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MSC. HOLISTIC SCIENCE:

SCHUMACHER COLLEGE 2011
EXPLORING WAYS OF CREATING A PARENTS ECOSOPHY
~Notes to inform a presentation which is a part of a 2 day process exploring Ecological parenting.

MEGAN DE BEYER, Psychologist and MA.

Embodying Gaia
The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you
not knowing how blind I was.
Loves dont finally meet some where, theyre in each other all
along. ~Rumi

INTRODUCTION
These are notes for a presentation to parents about the relevance of a meaningful relationship
to the Gaia (the animate earth) and the non-human world. It highlights a need for parents to
evaluate their values and behaviours that are contributing to environmental degradation and
climate change. It addresses the psycho-social influences that have shaped materialistic
lifestyles which disconnect human beings from nature. As a psychologist already engaged in
parenting workshops, I include my own process within Gaia theory and deep ecology which
enabled me to embody my love of nature and become the change I want to see. I also raise
the issue of nature deficit disorder that shows an obvious link between ecology and child
raising.
Parents are the harbingers of their childrens values, morals and lifestyle. They decide on how
and where children should spend their time and are living examples of communication and
relationship for their adolescents. Homes offer a sense of belonging laying the foundation of
how to live in community, and mature responsibly and safely into young adulthood. Eco can
be translated from Greek as home, which builds an obvious assumption that how we live in
our parents home may reflect in how we live in our planetary home. The values of the past
few generations have promoted lifestyles that have contributed to the degradation of the
environment and the loss of diversity on our planet. Our homes are proving to be unfit
learning grounds for the youth as psychological distress, loneliness and meaninglessness
increase. Parents have the opportunity to create homes that offer life-sustaining skills and
competencies that will help their children meet the environmental challenges of the future
and at the same time nourish Gaia. I believe that by improving a familys connection and
commitment to nature, all the necessary bio-psycho-social aspects can be addressed at the
same time.
Deep ecology and eco-psychology have informed this enquiry and the 3 aspects of deep
ecology: deep experience, deep questioning and deep experience are a map through this
subject matter. I hope that through this process I can assist parents to establish a ecosophy or
ecological wisdom-a way of being in the world that minimizes harm to nature whilst
enhancing ones own feelings of awe, wonder and belonging, and in so doing align homes to
embrace the mother of all homes, Gaia. (Harding. S. 2006. P.51).
DEEP EXPERIENCE
This is a profound waking up into a full experience of Gaia, the deep breasted Earth that
Harding refers to as animate or living system of which we are an intimate extension. This
realization is an acknowledgement of the interconnectedness of all living things, of which we
are a part within an endless cycle of life. Without this knowing it is difficult to move o the
phase of deep questioning. Studies have shown that a profound experience within nature
motivates a commitment towards environmental protection.1
Richard Louv (2005,p.3), author of The Last Child in the Woods, tells us that the way children
understand and experience nature has changed dramatically: they are made aware of global
weather threats yet their intimacy with nature is fading.
He coins the phrase Nature Deficit Disorder, which describes the symptoms of children who
are deprived of spending time outdoors in nature. This includes a diminished use of senses,
A study of environmental conservationists showed that these adults all had a rich and profound connection with the outdoors under the age
of 11 years.
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attention difficulties and physical and emotional illness (p.34). There is a wide range of
evidence showing that contact with nature enhances childrens education, personal and social
skills, health and wellbeing, and encourages pro social behaviour within their community. Yet
the connections between young people and nature are weaker now than in the past. Children
are becoming disconnected from the natural environment and from the sources that
nourishes and maintain them. We are raising children who do not feel a part of the living
system that shares the same elements and properties, which shape their human forms. I
experienced two examples that left me thinking that something was terribly wrong with how
we were raising our children.
The first was when going on holiday with a family to a magnificent and remote house (an old
hunting lodge of Jan Smuts) located on a picturesque estuary within a nature reserve. This
gave us all the opportunity to be off the grid for 10 days over Christmas under an endless sky
and to explore diverse habitats by swimming or canoeing in the fresh water river, walking
along pristine beaches, hiking up dunes and eating the fresh fish we caught and cooked over
an outdoor fire. What was bliss for me became a stressful time for my city bound friends
whose 11 year old daughter was furious that she could not watch her pile of sitcoms on DVD
and was petrified about the absence of electric lights even though there were many candles
and kerosene lamps. The family spent their time worrying about spiders, mice or snakes and
the mud at the bottom of the river, driving their car everyday along a dust road to find a signal
for their mobiles.
The second example was a family who refused eggs from their neighbour (who had laying
hens) because they looked dirty and were not in a sterilised container. It raised my awareness
about children being cut off from the source of their food.
Children who play outside enhance their sensory skills and develop empathy for others as
well as develop a dynamic sense of relationship with their place (Cobb.p.87). To nurture all
our senses, children require space, freedom and discovery, all of which are available when
playing outside. Chawla reveals that an experience of transcendence in nature during
childhood increases creativity in adulthood and these experiences become like jewels within
us that emit energy across the years of our lives.2
Our natural environment gives us a sense of place allowing us to contemplate the larger
fabric on which our lives depend (Louv,p.97) and deepens our identity and feeling of
belonging within this larger home we share with other life forms. Nature inspires and moves
us. Nature is the fountainhead of authority on how to sustain life in unpolluted and
cooperative optimums of peace, balance and diversity. (Cohen,M 2008.p11) A child or teen
who is not engaged in outdoor or animal activities becomes more influenced by the
mainstream materialistic culture, high-tech connectivity and consumerism. Generation Y and
Z (those born in the 80s and 90s respectively) have lost the ability to experience the world
directly and therefore do not use their primal senses and depend primarily on their senses of
vision and sound. (Edward Reed, p. 64). Studies also report higher rates of loneliness amongst
Teenagers who are frequently on the internet. (Carnegie study 1998). This is a strange
paradox, because our most connected generation is experiencing feelings of disconnection.
Bill McKibben points out that TV is an homogenous entity, with little variety where learning is
indirect with zero participation. He talks of being able to return to the same mountain month
after month with fresh eyes, something he couldnt undertake with a TV series. (p67).
In my own lifetime there has been an obvious change in the way children engage with the
world. I was told as a child what are you doing inside? Get outside! My parents saw children
2

Louv, R P.94

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as more linked to the park, the garden, the trees, the sea and our pets than with indoor
activities. My world was one of imagination, climbing trees, meeting friends in the park, or
making sculptural objects out of mud. I remember distinctly lying on my back on a summers
day with our dog nuzzling me as I called out the animals I saw shaped by the clouds as they
drifted by. 3 Thoreau says that we are weaned too early from the breast of mother nature
and thrust exclusively into human society. (p.5)
During my time at Schumacher while studying the Science of Qualities; hearing about the
plight of our beloved planet; walking in the forest or along trails in Dartmoor; I experienced
being connected to the greater whole that deepened into an existential meaning dissipating all
the longings I had held on to. This is what Stephen Harding refers to as being Gaiad. A deep
heart opening event where the bodymind self receives and processes information or energy
with its environment shaping a seminal fit that allows one to feel deeply known. 4 Laurens
Van der Post tell how the first people, the Khoi San, a wilderness nomadic people who were
committed to all of nature had a way that distinguished them from us, [in] that wherever
they went, they felt as if they were known. Van der Post goes onto say that we have
destroyed the wilderness persons within ourselves and banished the wilderness that
sustained them from our lives. (p.50)
Although I have had many experiences of oceanic states in meditation, I had neglected
embodying such experiences within the natural world. A true awakening to the depths of this
lived experience unites soul, mind and body. It merges the three ways of knowing or
perceiving this world that Jung articulates: sensing, thinking, feeling and intuiting. This and
developing a frame of intellectual reference was imperative to transport me into an
experience of embodied wholeness. It became clear that if I wanted to enhance the way I lived
in community and discover meaningful actions that served Gaia I needed to get my hands
dirty in the soil, engage in creative activities, cook and clean within community and dive into
a participatory experience with all of the earthly elements. (To my disdain this process at
Schumacher college also includes intellectual challenges like writing this essay.) This united
soul, soil and society a prerequisite for a sustainable and meaningful life (Satish Kumar
2008). My first deep experience occurred within days of arriving at the college and it reveals
how the external world reflects our inner experience.
It was a Tuesday that I was in the garden on a rainy, windy morning when the leaves gave
way to their water weight. My heart began to peel open and I felt the essential calling of a BIG
heart. Mine or 'The' big heart? I have no way to distinguish. A heart so wide that it can not
only hear and see and feel all the discrepancies but be wise enough to make choices of action.
..I came up against a striving for survival today. Within me and without in the form of a
fellow pilgrim on this planet: a weed. And yet, in saying all of this, the magnificence of this
matrix is that the mere weed, although encroaching, also contributes. ..In clearing a pathway
of weeds, while digging into cracks I uncovered an entire eco system, the world living in the
cracks. The unwanted world, the nuisance. The weeds that trip up a walker or appear
unpleasing to the eye. And I, as gardener trying to please the eye of man who strives for
neatness. Neatness for what? A safe walk-way to honor a rudimentary mind that craves to
dominate, control and destroy with no added value what so ever for the little things. Except if
he has a heart. A heart of mindfulness. I saw how big the heart needs to be today. Big enough
to take this all in and feel it and digest it and still be able to look for balance without rage. To
or painstakingly picking each ant or moth out of a pond happily talking to them as if they were no different to me. I also remember houses
being separated by green hedges and not brick walls. The day I picked a few leaves to smell their citrus scent includes a memory of a visceral
communion with the hedge telling me I had taken something I did not ask for. My apology was childlike and innocent and still informs how I
engage with the natural world, with reverence and respect for our co-existence.
4 (de Quincey,2002,p.80).
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find beauty without hating the one who demands it as a right. I am beginning to understand
the word soulmaybe after a lifetime of searching, for the first time. Soul of place, soul of
all, our collective soul and not mine at all.... and the words of the Kahil Gibran rang in my ears
as my tears fell with the rain: "say not that God is in your heart but that you are in the heart of
God!
And two months later I was Gaiad again after a cosmic time walk (see abstact 2 for the
complete piece):
We melted today into the wells of endless time.
Down we swam through primordial waters,
Down we swam into the unfolding of ourselves
As our cells became Her fruits,
Our bodies expressions of creative love;
Gaias love for Life.
We swam beyond the boundaries of here and now,
No arms, no legs, no organs,
Yet conscious tadpoles alive to one pulse
Of self creating, expanding and contracting
Such an experience catapulted me into deep questioning. I contemplated all the polarities,
preconceptions and assumptions of my society embedded I. David Abram cautioned,
qualities are fluid properties arising from the internal felt relations between beings (p.150).
Is there such a thing as the inner world, separate to the outer? Is not this spacious place were
the imagination dances inside the world itself?
DEEP QUESTIONING.
The belief in a purely objective comprehension of nature, in a clear and complete understanding
of how the world works, is the belief in an entirely flat world seen from above, a world without
depth, a nature that we are not a part of but that we look at from outside -- like a God, or like a
person staring at a computer screen. Abram,D
Modern science has taken us on a mind trip into abstractions and away from the experiencing
of the subject matter it studies. Over the past century, the scientific modality dominated all
other approaches carrying us into a dualistic world where we objectified all that we
encountered, reducing everything to static parts. We thought that we could apply our mind
and numbers to understand the truth of the world. This fixed way of knowing the world,
although it has its place, partially explains how we managed to devastate other life forms. We
collectively took on a blind arrogant viewpoint that everything was separate and below us.
This is a terrifying position to unhinge since it would unleash the pain in our hearts. The pain
of having known (intuitively) all along, that we are selfish stewards of the earth. We are
takers, not givers. The greatest destruction in our world..is done by ordinary peoplewho
are oblivious to where their pleasures come from and what they really cost.. Molly Young
Brown5 This engenders a deep conflict within us that guards access to our communal
deception. I had to open myself to look and to feel the pain of neglecting my responsibilities to
Gaia, to my home. Jack Kornfields statement helped me: Its is not our pain but THE PAIN,
and realizing this awakens our universal compassion.
5 extract from The Work that Reconnects. Macy.J.

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When we examine the impact of human activities on habitats and animals and on the climatethe question that needs to be asked is why do people not change? Why do governments and
business not make this a priority? Why are we promoting business as usual? The general
feeling amongst those who are creating a more sustainable lifestyle is that it is up to
individuals and therefore families to effect the way we live.
Lets face it: Homo economicus is one hell of an over-achiever. He has invaded more than three
quarters of the globes surface and monopolized nearly half of all plant life to help make
dinner.He has netted most of the oceans fish and will soon eat his way through the worlds last
greatapes. For good measure, he has fouled most of the worlds rivers. And his gluttonous
appetites havestarted a wave of extinctions that could trigger the demise of 25 percent of the
worlds creatures within 50 years. The more godlike he becomes the less godly Homo economicus
behaves. (Andrew Nikiforuk)
Human activity has so compromised the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the
planets ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. 6The
change with the greatest potential to destabilise this Holocene period is the chemical
experiment humans have been conducting on the atmosphere for the past 250 years. The
dominance of coal, oil, and natural gas as our sources of energy has released large quantities
of carbon previously locked in underground rock layers and has increased the amount of
carbon dioxide gas in the air by 35%, the highest concentration in 420000 years.7
Global warming has increased at a rapid rate8as green house gases trap more of the Suns heat
within the atmosphere, accelerating because of positive feedback loops that increase
atmospheric carbon dioxide. Gaia is an ensemble of living and non-living components which
act as a single self-regulating system,9 with all life forms helping to maintain the habitability
of the planet and the atmosphere. Yet the changes we are presently experiencing pose
unprecedented challenges to Gaias resilience. The speed of climate change is greater than
anything seen for at least 10,000 years, making it far more difficult for species to move to
more suitable areas or adapt to the new conditions by evolving new survival mechanisms. We
may also be pushing Gaia towards a tipping point forcing natural systems abruptly into a
changed state. Once such trigger points are reached, it can be difficult or impossible for
natural systems to return to their former state.10
The fact that we now realise they [beliefs] are having damaging impacts on ecological
processes is forcing society to enter a kind of collective regression a critical point and rethink at the most profound levels. There is growing awareness that the cultural constructions
on which we base our lifestyles, strive to make sense of our lives, and satisfy our in-needness,
are ecologically dysfunctional. There is growing awareness that the condition of the socioeconomic and bio-ecological spheres on which we humans depend has itself become
The provision of food, fresh water, energy, and materials to a growing population nearing 8 billion people, has devastated the complex
systems of plants, animals, and biological processes that make the planet habitable.
7 Fossil fuel combustion (plus a smaller contribution from cement manufacture) is responsible for more than 75% of human-caused CO2
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emissions. Land use change (primarily deforestation) is responsible for the remainder. For methane, another important greenhouse gas, emissions generated by human activities exceeded natural emissions over the last 25 years. For nitrous oxide, emissions generated by human activities
are equal to natural emissions to the atmosphere. Most of the long-lived halogen-containing gases (such as chloro-fluorcarbons) are
manufactured by humans, and were not present in the atmosphere before the industrial era. On average, present-day tropospheric ozone has
increased 38% since pre-industrial times, and the increase results from atmospheric reactions of short-lived pollutants emitted by human
activity. The concentration of CO2 is now 379 parts per million (ppm) and methane is greater than 1,774 parts per billion (ppb), both very likely
much higher than any time in at least 650 kyr (during which CO2 remained between 180 and 300 ppm and methane between 320 and 790 ppb).
8 (fastest rate in last 22000 years)
9 (64) Animate earth
10 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

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dependent on the psycho-cultural sphere.11
This takes us into the realm of ecopsychology a movement that primarily examines the
psycho-social-spiritual contributions to our ecological crisis by unearthing the beliefs, values
and assumptions that society holds, as well as highlighting the need for us to explore our
ecological self and the soul of the world.12
There is no more potent group than parents to come up against deep-seated values. Parents
take on the personal responsibility of raising their children into the world with the correct
moral and ethical and spiritual fibre. They commit themselves to contribute to society by
training its young in right living, right thinking, right emotions. Having spoken to hundreds
of parents about their short term and long term intentions as a parent, I am always struck by a
common goal: to raise balanced, empathic, communicative children who are also happy and
responsible and contributory. Parents lists are always long and idealized. Yet their message
is clear: parents unconsciously see themselves as the guardians of the moral life-pulse of the
community. The parenting workshops I run explore the philosophy of conscious parenting,
which involves deep enquiry into their values and their relationships. Yet there is a strange
juxtaposition of values with liberal parents. They often have the view that they can personally
oppose mainstream thinking yet still insist that their children achieve top grades, a trendy
image and an affluent education. Parents need to enquire more deeply into the relationship
between what they value and what they do, with their children in mind.
Richard Louv asks of us: why is it that our 10 year old can name every car that passes? yet
cannot identify one indigenous plant. What we can represent and name seems to say a lot
about who we are because it makes up our frame of reference.
Children today play inside with gadgets, computers, ipads, ipods and mobile phones.13 There
is an epidemic of materialistic values amongst children , but also a narcissistic wounding
whereby children have become convinced that theyre inferior if they dont have an endless
array of new products. Children of the y and z generations have an external locus of control in
that they hinge their identity on external objects or on celebrities.
This is an ecological and economical crisis but mostly it is a crisis of consciousness. It is about
who we are, what values we hold onto and how we think. And yet it is deeper. To reestablish
cognitive consonance between ingrained perceptions and new environmental realities
requires that we engage in the willful restructuring of our belief systems and associated neural
pathways.14 These efforts require conscious effort. We have deeply ingrained habits of
thought that make up the dominant paradigm that effects how our brain is wired. And yet
both can be changed. Parents need to address the forces that were at play during there own
maturation process.
Maiteny Paul. The psychodynamics of meaning and action for a sustainable future. The Grubb Institute of Behavioural Studies, London, UK.
2000
12 Rozsak 1992 Volume 24, Number 3 73
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The Telegraph (2011) sited a study by a toy manufacturer A breakdown of the top 10 most wanted toys for this Christmas among children
aged five to 16, revealed a grown-up taste in gifts, with Apple products, including the iPhone 4, iPod Touch and iPad dominating the top three
places Toy stores were prepared with the new Ipad for children. They sit for long hours in front of Tvs and dvds or at a desk completing
hours of written homework. The recommendations of a recent childcare conference were that toddlers have only an hour of screen time in an
attempt to be more realistic, given that, between TVs, computers, iPads and smartphones, households may have 10 or more screens.
14 Cognitive scientists have determined that cultural norms, beliefs, and values are effectively imprinted on the human brain. In the normal
course of a persons development and maturation, repeated social, cultural, and sensory experiences actually help to shape the individuals
synaptic circuitry in a neural image of those experiences. Once entrenched, these neural structures alter the individuals perception of
subsequent experiences and information. People seek out experiences that reinforce their preset neural circuitry and select information from
their environment that matches these structures. Conversely, when faced with information that does not agree with their internal
structures, they deny, discredit, reinterpret or forget that information. (p. 31
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In the 1970s our conscious development revealed our need for a freer more right brained
world where we demanded free expression. This soon moved into a demand for
individualization and we dreamed of being different. Marketing campaigns manipulated
these developments by driving us into a world of consumerism where objects and things were
purposely linked to our need to express our uniqueness. Values became tangled with objects
and we showed off our status and our image through our lifestyles. Anyone connected to a
screen were being bombarded with advertising images so believable since psychology and
marketing had undertaken an indepth study of our needs. Marketeers made it their business
to read, measure and fulfill the desires of people through objects. We believed we were
entitled to feel good with instant gratification and as long as we could have the lifestyles we
felt we deserved we remained rational, good citizens.
The New Age era, rise of Buddhist philosophies and transpersonal psychology showed a
change in our attitudes which was closely followed by the mind-body-spirit advertising
campaigns helping us discover our limitless self where we could create our own identity by
surrounding ourselves with the objects and activities that boosted our sense of self. It is
difficult to accept the manner in which we are seduced to buy and conform to growth at all
costs yet if we do not become more aware of why we hold the values we do, we will simply
pass on our own blindness to our children.
DEEP COMMITMENT
The hundreds of parents I have spoken to all have one major value in common. They want the
best for their children and they want their children to lead happy and fulfilled lives. parents
are already committed to the future and could become a powerful force of change if they
enquire deeply into what is a fulfilled life and what is it that creates and maintains
happiness?. It is said we only save that which we love which could be translated to read love
is the one force that could save Gaia, heal our communities and create an environment that is
more healthy for our children. Maybe parental love can be seen as a natural energy that can be
harnessed to drive the engine of change. And here is the cultural trap. If we are fully
embedded in a culture that we have not ever questioned or reflected upon the foundations of
our values and beliefs, than we only ever see through this cultural lens. Examples are: you
only get somewhere if you work hard, how you look creates a lasting impression etc. There
needs to be a commitment from parents to this process of self enquiry.
The most important commitment is to spending more time as a family engaged in nature or
finding ways to creatively inspire our children to discover and explore Gaia. To build the
ecological self and an ecological family identity. We are aware that selfish values and instant
gratification support a consumer lifestyle. Roughly put this is an ego driven impulse. It is
essential to shift from ego drives to involve a larger more interconnected sense of self. Warick
Fox (1993) suggests that enduring motivation for pro-environmental behaviour comes from a
move towards a transpersonal perspective. This is when the personal sense of identity
extends to encompass the wider world. This move includes shedding many layers of identity
that include our upbringing, societies rules, narrow paradigms of self and other until it
eventually opens to the ecological self which is an all emcompassing interconnected identity
and way of being.15
This suggests a reassessment of the values that we automatically promote in our parenting.
Most parents I have worked with list the following characteristics they would like to see in
15 This is the process of the Natural Change Project and is described in their report by Key.D .and Kerr.M.(2011, p.36)

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their sons: assertiveness, drive, success, achievement, self confidence, entrepreneurial,
strength, responsible, fulfilled and some times good relationship skills and good
communicators with a spiritual core. The all encompassing ecological self requires a
reappraisal of these. For instance, Ekhart Tolle suggests that true confidence is through
humility, low ego state is strength. A possible list of new values may look like this: Humility,
egoless, selflessness, standing back, humble, kind, cooperative, non-competitive, giving things
away (rather than taking and holding on), surrendered, open and receptive, ecological.
contributory, inclusive, patient, slow These values are the opposite of the extractive culture.
Practical commitments would also be necessary: To limit TV and screen watching and to
encourage outdoor exercise and sport. To increase contact with animals. To grow ones own
food and harvest food together. To bake bread together. To introduce outside games, picnics
and treasure hunts. To plant trees and flowers. To look for volunteer opportunities. To run a
green household. To expose children to short informative dvds like the story of stuff. To
read out loud togther.
Another commitment is to a more conscious and aware way of being. This would include the
practices that help calm the mind and uncouple us from stuck modes of thinking. These
practices include meditation, visualization, yoga, tai chi, chi gong and so on. These processes
soften us allowing more receptivity to our own intuition and inner guidance, They also calm
the stress response via the parasympathetic nervous system increasing our ability to be
patient, calm and peaceful. It seems that the more we can relax and accept what is in the
moment, the more we can allow emergent process to unfold. A calmer mind does also give
space for suppressed thoughts and emotions to arise. Therefore a commitment to a more
open heart may also require mentoring or psychotherapetic support.
Commitment to spiritual evolution. I have found through my recent process at Schumacher
that it is possible to have a deep spiritual experience yet remain stuck in old paradigms of
thinking. One needs to look at relative consciousness. Andrew Cohen suggests that we need to
bring inspired will and intention to the cognitive realms of the relative consciousness to
inspire spiritual evolution. Three aspects merge: the free spiritual experience+ the creative
impulse to evolve+ worldviews. The last of these tress processes can limit expression, like a
bottle neck. We need to develop new structures in thinking and enquiry that are mobile and
flexible enough to contain these openings and impulses. Ken Wilbur says that a pluristic view
is not enough as it judges and criticizes the mainstream views like hierarchy and rank. The
ecological self needs a world view that is fully inclusive, integrated and transcendent. The
cosmocentric.
CONCLUSIONS
Our concern for outward change can only be effective to the extent that we ourselves are open to inward change.
When persons experience policy as resonant with their inner convictions and values, behavioural change becomes
the inevitable consequence and is more likely to be sustainable. Once a family has succeeded in working out how
they can best contribute, with integrity and a sense of fullness, to the sustainability and purposes of the wider
systems on which they depend, it can be said that they are acting from an ecological family paradigm rather than
individualistically. This is a key to sustainability, both external and internal. To reduce the human eco-

footprint, the fetishistic emphasis in free-market capitalist societies on individualism,

competition, greed, and accumulation needs to be addressed through parenting and parents
should be encouraged to foster in their children: community and generosity where there homes
pride themselves on their community skills and sense of local sufficiency.

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