Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.
Many of us concerned about increasing extreme weather events are aware of how rapidly climate change is effecting life all over the globe. If you would like a primmer on how human activities are causing shifts in biodiversity, please visit globalissues.org/article/172/climate-change-affects-biodiversity or any reputable source of information on rapid climate changes caused by humans – anthropogenic climate change. This post’s focus is not on climate change directly; rather it explores how human diversity and global diversity are mirroring each other in the patterns found in increased extreme weather events and increased human polarization and lack of civility in problem solving. Acute human polarization and lack of civility when dealing with the environmental crises mean we have fewer creative solutions to address the climate calamities that have become every day events. To find out how we can participate in positive change, read on.
Intuition or Inn Saei
A creative or intuitive approach to challenges is always useful, but creativity is absolutely vital during human and environmental crises that threaten the diversity of life on earth, including human diversity. The most optimistic among us share a hunch that things can change for the better if only . . . . Tracing a hunch or intuition to its source is almost impossible because the source of such wisdom lies deep within our unconscious, that part of our “knowing apparatus” continuously functioning outside of our awareness. Two important works inspired this post’s exploration of dwindling natural and human diversity and their relationship to creativity.
The first inspiring influence is the film Intuition; it is available in its entirety on Netflix and its official trailer is available on Youtube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=leFCIThHaOs. The subject of this film can only be hinted at with words. If asked to summarize its subject I might offer the following: “A twenty-nine year old Icelandic former UN employee experiences burnout and goes off in pursuit of healing.” While this may be accurate in terms of the film’s linear story, it does not do justice to the ineffable contents of the film.
The abundant joy and deep wisdom of this film lie in the watching of it, in the deep peace it spreads to its viewers, in the imagery and expertise employed to convey this peace. For now, let me say the words inn saei, as well as suggesting the western concept of intuition, are translated from Icelandic as “the sea within” and as “seeing within.” Experiencing this film’s gifts to and through our senses is like the best massage, the best meditation, and the best emotional high all rolled into one luminous, transforming event.
It is gross understatement to say we all need these moments of peace-filled transformation to bring balance to our deep distress over constantly shocking revelations about people and the natural world. Our hunches and intuitions are generally devalued during what we think of as news gathering times since the word news suggests some kind of bedrock information. But with twenty-four hour news-cycle access to the worst events imaginable, our bodies and our spirits experience this information as constant, scorching personal devastation. We must shut down to cope, and in shutting down, we lose touch with the antidote to this constant scorching process, the balancing power that brings us back to centre. to our hearts, to profound peace, to our mysterious ability to know without words, without reason, without facts.
Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind
Guy Claxton’s subtitle, How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, sounds counter-intuitive, and this counter-intuitiveness is what his book, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, is about, at least in part. This study is a rich compendium of information about the thinking process as well as the deep and wise knowing that occurs when we take a break from active problem solving in favour of “wool gathering,” “vegging out,” and “goofing off.” Reading Claxton before I watched the Inn Saei film prepared me to feel the deep truth behind why doing nothing is everything, at least some of the time. To enjoy a brief introduction to Claxton’s theory of creativity in Hare Brain Tortoise Mind, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB_4YU6UtCw.
Creating the space for wool gathering, staring into space, walking in nature, gazing at the beauty and wholeness of a flower or bird or tree, all carry the antidote to the despair we feel over these calamitous times. Beauty and wholeness are everywhere if we but shift our attention away from the human noise and toward the deep wholeness that is wisdom’s song. We depend on our hope, our joy, our belief in goodness. We need the facts, of course, and we need the intuitive leaps beyond the facts.
Doing Our Personal Work
The works described above, both film and book, are created by people who are doing their personal work. Each is following her and his passion; each is contributing to our knowldege of how to be a creative, contributing member of the human family. Because of their influence on those who watch or read their works, they remind us of our interconnections to and with the rest of the world. The inseparable web of which we are both part and whole means each of us has profound influence upon our collective energies. Lighting our candles, saying our prayers, tapping on our fears and our hopes, setting our intentions to bring civility and reason, compassion and clear-sightedness, to every situation contributes to the creative pool of energy that inspires and blesses.
Decades ago, Ram Das – born Richard Alpert – gave the world the fruits of his scientific studies in a remarkable spiritual book: BE HERE NOW. It is a clarion call we are heeding as never before, perhaps because we have tools such as EFT to support our Presence, our Participation, and our Power to be in the world as coherent agents of positive change. This Earth Day, whatever the work we are called to offer the world, let us make it rich with inclusiveness, with reason, with love, with compassion, with far-sightedness, and with overflowing appreciation for our first and truest mother, Planet Earth.
Until next time,
Jane
Jane Buchan, MA, AAMET Advanced Practitioner, jane@winterblooms.net, 802-533-9277
Jane is a Learning Coach specializing in neutralizing cultural age, gender, and race constructs to support learners of every age. To engage her coaching services, please contact Jane by phone (802) 533-9277 or email, jane@winterblooms.net. Be sure to put Coaching Query in the subject line.