Desert Musings on the Political Landscape

How do we humanize one another in a climate of extreme dehumanization?

Photo by Joe Cook

John Livingston, in a dialogue with Derrick Jensen says, “civilization cripples the mind and cripples the heart by offering humanistic ideology in place of our evolved naturalness and wildness.”

This week, as I emerge back into my ordinary life in Cheyenne Canyon in Colorado Springs, after a five-day course with eco-philosopher Geneen Haugen and the wild-hearted Mary Marsden with the Animas Valley Institute, I feel my body's heavy ache at the state of the world. After my travels to Aravaipa Canyon, Arizona, I walked through the front doors of my Colorado mountain home with delight to see red roses on my dining room table, the aromatics of juniper tree incense, Sarah Jarrett’s artistry hung from my walls, and all the monsteras, pothos, and hanging ivy. I came home with stars in my eyes, touched by the deep waters, my skin illuminated with the scent and tint of the desert.

On course, we sat in council and shared images of dreams and poetry. We had hours to wander the land, listen deeply, feel the desert heat on the sand, watch Havalinas wander toward the creek, gaze at the penetrating force of saguaros, and bask beneath the wild, dark, starry sky.

We shared meals together in the evening, cooked with the warmth of song and clean, meaningful, playful conversations. We set all technology aside and let the dreamworld come alive in the dark beneath the full moon.

At 7:45 a.m. each morning, the guides would gather on the grass by the olive tree to listen to our dreams, to hear the whispers of the deeper stories wanting to emerge from the unconscious. At 9:15 a.m., we gathered together to dance beneath the blue sky.

We were immersed in human rhythms: council, wandering land, exploring dreams, sharing food, drawing, singing, dancing, studying, and learning about the deep imagination.

Upon arriving home, the joy quickly faded, and my heart began to ache with sorrow upon sorrow.

The sorrow felt unreachable, untouchable, unseeable, as if it were stored in the very center of my bones. Bone deep grief. How am I supposed to feel bone-deep grief in a flattened, thin, mechanical reality? It’s as if the electric heating itself suffocates my breath, tightens my heart, and squeezes my body tight. My friend April’s poetry lines from The Progeny of Love says it all. The Progeny of Love | Deep Times Journal

There are reasons people flock to ayahuasca ceremonies. There are griefs stored within us that, for some of us, need the support of plant allies to feel and digest. This world has hurt our hearts, and sometimes, it is only through full surrender to a non-ordinary state that we can touch the mountain of pain stored within our bones.

Ancestral bones stored with the heartbreak of thousands of years of domination, manipulation, and control. All of that heartbreak lives in the pavement, the power lines, the hegemonic and straight rows of houses upon my street, along with our growing augmented reality world, where most of society lives half of their lives on a screen, recording every moment to show-case to strangers, or distant friends.

There is nothing inherently wrong with social media, but it is often a distraction from coming home to our bodies, this earth, and getting real about what our work is to do here in this short, precious time we are alive and breathing.

Sometimes, I wonder if those of us humans whose hearts carry the deepest rivers of pain are the ones most obsessed with transhumanism. Transhumanism and welcoming in the age of the machine as the ultimate escape from feeling the broken, hurting human heart.

I watch Chrysanthemum and Pan, the furry cat creatures I live alongside, press their paws upon boulders and maple branches, pouncing up trees and back toward the ground. I don’t say “my” creatures or the cats I “own” on purpose. They are not beings to be bought and sold, nor can I own them. They are sovereign. Our flippancy with the language of “my pet” or the domestic animals I “own” reveals the deeper threads of our human species that have been built on competition, ownership, and control rather than cooperation, mutuality, and equality.

Where are the elders?

Who is tending to this land?

Where are the beating hearts of souls fully enlivened?

Why is there music everywhere that tells stories about hurting one another, women, and the earth?

Why are we not, as a collective, listening for the call of the planet's heart?

My mind is pained by abstraction as I check both FOX and CNN news. A friend of mine shared this habit of engaging critical thinking by reading both sides. In a time of extreme polarization, this feels necessary. I browse and read the Substack’s of Charles Eisenstein, Sarah Lousignau, Kristopher Drummond, and Carol Dansereau hoping to find some semblance of sanity in the word.

What is the truth of what is happening in these times? Everywhere I look, a person is blaming other persons for the cruelty of our world. And there is evil, and there are cruel people doing terrible things. And where are the adults owning up to the mess we’ve created as a human species? Those who are done with ideological wars and are picking up the trash on the land they live in, in their interpersonal relationships, and tending to living their truth, and pursuing work, creativity, and innovation.

If there is a way out of the mess we are in as human beings, it’s going to require us to work with our hands, feet, hearts, breath, kisses, and emotionally intelligent minds. Coming into our bodies, we may have the power to shift the winds of this time. We can be careful with where we place our money, and as much as possible, give our money to people and organizations that ensoul this world.

It is we, the people, who can recreate this world. We can build communities where people are not identified as ideologies or categories like Trump supporters, anti-vaxxers, snowflakes, or left-elitists. We take the complexity and nuance out of one another when we consistently box one another in like this. It’s dehumanizing.

I only know a few people in this world who are in their radical responsibility, and it is such a sight to witness. Nothing brings my soul greater ease than being in the presence of a person immersed in the energetics of their own truth, soul, and gifts to give to the world.

Geneen Haugen, Mary Marsden, Andrew Feldmar, and Bruce Sanguin are some of the adults in my life who I sit at the feet of, to learn from, about how to be human, about how to take responsibility, about how to love and show compassion, while also having boundaries. They do not let people who would take advantage of or hurt them into their lives. I believe this gives them an incredible life force to live here, being who they are and offering their beauty and love. I hope we all can bask in the beauty of adults like this. I know it is a privilege and rare.

As for my soul's calling in the moment….

I will touch the ground, kiss the juniper, make jewelry with yucca, clean the trash out of the creeks down the street from me, and be in relationships with people of differing political orientations. If a person treats me directly with harm, they don’t get to be in my life, but that is quite different from being in a relationship with a person who offers a different perspective on politics than I do.

The ideological war mentality is getting us nowhere.

I know a person, who was severely harmed by the left's agendas around transgenderism. Who transitioned from societal pressure and who deeply regrets it and will die with his body mutilated.

The erasure of the word “woman” due to progressive ideologies is a continuation and perpetuation of the commodification and erasure of the Goddess and woman only in a different guise. The Racist Origins of 'Gender Neutral' Language & Women's Bodies as Currency | Dr. Suzanne Vierling - YouTube

I also know a person who is an undocumented immigrant, who I care for deeply and who offers this city such beauty with her presence. This land has folded her into her arms, I can feel it– she belongs here. And yet, now, she has to live with the terror of being deported.

I met a man last weekend whose partner was fired by DOGE in a flash. Within a week, she had no job. The termination email showed no compassion, care, or heart.

There are ideologies, and then there are individuals. Individuals on either side of the political spectrum have stories upon stories of pain and heartbreak, love and loss.

I was recently reading in Derek Jensen’s book Listening to the Land that to avoid authoritarianism, we need to keep communities as small as twelve people. Why? Because this is how we stay true to one another's humanity. We lose the stardust beauty of one person’s being when they become only a category for an argument for the right or the left's agendas. This is why our two-party system is deeply flawed. It does not open enough space for embodied life's complexity and nuance.

When I see the faces of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and how they speak, I feel the strain of too much power-over and performance sweep across their faces, as well as the faces of journalists and newscasters. This much power, whether on the right or the left, is not good for these people; it wears on their bodies and is evident in their eyes and faces.

I wonder when we, the people, are going to stand up and stop giving our power over to the wealthy, the elite, the deeply wounded powers who think they can buy and sell anyone and anything. That drink in power-over as their elixir. They are not going to save us. Perhaps they will fade into the background if we stop giving them so much attention.

My mentor Mary says, and as a crow from the dreaming void told me, “You and I are not things to be bought and sold.” Most political drama occurs within the consciousness of the human being as an object and category to buy and sell for power-hungry governmental or corporate interests.

This civilization wants to buy and sell us, take our power, take our beauty, take our wisdom, and kill our souls.

But it can’t do that if we say no.