The Rainforest Information Centre presents DEEP ECOLOGY with John Seed, Erika Aligno, Sally Novak & Nirmala Rose blended with DEEPENING for Deep Ecology workshop alumni.

At Narara Ecovillage https://nararaecovillage.com/

Bring your own tent or campervan or Ecovillagedorm or b&b or you can stay in your own home if you live nearby.

Tickets are sliding scale from $150-$600 ($150 for students or unemployed, $600 if you've got a great job or wealthy, or something in between) b&b $60 to $110/night extra

25% of the proceeds will be donated to the Rainforest Information Centre.

Vegetarian meals will be provided, gluten-free and vegan options by request after booking.

FROM JOHN SEED:

I have worked for worldwide rainforests since 1979. Although many of our efforts succeeded, for every forest saved 100 have disappeared. Clearly, you can’t save the planet one forest at a time. It's one green Earth or a bowl of dust. Without a profound change of consciousness, we can kiss the forests goodbye, the ones we’ve "saved" alongside the rest.

Deep ecology is key to the change we need. To deep ecology, underlying all the symptoms of the environmental crisis lies a psychological or spiritual root – the illusion of separation from the rest of the natural world which stems from anthropocentrism or human-centeredness.

Conditioned since the Old Testament to “subdue and dominate” nature, the modern psyche is radically alienated from the air, water and soil which underpin life and this is reflected in the rapid shredding of all-natural systems in the name of economic development. Deep ecology reminds us that the world is not a pyramid with humans on top, but a web. We, humans, are but one strand in that web and as we destroy this web, we destroy the foundations for all complex life including our own.

While we maintain a self-image created in the matrix of anthropocentric culture, a shrunken and illusory sense of self that doesn't include the air and water and soil, we will experience nature as "outside" our self and fail to recognise that nature "out there" and nature "in here" are one and the same.

Many people INTELLECTUALLY realise that we are inseparable from Nature and that the sense of separation that we feel is socially conditioned and illusory.

But as the late Arne Naess, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Oslo University, the man who coined the term "Deep Ecology" wrote: "it is not enough to have ecological ideas, we have to have an ecological identity, ecological self".

But how can we nourish our ecological identity? In answer to such questions, Joanna Macy and I developed a series of experiential deep ecology rituals called the “Council of All Beings” and in 1986, with Arne Naess and Pat Flemming, wrote a book called Thinking Like A Mountain - Towards a Council of All Beings (which has been translated into 12 languages). Along with others, we have been facilitating these workshops around the world since then.

In this workshop we remember our rootedness in nature, recapitulate our evolutionary journey and experience the fact that every cell in our body is descended in an unbroken chain 4 billion years old, through fish that learned to walk the land, reptiles whose scales turned to fur and became mammals, evolving through to the present.

We further extend our sense of identity in the Council of All Beings itself where we find an ally in the natural world, make a mask to represent that ally, and allow the animals and plants and landscapes to speak through us. We are shocked at the very different view of the world that emerges from their dialogue. Creative suggestions for human actions emerge and we invoke the powers and knowledge of these other life-forms to empower us in our lives.

One of the rituals we will share is honouring our pain for the world: we grieve for all that is being torn from our world, the species lost, the landscapes destroyed. Only if we can allow ourselves to feel the pain of the Earth, can we be effective in Her healing. This is why the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, has said that in order to heal the Earth, "the most important thing that we can do is to hear, inside ourselves, the sounds of the Earth crying".

This workshop enables us to find an end to the illusion of separation and experience our rootedness in the living Earth

Erika Aligno is a veteran of community legal centres advocating for social justice. She has recently expanded her energy towards environmental justice. Her current work in the environment sector and studies in Environmental Management at UNSW led her to Deep Ecology with John Seed. This inspired her to peel back layers of coping and conditioning she has built over the years participating in a culture that prioritises economics over nature. Through Deep Ecology, she is articulating and exploring the ecological grief she experiences – mourning the wounds inflicted on nature and animals. And, for her, Deep Ecology offers hope put into real action.

Sally Novak is an educator, activist and Kundalini yoga teacher with a deep connection to and passion for protecting Mother Earth. She has always been fascinated by the thinking of First Nations people, and aligns with their sustainable practices and ways of connecting to Country. Sally is the Community Care Coordinator for Rising Tide, a climate defence activist organisation that is building an inclusive diverse social movement..She recognises the power of deep ecology to build deeper stronger connections that allows people to release stress and emotional tensions in relation to their pain for the world while nourishing and inspiring them to take action.

Nirmala Rose grew up deep in the bush on an organic farm, out the back of a little village called Elands, known for its culture of forest protection. She grew up visiting logging sites with her father, who would collect seed heads for his native nursery. Such experiences contributed to her sense of deep imbalance in the modern world.

Her first exposure to the deep ecology practices was in her late teens, whilst living and studying a diploma of yogic philosophy at an ashram on the central coast. The practices of DE married her love for spiritual teachings with her love for the earth. Her passion for right livelihood inspired her to travel the world in her twenties, visiting intentional communities practicing sustainability. Wanting to address the deeper roots of human trauma (the sense of the separation, from each other as brother and sister, children of the one Mother, Gaia), Nirmala’s love for natural healing led her to study herbalism and home birth midwifery. Nirmala now lives on an off grid community, in a valley behind Bellingen, where she spends her days doing bush regeneration, growing food and medicines, with a spiritual focus on vipassana meditation and cultural reconnection.

For more information, contact john@johnseed.net.au