Conscious Human(ity), No. 58
Expanding your awareness, recovering a sense of connection, a landmark climate case, fools and dreamers, vinyl records make a comeback, and more...
Welcome to this week’s edition of Conscious Human(ity) — it’s so good to see you here!
Below are seven things that have made my week better (one for each day of the week). They’re formatted so you can scan through and skip over things that aren’t interesting to you, and dive deeper into those that are.
I hope at least one thing brightens your day, prompts an ‘aha’ moment, or inspires you to take action on something close to your heart.
Expanding your Awareness
My brain has been putting together a few threads from Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being (also mentioned last week) with various experiences from my life more generally, including teaching and yoga. In one particular chapter called Awareness, Rick says,
“The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate our awareness, we are expanding the universe.
This expands the scope, not just of the material at our disposal to create from, but of the life we get to live.”
Expanding our awareness, or noticing more of what’s happening around us in each moment, can be a salve for anxiety, and provide creative inspiration.
Coincidentally, I got Jake (my eldest son) to do an awareness activity this week, designed to calm his anxiety. You might have done something similar in the past because it’s a common mindfulness approach, but it was completely new to Jake and it was beautiful to see a smile dance across his lips as he relaxed into it. This isn’t the sort of thing you can do when you’re in a peak anxiety state (like a panic attack) but when you’ve got a constant low-level of anxiety grumbling away, it can help.
In a nutshell, I put a comfy chair outside in our yard and asked Jake to sit there quietly with his eyes closed and notice ten things he could hear. I told him to simply notice and write each one down without analysing it, as much as possible. When I do this myself, the sounds I hear are nearly always natural ones. We’re in an urban area, but it’s also a relatively quiet pocket so when you stop to notice, it’s filled with birds, insects, and other little sounds like leaves rustling. I was fairly confident that I could guess many of the sounds he would write down. But, I was very amused at how different his responses were to mine. Here they are in his words (and yes, there are 11)…
Traffic
Leaves rustling
Birds wings flutter
Truck reversing
Nova shmacking her lips
Small birds chirping
Bee buzz
Nissan Silvia S15 with twin turbo cruising down near Macca’s (lol)
The resident bears’ footsteps [Nova]
Whipper snipper failing to start
Nova chewing
Okay, so we had some crossover, but this reminded me how our different ‘lenses’ influence what we notice. In this case, what we hear and how we interpret those sounds.
Where am I going with this?
Well, expanding our awareness and being open to new ways of seeing (and smelling, hearing, touching etc.) can be calming, as I mentioned above. It can also provide the creative inspiration we might be craving. I do think it’s a good lesson in empathy too. We all see and experience things differently, even when we’re in the same place at the same time.
Being open to new ways of seeing, and being, can be a good thing for our art, and for our life.
Recovering a Sense of Connection
There was synchronicity between Rick Rubin’s advice for expanding our awareness and this week’s instalment from ArtsHub about The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, which is about how to open ourselves up to inspiration. And creative inspiration can only land when we are open and ready for it.
To help with this, we need to challenge the inner critic (or filter) that tells us we’re silly, or childish, or not skilled enough and ‘learn to tap into a wiser and more playful intuition that is more about listening than it is about striving.’ So, rather than straining to think something up, or create something from nothing, it’s about ‘tuning in and dropping down the well’ into the sea of ideas that exist just below the surface of our regular consciousness.
It’s interesting that connecting with inspiration requires both an expanded awareness of external stimuli, and a heightened awareness of internal intuition. It’s kind of like fine tuning our internal and external sensors to the optimal levels for inspiration.
They require constant regulation too, rather than a ‘set and forget’ approach.
‘The Uncles’ Climate Case
On a completely different topic, I found a few spare minutes to sit in the autumn sun and listen to this discussion between Sarah Wilson from Wild and Isabel Reinecke, founder of the Grata Fund earlier this week. The Grata Fund is dedicated to providing legal support and advocacy in climate justice, human rights, and democratic freedoms.
Essentially, they make it possible for groups of ‘small people’ to hold powerful governments and big corporations to account for their actions.
Pretty amazing stuff!
Isabel explained that one of their current campaigns is a landmark climate case which is being brought before the Australian federal court by two Torres Strait Islander Elders, Uncle Paul and Uncle Pabai, whose island homes are under threat from rising sea levels. According to the Grata Fund,
“If successful, this case has the potential to force the Federal Government to rapidly reduce emissions. This could supercharge the transition to a clean economy and could stop new fossil fuel projects; improving climate outcomes for all Australians.”
The broad-ranging impact of this case could be just as powerful as the Mabo decision was for First Nations land rights.
Wow! My fingers and toes are crossed.
The final arguments will be presented by both sides on the 29th of April in Cairns, and a decision is expected to be handed down by the judge later in 2024.
I watched this chat on Substack, but it’s also available in audio form. You can find more information about the Grata Fund and the climate case, here and the latest media release is here.
Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest
From climate change litigation to on-the-ground conservation now, and in my search for wholesome content on YouTube, I came across a short documentary by Happen Films about Hinewai Reserve in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Hinewai Reserve is on the Banks Peninsula on the east coast of the South Island. It’s now 1250 hectares of native forest that Hugh Wilson and trustees set out to restore around 30-years ago.
In September 1987 the trustees bought 109 acres with some old growth forest on it and other marginal hilly land that wasn’t great for farming. At first, local farmers were very skeptical. They thought Hugh was going to let gorse overrun the property, which is a weed for pastoral farming. But as Hugh explains, gorse allows lots of other plants to regenerate and once the gorse is in shade, it dies. So, it’s an essential part of a natural growth cycle that results in restoring rainforest.
Once native forests have regenerated, there are huge benefits for carbon sequestration and biodiversity. And no planting is required! By closing off areas and simply allowing nature to do its thing, forests are returning.
Hugh is the manager of the Hinewai Reserve and works on the land every day, without any vehicles for transport or “grunt work.” Sometimes, he’ll walk two hours to his work site, do a day’s work, and walk two hours home again. Hugh clearly likes his walking-pace, low-tech lifestyle, but he insists he’s ‘not a hippy.’ The house he lives in is connected to the electricity grid and has all the amenities he needs. There is no mobile phone coverage, but Hugh likes it that way.
Today, the local community is largely in support of Hinewai Reserve, which is open for the public to explore. It has also inspired others to close off areas of their own land to allow regeneration.
As Hugh says at the end,
“The problems [we face] are immense, but the solutions are immense too.”
So true!
Hinewai is maintained through charitable donations, and grants.
Earth Day
Staying with a conservation theme and as you may have seen across social media (or on mainstream channels) it was Earth Day on Monday. There were plenty of photos and messages shared to remind us how lucky we are to call this planet home. As some people said, every day should be Earth Day but I don’t think it hurts to make an extra fuss every now and again!
There were many quotes and memes shared and this Native American Proverb was one of them:
“We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
If you haven’t thought of conservation from this perspective before, it might put a different slant on things. Imagine if we could pass on a healthier planet with a thriving ecosystem, in much better shape than what we received it?
It’s a big job, but it’s not impossible. There are plenty of people thinking, and taking action, on new ways of being on this planet. Including those mentioned above… and in every edition of Conscious Human(ity).
What do you think? Can we save ‘this one wild and precious’ planet?
Vinyl Records Make a Comeback
To culture now, and I found this article on Positive News about vinyl records making a comeback in the UK and it was so good to hear.
“The Digital Entertainment Retail Association says there are now 461 indie stores in the UK, compared to 339 in 2014. Vinyl sales hit £177.3m in 2023 – an almost seven-fold increase over the same period.”
Feeling nostalgic? As one indie record store owner said,
“The fact that so many people’s Saturday mornings were spent in record shops digging and chatting. There was a whole community, and I think people want that back somehow.”
Happily, that craze has apparently hit my hometown of Geelong too. Jake told me today that Popcultcha has just opened a record store and when I went searching, I found that was true!
Maybe we’ll plan a Saturday morning of bookstore and record browsing soon (the two go together, in my opinion)!
A Final Giggle
Firstly, a super short and relatable giggle for the parents here…
And this one is just beautifully captioned.
Finally, I find this one so relatable because we’re well into ‘teenager territory’ now…
Don’t forget to send me links on Instagram if you find any brilliant giggles - my algorithm definitely knows my sense of humour and it would be nice to mix things up sometimes!
And that’s it for this week! Thanks so much for being here. 🙏🏻
As always, I hope something here has brightened your day, prompted an ‘aha’ moment, or inspired you to take action on something close to your heart.