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Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects
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- What People are Saying
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Authors Joanna Macy and Molly Brown address the anguish experienced by those who would confront the harsh realities of our time. In this fully updated edition of Coming Back to Life , they show how grief, anger, and fear are healthy responses to threats to life, and when honored can free us from paralysis or panic, through the revolutionary practice of the Work that Reconnects. New chapters address working within the corporate world, and engaging communities of color as well as youth in the Work.
The Work that Reconnects has spread around the world, inspiring hundreds of thousands to work toward a life-sustaining human culture. Coming Back to Life introduces the Work's theoretical foundations, illuminating the angst of our era with extraordinary insight. Pointing the way forward out of apathy, it offers personal counsel as well as easy-to-use methods for group work that profoundly affect peoples' outlook and ability to act in the world.
Joanna Macy is a scholar, eco-philosopher, teacher, activist, and author of twelve previous books including Coming Back to Life .
Molly Young Brow n is a teacher, trainer, counselor, and author of four previous books on psychology and Earth-based spirituality.
ISBN-13: 9780865717756
Media Type: Paperback(Revised Edition)
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Publication Date: 11-01-2014
Pages: 376
Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range: 16 Years
Joanna Macy , eco-philosopher, activist, and scholar of Buddhism and systems theory has an international following, thanks to 30 years in movements for global justice and ecological sanity. She is the author of 12 books including the original Coming Back to Life and Widening Circles , and she has produced a 2-DVD set entitled The Work that Reconnects . Molly Young Brown combines the Work That Reconnects, ecopsychology, and psychosynthesis in her work: teaching online courses, writing and publishing books and essays, coaching and mentoring, and giving talks and workshops internationally. Her five books include the original Coming Back to Life and Growing Whole: Self-realization for the Great Turning .
How shall I begin my song in the blue night that is settling? In the great night my heart will go out, toward me the darkness comes rattling. In the great night, my heart will go out. I call heaven and earth to record this day to your account, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both you and your seed shall live. Read an Excerpt
- Papago Medicine Woman Chant
- Deut. 30.19
"Here is a blueprint for our present time-an honest and openhearted appraisal of our globally destructive and abusive behavior, and the work required to transform, to shift into a life-sustaining culture. Joanna Macy and Molly Brown outline the simple and essential choices we need to make, and give us the tools to make this shift. A vitally necessary book." "The Dalai Lama nailed it: a timeless manual for Earth healers, inspires actionable hope. The new edition reminded me again how to replace despair with constructive optimism; blame with imagination, innovation and collaboration. As a former middle-school teacher, I say "Hooray!" for the new chapter designed to aid mentors and teachers on whom it will fall to guide those likely to suffer the worst consequences of the Great Unraveling: Generations X through Z and beyond. The meditations at the close of the book are both balm and goad. From their unique and clear-eyed analysis of our present crises and their causes, through exercises to catalyze the Great Turning, Macy and Brown's book models the changes it aims to facilitate in our hearts and minds. A heart-lifting read." "In a time of catastrophic climate change, Joanna Macy and Molly Brown offer a treasure-trove of principles, practices, poems, and prayers that must become as natural to us as breathing. Only this quality of spiritual nourishment can sustain us in our planetary hospice condition. These tools not only fortify us for the long haul, but intimately join us with the Earth, our bodies, and one another, thereby enabling us to experience an exuberant aliveness." "Joanna Macy's and Molly Young Brown's new book is a spectacular and accessible blueprint for conflict resolution, environmental sustainability and a planet we all hope to embrace collectively and enjoy. The measures recommended in this book are ones that every individual and community can get behind. Coming Back to Life is a perfect title for a marvelous book." "We live in truly perilous times. If you want to face what is happening with an open heart and mind, if you want to use your suffering to awaken to greater aliveness and compassion, this book is for you. Coming Back to Life doesn't just teach that our suffering can be the birthplace for a greater capacity for healing. It shows you how. It's a brilliant guidebook to the power you have at your core to let your light shine its brightest even in the presence of fear and planetary anguish. If you want true wisdom for tough times, if you want to connect with your joy even in the midst of sadness, if you want to see new life arise out of despair, Coming Back to Life has my highest possible recommendation." "A must for all who want to mobilize humanity in service of all beings. These concepts, exercises, and meditations have proven to work across generations, religions, ethnicities and races." "Modern civilisation has brought the planet and untold numbers of species, including our own, to the brink of existence. To honestly witness this with our hearts, minds, and spirits wide open and remain able to react, adapt, and, when necessary, resist, often seems impossible. Coming Back to Life , the wisdom, clarity and urgency of Joanna Macy's lifelong body of incredible work shines brighter and more important than ever before. Our very lives now depend on being present in order to stay sane amidst this suicidal culture, and Macy shows us the way." " Coming Back to Life is the aptly-titled compendium of what has been learned over many years and can be shared with us all from the successful Work That Reconnects workshops that Joanna Macy and associates have offered to thousands of people from all walks of life. The book ranges from the purpose of such work and its role in what's called the "Great Turning" to the most specific details of how to conduct a successful workshop of this kind. It's a fine example of something the progressive world often lacks: a way to pass on what's been learned in one successful project or another so that this work can grow." " Coming Back to Life is for me a treasured core text and I am among the many who are delighted with this upgrade. It distils a further sixteen years of experience, names more clearly the context we face and broadens the reach of this work with important new chapters. Thank you Joanna and Molly." "The earlier edition of Coming Back to Life has been a roadmap to me and to others at the Gandhi Institute for years, especially for strengthening our systemic thinking in relation to social injustice and for increasing our capacity to practice mourning in community settings. This new edition is a gift, like a visit from an old friend during a rough time. I feel so grateful to Joanna and to Molly for choosing to return to and refresh this work - a more timely, practical book is unimaginable. I pray that it strengthens our collective ability to lovingly take action on behalf of our descendants." "Every generation needs its sacred texts, its scriptures. Our journey through the damaged landscape and perilous time on this precious Earth requires a new kind of soul guide. Coming Back to Life gives voice to our generations' psalms, praises, and lamentations, our call for justice. It provides practices and meditations so we can make sense of who we are. This book is our wisdom text." "Reading this blessed treasure of a book is a healing experience. It names and honors the overwhelming emotions, paradoxes, complexities and desires that swirl deep in us as we face the reality of this time. And with gentle assurance it offers us actions that reconnect us to our deepest sources of well-being, energy and love, no matter the external realities. I am forever grateful that this book returns to our world at this time." "If you ever feel pain or guilt for events in the world, dismay at useless cruelty, rage at environmental damage and waste, or powerlessness because you do not know what to do, this is the book for you. In Coming Back to Life Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown show how these feelings need not be suppressed. Far from being an agonizing companion, they can be a friend and an aid at reconnecting with your heart and taking useful action." " Coming Back to Life opens our eyes to both the difficulties and the possibilities - while inspiring our hearts and minds with practices that allow us to become wise activists in a very complex world." "Joanna Macy and Molly Brown in their expansive new book Coming Back to Life help us understand the urgency of and the steps to take for this necessary journey. This book is as challenging as it is breath-taking. Macy and Brown remind us over and over the importance of not just facing but claiming suffering, our own, other's and the planet's. Not to despair but to live out and embody our spiritual being in mutuality with each other and the world. They offer practical exercises to help us on our way. Rays of joy leap from the pages but without a guarantee that we will prevail. I found myself continually feeling grateful for this book and the wonderful beings who bring up the necessary challenge of reconnecting and coming back to life" "This legacy edition reflects forty years of highly refined, time-tested experiential group work that has now spread around the globe. Built on the wisdom and principles of Macy's life work, the volume offers a bounty of resources for teachers and facilitators engaged in social transformation. New chapters include insights and progress from expanding the work to children, young people, and activists of color. Macy and Brown provide clear analysis and guidance for cultivating a profound shift in perception critical to a viable future. They express great urgency about what must be done, yet their methods are grounded, powerful, and proven as a path of action. The creative strength of the work lies in its confidence in the human imagination as a basis for hope. This work is wisdom work, an inspired project for healing the wounded parts of the earth and the human psyche. It is filled through and through with the huge hearts and passionate dedication of all those who have been touched by this compelling vision and most visionary teacher." "Joanna Macy is one of the great teachers of our age. It is cause for great celebration that an updated guide to her Work That Reconnects has now appeared in the form of a new edition of the classic she wrote with Molly Young Brown. As the world spirals ever deeper into disconnect, as we witness the natural world plundered and unravelling into horror, it becomes ever more difficult to muster the psycho-spiritual resources necessary to face the reality unflinching and compassionate, to swim against the current of egoism and denial and to represent life, speak for life, come back to life. The testimony and practices contained in this volume offer us priceless and practical resources for transforming despair into creative action and answer the questions: "how are we to live at such a time? How are we to represent the 4 billion years of living ancestry on whose shoulders we stand and whose future lies in our trembling hands?"" "Whenever I am leading group processes to feel both the urgency and revolutionary patience of this extraordinary moment on Earth, I turn to this book. The exercises poetically deposit just right amount of theory in the explanations, and for more depth, one can just flip through the chapters. First introduced to Coming Back to Life and the Work That Reconnects in the context of a 2014 leaders of color cohort with Joanna Macy and Patricia St. Onge, the words and energy of this book illustrate the interconnectedness of social justice, environmental, and liberation theology movements for wholeness." "Where there is bewilderment, Joanna Macy brings wisdom. Where there are division and discord, she speaks for the Other. Where there is despair, she joins hands to dance. Humankind is about to make a Great Turning in one direction or another. If we find a way to turn toward a deeper, fuller humanity, one of the reasons will be the fiercely compassionate genius of Joanna Macy. [This] book is a great gift to the reeling world."What People are Saying About This
From the Publisher
—Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee Ph.D., Sufi teacher and author, Spiritual Ecology, the Cry of the Earth
—Ellen LaConte, author, Life Rules and Afton: A Love Story
—Carolyn Baker, Ph.D., author, Collapsing Consciously and Love In the Age of Ecological Apocalypse
—Michael Charles Tobias, president, Dancing Star Foundation
—John Robbins, author, Diet For A New America and co-founder and president, The Food Revolution Network
—Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, Director of Social Justice Organizing at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
—Dahr Jamail, journalist and author
—Michael Nagler, president, Metta Center for Nonviolence
—Chris Johnstone, co-author, Active Hope
— Kit Miller, Director, MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence
— Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director, Science and Environmental Health Network, and co-founder, Women's Congress for Future Generations
— Margaret Wheatley, author, Leadership and the New Science, Perseverance and So Far From Home
— Piero Ferrucci, author, Your Inner Will
— Lynne Iser, founder, Elder-Activists.org
— John Powell, director, Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, UC Berkeley
—Stephanie Kaza, author, Mindfully Green
—John Seed, founder, Rainforest Information Center, Australia
—Sarah Thompson, executive director, Christian Peacemakers Teams
—Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Wild Comfort and co-editor of Moral Ground
Permissions xvi Message from Dalai Lama xvii Foreword Matthew Fox xix Preface Joanna Macy xxiii Preface Molly Young Brown xxvii Chapter 1 To Choose Life 1 We Can Still Opt for a Life-Sustaining World 3 Choosing Our Story 5 1 Business As Usual 5 2 The Great Unraveling 5 3 The Great Turning 5 The Great Turning 6 1 Holding Actions in Defense of Life 6 2 Transforming the Foundations of Our Common Life 9 3 Shift in Perception and Values 14 Chapter 2 The Greatest Danger - The Deadening of Heart and Mind 19 What is Pain for the World? 21 What Deadens Heart and Mind? 22 Fear of Pain 22 Fear of Despair 22 Other Spiritual Traps 23 Fear of Not Fitting In 24 Distrust of Our Own Intelligence 24 Fear of Guilt 24 Fear of Distressing Loved Ones 25 View of Self as Separate 26 Hijacked Attention 26 Fear of Powerlessness 27 Fear of Knowing - and Speaking 28 Mass Media 29 Job and Time Pressures 30 Social Violence 30 The Cost of Blocking Our Pain for the World 31 Impeded Cognitive Functioning 31 Impeded Access to the Unconscious 31 Impeded Instinct for Self-Preservation 31 Impeded Eros 32 Impeded Empathy 32 Impeded Imagination 33 Impeded Feedback 33 Coming Back to Life 34 Chapter 3 The Basic Miracle - Our True Nature and Power 37 Living Systems Theory 38 How Life Self-Organizes 39 Water, Fire and Web 41 Gaia Theory 42 Deep Ecology 43 Beyond Anthropocentrism 43 The Ecological Self 44 Asking Deeper Questions 45 Ancient Spiritual Teachings 46 Abrahamic Religions 47 Asian Traditions 48 Indigenous Spirituality 49 The Miracle of Mind 50 Self as Choice Maker 51 Positive Disintegration 52 We Are the World 54 The Nature of Our Power 55 Power Over 56 Power With 56 Power Over Blocks Feedback 57 The Power of Disclosure 58 Synergy and Grace 59 Chapter 4 What Is The Work That Reconnects? 63 History of the Work 64 Aims of the Work 65 Basic Assumptions of the Work 65 $$$ The Spiral of the Work 67 The Shambhala Prophecy 69 The Work That Reconnects in Corporate Settings 71 Chapter 5 Guiding The Work That Reconnects 73 The Value of Working in Groups 74 Tasks of the Facilitator 75 Foundations of Good Facilitation 75 Capacities of an Excellent Guide 76 Engaging Full Participation 78 Working With Strong Emotions 79 Guidelines for Conducting Rituals 81 Money 83 Opening The Workshop 83 Closing The Workshop 85 Evaluation 85 Fellow-Up 50 Ongoing Support for the Guide 87 Chapter 6 Coming From Gratitude 91 Gratitude: Teaching Points 92 Practices 93 Becoming Present: through Breath, Movement, Sound and Silence 94 $$$ Introductions with Gratitude 96 Open Sentences 97 Open Sentences on Gratitude 97 Gratitude Rounds 98 $$$ Mirror Walk 98 Open Sentences on the Great Turning 99 The Wheel of the Great Turning 100 The Elm Dance 101 The Presence of Gratitude Throughout the Work 102 Chapter 7 Honoring Our Pain For The World 105 Our Inner Responses to Suffering and Destruction 106 Practices 107 Small Groups on the Great Unraveling 108 Open Sentences on Honoring Our Pain 109 Breathing Through 110 The Milling 110 Reporting to Chief Seattle 113 The Bestiary 115 We Have Forgotten Who We Are 116 "I Don't Care" 116 Cairn of Mourning 117 Truth Mandala 119 Despair Ritual 123 Bowl of Tears 128 Spontaneous Writing 130 Imaging with Colors and Clay 130 Chapter 8 Seeing With New Eyes 135 Brain Food 136 Key Teaching Points 137 Advice for Conveying These Concepts 138 Practices 140 The Systems Game 140 Riddle of the Commons Game 143 When I Made a Difference 145 $$$ Widening Circles 146 The Cradling 147 Who Are You? 152 Dance to Dismember the Ego 154 Bodhisattva Check-In 156 $$$ Council of All Beings 160 Chapter 9 Deep Time - Reconnecting with Past and Future Generations 169 To Reinhabit Time 170 Practices 172 $$$ Invoking the Beings of the Three Times 172 Open Sentences on Time 173 $$$ The Evolutionary Gifts of the Animals 174 Harvesting the Gifts of the Ancestors 175 $$$ Audio Recording to the Future 182 Letter from the Future 183 $$$ The Seventh Generation 184 Field Work on the Great Turning 187 The Storytellers Convention 189 Chapter 10 Going Forth 191 Discoveries Made So Far in the Spiral 192 Practices 193 Networking 193 Communicating Our Concerns and Hopes 194 Life Map 196 Imaging Our Power 197 The Sword in the Stone 198 Callings and Resources 200 Consultation Groups 202 Corbett 202 The Clearness Committee 204 Dialoging with Mara to Strengthen Our Resolve 207 Bowing to Our Adversaries 209 Creating Study/Action Groups 211 The Four Abodes 213 Five Vows 213 Circle of Blessings 215 Two Poems for the Road Ahead 216 Chapter 11 The Work That Reconnects With Children and Teens 217 What Do Children Know and Feel? 218 The Effects of Silence 220 Suggestions for Overcoming the Fear and the Silence 222 Using the Work That Reconnects 225 Generation Waiting Up 225 Practices for Children and Teens 226 Mothers and Daughters Follow the Spiral 226 Talking Circle 227 Gratitude 228 The Human Camera 229 Honoring Our Pain for the World 229 Open Sentences 230 Milling with Open Sentences 230 Two Stories of the Truth Mandala with Children 231 Boom Chicka Boom with Feelings 233 Seeing with New Eyes 234 The Web of Life 235 Our Life As Gaia 235 The Robot Game 238 The Council of All Beings in a School Setting 238 Going Forth 239 Open Sentences for Going Forth 239 Starfish Story and Ritual 239 The Galactic Council 241 Planning Actions 241 Chapter 12 Learning with Communities of Color 245 Part One by Joanna Macy 245 Getting Started 247 Honoring Our Ancestors 248 The Immensity of the Pain 249 How the Pain of People of Color is Pathologized 250 Seeing the Industrial Growth Society with New Eyes 252 Time for Deep Cultural Awakening 254 Part Two by Patricia St. Onge 255 Walking Toward the Work That Reconnects 255 Deep Culture as a Lens 257 Weaving the Threads Together 261 Part Three by Adelaja Simon, Adrián Villasenor Galarza and Andrés Thomas Conteris 264 Part Four: Sharing the Work That Reconnects with First Nations by Andrea Avila 266 Chapter 13 Meditations for the Great Turning 269 $$$ The Web of Life 270 $$$ Gaia Meditation 272 Death Meditation 273 $$$ Loving-Kindness 274 Breathing Through 276 $$$ The Great Ball of Merit 278 $$$ The Four Abodes 281 Two Litanies 283 Appendix A Chief Seattle's Message 287 Appendix B The Bestiary by Joanna Macy 291 Appendix C Ethics and Declarations of Rights 295 Appendix D Bodywork and Movement and Using the Spital in Writing Workshops 299 Endnotes 309 Resources 317 Index 329 Acknowledgments 337 About the Authors 342Table of Contents