This elaboration from you, Robert, really helps my understanding of what “Greenway ecopsychology” is all about. Thank you. It’s becoming clearer and clearer as we go along. And I’m happy to report that I find myself pretty much in full agreement with what you say. It makes a tremendous amount of sense, which doesn’t surprise me. Let me comment a moment on the “Interlude”, which will also lead us into other matters within your “Response 4”. I did not mean to privilege poetry over other modes of knowing or expressing. I agree with you wholeheartedly (and with those Buddhists you cite) that there are countless ways up the mountain, all valid. I will be the first to attest that my poetry is built upon a background of reading lots and lots of non-fiction, including most of the books you recommend in your list of “10” and also many of the books and fields of study you cite as part of “Antoinette’s” education. However, I was trying to get at something that may have significance in our further conversation. Namely, (using Wilber) the difference between Right Quadrant and Left. The science of ecology is a Right Quadrant activity. It is an observer perceiving and detailing other objects. As Wilber has gone to great lengths to show (perhaps excessively) as regards writers like Fritjof Capra or Joanna Macy who use quantum mechanics or systems theory (ecology) to argue for humans as not-separate from everything else, that type of scientific argument is not in itself the realization of non-separateness. Our science has for a long time now made very clear that humans are “but one strand in the web” (good old Chief Seattle), and yet, that science has not yet been enough to influence our culture as a whole to behave from that non-separate understanding. Wilber argues that the actual realization or experience of non-separateness, of belonging to the earth, of being interconnected with all other beings, even "one" with them, happens on the Left Quadrant. Therefore, it is really Left Quadrant “skillful means”, rather than Right Quadrant elaborations, that most directly lead to the experience of connectedness. You can have all the Right Quadrant elaborations in the world, but it doesn't automatically jump over to Left Quadrant realization. If it did, we'd merely have to be told there was a Singularity, there was a Big Bang, and we'd feel to the very core the non-duality that is implicit in that cosmology. Like you, I am all for rationality ("fully engaged"). But it must be seen for its limits. Rationality is the ego perceiving and measuring things outside itself, and studying associated cause and effect often from its own self-centered needs and perspective. As such, duality is fairly implicit in, and inextricable from, rationality. Now I certainly do not rule out that the study of natural history can lead to many moments of deep awe at the sheer intricate way nature works, or that a profound knowledge of ecology can in a “vision logic” moment lead to a very deep understanding of non-duality. Perhaps we could liken this approach to “Jnana Yoga”, the use of thought and knowledge to transform fundamental worldview. But by including "vision logic", we are moving into the lower rungs of all the "trans-rational" levels that Wilber describes. And I believe he would maintain that rationality itself as a "stage" cannot experience the non-dual. In fact for him, the "rational" is in some ways the most "alienated" stage, with both pre-rational and trans-rational containing more experiential feelings of connection. Fortunately, your “Greenway ecopsychology” balances ecology (Right Quadrant) with psychology, and psychology, as we know, is concerned with what happens in the Left Quadrants. This balance is something I admire in your system and which makes it very encompassing and applicable all through AQUAL. And I know you are in particular a proponent of "trans-personal" psychology, which further shows your valuation of the trans-rational stages I'm referring to. I am reminded a bit of a difference between Emerson and Thoreau. Thoreau “wanted to get to know his neighbors”, so he spent a lot of time running around the Concord area looking at plants, animals, watersheds, weather and seasonal patterns, such that he came to be someone we would think of as a very good naturalist (and something of an ecologist, though that full science had yet to come into its own). Emerson, on the other hand, explicitly warns against “a too trivial and microscopic study of the universal tablet” (nature). He talks about “relaxing the despotism of the senses” (Right Quadrant activity) and allowing what we might think of as a more intuitive or contemplative mode to arise (Left). Perhaps poetry, music, art, dance, could be likened, in contrast to “Jnana”, as more of a “Bhakti Yoga” approach. This would be oriented toward the feelings of love, reverence, celebration of our connection to nature. So, one practitioner (Emerson-style) of “Greenway ecopsychology” might read and study a little less of ecology and a little more of the poets and mystics, while another practitioner (Thoreau-style) might be out there devoutly with hand lens and binocular, and more rarely with Mary Oliver or Rumi. Both are acceptable paths, and I'll give them equal "certificates of completion" if you will. Here's something that is always so interesting to me: why did Thoreau become Thoreau and Emerson, Emerson? Why will one student within the same two-year Greenway ecopsychology program become an absolute expert in ecology but quite mediocre when it comes to composing a poem or carrying a tune? Since we both subscribe to the idea that no path up the mountain is better than another path (though a path not going up the mountain – connection; non-duality; intersubjectivity; querencia – might be questioned), then it becomes a matter (and a mystery) of each individual finding their own way. I look to Joseph Campbell here (“follow your bliss”) and Carlos Castaneda (“find a path with heart”). I even look as far as James Hillman, Bill Plotkin, David Whyte and their radical perspective that we aren’t blank slates but arrive in birth as “souls”, and that our delicious life-task is to discern and harken to the very particular callings of our soul. OK, to wrap up, I am saying nothing that Bateson didn't say years ago, but more succinctly: "the map is not the territory". You explicitly call your EP a "map", and it uses a "fully engaged" rationality to lay itself out. That's all very good. I think we need maps – they help guide us in a direction we want to go (up that mountain), and in cases of insight or peak experience, the map helps us make sense, orient, and incorporate that new perspective. But ultimately, it's the "territory" we want, not the map. I think my Interlude was trying to say that sometimes for me a poem, or let's take the example of a Zen koan, can prod or seduce me into an actual glimpse of the territory more than, say, a book length treatment of cybernetics. But to each their own! What I'd like to ask you now, with the "map" having become more clear, what have you found in your years about how to foster that mysterious leap from map to territory, from Right Quadrant explanation to Left Quadrant experience, realization, transformation? Back to poetry. Mary Oliver writes: "the path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles. [map?] It's in the imagination [Left] with which you perceive this world and the gestures with which you honor it."
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AuthorDiscussion between Walker Abel and Robert Greenway. Archives
January 2015
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