Aaron Perry
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[GOT SOPHIA?] Celebrating the wisdom of the Divine Feminine, and the importance of cultivating balance in the age of the Anthropocene, Lila Sophia Tresemer, Co-Founder of The Star House and their Sacred Arts Program (SAP), discuses the importance of reverence for the sacred that pervades our bodies, our landscapes, and our world. Lila embodies the wisdom that our spiritual cultivation is essential to creating a culture of regeneration, stewardship, and sustainability. A trans-denominational temple (TEMPLE = Templates of Embodied, Mindful Patterns for Living on Earth), The Star House is a beautifully designed mind/body/spirit activating architectural treasure rooted in the soil, open to the tranquil forested landscape and connected to the celestial bodies above.
This May 17-19, the Y on Earth Community is hosting a 3-day summit: Massively Mobilizing Sustainability: Deep Leadership for the 21st Century, at The Star House outside Boulder, Colorado. Enjoy exclusive 25% savings on all-access tickets with the special discount code: STARHOUSE at https://yonearth.org/events/summit2019/.
Learn more about the Sacred Arts Program (SAP) at sapcp.wildapricot.org
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Hi friends, welcome to the YonEarth communities, stewardship and sustainability
podcasters.
And today I’m so excited we have the opportunity to visit with Lila Sophia Tresemer and her
highly loved one.
Hi Aaron.
How are you today?
I’m really great.
I’m having a great day.
Absolutely wonderful.
Sun shining and it’s a beautiful, beautiful day.
So Lila is a group facilitator, author, photographer, ceremonialist, minister and co-founder
of the Starhouse, with her husband and partner, David Trussimer.
Her primary dedication is to raising awareness and stewarding the geomethology of sacred
sites.
In 2000 Lila co-founded the Path of Ceremonial Arts at the Starhouse, which was a training
for women in the Path of Priestess, one of the earliest in the field, and co-created the
women of vision in Israel and Palestine.
She creates programs for sacred living and remembrance primarily in Boulder and Australia.
Lila and David have a healing retreat in Tasmania, Australia as well.
She is a certified mediator with mediators beyond borders and is dedicated to building
a global community which honors the feminine and celebrates the sacred in all beings.
Her current passion is weaving a living network for the lineage of Sophia, for men and women
around the world who are seeking to reconnect with sacred earth activism and spiritual practices
that matter in these astonishing times.
She is a co-founder and a lead facilitator of Sacred Arps Practitioner Certification
being held at the Starhouse beginning May of 2019.
Lila has written and published several books, including Conscious Wedding Handbook with
David Trussimer, and don’t go back to sleep a spiritual novel.
And Sophia Elements Meditations.
Her DVDs include Brain Illumination, Couples Illumination, and Sophia Noxthic Creation
Story.
Now, I know there may be some words in here that aren’t as familiar to some of us and
we’ll be diving in and chatting about some of them.
But before diving in Sophia, Lila, I want to thank you so much for being with us today,
and for sharing with us about the Sophia tradition, which, of course, is part of your name
as well.
So I was thinking to kick things off.
Could you tell us a bit about the story of Sophia and what Sophia means?
I would love to tell the story of Sophia, and I think the entryway to that is the place
we’re sitting.
So just to introduce people formally to our background, which is the Starhouse, and
it was co-founded and built by my husband and other people exactly 30 years ago.
And then David and I got together 25 years ago and kind of built the community.
And in a way, I feel like Sophia is the community that comes into form.
And the form that we’re sitting in right now is an extraordinary design of sacred geometry,
the fact that there are no pillars in this rather large, expansive, empty space, which
is 12-sided, each side dedicated to one of the constellations of the Zodiac, hence the
Starhouse, part of it.
But it’s grounded in Earth.
And it’s a realization that the communication between heaven and Earth or between spirit
and matter through the human heart, that’s also how we would define Sophia.
So the word Sophia means wisdom in Greek.
So we get the word philosophy.
Philosophy, philosophy.
David works a lot with the anthropographic tradition, which is anthroposophia, meaning
the wisdom of the human being.
And Rudolf Steiner actually intended that word to represent the conversation between the
feminine wisdom and humanity.
And he knew over a hundred years ago that that’s where we were headed.
And I just invite people to realize we’re all connected to whatever you want to call
the principal, whether it’s sacred Earth, or great mother, or Shakti, or in every tradition
has some version of the sacred feminine.
And if it doesn’t seem to have that connection, almost always one can find it, but dear
friend who’s researched Judaism and really made a point of finding the feminine in Judaism.
So, and there’s been movements in Christianity as well as Islam to find where does the feminine
reside.
I personally feel that the planet in the middle of the screen here is one of the most important
things we all have in common.
And you could, I refer to her, my word, for the Earth is Gaia Sophia, that it’s all related
to this feminine principle of nurturing life, being in connection with place, and sharing
the resources of Earth, hopefully that sustainability is the outcome.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I’m so struck that for many of us, we’ll refer to this planet that we all share.
We can sometimes think of it as a spaceship.
We can sometimes think of it as a super organism that we’re part of.
And so many of our traditions we refer to Earth as feminine Gaia, mother Earth, mother Earth,
and even Saint Francis of a CC refers to Earth as sister.
And it’s just, it’s a really beautiful and I think probably integral aspect to our human
experience.
Right.
And I think it’s something my life has actually been dedicated to remembering, reconnecting
to feminine tradition through time, because I believe in my heart and so all that.
And now I can say through my research that there is a Western tradition of the sacred feminine
that it intentionally had been somewhat cut off, so that we don’t, you know, we have
a little echo of Catholicism honoring Mary.
And certainly the rich traditions of Hinduism, for instance, you know, a lot of goddess energy
that doesn’t exist, well, it exists in their mythos, but it doesn’t translate necessarily
to the human dignity of honoring women in a culture.
So there’s a lot of disconnects around the planet of how we disregard and disconnect
from not only our bodies, but from the body of the Earth.
So by going through our body or by caring about nature or by planting, replanting for us,
you know, there’s so many ways that we need to regain connection through direct communication
and sacred activism.
Yeah. Well, I’m wondering if you can tell us a little more about what geomithology means
to you.
And I know in the introduction that we mentioned that a big part of your dedication is to raising
awareness and stewarding the geomithology of sacred sites.
And this is one.
Yeah.
What does that mean?
You know, it’s a phrase I just, I landed on about two weeks ago, because I was having
a lunch with a friend, a new friend in Australia, and she said, so, you know, Lila, what is it
that you do?
And I just went completely blank.
Like, it was like too big to put words on, and I didn’t want to just start, you know,
reading a bio, which is always like such an interesting snapshot.
Who are you?
You know, it’s like I feel like so much more than that.
So I went home, I said to David, I need to find that phrase, so I’m like, okay, I steward
geomithological landscapes and sacred sites starting with my body, right?
This temple, I have been stewarding it for 25 years, and it’s not just the temple.
It’s a landscape that’s surrounded by 12 standing stones that are, you know, six feet high
and six feet into the earth, so they’re rounding energy.
It’s then a hundred acres around which are different sites, a labyrinth that is a site
that can be found on the cave walls of Crete in different locations in India and throughout
Israel.
If this form is an old, old form, it’s called a Cretan style unicrystal labyrinth.
That’s one of the sites.
There’s dedication to the pattern that Venus makes eight years in the sky when you watch
it from earth, which is a beautiful geometry.
So it’s a whole stewarding.
There’s a sacred well we call Mary’s well and kind of the tradition of the glass and
very well.
Have a connection with that.
So the landscape for me has taught me so much as we created it, it’s informing us, working
a lot, why I love your work so much is because the fine tuning of communication with the
plant world is an essential aspect of what we have to reconnect with.
Why do the trees matter?
What do we really need to understand about trees, about herbal medicines, you know, the
big hoopla of plant medicines, but every plant has a medicine.
How can we really, you know, we’ll start creating more relationship with them in this
upcoming, sacred art practitioner training?
What is your medicine that grows in this environment and if you nurture that plant and then
turn it into a tincture after the nine months training, how would that be?
You know, what plant medicine would that be for you?
Would it be St. John’s work or dandelion?
Do you know what I’m saying?
That’s so exciting.
Yeah, it is exciting.
I love dandelions in particular.
You know, and it strikes me too that herbal medicine is one of these aspects of our story,
of our heritage, of our ongoing legacy as human beings that we could say has been sidelined
at the very least over the last few centuries in particular, the last several centuries
generally speaking.
And it’s so exciting to see herbal medicine on a rebound now.
Of course, we had Brigitte Mars on the podcast several weeks back as well as our friend Stephanie
Seisen, who’s growing biodynamic herbal medicines of that sustainable settings.
And as we reconnect with these plants, with these medicines that are part of this creation
here on this planet, it seems it will also necessarily result in enhanced health
and well-being at the individual level.
And it just it strikes me that as more and more of us reconnect with that reality, that
we are going to discover keys to our own quality of life and health and well-being that we
may have not enjoyed previously.
That’s really beautifully said.
I sometimes feel like, you know, there’s two very clear paradigms that may be crossover
a little, but they’re not completely separate, and that in each paradigm you could make
the list.
So, you know, earth medicine, plant medicines, and pharmacological, allopathic way of dealing
with health, which has its place and has developed important language and can overdrive and
you know, takes us out of the experience of relationship with our body and knowing.
So I like to think I come from a medical family and have challenges with it from when I was
quite young, because I’m not someone who takes medication.
I would much rather find my way, right, and there’s times when it saved my life.
You know, it’s a both-and conversation, but to reintroduce relationship to plants.
We eat them all the time, but what are we really eating?
You know, really, what are we taking in with, you know, every bite of broccoli, where did
it come from?
You know, is it laced in technological farming or was it grown and loved?
Because, you know, we both know that makes a difference.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, it’s such a beautiful aspect, too, of the legacy that we received from Rudolf Steiner,
who gave his ag lectures something like 97 years ago.
And he was able to make so many connections between our own bodies and the landscape.
And I’m totally struck that, of course, all of these plants are growing out of soil.
And so, so fundamentally important to our lives as human beings,
are we’re human and the we’re humans are intimately linked.
And I’m just curious, what that is like for you, Lila, in terms of the work you’re doing
on this land with this sacred site and the tending that you’re doing to this geomithological
sanctuary, what is the relationship with the soil in particular, like for you?
I love that question.
It’s not as predominant in my life as I want it to be, number one.
Some of the people we know in common, I am intending, you know, who are, we call them
earth angels on the property, who do grow bio dynamic herbs that go down into town and
become tinctures.
And Rebecca’s apothecary loves our herbs because they’re bio dynamic and why crafted.
And I have a connection to that and I just, I want more time with my hands dirty.
So, I’m actually looking forward to nurturing that, you know, in this coming spring cycle.
But on the other hand is a kind of primary vision holder for a rather large project times
two because we have one in Australia as well.
It’s all related, right?
So, even the word earth has so many actives of meaning, right, as well as being, you know,
the actual humus, you know, earth substance as it connects to water, air, and fire.
Starhouse ritual works a lot with the four elements, the way the kind of the cosmic clock
or the geometries would be worked into winter spring, we’re sitting on the summer line
and autumn equinox.
So, to be in relationship with the earth is ultimately the dance of this beautiful planet
in relationship to the sun and the moon.
So, looking at it sometimes in my meditative practice, I’ll go to kind of a gnostic mythology
that, which means sort of direct knowing, but is also connected to the nog comedy texts.
And, you know, there’s a tradition of narcissism.
I tend to use it with a small G, meaning it’s my direct knowing, but there is a tradition
of a Sophia creation that, going back to your first question, what does Sophia mean to me?
It is a cosmic principle.
And, in this working with the animation of what this cosmology might have looked like,
I spent time with the animator looking at the earth from the galactic core,
which shows up in the myth telling and the creation story from narcissism.
So, when you imagine looking at the earth through a field of, you know, billions of stars and bodies,
it’s like my sense is she still shows up as a shining potential seed.
And, there’s something about earth from a cosmic creation story that is so remarkably precious.
So, earth is a planet, earth is a substance, earth my body.
Now, they’re all, they’re all a resonance of some extraordinary gift of spirit and matter,
working together to create the precision of life on this planet and how finely tuned it is.
It’s so finely tuned, our atmosphere is so incredibly tiny and precious.
And thin thin layer.
It’s thin thin layer and it’s the thing that allows us to be able to, you know, walk in the sun and, you know, live.
Absolutely remarkable.
Well, I will mention that many of our audience are growing in excitement around a very significant event
that the Wiener’s community is curating and hosting, co-hosting right here at the Starhouse and on this property in May, May 17 to 19.
And, one of the things that we’re doing with this three-day event is bringing together a number of different experts and practitioners,
one of the folks who will be joining us is a medical doctor trained in the Western alleopathic tradition and also steeped in the anthroposophic tradition.
And he’s going to help walk many of us through, connecting some of these dots that perhaps haven’t yet been connected for us individually in terms of our own knowing, our own noses, our own knowledge.
And I’m so thrilled and excited, Lila, that we have this opportunity to bring people together at a sacred sanctuary right here at the Starhouse.
And among other things, we’ll be talking economics. We’ll be talking about leadership for executives and entrepreneurs.
We’ll be talking about educators truly activating those elements in their students that will help heal our world.
And we’re going to play in the soil. We’re going to get our hands dirty.
We’re going to connect with some of the biophysical forces that animate our lives and make all of this possible.
And just want to give a quick shout out that it is a whole lot of learning and training and practice over years and years that allows us to bring this together now.
And I’m absolutely thrilled and honored, Lila, that we have the opportunity to do this in a couple of months.
Yeah, well, this is what the property is meant to be, right? To be a template that provides, I mean, if you look at the space behind us, we think of it as a chalice.
And that the name of the church itself as a legal organization is all seasons chalice.
And the building is empty space and then people come into it and fill it, right?
We give their content and part of our job as stewards is to make sure that content is in resonance with an overarching intelligence, with the sacred intelligence that the property is dedicated to.
And what I love about what you’re saying, the work you do, the visions that we share in common, are that when these templates can be understood, we have an acronym for Temple.
Temple is also one of those words that’s kind of charged. You know, it can mean something that, well, that’s my tradition doesn’t do temple.
My tradition does church or, you know, I’m a pagan. I don’t really like temples. I want to be in nature. It’s like, you know, all things work.
But I like the acronym. Templates for embodied mindful practice for living on earth.
I am writing that down. Templates for embodied mindful practices for living on earth.
Beautiful.
Patterns, sorry, change practice to patterns.
A mindful pattern, which is a little bit more energized than a practice, no practices are key as well.
Yeah, practices are active, aren’t they?
It’s embodied and it’s mindful and it’s universal pattern.
So everything that you do, Aaron and I had this fabulous crossing over moment when we do a lot of biodynamic stirs on the property, occasional.
And we have done a few together. And then we did one that we then took to Washington, D.C. as a prep and on a sacred tour with people who worked in the star house.
We kind of practiced some understanding of how to hold sacred space in the four directions.
How to be a vessel as I would call it of our higher self or as the anthropocede of the divine that we are to hold that presence.
And then bring offering, bring prayer, bring chanting, bring a song, bring one of the four elements to the national mall in Washington, D.C.
Along with biodynamic preps, which we spread around to the trees.
We’re going to be doing this as an annual workshop in Washington, D.C. because this embodied mindful pattern for living on earth is something that we all can magnify along with much of what will come up in your three day event as well.
That we can take these practices, weave them into what we’re each here to do.
So for me, the differences between like, this is the way you do something. And here’s a little bit of a smorgasbord of sacred items.
Which ones are yours? Which tools are yours to work with, rather than this is the practice of how you do this thing?
And I’m really excited about that because I feel our individuality right now is looking to find its place in connection to the mandala of the whole creation.
And that when I know that you know that and you’re doing your thing and being your best, very best Aaron, and you know, representing what you do with yonearth.
And you know, we start to then become a conscious community that can take a template, learn and synergize it and then start replicating it as patterns and practices around on the earth.
Not everybody needs a star house, but one can set up 12 stones in the four compass directions, use the template if that template works for you to do a little bit more focused and simplified ritual offering next time you’re at the beach or draw a labyrinth in the sand.
We’ve done this quite a bit. We leave elaborate labyrinths that are quite large in the sand and then we come back and see how many footprints have walked it.
Oh, beautiful. I mean, you just made you leave a little room.
That’d be really fun to film.
Yeah, it’s right to have a way. Who finds it and what have they made of it?
But just fun things like that. Like how do we create the templates that are conscious and mindful?
Now, of course, the phrase elaborate labyrinths may be difficult to say 10 times.
But I want to hang with that because my gosh, what a beautiful offering you’re placing maybe on a beach where random strangers may come by.
People you may not actually interact with person to person, yet you’re leaving them the gift that’s an invitation to pause slow down and take a little more time perhaps even a little more breathing.
And to connect in with self, with surroundings, with spirit in a way that I know in many of our very busy days we can forget to.
And what a cool gift to offer people.
My gosh.
Yeah, it’s really sweet. And drawing and making a labyrinth is a little mini workshop in itself.
Yes, because it all it it’s sort of the great to show a pattern here.
But most people have seen this labyrinth pattern that I’m talking about.
It ends up looking a bit like a brain and that’s all very rounded.
And there’s it’s called heptomatic because it has eight circles.
But when you draw the whole thing, you start with angles.
The whole thing it starts with a cross and then angles.
So it’s a perfect dance between flow and form.
And then you start connecting dots to lines and pretty soon you end up with this whole walking pattern.
So even the drawing of it is this fabulous balance between flow and form, masculine feminine, you know, straight lines and rounded expression.
So I love that part of it because the to me the dance in the creation is the sacred union between the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine.
And that that’s what I feel.
Steiner in his brilliance was giving some really profound insights into growing community, growing children through the Waldorf training.
Remembering that there are nature forces that biodynamic practices feed.
They need to be said, you know, and that that’s a, I mean any one of those is the lifetimes work.
Waldorf education, but biodynamics is exciting to me because I feel like, you know, the dynamic of bios of the life is something that we all need to know.
And remember, we are engaging with all the time every breath we take and part of that bios.
And in order to capture the possibility of sustaining it, we need to re-sacralize it.
We need to remember the sacred that we are in the sacred geomethology of my body, of my land, of my community, of my planet.
So I would love to see, you know, little armies.
The big people, little people, all kinds of people, just kind of remembering how to do simple, sacred practice.
It’s authentic for whomever and whatever.
We often will say to people coming into sur house, because we think of it as a trans-denominational temple.
To bring what sacred to you into the ceremony or into the event, don’t wait for us to provide that,
because the mandala of the unfolding right now feels like I need to honor the allies I’ve worked with,
who teach me and whom my mentors are, and to bring that, and not to feel like somebody has to agree with me.
We’ve made this a traditional location for different expressions of sacred communities,
both are famous for them anyway, one of the only western Buddhist universities in the world,
and heavily practicing yoga community, strong anthroposophic and Jewish renewal,
and Sufi dances happen in sur house.
So it’s Native American practice, pagan practice.
So I love that that weaving keeps happening, because I think it’s going to be diversity,
just like it is in the edge places of gardens and permaculture design, those edge places,
where we meet in our commonality and deep respect for each other’s traditions and templates.
Well, I love the edge metaphor and reference that, of course, our dear friend,
who’s past Bill Morrison, who founded permaculture, he’s from Australia area.
Same island.
Really, yeah.
He noticed that in ecosystems when you have these edges, where a forest meets a meadow, for example,
you’re going to have increased diversity, right?
And it seems absolutely applicable to our social groups organizations, and I am so grateful
to be connected with a group called Green Faith that is doing incredible ecological and social
stewardship and justice work all around the world, bringing together Muslims, Christians,
Protestants and Catholics in all manner of Christians and Jews and pagans in Native American
practitioners.
And they like to say from A to Z, from agnostic to Zoroastrian, they really are doing as
much work as they can in communities all over in a truly interfaith and trans-denominational
way.
And it’s so cool to be hanging with groups of people who are very devoted and steeped
in their own traditions, who are not saying, no, you’re doing it differently and that’s
wrong.
Instead are saying, wow, you have this beautiful thing in your tradition, I’d love to hear
more about that.
I’d love to understand how that might help me relate to some of these other folks in
my community or with this work I’m doing over here.
And I think for each of us to approach diversity with that openness, that curiosity, that sense
of celebration is perhaps one of the layers of healing that we’re invited to right now
in these times when that kind of healing is obviously so important.
So important.
I mean, in a culture where hate crimes are becoming daily events, and we, you know, parliament
or over religions is doing their best as well, to just keep a post going of, you know,
we respect and welcome traditions, and they’re doing the same kind of forums.
You know, how do we keep pulsing tolerance and acceptance and communication among
sawpates?
Because that is partly where it has to come from, right, the spiritual and religious leaders.
And there’s been, you know, good efforts made in that regard, and it, you know, obviously
still want to be done.
A lot of work to do.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I would love to hear.
I know that you all are launching SAP, which stands for Sacred Arts Program, and I love
the acronym.
Can you tell us, what is SAP?
Why, why, why the acronym SAP?
Well, I don’t, you love SAP.
I mean, I just get so excited about it, and I don’t even know anything about it.
I mean, I, I’m, it’s one of those things that’s on my literal desktop to, you know, like
do more research about it, but here’s what I know about SAP.
And I especially love it in the form of frankincense, by the way.
Oh, okay.
There you go.
That’s a tree sap that we serve as an incense.
Yep.
And around here, you’ll get it as the pine sap, which is just, to me, is what Colorado smells
like.
Yeah.
It’s like to find that sap.
And sometimes it, what does it smell like, butterscotch or something?
Yeah.
It’s like a butterscotch vanilla.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that sap is similar and has relationship to our cerebral spinal fluid.
So that’s one of, like I’m, I’m most interested in how to keep finding where the templates cross
over.
So David and I, my beloved, we’re talking about this this morning, because I said, I need,
I need to just get a little closer to the SAP metaphor for why we’re with, you know,
the law wasn’t going to be right, but SAP worked and, you know, so sacred art practitioner
program.
So SAP, actually, as the, and I know you know more about it, you know, in an academic
way, perhaps, also hands on, but David was saying, think of it as, like, a conversation
between the stars and the minerals.
And so from the trees are drawing in all this kind of cosmic process of light and sunshine
and stars through leaves and drawing it down the trunk into the root system where it’s
met in a way with the mineral kingdom that then is being drawn back up the tree and that
the intricacy of what’s happening in this apparent tree energy is nothing short of an absolute
miracle.
The levels of the communication and sensitivity of the roots, the fact that so many of these
tree systems are one organism, I think more than we know, but you know, certainly Aston’s
and Bamboo have been understood to be one big tree system, one organism, one being.
So it’s like to sit with a tree and to remember what the trees remind us of and then to
begin to feel, you know, sat rising and falling, like even the cerebral spinal fluid, there’s
only 150 mils of cerebral spinal fluid, right, like 100 mils is what you’re allowed on an
airplane, right?
So that’s 100 mils.
Well, it’s not that much, it’s a container about this big, and then, but it keeps circulating
and then it gets absorbed and it’s refreshed, but if it’s not a lot of volume there and
yet, it’s what, you know, keeps our brain moving, it’s a, you know, really delicate
aspect of how we function in our core.
So finding out what that relationship is and then giving people an opportunity to discover
it as they lean up against a tree or a hug a tree or meditate on a tree, whatever their
mode of communication connection will be, and to learn, what it, what’s, how to satellite
to us, what does it have to teach us, how can a tree, you know, help us round at the
same time, you know, open and flower or bear fruit or, you know, be a home for eagles
and songbirds.
So that’s why it’s that fun, yeah, we’re all really excited about it because for David
and me, it feels like it’s a culmination of, you know, literally decades and decades
of esoteric research and programs and offerings and we’ve both written a lot and we’re at that
stage of life where we really want to be contributing, you know, and not just to a legacy, but
to a way of offering, you know, a lifelong body of work.
Yes.
It’s a fabulous faculty, you know, starting with a beautiful 30-year-old who, you know,
is kind of navigating the wild and has done a lot of Native American practice and, you
know, so 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70 years are our faculty, so we cover a big life span.
That’s trans-generational.
It’s trans-generational, which I feel is an important part for sure of what we need to be
learning from, you know, his wildness and, you know, and every faculty member is bringing
a huge gift of their particular expertise.
Beautiful, beautiful.
I am so struck by the connection with the sap, the cerebral spinal fluid and thinking
now about the trees and the plants that are literally mediating between cosmos and earth
they are connecting with that soil with those trillions of organisms.
They do have this neurological communication network that utterly dwarfs our internet.
And I know David Haskell was on the recent episode, the author who writes about trees and
is a biologist and the trees are truly, truly, truly miraculous.
And of course, who wouldn’t be alive without them?
I remember when I was researching YonEarth I came across this little tidbit that
blew me away and it still does, which is that the molecule that those trees are using
to transform sunlight into food and energy through photosynthesis, right?
Chlorophyll.
Chlorophyll, it’s the exact same molecule as the hemoglobin in our blood with an exception
at the center of the chlorophyll, there’s a one little magnesium atom where in the hemoglobin
that’s an iron atom instead and it’s my gosh, we are so related.
From red to green too, right, I mean, that little shift is a powerful color enhancer.
I think that’s an essential part of understanding that connection and when you are filled with
the awe of what a tree actually is and then we realize, okay, well that means we have
to be as amazing as that as human beings and it’s almost like reflective knowing the
more we learn about the amazing thing a tree is and then start to say, well, that must
me know, I’m capable of a lot more awareness and function, I mean, we all know there’s
a lot that goes on that we’re not conscious of, you know, amazing biology and neurology,
no question about that, but how awake can we start to become?
One of the other things that we’re working with that comes out of a couple traditions,
but it definitely comes out of anthroposophy and I recently for the first time read it
in an African book, about the 12 senses, that we are more than our five senses and
people have referred to that, there’s obviously more going on than just the five biggies,
but Siner has 12, so we’ve applied them not that this is true, but it gives a template,
so we put a sense at each of the zi-diable posts so that we can start to use it as a way
of creating pattern. So mindful patterns for living on earth, how do we cross over our
sensory doorways that we all know there’s more just even using sound, say we know that
dogs can hear in a much greater range than we’re capable of, but is that because we’re
not applying an ability to open that temple doorway to increase the frequencies that we
can hear, that’s just a simple example, and his way of Siner’s way of putting the 12
senses becomes another way to create conversation, like how do we come better humans, more open,
more aware of the intricacies, the same way of tree is intricately connected to everything,
to the water, to the air, to the stars, to the ground, to the humans. So that’s exciting,
and to feel how much we can be learning from nature, and that we need to be preserving
nature so we can keep learning. Yeah, absolutely.
Well, let me just pause there and share with our audience that if you’d like to find
out more about SAP, and I encourage you to check it out, because it is getting started
here in just a few weeks. The best place to go is to a website sapcp.wildapplication.com
and I want to also mention that in May, May 17 to 19, we are hosting a wonderful three-day
summit, massively mobilizing sustainability, deep leadership for the 21st century, right
here in the star house, and on this beautiful property, unlike a lot of other conferences
you may have been to at hotel, conference centers, and so forth. Outside of this space is
a whole bunch of beautiful forested wild land that you’re going to be connecting with as
part of your three-day experience. So if you want to learn more about that, just go to
yoners.org, there’s info right on the home page, the landing page there, and I also want
to mention this is the Y on earth communities stewardship and sustainability podcast series,
and want to give a quick shout out to our sponsors who are supporting the upcoming summit,
as well as the podcast. And this includes the association of Waldorf schools of North America,
earth coast productions, equal exchange, fabulous, farmer-owned, organic, stewardship-based
coffees, teas, and chocolates for those of you like those sorts of things, I love them.
The International Society of Sustainability Professionals, the LIDGE Family Foundation,
Patagonia, Purium, and Walei Waters. So those are our sponsors, really excited about the
summit, yoners.org, and also want to mention if any of you would like to check out any of
our audiobook or e-book products on the Y on earth website, just use the code Y on earth,
you’ll get a discount with that. So Lila, getting back to SAP, and to the nature as
metaphor, nature as teacher, when we’re talking about Sacred Arts program, I imagine there’s
also some human practice side to this. Is that something you could share a little more with us?
Yeah, there are three temples that we’re exploring through SAP.
So one is the Temple of Nature, which is wild nature, and I think it’s sort of domestic,
like where you’re gardening, so wild and more tame, cultivated nature, and then the temple of
body, soul, and spirit. So how do we navigate as soul in such a way that we are actualizing
to the highest potential, the realm of spirit into matter, you know, first with
ourselves. So self-realization is sort of what I would say most workshops are dedicated
to self-realization, how do I wake up, important work, and we need to move into earth
realization. How do we become aware network of communities that are sharing and rising
into what I think is the next level of, could be called surrendered leadership, it could
be called ecstasis, where group really starts to function with a intuitive connection,
and the most relevant person takes the lead in whatever might be happening.
So it’s a different kind of an organism.
I love how Shardan, the wonderful Jesuit philosopher and writer was anticipating this
in what he was calling noosphere and Omega Point, and he was writing about this in the early
20th century, 100 years ago.
Yeah, it’s the next obvious place, like trees, right? I mean they’re sharing an ecosystem
and they’re, you know, one moves and they all kind of move. And then the third temple is
basically of a form and flow of, you know, the structure and how temples have patterns
and codes and keys, which are universal. So it’s this fabulous mix of, like I say,
everything that we’ve, as a couple, have learned together another 25-year journey.
It definitely involves this as a temple, this as a temple, you know, but all earth becomes
a temple. And we keep moving appropriately. So it’s not all about earth stewardship
because we have to take care of ourselves. You know, we have to keep healthy and vibrant
and alive. So it’s like becoming deliberately awake to where do I need to put my attention
now, but also to make sure that as much as we can be serving what’s happening at this remarkable
time in the developmental cycle of earth in her, in her process of being initiated,
which is one of the ways I see it when I can be expanded enough.
And we have to keep expanding our ability to see what’s going on because if we don’t keep
getting like potentially bigger and holding what’s happening on the planet will collapse
into the despair and the grief, which is also an essential and important part of being
able to realize that’s there also. You know, we’re if we feel it, we can experience
the extinction of species. And that’s a death process that we can’t just not acknowledge
because it has an impact. And if it keeps happening at the rate it is, it’ll have a major impact.
And yet the further out we can expand to see what’s happening as its own natural cycle,
the more we will feel empowered to be able to be in connection with it and not only at the
effect of it. So it’s a dance, isn’t it, of like the paradox of the light in the dark?
Yeah, and it’s so beautiful to feel the empowerment of recognizing how much this is
inside out job and opportunity. And I’m struck that part of what we’re talking about
is understanding the sanctity of each of us and of all the different places and spaces
on this huge beautiful planet. And, you know, I think it’s fair to say that much of our
recent history has included a whole lot of desecration, which is the opposite of understanding
sanctity. It’s the desecification on some level. And, you know, I’m struck this word
mundane is popping into my mind that for some of us we might think of trees as mundane
or might think of soil as mundane. And well, that’s absolutely true.
Monday means of the earth. So this word mundane is actually also pointing us in the direction
of the sacred where we might have previously not realized the sacred is right there.
And I wonder if that’s part of the awakening that’s happening right now in our culture in particular.
Oh, I mean, I love that. I love that it is. You know, and you’ve referenced a few of these different projects.
You know, Bill Mollison would find that when he would teach in the United States where people
were willing to pay an enormous amount of money for his furniture culture. He would then
have had himself with wads of cash and cross into Africa and India where he would meet with the
women mostly or in the Middle East. And he would give away as much of his work as possible
because he knew that women would take the desertified desert areas of their homeland
and they would grow stuff. And they would create a shift in their locality.
Or somebody begins about a dynamic farm in the midst of a chemical farming operation
and their story after story of, you know, this is the farm that somehow is protected
because it’s in communication. You know, a mocus or whatever else might flood the neighboring areas
but something about the level of refined communication that that group of people had
with the elements and the elementals themselves meant there was more intelligence
and that life supports intelligence and integration.
And, you know, I have loved being in connection with elementals
to my very limited experience of that because it’s so clear to me that they are there.
Right, that there’s little gnome creatures and, you know, we have, as I’ve mentioned,
these 12 standing stones. So one of our practical ways, people I hope will enjoy the humor
that we connect with some of these stones, which have a real presence.
I mean, each one is a character and after 20 years of connecting with these 12 stones,
which are all way bigger than me, I now start to feel them.
Like I’ve had an experience of the frequency of what it is to actually feel a stone
and have it translate into a vibration.
And one of the ways we feed the stones is by pouring high-quality beer on them.
They like the good stuff.
They like the good stuff because the yeast feeds the lichen. That would be one way of looking at it.
And I think that stone beings like beer.
You can see a little gnome like, you know, seven dwarfs, you know,
just that they’re like the beer-drinking type.
That is fabulous.
Well, I’m so excited, Lila, to have this opportunity to talk with you today
and to share this wisdom and this knowledge with our audience.
I want to begin to wrap up here by inviting folks.
Please check out sap at sapcp.wildapricot.org.
You can find the Starhouse online as well.
And yuners.org, of course, has all kinds of resources for you too.
Lila, before we wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with the audience
before we conclude for today?
Oh gosh, I think maybe it would be Earth’s body temple, you know,
to realize that the sacredness that we are, that the altar, that we are,
the massive intelligence that’s gone into the design of Anthropos,
is such a miracle.
It’s just we are such a miracle.
And if we can reconnect with the miracle of that and the treasure and preciousness
of being able to say, okay, in this moment, what my body needs right now
is a really deep, slow breath.
And that I need to light on the candle of my heart, you know,
a dedication to something I care about.
So that when I walk through this world, I’m not just walking for myself.
Maybe I’m walking for the unrest in New Zealand right now
or holding those people who were, you know, taken out of a temple in such a dramatically.
To realize that the simplest ways can have meaning, that the privilege I have to be in this world
is something I need to make a dedication offering to the whole.
Wonderful, beautiful, thank you so much for being that.
I love you Aaron.
I love you.
I love this work.
Great work.
Thank you.
Thank you, my friend.
Yeah.
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