Healing Ourselves to Heal the Planet

Unless you prefer to believe in the lost city of Atlantis, the world won’t one day end in a sublime implosion killing us all, instantly. Thanks to climate change, it is declining gradually, with areas here and there succumbing to floods, drought, storms, heatwaves, disease and starvation. In many areas there is a slow almost imperceptible rise in land temperature, that many do not notice, and how many will notice until its too late? How often do we only believe what we want to believe? (‘Is Climate Change Real Anyway?’) Sadly, that ugly, messy ending is already upon us, with scientists predicting 2 degrees of warming with no sign of it stopping, and no reduction in emissions, of any kind, in any country. 

How do we communicate the need for decisive action to our leaders on a scale only seen in the COVID crisis where spending reached £350bn in just two years? Spending on climate change by UK government was only £4.4bn in 2021. How do we tell all the people with money and power that we need to change our ways and redirect the majorit of dividends into green infrastructure and retraining? How do millions of cash poor people come to acept that even cheap produce must be consumed in moderation? Supply lines and behaviour patterns, economic forecasts and profit margins, apathy and classism, all need to change if we are to beat the 2 degrees of warming. It’s about being honest about the climate, and believing that we can change our ways in time.

It was Plato, who said, leaders are only as good as their people

It was Plato, who said, leaders are only as good as their people. When I first heard this, I was dumbfounded. What could I do that would make our leaders any better? I’m not corrupt, am I? Do I steal? Do I lie? How do I become aware of my ‘self’ sufficiently to see my own shortcomings? How do I confront the lies and deceits I act out against my fellow humans, and the greediness I inherit or adopt?… Through mindfulness and brutal honesty we can come to realise what we are doing, and only then change it. It follows that greed, lies, manipulation (including sexual manipulation) between us as individuals leads to lying, cheating governments and leaders. It takes courage to admit it.

Few of us start a yoga practice out of our need to make the world a better place. No, we want to make ourselves better. So sure let’s be nicer to each other, in the hope that altrusim breeds altruism. But what if it’s more important than just being nicer. What if the very fabric of society feeds on our individual actions? Through meditation, yoga helps us to see ourselves, and our reactions to the energy moving through us, and it makes time for reflection on the relationships we have with the people that we meet. The yogic texts dictate that we must observe certain things and restrain ourselves to achieve a state of yoga, and it follows that what is good for us is good for our planet, is good for our leaders. Deepak Chopra commented at the Shift Network Healing summit last week, “the yamas and niyamas are keys for healing”.

As laid out in the central yogic text, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the yamas and niyamas, the restrains and observances are as follows; the yamas: ahimsa – non-harming, asteya – non-stealing, satya-truthfulness, aparigraha-non-hoarding or non-greed, brahmacharya-sexual responsibility; and the niyamas: sauca-cleanliness, santosha-contentment, tapas-suffering, or sacrifice, svadhyaya-self study, and Iswara pranidhana-surrender to a higher power. These are the ten tenets of yoga, and each one deserves an in depth analysis of its own, but the ones I think are especially useful with influencing qualities of leadership in a time of environmental crisis are satya-truthfulness, aparigraha-non hoarding and santosha – contentment,.

Does it sound boring?! Lying is fun, isn’t it? Never so much hilarity when telling fibs, and most of us grow up doing it. In fact lying is such a treasured gift that some children prevent their peers from lying to ensure their own lying capacity! I remember one girl at primary school, she still couldn’t lie aged 30. Telling white lies is one thing, but with so much lying in our culture, it means we cannot see when corporations are lying to us about the safety of their products and their effect on the environment. 

Plastics have littered the earth far and wide causing irrevocable damage from icebergs to the placentas of unborn children

Plastics have littered the earth far and wide causing irrevocable damage from icebergs to the placentas of unborn children, microplastic is everywhere, and the damaging products just keep rolling off the shelves. But we don’t believe the facts, because we are saturated in untruths. We need to work on cultivating satya, truthfulness, in our own lives in order to tell when we’re being lied to, and so others around us know when they can trust what they hear. 

How much stuff do we really need? How do we challenge our greed, our parigraha, and our impatience to consume yet more and more? Our inner world of blood thirsty calls, death threats and shame bound panics propel us to buy more and more things, investing our identity in belongings rather than experiences, or emotional wellbeing, trapped in a material game of oneupmanship. Can we cultivate creativity, wisdom and kindness where there was once fear and hatred? If we need to fight greed in our leadership, we must be less greedy. Veganism is a great way to be less greedy, because you literally sacrifice your own deep desire for meat and leather, in order to save a life, or many lives. Another way would be to start an organic farm, saving the local wildlife, waterways and soil from pesticides and other chemicals to grow your own food, and also make organic food for your fellow humans, helping to protect their health too.

What if we consciously cultivate contentment, and move away from highs derived from damaging or polluting goods? The buy nothing economy doesn’t have to mean do nothing; can we be wise about how we spend our time and money, can we have fun and find contentment without burning lots of energy? If we’re going to change supply lines and behaviour patterns, economic forecasts and profit margins, apathy and classism, do we need to challenge the fatalistic voice that says ‘no, its impossible, we’re all going to die’? Do we need to learn to feel content in the face of the gargantuan task of redesigning our consumption patterns, instead of ignoring the work that needs to be done?

Do we fear goodness? Do we believe that the road to hell is paved with good intentions? Religious wars are often touted as evidence of this philosophy, but is it not more that when people cling to something outside of themselves for comfort or a sense of identity, it becomes divisive, and we reject the Other for fear of losing our sense of self? Environmentalism sometimes seems fanatical, but I think there is only one aim: to preserve and protect the environment. When it comes to “saving” the planet, it is more about practically living on the earth for generations to come, and preserving its green and pleasant lands for us to enjoy, its almost hedonistic in its ambitions. Is the polarity between good and evil perfectly balanced like a utopic yin yang, a manifestation of earthly harmony, dependable and certain, yet doomed to mediocrity? Or is there room to take significant positive, practical steps towards a self sustaining equilibrium that recognises earth and the atmosphere as a necessary asset to be invested in, without fearing a devilish backlash? 

It seems that greed coupled with a population explosion has lead to fierce destruction of the planet and its creatures, and now we need to motivate our leaders, of all political partie to put it right without compromising our material pleasures. There is a kind of unconscious contentment in fatalistic attitudes that is dangerous. How do we manage the latent evil in assuming our own powerlessness? How do we unravel our “human destiny” to create the space we need to protect the planet from the effects of our inevitable desires? Can we be content to change the products that we buy, the frequency that we drive, the holidays that we take, the number of children that we have, the resources that we consume, the money that we make, the people that we use?

Noticing these patterns in ourselves, telling the truth, laughing at our foibles, cherishing the joy of being alive on a beautiful planet, this is what yoga healing can bring. Yoga doesn’t have to be a way of life, but it can offer clues to what can be done to help the earth by healing ourselves.