Mourning-John Seed (Failitating Grief)
MOURNING — John Seed
After the intros, milling etc, tell the Shambhala tale and then ask people to spend five minutes considering something that they sincerely mourn, something lost from the Earth— maybe a species of plant or animal in danger or extinct, some landscape from your childhood buried neath a freeway or shopping mall, some quality of the human spirit disappearing in the confusion of these times or just a relative, friend or pet that has died and we haven't completed our mourning.
Then we find an object, leaf, stick, stone to represent what's been lost, then gather in a circle and one at a time (but as we feel moved, not in order), we go to the centre of the circle, tell the story of our mourning and lay our object on the cairn of mourning.
Then introduce thus: We have been conditioned to deny our feelings. If we ever express them, it makes our friends anxious, they ask us to lighten up. Any feeling of grief that we have about what is happening to our world may be interpreted, "reduced" to personal pathology by psychiatrists and others. Yet, without the feelings, our knowing the facts of what's happening doesn't change anything. We must allow ourselves to be moved. It's only to the extent that we can feel the pain of the Earth that we can be instruments for Her healing.
From:
http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/web/web1/processes.htm#mourningOHF sticker
