- The What, the Why and the How -
All projects must, at some point, face these three essential aspects: the What, the Why and the How. Only when those three aspects have been thoroughly examined can they truly come together in harmony, leaving the project initiator feeling aligned and truly satisfied and inspired to make the project move forward. The Avalonia Project is no exception to this lore; at every step of the process, I questioned again and again those aspects until, at last, the project felt ripe and ready to be shared with the world.
The What is the matter, the subject, the body, an essential element making us feel like we are working on something concrete. The Why is the part that nourishes our mind’s need for a sense of purpose without which we are lost, directionless. The Why cannot exist without the What, because there would otherwise be nothing to question. The How is the process, the method of bringing the What and the Why together into action in the present moment, our carpe diem. It sits in the middle, as the heart thrones between the body and mind. All are intricately interrelated and essential to one another.
For the Avalonia Project, the What is humanity and the more-than-human world coming together to make Nature (a whole topic in itself which I will be delighted to write an article on in the near future). The Why, aka the problem to be solved in that subject is the lack of perceived connection between humanity and the more-than human world, responsible (in my humble view) for many of the world’s ailments and blocks to the possibility of evolving and building together as a beautifully creative specie with a healthy sense of belonging with Nature and the rest of her children. The How is the prism with which I look at the world and make sense of it to reconcile us with the rest of Nature: the Sacred Ecology prism.
The Why is fascinating to me, as it touches one of the subjects I’m most passionate about: psychology. The Why often gets lost in the dangerous sea of subjective perception being mistaken for truth, reality or objectivity. Defining our Why properly can take a lot of time to avoid these traps; it was important to me to find the humility in recognising my very personal needs I wished to fulfil in answering that question. Why do we want to change the world, truthfully? What is it that we are not actually satisfied with in our own personal lives that we perhaps project onto the outside world? Can we be sure that our point of view is the ultimate truth? No. So, why do we still need to push for that change, when we aren’t even sure that it is the right thing to do at all?
The study of the psyche is essential in that process, and it is important to nurture an open compassionate mind when faced with the answers we may find buried deep within. I personally love to dive into the ancient teachings - an essential aspect of Sacred Ecology - to understand my Whys better. The Alchemists used to say “As within so without, as above so below”. What are my personal needs and projections behind the Avalonia Project? “I want others to be happy”. Yes, OK, that’s noble, but why? There are always deeper layers of Why, and the ego loves to show us the pretty ones first… Diving in, I could look for the more shameful reasons I hadn’t dared admitting to myself at first.
Perhaps it was because in a way, I wasn’t entirely fulfilled in my current job and secretly hoped to “get noticed” to finally get my dream job and a sense of achievement. Perhaps it was because I very selfishly wanted to have beautiful moments of connection around a fire in music and poetry on a regular basis and needed a legitimate “serious” excuse to do that. Perhaps because I felt a bit lost and directionless, so I tried to put a label onto all this. And the long-term vision? Perhaps because I struggled to find my place in having to choose between the countryside or the city lifestyles and mentalities and wanted an in-between “ecovillagey” solution to feel at home in both worlds, whilst surrounded with like-minded people unlikely to provoke my peace too much…
The ugly Whys were numerous. Always challenging when they pop up at first, this has been a great opportunity to “clean up” the shadows around my ultimate Why and feel the positive energy required to make this project happen and feel truly good about it, removing the blockages one by one (I highly recommend Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way to get some tools on how to do this for any creative project).
Now, let’s dive a little closer into our How. Sacred Ecology is defined on our website as understanding our world from the perspective that all is sacred, in that each Being has a reason for existing and possesses a form of intelligence, consciousness, anima, or soul worthy of praise. Sacred Ecology is a reverence to the Beauty of the world. Using lessons from the more-than-human world, be it our ancestors, animals, plants, minerals, spirits, collective intelligence, spiritual or scientific wisdom, magnetic or morphic fields etc. (depending your own prism and vocabulary to make sense of the world), we can all learn to develop the sense of love and care for the world around us using inspiring methodologies to feel connected to and a part of it.
What’s interesting with Sacred Ecology is that whilst the How is in service to bringing the What and Why together, it can also inform the Why and help define the What is. The process is dynamic in itself, and has a life of its own. It is by learning about Sacred Ecology and its methods that I found a purpose, a Why, and it’s because there is a Why that I get to use Sacred Ecology as a How. The Greek philosopher Thales once said:
“All is water, and the world is full of gods”
The way I may interpret the quote in this context is the following: all is movement, and all is alive and sacred. This includes our What, Why and How process. Each has its own energy field, its personality, its movement. Each even has its own What, Why and How (another fascinating topic: fractals theory, or the microcosm–macrocosm analogy, other examples of the Alchemists’ quote I wrote a little earlier).
In the same way, the Avalonia Project has a life of its own. It moves, it experiences change, it finds inspiration and wants a new direction every once in a while. The energy we feed it with has an impact on its personality, its actions, its outcomes, the same way that the bacteria we choose to nourish in our bodies can impact us in unsuspected ways, including our behaviours. I deeply believe that the energy and emotions involved in the process of creating a project have as much impact, if not more, on the project than the content itself, influencing its anima. Same as I believe that a human showered in love has more chances of becoming successful (in its very personal definition) than someone who is consistently faced with rejection. And so, I chose to feed this project with as much love and inspiration I could muster, with one purpose in mind: to inspire people, using the teachings of Sacred Ecology.
Why?
Because I found out that being inspired is the energy that nourishes most my mind, body, heart and soul and that it is fantastically contagious. In druidic terms, we call it the Awen. It has flowed in many of the Celtic celebrations we held as part of the project and has led many participants into daring to express their own inspiration as they felt held in a safe space. Seeing this has given me a lot of pride and gratitude for having the honour of proposing such spaces and I hope to have many more opportunities to feel those emotions again in similar contexts. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some of my shadows lurking in the corners around this Why. But this felt “clean enough” to give me the courage to move forward with the project and share it with an increasing amount of people.
I would like here to share one of the many processes I went through to polish my Why. To find out the purpose of the Avalonia Project, I had to remove one important blockage: the constant dooming sense of urgency I felt inside of me. Diving yet deeper, I got to realise that I felt this urgency because, having grown up with a high perceived sense of responsibility, I had always felt that I had to do everything, and never had enough time to do it all (there is yet a great deal more as to the reason behind all this, but as this is quite personal and would require a very long time to go into the details, I’ll let your imagination do the work). In time, I projected those fears onto the world around me. I struggled to feel a sense of belonging with others because I felt like I was always taking on more than them; sometimes I would hate them for it, sometimes I would envy them, sometimes I would feel a disproportionate sense of importance. Gradually alienating myself by stubbornly refusing to look at this problem in the eyes, I increasingly felt disconnected with the world around me.
For years, I fought hard against climate change whilst ignoring my dreams and personal needs along with those feelings which were boiling under the surface. As I found is often the case when you try to bury emotions, life has a surprising way of putting you face to face with situations that will eventually help you sort them out. A series of life events, including a mind-blowing experience at the Schumacher College in Devon – which teaches Sacred Ecology using different terms - made me come across new paradigms of addressing our ecological crisis from a more joyful perspective. I came to realise that the healthy way to provoke change was to do it from a place of joy and love - as cheesy as it may sound - rather than fear and that sense of urgency to get as much done as possible in as little time as possible to “save the world”. Bayo Akomolafe, a great thinker of our time, once wrote a quote that deeply inspired me:
“The times are urgent. Let us slow down.”
Similarly, Andy Letcher, a fantastic lecturer at the Schumacher College I was lucky to be taught by, spoke of things which made me reconsider a great deal that need for fighting. During our opening circle for the 2019/2020 studying year, around a fire set in a beautiful redwood forest with dozens of postgraduate students eager to make a difference in the world from an ecological perspective, he said something along those lines (please note these weren’t his exact words but rather what I perceived from his speech):
“We humans always think that we live in the most urgent times with the most important needs and biggest crises humanity has ever faced. We romanticise the past, thinking life was better then, simpler, without all the worries that we face today. But remember this: humanity has always been in crisis. There hasn’t been a single moment in history when war wasn’t raging somewhere or diseases weren’t killing people. Let us not mistake our crisis and our actions as more significant than that of our elders, at the risk of falling into arrogance.”
His words had a deep impact on my ego. “Yes, but this time, it’s the planet, the world! Not just humanity!” I wanted to argue, and I am sure I was not the only one who thought that in the circle. But instead, we all remained silent, faced with the gentle slap of humility we just received, understanding somehow that even by putting all our will and energy into this fight, the War would never stop, because there would always be people willing to fight for it.
After a period of integration, I started living my life with this new attitude: whether the planet would die because of our human actions, or whether it wouldn’t (because, after all, can we ever really know?), it didn’t matter to me anymore. What did matter is that because I belonged in Nature, I felt love towards her, and since she was alive to me, I would continue caring for her until the end. Not her end, my end. Whether she was well or unwell, I would care for her, since she showed me that same love back. The way in which I did it may not necessarily change, but the energy with which I acted had another colour. Sadly and lovingly, I felt the same way about my grandmother; she had been gradually losing her mind more each day due to Alzheimer, and it would never get better at her age. But I loved her and would do my very best to care for her, even if I knew she would soon move beyond this world. There was no point in fighting against the inevitable, in trying to make her remember trivial things whilst stressing her, but instead to enjoy every moment I still had with her, in peace, love and harmony. The last time I saw her before she left, I could feel that even though she wasn’t too clear on what was going on around her, nor who was that face staring at her, she recognised my energy and felt at peace by my side, feeling free from the burden of expectations.
Admittedly, there was a grieving period I needed to go through to accept that, both for my grandmother’s decay and recent passing and my fears of climate change. Same as most environmentalists and climate change activists, I looked into collapsology and the philosophers discussing such topics around the grieving process of acknowledging that the planet is changing, or “dying” in our perspective. Only by acknowledging that part of me that felt grievance even without knowing whether there was truly anything to grieve about (because, again, do we really know?) was I then able to accept and release the stuck emotions around the guilt of never doing enough preventing me from feeling joy for the process, the present moment, the How. Instead, I could just simply throw all my love and care where it belonged along with the many other people who saw the world the same way as I now did. Other life lessons I had during my time at the Schumacher College helped me to realise how interconnected everything, everyone is, and I learned that I could lean on that.
What a relief. I belonged, I was one of many, and I didn’t need to take it all onto myself, because we were all working together. I didn’t need to know what the future held and be hyper aware of everything to make sure things were going in the right direction, because others knew what I didn’t, and I knew what they didn’t. I could accept, welcome and honour Mystery back into my life without being scared of it, because I knew one thing: I was doing my best, not by just thinking, but most importantly by feeling into what that meant. For the first time since what felt like forever, I was at peace with myself, at last.
A sense of belonging can go a long way. By feeling connected to our peers along with our natural environment, seeing “it” as alive and feeling a deep sense of belonging with Nature and the more-than-human world, I believe that a lot of us may feel inspired to dare being the most beautiful authentic version of ourselves and reclaim an innate natural desire to care for our environment, be it wild, relational, societal, cultural, or even our home or workplace. I believe that when people feel that they belong in any given environment, surrounded by benevolent beings, it gives them a chance to feel at ease to show their light (aka the expression of their inspiration) without being scared of others stealing it or being better at it. When you feel like you belong, you acknowledge the uniqueness of your essence and that of your creation, and therefore understand that no one’s light will ever shine the same way as yours. In this way, you cannot possibly feel threatened by others, and therefore, there is no shame nor need to hold back on your expression, other than to respect others’ light. This is how trust is born, and out of it, faith. And that is when miracles happen…
The Avalonia Project is a bit of a miracle to me. A few years ago, I experienced some severe distressing situations which would have never led me to believe that creating this project today would be possible. I am incredibly grateful for the Awen, the inspiration I got in great part thanks to the Schumacher College which gave me the perfect context to reclaim my sense of intuition. I hope that this article has given you a bit of that inspiration too, because you reading this article might be the reason Why I wrote it in the first place. Because the process is, after all, dynamic and fully alive.
With much love, and Awen,
Sarah from Project Avalonia
PS: please note that any explicit or implied fact in this article is nothing but my personal opinion and perspective. I highly encourage every reader to question what rings true to her/him/they and take out only the best which may lead to inspiration…
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