As the World Burns
Grief. That hardly begins to describe the feelings associated with what’s happening to our beloved planet. Now the Amazon Rainforest burns…after a 60% increase in deforestation by humans that began in June. The new president in Brazil has set a course to dismantle environmental protections and has encouraged for-profit destruction. Many fires there have even been associated with the government as a way to get rid the Amazon indigenous people. Genocide to further profits—not a new idea, right United States of America? Freedom to exploit and all….
I think of the incredible biodiversity in the Amazon…plants, animals and a weather system that forms there and operates like magic. Well, until the trees are gone and the lungs of the planet are gone. My heart is so heavy with grief but I am determined to feel it, to feel the loss of precious and sacred places, animals, people.
I read a comment on social media this morning—someone suggested this will be the wake-up call for the world. I wrote that same idea when I was documenting the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill nearly ten years ago. And it’s only gotten worse. I thought then that the world would awaken and a new effort to strengthen environmental laws would provide greater planetary health—for all life. Never in my wildest nightmares could I have predicted the downward spiral that is happening.
The USA isn’t the only country with an administration hell-bent on destroying the environment. Brazil’s administration is doing the same thing. And the mind-blowing aspect is that we know for certainthat reversing environmental protections will create lasting negative consequences that will forever alter and destroy the very things we need to survive. How is it that voters have allowed this? I am truly aghast.
Every day more news about greater destruction is shared. The profit-at-any-cost crowd licks their lips at lessening environmental regulations. The rapture folks think it’s a foregone conclusion that the end of the world is near so why bother…even when they were ‘charged’ to be good stewards. Tree huggers make social media posts pointing fingers. Scientists keep publishing and warning. It seems we are in a vicious cycle of insanity.
And this is what we have accepted as the new normal. As the world burns those of us who care sit here in a daze of frustration, grief, anger. I suspect post traumatic stress disorder will have a new name because it’s not post or after…it’s ongoing. How about we call it what it is: Global Traumatic Stress Disorder.
What can we do? Isn’t that the knife that continually twists within us? I have decided to rarely use lights in my home. Every switch that is off is less coal burned. As I sit in a darkened home at night I think about our planet and send love to Her. But what more can we do? We can vote…but honestly, another two years and what more damage can we expect and what will be left? We can stay informed….but that comes with the risk of more trauma…and yet we must stay informed and help inform others.
The schizophrenia of this is that people continue on as if everything is fine. It’s like a sort of Hunger Games world of fake, extravagant ‘living’ and then there’s the reality of everything falling apart. Or it’s like the Matrix movies where humans live in a simulated reality while their bodies are used by thought-capable machines for energy.
People often comment on how positive my writing is or how good it makes them feel. Some days its challenging to find the beauty yet perhaps our greatest edge of growth comes when we are able to know the truth of what is happening and stay grounded in the beauty that still exists in a sunrise, a flower blossom, a dog’s tail wag, and the human heart.
It is said that grief is an indication of how much we love. Let us remember to open our hearts with love to our planet, to each other and be mindful every moment of how our lives affect the planet with every action we take…or don’t take.
One of the benefits of staying with the grief, keeping a heart open to the losses occurring, is it’s open for everyone and everything. It isn’t prejudice about which place or person or animal to love. Once opened to the depths it takes to remain open with these days of challenge, it is open. Perhaps that’s the lesson we are all to learn.
During this long Threshold experience there has been much time to reflect on this juncture in life. For over two years there has been intense consideration but in reality the question Why am I here? has echoed for many years.
I have followed my heart, followed the guidance I feel, and it led me on a fascinating journey. It started while in high school working at a local state park in environmental education which progressed to attending college and majoring in Outdoor Recreation Administration which led to seven years working as a state park naturalist which led me to deeper discovery in life when I had an awakening that took me away from everything familiar at age twenty-five.
Because self-reflection was so useful for my own inner growth, I choose to attend graduate school majoring in Counseling which led me to work in the fields of addictions, children and adolescent therapy and family therapy. To be an effective therapist I kept going deeper which led me to massage and bodywork.
But the part of the path that was missing in my work was nature. I spent a lot of time in nature—hiking, cycling, paddling, diving—but my work was indoors and there wasn’t a connection with nature and healing in the work I offered people.
I stopped ‘working’ for a living and started giving for living. I photographed beautiful places—both on land and underwater—met amazing creatures that allowed me entry into their realm and through these amazing experiences kept journals and wrote about the inner transformation that happened every time I submerged into underwater caves, made contact with humpback whales underwater, swam with dolphins pushing against me in their pod, witnessed lavender mountain sunrises, saw the birth of baby sea turtles, had manatees rest their heads on my shoulder…amazing experiences happened when I stepped out in faith to fulfill the promise of helping connect nature and humans.
During this time I spent a year documenting the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. I traveled from the mountains of North Carolina to the Gulf Coast each month and spent a week photographing and creating videos of seven beaches from Fort Morgan, Alabama to Ft. Pickens, Florida.
A lot has resulted from fulfilling that promise and now the time comes for another leap. Guidance has been to go deeper with Nature, to connect people with the wisdom teachings of wildlife. During one meditation I heard, You went out and connected with the animals and places, now you must teach what you learned to those willing to listen.
Not the most specific instructions but I did begin writing a course in self-study called, Deepening with Nature, which will eventually become an e-book people can download and use for their own deepening experiences. The other piece will be workshops and retreats designed to help people connect deeper with Nature and each other.
One has been delving into the last few years of Freddie Mercury’s musical career and while I respect and generally adore Freddie Mercury and his music, it is the final years of his writing and singing that have touched me deeply. His love of opera motivated him to follow his passion to write and perform duets with opera diva Monserrat Caballe.
His advancing illness eventually kept him from performing yet he was determined to go into the studio and record tracks that his band mates in Queen could finish after his death. He knew he would never hear the final music yet the songs were coming through him and he wanted to give them to the world.
The album the band released four years after his death contains some of the songs he left behind with his piano and voice. Other tracks were recorded by the other members of Queen and then mixed. It is some of the most moving music I’ve ever heard, especially knowing how it was created and with passion not only from Freddie but his friends who added their instruments and voices…and love.
Can you imagine the loyalty for your path to keep going, to keep sharing under such hardship? He inspires me every day to listen deeply to that which wants to be birthed through me.
As I read her stories, her passion and vision was so evident. I heard myself asking, What is my vision? What is my passion? I love to cave dive but there is no way I would ever explore and go through the hardships required to do that sort of work. And yet, I have done deep exploring…within myself.
Too often we fail to give ourselves credit for the intense, challenging, courageous work we do when we make the commitment to grow. The awakening that happened when I was 25 years old was the first major leap inward. It was my introduction to ‘cave diving’ within the cave that is me. And even though I am a certified open water diver/instructor and certified cave diver and side-mount cave diver, the most incredible experiences from my life have been the ones where I unearth treasures buried deep within myself.
It’s not so exciting or adrenaline-pumping to read about someone’s personal, challenging, courageous inner journey through their life but those journeys are just as important as the challenging experiences extreme explorers have that take them to the edge. Anyone that makes the commitment to grow faces many experiences that take them to the edge of what they know and their ability to navigate the dark, uncharted inner realm.
The outer experiences of learning to open-water dive and learning to cave dive compelled me inward, called me deeper as did experiences with humpback whales, manatees, dolphins, sea lions, mountains, streams….my outer ‘lite’ explorations pushed me to depths of connection that forever altered my life and hopefully, by sharing them, the lives of those reading about them or viewing my photographs.
We can stand in awe of what people accomplish in the fulfillment of their life purpose and what they do in the realm of exploration and be inspired by it, but let us not forget our own amazing capacity to take the inner journey that opens us to uncharted landscapes, challenges, battlefields, and heights and depths the soul can reach when given the opportunity to shine through the experience of being human.
I bow to all those brave humans who dare to dive into the depths of themselves, to the very edge of what they know, and press onward through darkness to discover their inner light. You….we…are the ultimate explorers.
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The process of giving up television has given the gift of showing just how much it and other mindless past times have separated me from life, from a deeper connection with my Higher Self…the spiritual self…the soul. I have discovered, through this process, that I have used mindless television-watching—even though I didn’t watch that much—to numb myself from life. I used it as a way to cut myself off from a voice within that wanted to come out and sing, speak, play. I had no idea….but then I discovered it wasn’t only television….it was anything that put me on auto-pilot and that included books I had read many times before, favorite movies. As I tracked myself I became more aware of the distractions I used to keep my inner voice quiet.
As I looked at the bottom of the search page it listed my search origin location as Chimney Rock, North Carolina. I had been there in the journey, no doubt, but at that particular moment my body and phone were sitting in my home in Magnolia Springs…Alabama.
Then one of the pages about Pegasus had a rainbow background…reminding me of the rainbow colors of myself as Pegasus. Oh, and let’s not forget the walk I did after lunch with my dog Buddy. As we went under a magnolia tree I saw a cicada shell and the freshly hatched insect known as a translucent cicada… with beautiful wings drying in the air. I had the exact same experience in the journey as my wings dried after ‘I’ hatched from the hard shell.
How would our lives change if we put the beautiful, sacred self as a priority and stopped trying to cut off its voice…with television, news, social media, mindless books, arguing about who’s right and who’s wrong? Just one morning of doing this resulted in amazing experiences and clarity and…quite honestly…a big dose of WOW!
One other bit of information came to me about Pegasus. He has always been in service to poets. I reflected back to my recent writing about 
Patrick Kavanagh, an Irish poet, wrote one of my most favorite poems, Pegasus. Perhaps this poem, more than anything, explains the meaning of seeing myself break free as Pegasus in the journey.
“When I know they are listening, when I know I really have them, I couldn’t sing off-key if I tried. I’m exactly the person I was always meant to be. I’m not afraid of anything.” In the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, Freddie Mercury’s character says this to his girlfriend after the band begins to attract large audiences and she asks him what it’s like to perform in front of so many people. This scene in the movie replays in my mind often.
I allow my mind to wander through experiences in life…When have I felt I am exactly the person I am meant to be?
In the high school football stadium in the 1970’s, Queen’s music inspired a generation. Stomp, stomp, clap…stomp, stomp, clap…stomp, stomp, clap rocked the bleachers as We Will Rock You inspired us. I remember feeling alive with amazing, endless hope for the very essence of life as the entire student section came alive. Carefree, with my spirit open to every possibility, their music was fuel for life. We Are the Champions was even our senior class song…
Odd that now, as I dive deeper into my life and purpose, their story becomes known to me and these decades later Freddie Mercury’s dynamic energy and passion is inspiration…long after he died.
Days ago this bit of writing began to come together but the question kept echoing in my mind and heart…when do I know for sure I am doing what I came here to do? Today, as I cycled at sunrise, the question continued to repeat. And still, as I sit with Buddy dog curled up beside me, the answer isn’t totally clear.
There have been moments….photographing humpback whales while floating motionless in the Atlantic Ocean, a calf a few feet from me…a manatee laying its head in my hand and gazing into my eyes, sharing a transmission from the deepest realms of Nature…a female spotted dolphin healing my headache and swimming with me and her calf…kneeling at a standing stone circle in north England and weeping about the election and ‘hearing’ the outcome would hasten the awakening…standing at a cliff in Ireland and feeling the immense Presence that has been with me ever since…writing about these and many more experiences and sharing them…diving with an octopus that danced with me…hearing the Song of the Sea as I was diving in Bonaire…diving in caves in Mexico that awakened the shaman in me…being present for moments such as these and more but perhaps sharing these experiences with others and watching their faces light up with wonder and awe and feeling their appreciation for deepening with Nature helps me really feel I am doing what I was born to do.
When I write from my heart, I feel that truth. When I facilitate women’s circles I feel it. When I am in the water with humpback whales…or manatees or dolphins…and listen with my heart, photograph them and then communicate the experience by writing or speaking so that others can touch their sacredness…I feel a sort of personal mastery. I come alive when I connect Nature with humans.
The lyrics to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now have been in my mind all day…“I feel alive and the world I’ll turn it inside out, yeah…and floating around in ecstasy…I’m a shooting star, leaping through the sky like a tiger defying the laws of gravity…I’m burning through the sky, yeah, two hundred degrees. That’s why they call me Mister Fahrenheit. I’m traveling at the speed of light…”
Perhaps the movie is helping me remember and clarify my purpose. Maybe Freddie’s life reminds me to do what I was born to do and drop the fear. Once we fully commit to our purpose and come alive to it, the fear can be burned up in the passion. Sometimes it takes a while to figure that out but if we pay attention to the whispers within and listen when our heart speaks, we will find our way…and we will shine.