MASS EXTINCTION - A SHAMANIC PERSPECTIVE

As we know, this world - this universe - is dreamed into being. It is unknowable. That is why 86% of it has recently revealed itself to be dark energy - it is the dream saying the more you try to know me by your puny rational means, the more I will elude you. Evolution is the same: as a theory, it provides a tiny slice of explanation in a vast and unknowable creation.

These dream universes, they come and they go. In the deepest sense, they are illusion. The mass extinction we are seeing on this planet is painful. Life has such beauty and mystery to it. And it is unbearable if this is the only planet and when you die that is it.

Shamanism offers not just a deeper connection to life, but perspective. The eagle who sees a much bigger picture from way above. The therapy rooms are full of people grieving at what is happening to the planet. That grief is not something to be 'cured', because it is a necessary first step for anything to happen. But the planetary situation is something that the individual can do very little about. It is one of things that, to all intents and purposes, you cannot change. And cannot fully know about - who knows the full spirit reason behind the mass extinction, why these species are, in a sense, choosing to leave, and what is the longer-term process that humans are going through? 

Species have been coming and going by the trillion in different dream universes since forever, and it is all illusion - yet it is a dream we are passionately embedded in, incarnated in, we rightly care enormously about it. What we do know is that prayer works. A constant, heartfelt connection to the dreaming, a wish for its health and flourishing. A traditionally trained Native American once told me that some elders, all they do is pray. By prayer I do not mean supplicating a god, but a heartfelt and ongoing conversation with the natural world.

Perspective and prayer - these are 2 things that can, I think, make what is happening to the planet bearable.