The Extinction Symbol [http://www.extinctionsymbol.info/]The 6th mass extinction underway on our planet is a primary indicator that Earth is leaving the Cenozoic Era that has extended over the past 65 million years since the dinosaurs. The Anthropocene Epoch we are in is one of the late, perhaps last, epochs of the Cenozoic.
Will we as humans keep pace with these changes in our planetary home? A major requirement of us is to live with consciousness of these changes. We need to spread out our seeing beyond how civilization has narrowed it. Speaking personally, I want to get beyond the smaller topographies of consciousness that my ego can control, and into topographies much larger, more Earth-size. In this creative, evolutionary process, at least ten consciousness-changers have factored prominently in my life. They are part of my new book, From Egos to Eden: Our Heroic Journey to Keep Earth Livable (available Feb. 7, 2017). Here they are:
- Emptying myself of what I once “knew” and felt certain about. Being open to receiving new information and new perspectives.
- Re-narrating a story or myth, drawing on a different layer of meaning related to a current situation.
- Going into Nature to learn and be.
- Engaging with Wildness encountered in Nature and in my own being.
- Encountering the darkside—so-called negative aspects of myself, of others and of society that I’d disowned, couldn’t be bothered with, just didn’t know about myself or others, or didn’t want to know.
- Experiencing “The Other”— all that is beyond understanding.
- Hearing and telling stories of change, whether in conversation with another person or through movies, books, audios, and spiritual texts.
- Taking in new information that changed my paradigm or simply how I thought about someone, someplace, or something.
- Experiencing pain, suffering, and disease. Moving beyond the circumstances surrounding it and growing from it in some way.
- Loving and being loved.