The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
To Hell with Drowning
Julian Aguon, The Atlantic, 2021
In Fiji (as in many of our islands), the people are tethered to the earth, as enshrined in the concept of vanua, a word that means “the land” and “the people” at once. Vunidogoloans live and love and die on their lands, most of which they do not even own, at least not as individuals. Rather, theirs is a system of communal land ownership. They tend to their gardens. They bury their dead. They even bury their umbilical cords. So it was no surprise when, as about 30 families set out for the new site, some of the older women wailed as they walked.
Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future
Nurturing Our Humanity offers a new perspective on our personal and social options in today’s world, showing how we can build societies that support our great human capacities for consciousness, caring, and creativity. It brings together findings–largely overlooked–from the natural and social sciences debunking the popular idea that we are hard-wired for selfishness, war, rape, and greed.
Its groundbreaking new approach reveals connections between disturbing trends like climate change denial and regressions to strongman rule. It looks at where societies fall on the partnership-domination scale.
On one end is the domination system that ranks man over man, man over woman, race over race, and man over nature. On the other end is the more peaceful, egalitarian, gender-balanced, and sustainable partnership system.
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It shows how through today’s ever more fearful, frenzied, and greed-driven technologies of destruction and exploitation, the domination system may lead us to an evolutionary dead end. A more equitable and sustainable way of life is biologically possible and culturally attainable: we can change our course.
8. IFS: Issues of Projections & Coming From “Parts”
In all interpersonal relationships, we are vulnerable to projections. Our doing so seems most likely to happen in intense intimate relationships, when old relationship dynamics are most readily triggered. (Our amygdala takes on a “scanning” function, recognizes when “like” seems similar to “like,” and we respond accordingly, usually out of our conscious awareness.) Sometimes we […]
7. Relationship Repair after a Rupture
Discussions about restoring a better balance, particularly after a rupture – say if one partner has broken out of an old pattern? This image is intended to convey the sense that one partner has grown beyond a previous “fit” within a relationship. This happens not infrequently, if one partner is engaged in a recovery process […]
6. Enmeshment, Codependency, Over or Under-Functioning Within a Relationship
Discussions about “right balance” interpersonally — what if there has been enmeshment, codependency, over-functioning, or under-functioning within a relationship? If we draw from the issues of balance (or imbalance) within ourselves, what if two people (each with their own idiosyncratic imbalances) get together? If we take two individuals, each in their own “imperfectness,” out of […]
1. What do I mean by “right balance”?
I do not use the term “right” to convey “right or wrong,” as in moral judgment, but my belief is that there is – within oneself, within a dyad interpersonally, and within all the elements, all the “players” and all the considerations within the whole world – a balance that is healthier, more sustainable, and […]