Rebecca Wildbear and Joanna Macy

Rebecca Wildbear of the Animas Valley Institute in Colorado recently pointed out to me that Joanna Macy highlights 3 dimensions of actions needed for an Ecological Revolution, the “Great Turning.”

1) Holding Actions,

2) Life-Sustaining Systems and Practices, and

3) Shifting Consciousness.

Here’s a link that describes this in more detail – https://www.activehope.info/great-turning.html.

Rebecca went on to say “The Global Earth Repair Conference looks particularly strong on dimension #2 offerings, Life-Sustaining Practices and Systems. I didn’t see too much on dimension #3, unless I missed it? Please let me know if I did. Although I’m familiar with some dimension #2 practices, my colleagues and I are focused on dimension #3, Shifting Consciousness. I applied to present at your conference, because it seems beneficial to the Earth for humans to work together across dimensions.”

Let’s look at the Global Earth Repair Conference with this analysis in mind. 

1) Holding Actions.  If this includes resisting the forces of destruction and social injustice than this is addressed to some extent at the conference.

* Dr. Don Huber is one of the world’s top experts on the bad affects of glyphosate on ecosystems, soil life and human health will be attending to raise awareness of this issue and offer alternatives.

* We have a whole track on Reducing Contaminants in the Biosphere with multiple presenters.

 * Parts of the tracks on the Salish Sea, Orca Killer Whales and Dam Removal and River Restoration include protection and calls to stop degradation.

 * The track on Earth repair in war torn areas has to include a social justice component and a call to end wars.

* There is a Social Justice and Earth Repair track.

* A Rights of Nature Track

* A Resisting the destruction of the biosphere Track including participants from Deep Green Resistance and other environmental groups.

2) Life-Sustaining Systems and Practices, This is the heart of the conference and the large majority of sessions will focus on this.  However it is nigh impossible to deal with any topic in 2) without bringing in elements of 1) and 3)

3) Shifting Consciousness. This is also part of the conference and it remains to be seen how much of the conference energies will go here.

Some of the things we do know:

* Most of the Indigenous tracks will focus on indigenous wisdom and world views.  There will be many indigenous speakers bringing this to the conference.

* We are making sure to include Perspectives from Smallholder Farmers in “The Global South” and they will have ideas on shifting consciousness. 

* The Ceremony, Art, Song and Music aspect of the conference speaks directly to shifting consciousness.

* The culture repair track is all about shifting consciousness. We have many people wishing to contribute to this track including Charles Eisenstein, David Korten and Jeremy Lent (tbc).  

* The track on Environmental Philanthropy is about a change in consciousness among the wealthy.

* Grieving is one of the things that can help lead to a shift in consciousness and there will be sessions devoted to this.

* Communicating with Nature can only happen with a shift in consciousness.  This will be a track as well as being addressed in the Indigenous tracks.

* A Wisdom Council will be held at the conference.  Facilitated by its originator, Jim Rough using a process of Dynamic Facilitation.   A small group of people will meet four times during the conference on how to enable the shift in consciousness needed by humanity. Jim says wisdom councils often yield dramatic breakthroughs to seemingly insurmountable problems.

* Derrick Rhayne will do a training on NetworkWeaving early in the conference so we can use some of their techniques to enable us to make more shifts in consciousness towards cooperation and collaboration.

* Rebecca Wildbear of the Animas Valley Institute will bring Soulcentric Dreamwork, a talk on Soul, Human Development and Cultural Transformation and an experiential opportunity/immersion to shift consciousness through the body, dreams and/or the deep imagination.