Deep AgroEcology

"I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy...and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation and we scientists don't know how to do that"

-Gus Speth

Below are various ways in which we can learn how to practice mindfulness as we go about our learning and doing as part of ASI. Feel free to return to this resource to help you connect as part of our practice of "deep agroecology".....

Walking

Walking reinforces our connection to the Earth, one step at a time. Attuning to the rhythms of one's feet, the swaying of one's arms, the in and out of breath, the ways walking moves us through time and space, helps develop this relationship, reminding us consciously and unconsciously just how much a part of nature we are. Nature is cyclic and rhythmic, and walking - when we are not focused on where we are going - attunes us to this non-linear reality

• • • • walking practice is perhaps best begun alone, when the intimacy of nature's communication can be sensed without distraction

      • choose a time when you can be alone; when listening, hearing, and sensing can take place. Perhaps the start or the end of the day or even after lunch

      • make sure the walk is long enough for you to let go of work thoughts and tensions of the day

      • leave your cell phone at home - there is a way that the vulnerabilities that come with being alive have been squelched by our daily safety tools

      • let the rhythm of you steps soothe your mind and create a space for listening. Feel how your feet connect with the earth, how the air moves through your lungs. Follow your attention as it is drawn inward and outward both - the warmth, a bird, a plane. Let your thoughts and impressions move through and out as part of the natural rhythm of walking. Turn your attention to your feet and their meeting and letting go of the ground.

      • commit to walking every day if you can. Walk without expectation, with an attitude of openness and gratitude.

Breathing

Because you are always breathing, you always have access to the sacred; you always have a refuge in the real. This understanding informs a breathing practice that is simple, available, and easeful. You do not need to search for your breath or force yourself to breathe. This practice is about shifting your attention to what is already happening, already sustaining you.

• • • • Listen to your breath, feel your breath, be aware of your breath. Sensing to how the breath infuses the body, you attune to a tenderness and a quietness within life. In today's overstimulated world, most of us need access to this refuge that is gentle and rhythmic, simple and alive.

      • Bring your attention to your breath. When you are in class, when you are working with animals, when you are out in the gardens or on a field trip. At night you can feel the weight of your body rise and sink gently before you fall asleep.

      • Notice the state of your body as you breathe. Possibly combine a breathing practice with a walking practice. Or, consciously extend your belly outward as you inhale, and contract as you exhale. Using your muscles in this way can release some tension.

      • See if you can feel your breath reaching beyond the familiar boundaries of your self. Are you breathing alone or do you sense your breathing joins you to other living things?

Gardening

Growing plants for food and pleasure has been a sustaining practice for humanity for many thousands of years. Today, with our industrial food production systems and busy lives many of us have lost the intimacy and nourishment that come from working directly with the Earth. But this connection is dormant, like a seed, in all of us, and can easily be awakened by a conscious practice of growing and tending plants - connecting us to the Earth and reminding us of our place in the intricate interconnectedness of all creation.

• • • • A gardening practice grounded in the principles of spiritual ecology rests on the recognition of our participation within the great web of life, in which everything is connected and works in concert with everything else. Gardening enters us into a co-creative relationship with all the elements at play: the plants we grow, the soil, the sun, the water, the temperature and quality of the air, the wind, the rain, the turning of the seasons, the microbes and minerals inhabiting the soil, other plants and insects and animals. Let an understanding of the natural world as a great collaboration in which we participate form the foundation of your gardening practice.

      • In this intricate web in which everything responds to everything else, it matters what we bring of ourselves to the garden - our touching of the soil, our fingers in the earth, our reaching down into the ground. Be aware of your attitude as you work in the garden. Do you rush through planting, or do you give time to recognize the potential of each seed or seedling as you place it in the soil? Do you water and weed out of a sense of obligation, or do you allow the elements to draw you into relationship - the sun to warm you, the rain to soothe you, the insects to call you to action?

      • Let your gardening be a conversation: listen and observe, respond. Allow your garden to tell you what is needed. Put your hand in the steaming compost - is it ready to be mixed with the soil? Watch as the tassels on the corn stalks move with the wind - is it enough to pollinate the kernels? Move through all the stages of the life in your garden with this openness to what is taking place, what is needed from you, and what is being given, what in deeper ways may be on offer.

      • Celebrate the harvest - both the literal harvest and the pleasures that gardening yields along the way. Mimic and amplify the Earth's receptivity in accepting and enjoying what She gives, and Her generosity by sharing Her bounty with others.

Seeds & Their Stories

Every seed is unique. Every plant, every fruit, every flower, is an individual expression of creation. At the same time, the essence of a seed is universal. It is the beginning, the spark, the creative power that enlivens all that is. All of life comes from a seed, from the spiraling galaxies of the Big Bang to the sunflower growing from a seed in a garden plot. Our own seed stories reflect this truth of microcosm and macrocosm. Every human being contains the essence of what is eternal and sacred. But just as weeds grow to become individual plants giving rise to flowers, apples, or acorns, every individual is uniquely herself both unique and one with the universe. To know our own seed story is to live this paradox, that we are both unique and one with the entire universe, we are ourselves as well as an expression of the power within all life.

• • • • You can ground this understanding in a concrete way by making a practice of growing plants from seed. How many of us as children grew a sunflower from seed in our primary school classroom, and so experienced this miracle firsthand? First, hold a seed in your hands, and then as you tend to it through all the stages of its development - germinating, sprouting, growing, flowering, fruiting, seeding, dying - you can witness this simple wonder: the promise hidden in a seed, and how your caring is a part of it. And so this awareness if the seeds we grow can help move us out of the fragmentation of our times into the experience of life's wholeness.

      • Try setting aside a few plants for the sake of saving seeds. Learn the best practices for seed saving and become a steward of seeds. Exchange seeds with fellow gardeners. An awareness of the power and beauty of seeds and their fundamental importance to life, both literal and symbolic, can be a cornerstone for a practice of spiritual ecology. Growing plants for the sake of their seeds can serve as an outward anchor for that understanding and practice - besides contributing to the critical worldwide effort to preserve the diversity of seeds, helping in a small way to preserve food sovereignty for everyone.

      • The unfolding life of a seed can also be seen as a metaphor for one's own unfolding story. Our "seed stories" reflect the inner mysteries of life and death as they play out in our lives: our origins and our destinies; our unfolding into what we really are; the universal drama of descent into darkness, transformation, re-emergence, and rebirth. What are your seed stories? The seed stories of your community? Our shared planet? You might find a seed story in the events of your own life or the life around you. Find the stories that speak to you, that allow you to put your own life into a dimension of larger meaning, that nourish your soul. A first step is to find the humility, the ground, the place of vulnerability from which you can truly listen. The word humility comes from the Latin humus, which is earth, ground. Just as the seed needs earth to grow, humility is the soil for our own seed stories and the stories of all creation.

      • Be aware of how you yourself might be a seed - how you might be a part of the unfolding stories of our times, especially the much needed narrative of humanity coming back to a sacred relationship to the Earth. We are all part of this greater story, and if we pay attention we can find echoes of it in our own lives, sense how this unfolding is living through us, and, with awareness and intention, contribute to its realization in the life around us. Often in spiritual life, it's important to recognize the connection between the inner and the outer, and ask ourselves: Can we find in ourselves the willingness, to capacity, to recognize signs? Tp respond from a place of inner truth, of true connection? To honor what os taking place within and around us? Can we see the seeds of this new beginning, of life recreating itself? How can we nurture this new growth? Life is urgently calling for our awareness and love and humility, to remember that we belong to the Earth, that we are a part of life's sacred wholeness.

On Water

To be in, on, or simply near water is a gift. Water is the stuff of life...all life! Moreover, water has the ability to cool, soothe, wash, and wear. In it is great power, shrouded in calming trickles and glinting sparkles. Water ignites our senses - whether by sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell - it provides a centering that is at once enlivening and peaceful. Those feelings are hard wired to the core of our mind and our soul, as though the Creator did not want us to forget our inextricable connection to and reliance on water.

• • • • Water abounds in this part of the world, both on the surface and in aquifers. Find a spot where you can see water and reflect on that fact. What does it mean to you that we are so abundantly gifted here? How should we steward that gift? How do we care for the neighbors who live downstream from us?

      • Intentionally interact with water using all five of your senses. Concentrate on how you feel as you look upon it, listen to its waves on a shore or trickles in a stream, place your hands or feet (or whole body) in it, smell the richness of a wetland, and taste a fresh glass on a hot day. Pay attention to the thoughts that surface, hold them for a bit, then allow them to drift off, like leaves floating downstream.

      • Go for a paddle. Try both the intimate community of a canoe, as well as the sacred oneness of a kayak. Explore. Embrace the surprise of new things you are able to see from this vantage point. Float. Lay back and watch the clouds go by. Close your eyes and feel yourself as wholly part of the water - made of it and moving with it.

Death

Awareness of death is a spiritual practice almost as foundational as awareness of breath. Death is as sacred as birth. It awakens us. It opens us to the unknown, to one of life's greatest mysteries, and thus it reflects into our lives a reckoning of what truly matters.

• • • • The key to a death practice is presence. Our culture may turn away from death, but we need to be aware of death and be present with it. We can reflect on the small deaths in our inner and outer life, and on our willingness to let go of attachment, relationships, or patterns of identity. How freely do we go with the changes of life? How much do we cling to what no longer serves?

      • How do I attend to those deaths that sustain me? The beet, the corn plant, the pig? Life is sustained by feeding on life.

      • Ask yourself: How can I let death become part of my life? How can the presence of death help me to live more fully, more in touch with the Source? What am I holding on to that contributes to my suffering and the suffering of others? How can I let go and become part of what is being born?

Simplicity

Simplicity is the essence of life. The word itself comes from the Latin simplex, meaning uncompounded or composed of a single part. Simple things reflect this essential nature, which belongs to everting in creation. When we honor the simple things of life, we bring ourselves back to this oneness, our true home. If we honor what is essential in our lives, we connect with the life force that runs free of the dramas of our individual and collective psyche. Where we are connected and responsive.

• • • • Begin by giving extra attention to your simple daily activities, like rising from bed and putting two feet on the floor. Pause there. You are awake; you are alive. Take note of how you feel in your body, and how your feet touch the floor. Be aware as you move towards the bathroom, towards the kitchen and the tea. Be grateful for water in the sink, for oranges that made your juice, for milk in your tea. Drink slowly, appreciate your food. Appreciate your friends, the sun coming in the window, the beauty you see all around you. Simplicity reveals itself through slowness, in quiet moments when you can see, feel, taste, touch. Take time during the day to stop rushing. Move through the day with respect and openness

      • Take an honest inventory of your life. Look at the things that take up time and space in your mind. Look at your activities and commitments. What of these things do you actually need? Which are habits and entanglements that take up space and weigh you down? Which reflect your real values, feed your soul, touch you with love? For a short time, try going without some of the things of your life. Maybe you don't need them after all.

      • Let nature teach you. In nature we are students of simplicity. The way a tree grows towards the sun, the way a cat stretches beside the fire, the way the seasons come round again and again without fail, can teach the simplicity of what is. The essential nature of our own lives - the cycle of birth, death, suffering, and joy, and even liberation - also reflects this simplicity. We might make our lives complicated by how we relate to these - fighting, death, avoiding suffering, searching for freedom and happiness - but this is our superimposed experience, not what is. Look for ways to attune to the natural simplicity of life that underlines the complications of our human experience.

      • Bring yourself back again and again to what is simple, to what does not change over time, to what shines steady through the fog, Ask yourself, do we need more than these things? Do we need more than the beauty of a crab apple tree in spring, a warm house in the winter, the way water sounds flowing through a stream, a cup of tea with friends? Do we need more in our lives than love? What is enough?

Cooking with Love

"I made this for you."

What a simple, yet powerful sentence - part declaration, part invitation. When we make something for another, we participate in active love, and we give them a part of our self. Let's deeply explore the power of its meaning:

• "I" - This is from me, it is of me, it is personal. The time, energy, focus, and intention needed to make this were mine. I stand before you, offering something from my hands and my heart.

• "made" - This is a creation! It is made of different parts that I transformed. The color, shape, taste, smell, and texture are all remade and combined into something new, fresh, and unique.

• "this" - Oh, the glorious this! How many myriad manifestations there are of this! How many myriad hands, energies, livelihoods, and lives contributed to the making of this. This is a work of art, a work of heart. This is a feast for all the senses. This is the gift. Enjoy this.

• "for" - This was done not for selfish reasons. Sure, the making may have been fun, but this was done with the pleasure and flourishing of another in mind. It was done with intention and forethought.

• "you." - It was you who I was thinking of while I made this. You are the special recipient. You are important and loved and valued. You are deserving of this.

"I made this for you."

Patterned after "Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life" by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Hillary Hart