A journey of reconciliation with Mother Earth

Healing is ultimately a process of regaining lost power: the capacity of co-creating and dynamic stewardship of and with the Earth. The first step of the process is to acknowledge the most profound disease of Homo sapiens, war. This real mental illness is at the root of the Story of Separation [1] - a millennia-long journey that started with the transition of self-domestication, an experience of taming the dynamic feminine at the core of the organic societies in which we lived the most of our presence on Earth. These immediate-return foraging societies had been long living in the truth, mutual support and responsible participation in the whole. Their relationship to the world has been shaped by cosmologies and lifestyles fully embedded in the basic principles of Nature: interdepence, partnership, flexibility, diversity, flow and self-organization. All interactions contained these information: the way of eating, the way we mating, the way of speaking, the way of building, the way of organizing. All according to the whole, all turned into Gaia. All unfolding from the patterns of the Cosmos. [1]

Increasing sustainability and systemic health has to be a characteristic of all good design - the process that turns human intentions into interactions and relationships.

Regenerative design needs to be harmlessly integrated into the specific ecological, social and cultural conditions of a particular place in a particular time. [2] Infact, many scholars agree today that in order to safeguard biological diversity it will be increasingly necessary in the future to guarantee the survival of the native peoples who have guarded it in every corner they inhabited since the dawn of time. [3] Their ways of approaching Life represent the precious residual traces of a complex social organization, made up of small interconnected groups, without strong social hierarchies, without an explicit concept of private property or of money and with foundational narratives centered on the sacredness of the environment it gives their Life. [4] Native peoples are repositories of ways of survival and relationship with the environment that embed in many ways a model of sustainability from which we have a lot to learn, having been unfolding for thousands of years in complete communion with Nature.

We will have to combine the best of traditional, place based wisdom, with the appropriate kind of modern technologies and innovation, and find creative ways to meet human needs, everywhere, within the limits of the natural cycles that sustain all Life on Earth. Thus, today, the solutions offered by the technocratic class are so often part of the problem.

The growing realization of our crisis and our helplessness constitutes an initiatory dilemma. [5] It leads to humility, which is the surrender that allows higher forces in. Whether it is the “ceremony” of meditation, conversation, or an endeavor, enter with an open, humble mind, being willing to drop any preexisting answer: enter with a willingness to change. [6]

What I've learned in my ESK experience in Greece is something I will carry with me forever, in every step my journey will take. This country has taught me a lot: it is a pure example of how diversity is abundance and how the essentials are what truly matter.

The hellenic peninsula has always been an appealing land: rich in agricultural land, a crossroad of cultures and geographical areas fundamental for the development of all major european civilisations throughout history. That's why it has always kept under control, belonging to an empire driving her natural and cultural resources into the progress of a central force. This process brought different microclimates and people across the Greek territory: presently, a wide range of diversity is united from land domination and suppression; instead of an ethnic common ground, it is a social rights revolution for freedom from continuous crisis, without any prejudices and full of genuineness.

"It's an illusion that the story of hope and the story of doom are separated. We have to embrace both and live, not telling it, the new story. It means to walk courageously into the pain of loss, knowing that there is something worth doing that for, and the best way to do it is to know there is something in the future that you love that cannot be lost.

Step into the pain of loss, with the hope you've never touched: it's the hope you are giving to someone else,  the story in which we experience interbeing; and as we are living it,we discover that the not-knowing was an essential piece of living it."

[1] Charles Eisenstein, "Ascent of humanity"

[2] Andrea Lo Presti, "What is a healing biotope?"

[3] Gaia Education - Holistic design for sustainability course

[4] "Tending the wild" movie

https://youtu.be/TbxLv9EEzs8

[5] Luca e Francesco Cavalli Sforza, "Chi siamo. La storia della diversità umana"

[6] Pablo Servigne e Raphaël Stevens, "How Everything Can Collapse: A Manual for Our Times"

[7] Charles Eisenstein - Conversation with Orland Bishop course

[8] "Living into being" video - Joe Brewer https://vimeo.com/235829612