[Ccpg] Council of All Beings Ceremony at Topanga Earth Day - April 24

[Andrew Rasmussen]

Greetings Spiritual Beings of the Earth !

By the powers of Compassion and Courage vested in me , I hereby call

a Council of All Beings

at Topanga Earth Day
April 24

http://www.topangaearthday.org/

Please arrive for the opening ceremony at 11 AM
the council will  immediately follow.

Bring a cushion to sit on, and a mask of the life form you will represent. If you do not bring a mask , materials will be provided to make one.



Participants in the Council will nurture thier ecological self, by allowing themselves to be choosen by a species or ecosystem. A council will be called to share our gratitude and joys for Mother Earth, and to speak of the grave threats faced by nearly all life forms today.

 Many participants report feeling a sense of empowerment after listening to the wisdom of these non human life forms, and giving a voice to ecological aspects of our counsciousness that have been repressed. 

By honoring the guidance the biosphere provides us with, we can re-align our healing intentions and take effective action in service to All Beings.

For more information contact Andrew Rasmussen (818) 383-4998



PAIN FOR THE WORLD

>From news reports and life around us, we are bombarded with signals of distress- of job layoffs and homeless families, of nearby toxic wastes and distant famines, of arms sales and wars and preparations for wars. These stir within us feelings of fear, anger, and sorrow, even though we may never express them to others. By virtue of our humanity, we share these deep responses. To be conscious in our world today is to be aware of vast suffering and unprecedented peril.

    Even the words- fear, anger, sorrow, are inadequate to convey the feelings we experience, for these connote emotions long familiar to our species. The feelings that assail us now cannot be equated with ancient dreads of mortality and , "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." Their source lies less in concerns for the personal self than in apprehensions of collective suffering- of what happens to our own and toother species, to the legacy of our ancestors, to unborn generations, and to the living body of Earth.

    What we are dealing with here is akin to the original meaning of compassion:"suffering with." It is the distress we feel on behalf of the larger whole of which we are a part. It is the pain of the world itself, experienced in each of us. 

    No one is exempt from that pain, any more than one could exist alone and self-sufficient in empty space. It is as natural to us as the food and air we draw upon to fashion who we are. It is inseperable from the currents of matter, energy, and information that flow through us and sustain us as interconnected open systems. We are not closed off from the world, but integral components of it, like cells in a larger body. When that body is traumatized, we sense that trauma, too. When it falters and sickens, we feel its pain, wether we pay attention to it or not. 

    That pain is the price of consciousness in a threatened and suffering world. It is not only natural, it is an absolutely necessary component of our collective healing. As in all organisims, pain has a purpose: it is a warning signal, designed to trigger remedial action. The problem, therefore, lies not with our pain for the world, but in our repression of it. Our efforts to dodge or dull it surrender us to futility- or in systems' terms, cut the feedback loop and block effective response.

-Excerpted from COMING BACK TO LIFE , by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown

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