Although I spent many years as an Earth and Space scientist, I now identify as a writer – or more appropriately, as a channel in the rich reality of interbeing. I was graced with a consciousness-expanding awakening, and now sense a deep obligation to share the experience of interbeing through writing in support of the Earth. Radical shifts in my awareness exposed to me the great hubris – as well as a dearth of the sacred, and of meaning – in the narrative that Western science is the only legitimate way of knowing, having staked its claim as the yardstick of the “real”.
Through my writing, I also seek to lend my voice in the reimagining of education as subversive consciousness. It is embodied interconnectedness that rescues knowing from the deep recesses of our psyche and fuses it with the unsettling present, articulating a new way for the Western mind to define and receive knowledge. Charlene Spretnak defined ecological postmodernism as “social construction that is grounded in the fact that we are embodied organisms embedded in subtle processes of nature”. Critical to taking responsibility for our role within the rest of nature is noticing this non-duality, and dissecting our social conditioning and processes from this understanding.
Yet, the formative concept of dualism in Western philosophy renders it nearly inconceivable to the Western mind, which assumes a “discontinuity between self and the rest of nature: the disembodied, solipsistic, alienated, and autistic view of the human in the Earth community.” In these deeply existentially troubling times, it seems no question that there is a deep aching for a reconnection to a truth we had once known, but had been stolen away in the dark of night; to find some permission in the suffocating grasp of rationalism for reconnection to something more simple, salient, real; to live in a way that isn’t so painfully absent of meaning, wonder, and the profound; to live in a way that isn’t so painful.
The question again and again becomes: Is it possible? Presence – active listening and humble conversation – with trees and rivers and land, and learning the place of power that is beyond the human intellect, is my lived experience and journey to share with others. This is a wisdom that belonged to our ancestors and was the avenue of their survival. It should be no surprise that it is also ours.
Contact
email: christy.marie.caudill@gmail.com
Instagram: @spaceearthadventurer
website: https://www.spiritual-scientist.com