Resource Type: Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes

This colorful, sometimes solemn, and often lusty communal ritual allows us to step aside from our human identity and speak on behalf of other life-forms.  It is excellent for growing the ecological self, for it brings a sense of our solidarity with all life, and fresh awareness of the damage wrought by one upstart species.… Read more

(or Accepting the Challenges and Gifts of This Lifetime) (Revised version by Molly Brown and Joanna Macy) (60 minutes) Using and growing our moral imagination, this process focuses on our own lives and helps us see how their basic features and conditions prepare us to take part in the healing of the world. Like climbing… Read more

(60 minutes or more) This fanciful process derives from a Tibetan lama dance.  For three days every spring, the monks of Tashi Jong, a refugee community in northwest India, honor their ancient Buddhist tradition with majestic, masked rituals.  One of the high points for Joanna, a long-time friend of Tashi Jong, is the Dance to… Read more

 (60 minutes) This process in pairs serves to move us beyond constricted notions of who we are and what can happen through us.  Of a metaphysical bent, it was originally inspired by followers of the Hindu sage Sri Ramana Maharshi.  In their “enlightenment intensives,” persistent inquiry helps participants to free themselves from socially constructed self-definitions… Read more

(20 to 60 minutes) A guided meditation on the body, the cradling practice serves many purposes.  It permits deep relaxation, all the more welcome after dealing straight on with fearsome issues.  It builds trust among participants, and a kind of respectful cherishing.  It widens our awareness of what is at stake in the global crisis;… Read more

or Four Voices (About 60 minutes) Activists want to be able to express their views about an issue clearly, even passionately.  At the same time, for their own understanding and skillfulness, they want to see differing and opposing perspectives on this issue.  This favorite exercise of ours helps us do both.  And in the process… Read more

(30 minutes) Recounting incidents from our own lives, we recognize our capacity to create positive change.  This is all the more valuable since we are not accustomed to sharing this kind of experience or understanding it as power. Method Think of a time in your life when something important and good happened because of what… Read more

(also known as the Nuts Game)     The “Tragedy of the Commons,” first named by Garrett Hardin, occurs when a community consumes a common resource too fast for regeneration to occur. In such situations, people must choose between restricting their own consumption for the good of the community, or continuing to consume at a rate… Read more

(30 minutes) This lively, engrossing process provides a direct experience of the dynamic nature of open systems. It dramatizes two features of the new paradigm view of reality:  1) that life is composed not of separate entities so much as of the relations between them, and 2) these relations allow life to self-organize. Method Have… Read more

The following interactive practices help us see the larger context of our lives. They use our innate powers of imagination and empathy to shift perspectives from separation to connectivity.  Seeing With New/Ancient Eyes includes not only the practices described below, but also those of “Deep Time,” that make vivid our connections with past and future… Read more