« Becoming an Eco-Spiritual Guide to Assist Our Relocation from Ego Civilization to Earth's Sacred Community of All Life »

Earth is becoming our kiln of transformation. The thermometer is rising toward 2°C and higher above pre-industrial levels, and all species are feeling the heat. Change is happening faster than predicted. Human egos, stubborn and arrogant, are nonetheless cracking under the heat. Civilization, a creation of human egos, shows signs of melting and cracking.

Thousands of humans have chosen the hard inner journey to dethrone their egos. Many have gotten far enough on the journey to relocate OUT of ego civilization and INTO Earth’s community of life. This is no small matter! Relocating out of ego control is the core journey of our souls in anyone’s lifetime. Many never make it. The graphic below shows the radical difference between a world shaped by egos and a world shaped by the full array of Earth’s species.

Egos truly believe they, of all the other species, are intended to dominate the rest. They believe it to be their evolutionary and creational purpose to do so. But I quickly add, our egos are delusional. It is only when we travel out of our egos and into a deeper sense of who we are as humans that we realize what usurpers our egos are. We are intended for so much MORE than what our egos can ever imagine. Their creed vigorously resists the notion that we humans can be about far greater living than what they redefine as our purpose, which is to dominate by (1) accumulating more and more power over instead of sharing power with one another to make everyone and every being achieve fullness, (2) acquiring more and more money instead of distributing money justly and seeing riches in many forms other than money, and (3) seeing every situation as win or lose instead of seeing how winning means getting Earth to be livable again or we all lose.

Larger, fuller living beyond ego control becomes possible when we relocate from the illusion that we are the apex of all beings to living interdependently with all beings. That releases a capability in our species egos cannot dream of. Our species cannot find the purpose for our lives in control, greed, and domination. Sharing is what we’re hard-wired for. The interactions of sharing with all beings are so profoundly wisdom producing that our egos have no idea. 

And that’s why any civilization project designed and maintained by human egos must undergo the change of Earth’s kiln of transformation. All who direct the civilization project and arrange it for their benefit must crack under the heat. Earth’s community of all beings, a true democracy of life, needs to breakthrough soon. What a spiritual, psychological, and financial transformation this requires of us!!

If you get what I’ve said so far, then you know that we need guides—individual guides and communities all beings guiding one another. I’m calling for eco-spiritual guides who have experienced enough dethronement of their egos and enough power of interconnection with all beings to provide guidance on this journey. 

For several years now, I’ve been thinking about how to be an effective spiritual guide. A community of all beings who earnestly want to practice living beyond ego consciousness—that’s what I want. So I’ve followed with interest an intensive program on eco-ministry that has emerged at an interfaith seminary, The Chaplaincy Institute, Berkeley, California. Follow this link. Definitely worth checking out. In full disclosure, my daughter, Lauren, is the Dean at the interfaith seminary, coordinates the eco-ministry work there, and teaches in it.

I’ve also written a book about this journey out of ego consciousness. In writing it, I came to see more deeply that relocating to eco-community puts us right into the thick of what it truly means to be a human being. Yet, most of us don’t get there without time in one of life’s many transforming kilns. I hope you’ll read about what I learned and continue to learn. I continue to seek out people, animals, and plants that can teach be about being a more authentic participant in Earth’s community of all being—just like I write about in  From Egos to Eden: Our Heroic Journey to Keep Earth Livable (2017). Core to the book is this point: we don’t keep Earth livable really; we get liberated from ego domination so that our species can learn and share with everyone else. Earth is the most genuine, reliable eco-guide. You might say I wrote the book to open myself to her genius.