Council of All Beings -- Past Project of Our Sacred Earth

===================================================================================

Ever wonder what a coyote would say about us humans?

Ever want to be a Bear for a Day?

Participate in a Council for All Beings and you'll have that chance. The dynamic experiential Council is created by Joanna Macy, an activist, author and Buddhist, and is sponsored by local non profit, Our Sacred Earth.

The Council of All Beings invites us to step aside from our

human identity and shift out of limiting cultural beliefs and paradigms

about the Living Earth and our relationship to all forms of life.

Participation in the Council of All Beings enables deeper interconnections

with and inclusion of all Life with respect and profound understanding.

Bonnie Sundance of Our Sacred Earth co-facilitated the Council of

all Beings in 2015 and has extensive experience in facilitating group experiences.

For more information:

see Council of All Beings held in Spring 2015 described below

also:

http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/coab.htm

and / or see the many articles on the Council and people's experiences with it, by doing a Search on Council of All Beings or on Joanna Macy.

Council of All Beings Spring 2015 report

Our Council of All Beings convened on March 14, 2015 in a sunny “Sky Room.” The Council was sponsored by Our Sacred Earth and the Goddess Circle of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder.

We called the directions and spoke the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Prayer to connect with the Spirits and the Beings of the Past, Present and Future and calling for Healing. In so doing we created sacred space for the Council

We worked with 3 questions:

As this life form what do you enjoy and where do you live?

What difficulties to you encounter in your environment and particularly with human encounters?

What would you like humans to know and what gifts would you like to give them?

Following is A) Description of what this Council experience provides.

B) Excerpt of each Life Form’s Speaking answers to these questions

A) The Council of all Beings experience

It sneaks up on you ….by stepping inside the “skin” of another form of life,….and suddenly you realize and know from inside the truth of each being in the circle and it’s intimate relationship with other beings.

Not from outside looking upon, you are inside the life forms, seeing and being effortlessly part of the interconnected web of life. It is a felt sense of interconnection rather than one we know in our left brain/mind….and what a difference it makes! That is the magic. When Fish speaks, we enter the experience of Fish and know from our felt body and emotional sense…..the Truth of what Fish shares about swimming in toxic water…breathing the toxins along with the water …. and having pollution on its scales.

One of us later said, “We seem able to respond more readily to the realities of other life forms from within our nature beings and inside the life form we are representing, than we do in our socialized human selves.”

Stepping out of our socialized style of conversation, and calling on the sacred nature of Life via the directions and the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Prayer, being drummed into the sacred circle, while donning our masks, stepping through the gateway greeted by Tree into the Council Circle….all this is a kind of permission to enter a state of being open to Life in its deepest nature.

B) The Life Forms Speak:

I am Stream. I’m given birth by the rains and snow. I grow from a tiny trickle to a noisy stream, to wide rivers and then to the sea.

I am being contaminated and poisoned by greedy [and irresponsible] humans. I want humans to know that by assaulting me, you are assaulting an essence that gives you life and you are assaulting yourself. I need respect and care to keep me pure, healthy, beautiful and free. My gift and strength which I offer to humans is flexibility and the power of yielding—not resisting but changing flow in order to reach one’s destination in spite of obstacles. (Stream, Arden Buck, on left; tree on right)

I am Fish. I breathe water through my scales so clean water is important to me. Polluted water is very difficult for me….in fact we fish are so often contaminated that some are not safe for consumption by other life forms.

I want humans to know they are not more important than other life forms. We are all equal. We are all part of an interdependent world.

I give to humans the gift of flexibility like fish and like water; I say, move with the flow, adapt and don’t take so much.

(Fish, Marianne Ousler)

I am Beaver. What I bring is change to streams and canyons, over long time, making meadows and new kinds of forests become home to many creatures and plants. It takes a lot of chewing to make a meadow.

Humans: we want you to know how interconnected we all are. Trust that nature does not need to be altered nor undone. Be patient and share with us.

With humans, we wish to share knowledge that free flowing water is a necessary blessing, trust in how nature has worked things out, and understanding that we millions of interconnected, diverse beings know more than any one or one hundred humans know.

Harry Albert (Beaver) Tree on left; Beaver on right..

I am Fox. I live in meadows, forests and streams. I get along and last better than most other creatures with human beings, because I can share their yards, gardens and porches.

I want humans to know that we are all inter-connected. We all need the forests, rivers, meadows and oceans. Human beings must do whatever they can to help all of us live a healthy life…with clean air, water. I give the gift of the beauty of the natural world to humans.

Deb Grove (Fox)

I am Honey Bee. I pollinate all our food for creatures and for human beings. I am one organism among a thousand individual bees and together we are also one [being].

To humans I say: the new plants and chemicals you use are harming us.

You can learn from us the value of working together – what thousands of individuals can do working as one. We want you to see and understand the harm your ways are causing us and that you do the same harm to yourselves that you do to us.

Jeff Davies (Honey Bee)

I am Crow (caw caw)

I live anywhere and everywhere, in the air. Cars kill animals and they become my food. I love to PLAY, to fly and laugh all day in the sky.

I see so many vast changes with my excellent vision and hear stories on the winds. I see Fracking, warming of the Earth, Forest Fires and floods -- and the air in places is filthy and the water tastes terrible.

To you Human Allies I say, use your voices and wake the others up. We crows talk among ourselves constantly – please do the same as we do.

Oak Chezar (Crow)

I am Tree and I am Forest. We are one and the same. I delight in the gentle breeze as it plays through my branches and gives me the opportunity to move.

I give the gift of stepping into the web of life, the sense of interconnectedness as an important place from which to address problems which plague humans. Step out of your problem & into the space we offer from which to see the whole. We trees hold that sense of fullness of living interconnection and offer it to humans.

Bonnie Sundance (Tree) (see photos above)

I am Spider. I am many sizes from very small to large. I am seeing more people be able to appreciate us and our place in life.

I offer you my ability to listen patiently. Bring your fears to me and other nature beings and confront them in our company. I listen.

I offer you the protection of biodiversity and knowing we can all survive together.

Coco Gordon (Spider)

I am Frog. I live by a pond.

Water enters my body through my skin. I am not happy when there is pollution in my water. I also worry that with the drought that my pond will dry up. I can’t hop very far so where will I go?

I ask humans to please stop polluting the water where I live. I am important to the web of life. I eat bugs. I am eaten by other beings. I may be small but I provide sustenance and keep the mosquito population under control.

Debbie Davies (Frog)

I am an Aquatic Bird. Scott B. as Bird & Drummer

I live in both the water and on the land. I am grateful to be of the air and of the water …to expand my being into the endless sky and to find sanctuary in the pulse of the waves.

The once clear sky, which allowed us to see for miles, is now filled with a plethora of pollutants which hurt all life and make it hard for us to breathe and to travel freely the way we used to do.

We Aquatic Birds would like the bipedal ones to simply realize our importance to them and their importance to us, that we are only different by form.

We need human ones to care for the air and water so that we can continue to support the biodiversity of life.

Scott B. (Aquatic Bird)

I am Whale

Karen Judd (Whale)