Eco-Awakening, Part 6 SM#74: Bill Plotkin's weekly Soulcraft Musing

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Moonlight [Collage]. Doug Van Houten

Eco-Awakening

Evoking Eco-Awakening: Attending to the Nature-Oriented Tasks of Childhood

This is the sixth part of a seven-part Musing (one per week).

Friday, June 22, 2018

How is the major life passage of eco-awakening evoked? The best way I know to frame the answer is to say that it’s done by addressing the incomplete developmental tasks of the two stages of healthy (ecocentric) childhood — the early-childhood stage I call the Nest and the middle-childhood stage I call the Garden.[1] No one ever fully completes the developmental tasks of any stage of life, but the tasks of earlier stages can always be revisited later (and usually need to be).

In the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel, there are two kinds of tasks in each stage, one culture-oriented, and the other nature-oriented. The nature-oriented tasks of the two stages of childhood are the ones most neglected in egocentric culture and often in fact actively suppressed.

The nature-oriented task of the Nest (early childhood, stage one) is the preservation of innocence, the capacity for present-centeredness. It is the responsibility and opportunity of parents and other family members to address this task on behalf of the pre-school child. If the family did poorly here — and, tragically, this is quite common in the contemporary world — then it might be challenging later in life to be fully (and innocently) present to the here and now, a capacity essential to human development. In particular, presence is foundational to relationality and to the skills of empathy and compassion. Without sufficient presence and innocence, it’s impossible to feel truly connected to anything.

But even when a person’s capacity for present-centeredness is poor, it’s entirely possible to address this essential unfinished business; it's never too late, as attested by the burgeoning contemporary movement of mindfulness training. After early childhood, the cultivation of present-centeredness is accomplished through a person’s own efforts rather than their parents’ (or others’). In addition to mindfulness practice, present-centeredness can be cultivated in a number of other ways, including regular periods of attentive solitude in wild or semi-wild places, devoted play with any of the expressive arts, psychotherapies that emphasize present-centeredness (such as Gestalt, psychosynthesis, existential, focusing-oriented, and sensory awareness), the practice of presence and innocence in social settings, and, last but not least, apprenticing to infants.

The nature-oriented task of the next stage, the Garden (middle childhood, approximately age four until puberty) is to learn the enchantment of the natural world through intimate contact with the wild, other-than-human world — a world found in the backyard, the nearby woods and thickets, the ditch or creek, the prairie, the mountains, or the beach, and the mind-boggling diversity of plants and animals living in each (unruined) place. The night sky, too, is an essential realm of enchantment — the Moon, local planets, and the countless stars and galaxies. It is membership in this greater, natural world that the child in stage 2 (the Explorer in the Garden) discovers to be the other half of her birthright beyond family, school, and market.

Success with these two nature-oriented tasks — cultivation of present-centeredness and surrendering to the enchantment of the other-than-human world — precipitate the major life passage of eco-awakening.

To read part one through five , click here

References

[1] Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (New World Library, 2008).

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