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An acquaintance of mine was talking about a guy she knew who had taken a personal-growth course. I seem to recall she was talking about Landmark (a very popular course that many of my friends have taken and benefited from), but actually it doesn’t matter which course it was, because what I’m about to say applies universally to personal growth, spiritual growth, religion, self-improvement paths, books and coursework of all kinds.

“It [the course] must not have worked,” she said, “because he ended up getting a divorce.”

This illustrates a common misconception about personal-growth work: that if a person’s life is anything less than perfect, then they must not be “doing it right,” or the “program isn’t effective.”

First of all, self-evolvement is not some kind of “Get Out of Jail Free” card. “Yippee, I am ENLIGHTENED and I will never have to struggle or suffer again!” Um, yeah — No. This is the same line of reasoning used by people who say things like, “She must not have been a good Christian, because God didn’t answer our prayers to cure her cancer.” (Yes, I actually DID hear of someone saying this, I am not making this up.)

Personal/spiritual growth is about learning how to take responsibility for your life, get comfortable in your own skin, enjoy the everyday moments as well as the “special” ones, become the most authentic possible version of yourself, make the difference you want to make in the world, be in service. It is NOT about suddenly having a perfect life. Whatever “perfect” is — which brings me to my second point.

Second of all: What seems like a bad thing to an outside observer, could be the best thing for the person him/herself. Take the example of the divorce mentioned earlier. Maybe it was time for that relationship to end! Maybe it was a really valuable part of that person’s journey. Maybe maybe maybe … ! We are not in a position to assess the efficacy of a person’s self-evolvement path by observing their external circumstances through our own personal filters.

Oh, and speaking of filters, sometimes our own personal filters are actually themselves a problem, and therefore a worthwhile target for personal-growth work. One woman I met as a fellow participant at a self-improvement course was obsessed with her weight. She was (maybe) carrying a couple of extra pounds. She probably noticed those extra pounds more than anyone else. In fact, maybe she wasn’t really even carrying any extra pounds at all! But she was very focused on her weight. (Something I can relate to, as one who for some years struggled with an eating disorder.)

She looked around the room and said, “If this program works, then why are so many people here overweight?” I was stunned because I just didn’t have that filter (anymore); I just saw a bunch of people who looked healthy, enthusiastic, and ALIVE. And I figured that if any of them had weight goals or other physical-body goals, they were surely working toward them and would be able to achieve them.

Ditto for a question I heard from someone who had a lot of worry around money: “If this program works, why doesn’t everyone in the room have a million dollars?” Well for one thing, maybe, strange as it may sound, not everyone WANTS a million dollars. Or maybe they are working on other things first, things that have higher priority for them. Things no amount of money can buy. Healing old family upsets, for instance. Or empowering their kids to live fully. (Anyway, how do you look around a room and know who has a million dollars and who doesn’t? Is there a special forehead tattoo or something?)

All of which is to say: No matter what world-self goals you are working on as you seek to grow in mind and spirit … Keep Evolving and Carry On, everyone! Enjoy your life and respect your own journey, suffering and all. And don’t let anyone discourage you from your self-evolvement path.

My field is permaculture design, the design of sustainable human living environments.

One of the tenets of permaculture design is, is “Turn problems into assets” or “Find the solution in the problem.” Another permaculture design tenet is “Work smart, not hard!”

I applied these ideas this morning to offer a solution to someone experiencing a problem with people trespassing into her garden.

In the Central Florida Fruit & Vegetable Gardening group on Facebook, someone asked for suggestions on plants she might use to keep people from trespassing into her garden.

Because her property is at water’s edge, it is not completely fenced off. Anglers like to creep through the opening to get into her garden area for a better spot to fish. She tried putting up “no trespassing” signs, but the anglers are stealing the signs, and furthermore leaving hooks, lures, and other trash behind.

She originally thought of using barbed wire to block the area off, but then thought to ask the garden group for suggestions on thorny plants such as blackberries that might do well in a shady area at water’s edge.

In response, I wrote this comment:

This will probably sound outrageous to many folks, but this is what I would do.

I would start going to the water’s edge and striking up conversations w the fishers. Make friends. Ask how the fishing is going; what’s tasty.

Create an obvious prominent path for them to walk on, so they don’t step on my veggies or whatever I’ve got growing near where they are walking.

Tell them I need fish guts for my garden, give them a spot where they can clean their fish, and a bucket to put the fish guts in.

When I have extra fruit or veggies from my garden, I would offer them to the visitors.

Tell the fisher-visitors I have been having trouble with some other fisher-visitors leaving lines, hooks, trash, etc.; ask for their help keeping a lookout.

And I would ask my city or county, or neighborhood association, to install one of those monofilament collection containers on the riverbank in a nearby central area.

I braced myself for the response, figuring my comment would elicit hoots of ridicule and get me called all sorts of names like “stupid hippie.” Instead, several people have Liked the comment. And one person even said it made her feel like there is hope for the human race.

There is, indeed, much hope for the human race, if we decide to work with nature (including human nature). Permaculture training and practice helps me do this.

The positive response to my comment (a comment that would be viewed in many mainstream circles as hippie-dippie, unrealistic, even outright communist) gave me increased hope for the human race too!

Someone just now in the Deep Adaptation group (Facebook) posted the question, What should we call the planetary situation? “Climate change” is the most common term in general use but doesn’t really encompass the full enormity of what we’ve wrought. The phrase lacks agency also.

Climate instability is just one symptom of humans’ disconnect from the rest of nature. That disconnect — from the natural world and from our fellow humans — is the root of the crisis.

Some of the terms people suggested: ecological collapse; systemic collapse; planetary murder; civilization collapse; The Great Betrayal; biosphere collapse; planetary overshoot.

Another one that comes to my mind is “human-induced systemic collapse.” (Kind of a mouthful though.) I favor “systemic” as a term because it encompasses the social and economic, as well as ecological, nature of the crisis.

“Life-support system” is a term that’s come to my attention. As in, we are destroying our planetary life-support system.

Terminology is a dual-edged sword. On the one hand, if it’s too nakedly alarming, people are tempted to tune out, hide, go into denial. On the other hand, if the terminology is not appropriate to the urgency of the situation, or if it fails to convey a sense of our agency, people tend to fall into either complacency or finger-pointing.

Further Exploration:

• “How To Enjoy the End of the World” (YouTube, 1 hour): Talk by Sid Smith for the Greens of Virginia Tech, 2019. Good explanation of Energy Return On Investment; Jevons Paradox; why renewables are not the savior. And how we face the existential challenge; move into new ways of being. Very deep, powerful talk.

• Sid Smith: Post-Doom with Michael Dowd (YouTube, 53 min), 2019.

• “All the Bunnies in the Meadow Die” (Sid Smith essay on overshoot). “Far too many people are still asking how we can avoid the consequences of overshoot. This is like someone who is already falling asking how to avoid hitting the ground. The right question is, how can we best cope with and mitigate the consequences? How do we shape our lives to fit the future we have made for ourselves? Or rather, not our lives, for that die is cast. What can we do now so that our children’s children’s children may have a world to live in, in freedom, dignity, and peace?”

It’s a popular thing among some New Agers and neo-Pagans to use aromatic plant material in purification rituals. Lighting up a bundle of dried sage and waving it around the house to cleanse away bad energy, etc. But I never knew this had become so popular that it’s actually depleting the sage plants to an unsustainable degree. Same with Palo Santo, a resiny aromatic wood from Central and South America that’s become popular in the USA and other countries outside its place of origin.

I can see why people love these aromatic materials from nature. I myself have used them in rituals and enjoyed them. A friend gave me a couple small sticks of Palo Santo about 20 years ago, and I still haven’t used them up; a little goes a long way. (Not long ago I was taken aback to see thick bundles of Palo Santo sticks for sale at a new-age/Pagan shop. I hadn’t known it was even available commercially, let alone in such large quantities. When I read recently — in the article linked below — that it had become endangered, I was not surprised.)

I’m more of one to burn aromatic materials for the smell than as a cleansing ritual per se. Either way, in recent times I’ve been using locally gathered materials for this purpose. Resinous aromatic twigs from cedar or pine trees, bundles of local sweet-smelling dried grass, that kind of thing. Of course they don’t smell the same as sage or Palo Santo, but I get two advantages: 1) I stop putting undue pressure on ecosystems; and 2) I avoid cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation is something I’ve tried to become more sensitive about. The respectful thing to do regarding other cultures is to enjoy and appreciate them without stealing from them. The cultural dimension is as important an aspect of sustainability as the eco dimension.

Besides using local materials gathered in small quantities, another suggestion I have is: Draw on your own ancestry for rituals, and ritual materials. If you’re of Eastern European descent, for example (that’s half of my ancestry), you could research what, if anything, people in that part of the world did/do in terms of using aromatic plant materials for ritual or enjoyment.

If you choose to purchase materials, the article below from Anti-Racism Daily offers some good tips for ethically doing so. And it’s an eye-opening read about the harms caused by cultural appropriation.

Further Exploration:

• “While the practice of smudging began with Native ceremonies and traditions passed down from generation to generation, companies are now using the practice as a way to spread ideas of yoga and wellness. Back in 2018, fragrance brand, Pinrose pulled back their ‘Starter Witch Kit’ from Sephora after receiving backlash from activists about the appropriation of Indigenous medicinal practice in commerce. Urban Outfitters sold smudge sticks and marketed the product on social media with the caption ‘cleansing your Insta of negativity’. These instances of major retailers profiting off of smudging perfectly demonstrate the definition of cultural appropriation. And, while some Indigenous people believe that selling smudging products is fine, they’re still concerned about whether mainstream consumption will erase its significance. … The demand for white sage and Palo Santo also contributes to a growing environmental issue. As beauty and wellness brands continue to gentrify the practice, these endangered plants are being overharvested.” (“Preserve Palo Santo and White Sage”; Isiah Magsino in Anti-Racism Daily.)

Saying prayers for the people in a couple of towns here in Florida, just east of Tampa, that are having wildfires right now. Here on the east side of the state where I live (Daytona Beach), we have no fires (that I know of), but it’s been a long wait for the rainy season to start. Seeing endless days of sun and wind in the forecast.

Relentlessly dry sunny weather always feels to me like that relentlessly cheery, “positive thinking” relative or Facebook frenemy who won’t let anyone talk about “negative” feelings because “we attract what we think about.” (Mental-health public-service announcement: Thoughts and feelings are the weather of our inner landscape; they are all part of life just as rain is. The surest way to keep an unpleasant feeling around, or turn your mind into rigid concrete, is to try and banish so-called “bad” feelings through “positive thinking.”)

Back to rain … I hope we never have to find out what it’s like to go for a summer without rain in Florida. But we have disrupted the rain cycle by destroying our forest belts and wetlands. Vegetation and wetlands are an essential part of the hydrological cycle.

This has been weighing heavy on my mind. (And heavy on my body, as I sometimes spend hours hauling water from my rainbarrels to trees and plants in the yard because there is no rain for them as would usually be expected.)

On the weather page, a person from another town in Florida commented that she had had rain only twice at her house since September 2020.

Worldwide, there are places in multi-year drought while some are hit by violent storms, flooding. Massive disruption of weather cycles as we have destroyed huge swathes of forest and wetland that are the life and lungs of the planet.

And drought can be self-reinforcing. In the words of Laurie K., a fellow eco-citizen in my area: “A scary thing about droughts is that the longer they go on, the less chance for moisture from the ground to go back up to clouds to form the rain and the ground gets harder so what little rain falls can’t get to the root systems. It can be a vicious cycle.”

Australia experienced a drought from 1996-2012 that came to be known as the “Big Dry.” Parts of Central or South America have had little or no rain for the past five years or more.

Wherever you are, it’s likely you have experienced some version of worsening drought-flood extremes.

Suggested action steps for you:

• Ask your local government to prioritize reforestation; back off on needlessly harsh landscaping practices such as excessive mowing, the use of chemicals, and removal of fallen leaves from under trees. And of course, do these things at your own residence or any other property you manage.

• Ask your local government to consider collecting rainwater off of public buildings; and to encourage residential and commercial rainwater collection. Rainwater collection is another component of repairing the hydrological cycle. Catch and store rain when you’re getting more of it than the ground can hold. Then use it on your site during the dry spells.

• Go outside whenever you can, notice anything about the weather that you can give thanks for. The other night, for me (I often take a little stretch in my yard during my wee-hours wakeup window), that moment of thanks was for the most brief and delicate little rain-sprinkle that started as I walked outside. I would never have noticed it if I’d stayed inside. It was beautiful; I felt the plants feel it, and I myself thrilled to the smell of the rain.

• Read up on the hydrological cycle (or watch YouTube or other videos about it.).

• Drawing on my training in permaculture design and other fields, I am available to give talks for churches, neighborhood associations, community groups, and so on, about how you can work with nature to green-up your community and become more resilient, less vulnerable to droughts, flooding and other disasters. And make your place a sanctuary for life and human connection. My talks are by Zoom or equivalent, so I’m available to you wherever you are located. Contact me and we’ll set a date! I always have openings in my schedule.

• Tune up your inner landscape in order to be more resilient through times of adversity, be it drought or anything else. A couple of good reads for this are offered below.

• “I’m starting to see the unifying principle behind all the philosophies that really appeal to me (e.g. Buddhism, Stoicism, Arnold Schwarzenegger). They view all of life’s moments as having equal value, at least where it counts, and what counts is your skill in embracing the moments that make up your life. It’s a genius idea, possibly the smartest thing human beings ever came up with. Embracing all moments as a rule transforms every day into precisely what you’re looking for: an interesting variety of experiences, every one of which offers you what you value, regardless of what happens in particular. This is a dramatic improvement over the prevailing mammalian strategy – desperately trying to make certainties out of favorable possibilities, and impossibilities out of unfavorable possibilities. It’s a losing game by definition, so playing it makes us unhappy. The bigger our brains get, the more obsessively we try to map out every contingency, and the more of our lives we spend suffering possibilities in our heads instead of appreciating the actualities around us. All moments can be appreciated, on a basic level at least, when you value the two opportunities each one offers – to respond skillfully to what’s happening, and to experience being alive for another moment. When this is what’s valued – rather than the fleeting bubbles of pleasure or ease they might bring — an unpleasant moment is just as good as a pleasant one, sometimes better.” (from David at Raptitude, “When All Moments Have Equal Value“)

• “If you want to enjoy life, deliberately appreciating what you’re experiencing is a great way to move forward. If what you’re experiencing is difficult to appreciate, then take a few minutes and find something in your life that you can appreciate. Then find something else to appreciate. Keep going until you can appreciate anything in your life.” (“Appreciation,” from Star’s Edge, the company created by Harry Palmer to administer The Avatar® Course.)

There are two ways to live up to your own moral standards perfectly all the time.

1) Keep your standards really, really low.

2) Willfully engage in self-delusion.

I don’t recommend either of those. Nope, go ahead and set high moral standards for yourself. High as in tapping into your higher sense of good — not high as in punitive or unrealistic, inhuman.

If you don’t know the difference (some people were raised in harshly judgmental climates and did not get to learn the difference), then you could look for guidance, perhaps from a trusted mentor or colleague who seems to have values and aspirations that resonate with you.

I used to be so demolished when I’d fail to live up to my own moral code. Then I realized I’m just human. Nobody can always live up to their own standards. My advice is to go ahead and set them high, though! It helps a lot in life. Simplifies things greatly. Decisionmaking, goal-setting, prioritizing become so much easier.

When we fall short of our moral standards, that’s what apologies and amends are for. Confess, apologize, make amends, self-correct. Whew!

Mentioning this because a lot of us environmentalists get accused of being “hypocrites” because (say, for example) we drove a car to a climate protest.

We live in an imperfect world. We can’t always live up to our own ideals. Meetings can be too far away to get to without motorized transport; thunderstorms can hit; some roads aren’t safe for cycling. Obviously we do our best to minimize our fossil footprint but we sometimes end up incurring more of a footprint than we want to.

Some of us are pretty idealistic and beat ourselves up for every shortfall. Don’t do that; we need all our energy directed toward making a positive shift.

Noticing seasonal details is something I find fun and enriching. Like, Oh, it’s that time of year again!

In Japan, where I lived for several years (once as a young child, then later as an adult), noticing and honoring the unique gifts of each season is a major thing. Every season seems to have some special fruit, flower, vegetable, tree, insect associated with it. Cherry-blossom viewing in springtime is a grand tradition. Autumn is moon-viewing. There are different teas, special cooked dishes for each season.

The cry of cicadas is a prized summer song.

In the hottest days of summer in Japan, it’s popular to eat unagi (eel), which is grilled and served over rice with a tasty sauce; supposedly boosts one’s energy to endure the heat. One thing I know for sure, unagi with that sweet-salty brown sauce is a delicious treat.

It’s very grounding to be able to enjoy seasonal rhythms anywhere we live. It lets us build a unique connection with the place we call home. It helps if you stay long enough in one place to be able to pick up on the seasonal rhythms, but if you’re new, ask the locals! It’s a good way to get rooted in your new place. I’ve found I can tap into existing seasonal traditions, or notice/make my own.

I’ve lived in this house for three years now, and have noticed that this time of year is when my plumeria trees start dropping a few of their beautiful fragrant flowers each day. Every morning I go out and retrieve the fresh blossoms and float them in a shallow bowl of water. It’s a sweet addition to my little front porch room where I sit and do a lot of my work in the daytime.

It took me awhile to catch on, but this is also the time of year when tiny tiny ants come into my house. Not in huge numbers, and they only seems to come for certain things. Water; a spilled bit of fruit I missed picking up.

I realized they are drawn to the plumeria bowl. It’s their water-bowl!

Oftentimes, my water-glass is also their water-bowl. How did I forget that this is what always happens at this time of year? The mini invasion of harmless tiny ants. Because they’re so itsy bitsy, it’s hard to clear them safely out of the way so I can drink my water. Also sometimes they drown in the water glass. I realized I always need to make sure their plumeria bowl is full. And, I need to not leave my water-glass unattended, especially if the water has been sweetened by a bit of juice or a drop of essential oil or something.

It’s that time of year again! The season of tiny ants and plumeria showers. What unique aspects of nature show up in your world at this time of year?