around us. The greatest might just be the Earth herself. The title of the course may suggest that we start paying attention to our planet and to our relationship with it – and so we should. But as we deepen into our practice and our learning perhaps we will realise that actually we are being invited to join in with what the Earth herself is constantly, effortlessly doing. The title of the course turns out to be a description of the planet and her ceaseless prayer: contemplating Earth.
We are not going to heal the Earth and our relationship with her by ‘just’ meditating. In fact, there are many who would assert that there is no such thing as ‘just’ meditating. If your regular practice of sitting doesn’t inform your practical daily life in all kinds of subtle but deeply felt ways, then it’s not yet really meditation. The practice, if patiently and faithfully followed, opens us to that within and between us that wants to grow, to become more real and truthful. The practice uncovers a yearning to put into practice this ‘new’ information that we are recovering – this timeless wisdom. The inevitable result will be changes in the way that you live and love. These changes needn’t be dramatic and large scale (though it’s difficult to imagine anything greater or more profound than beginning to be a little bit kinder to yourself and to others.) They might, though, involve a new – or renewed – commitment to engaging in activities that promote justice for the Earth and for the poor of the earth, who are the ones suffering most from habitat destruction, species extinction and climate catastrophe. How this manifests will depend on you and your circumstances. It might be joining in local ecological projects, donating to national and international campaigning organisations, pressurising your democratic representatives to act wisely and swiftly, participating in compassionately-inspired actions of civil disobedience - or an infinity of other choices made in every part of your life.
Contemplation is not the opening of an escape hatch to a more comfortable place where we can pretend that things are so much better than they really are. John Main, who did so much to reconnect us with the Christian contemplative tradition, always warned against the dangers of ‘holy floating’, just as Simone Weil, the great French mystic and philosopher identified ‘daydreaming’ as the easiest trap that we can fall into. Because we contemplate, we learn to act wisely. The practice is one of continually waking up – from daydreams, from the American Dream and from every other kind of dream except “the dream of the Earth”. What is the Earth’s dream? We find out by joining with the Earth in her own ceaseless prayer, embodying the radiant consciousness of ‘interbeing’ – the one reality that unites us all in love.
The question, though, will continue to be asked by many, often including those of us who are committed to the practice: “What good will meditation do in the face of this seemingly overwhelming chaos and destruction?” The most convincing answer lies within the field of our own experience. When we meditate - setting aside our own agendas, our preferences and our judgements – we are able to directly experience the beauty of the world and of our own being. That experience releases and activates the innate wisdom that links us indissolubly with each other and with all life. We cannot then do anything else but act wisely, not out of guilt or duty, but out of love, now truly knowing that “hope for the salvation of the world lies in the greatest number of wise people.” (Book of Wisdom)
*More information about Contemplating Earth can be found here:
https://wccm.org/offerings/contemplating-earth/
© 2021 The World Community for Christian Meditation. No part of this content may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, streamed, downloaded or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, WCCM.
References
The picnic scene from Mad Men: www.youtube.com/watch?v=roREnVhd_og
A Life on Our Planet – by David Attenborough. “The film addresses some of the biggest challenges facing life on our planet, providing a snapshot of global nature loss in a single lifetime. With it comes a powerful message of hope for future generations as Attenborough reveals the solutions to help save our planet from disaster.” A two-minute trailer is available here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=64R2MYUt394&t=18s
This is a deeply moving, even harrowing watch. However, the message is still one of hope. In a way this is almost required viewing for this course, for life on this planet. If you, or a friend, have a Netflix subscription, please watch all of this extraordinary documentary.
“Breaking Boundaries tells the story of the most important scientific discovery of our time - that humanity has pushed Earth beyond the boundaries that have kept Earth stable for 10,000 years, since the dawn of civilization. The 75-minute film takes the audience on a journey of discovery of planetary thresholds we must not exceed, not just for the stability of our planet, but for the future of humanity. It offers up the solutions we can and must put in place now if we are to protect Earth’s life support systems.” A 10-minute preview of the Netflix David Attenborough documentary can be seen here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jq23mSDh9U&t=2s
Climate crisis: one month of flash floods, wildfires and heatwaves: July 2021
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB60Ls2O2ik