Welcome, EcoSoma

The trajectory of environmental, social, and economic change is inseparable from our own development as humans.

There is plenty of evidence that the recently dawned year will present extraordinary opportunities for choices that matter. On the menu this year? Presidential elections in a polarized US. Unresolved debt crisis in Europe. An extraordinary array of grassroots initiatives for social justice and global economic development. Accelerating species extinctions. Deteriorating relations with Pakistan and Iran. More extreme weather events. Women coming into more power. Melting Arctic ice.

The media grabs our attention on some of these. Others we won’t see unless we look. All are indicative of the tremendous spasms of change sweeping our earth. All provide opportunities for discernment and choices.

These dramatic events are the inevitable product of human habits. We interpret the world in particular ways, and take actions rooted in our interpretations. Our actions intersect with natural laws, and produce consequences. Since each of us is the perfect reflection of our history, we make the best choices we can see and act on, given our unique constrictions in how we see and interpret our world.

In a Buddhist sense, the collective mess that we have created is literally the only thing that could have happened. It is the only possible result of the uncountable “best possible choices” made by myopic and mostly well-intentioned humans, over generations and millennia.

We have all engaged in a certain detached observation of these phenomena. In so doing, we sometimes make new choices or respond differently.

We suggest it is more accurate, and more galvanizing, to experience ourselves directly AS the earth, and to invite the dramatic felt realization that we are both characters in this tremendous unfolding drama, and authors of it.

We call this way of being the EcoSoma: at home in ourselves, at home in the world. The EcoSoma directly experiences our connectedness and our aliveness in an astoundingly creative corner of the universe at a poignant time in the 13.7 billion year story of evolution, when that very creativity is in serious jeopardy. EcoSomas are authors of this story; our actions and commitments collectively create the story precisely as we live it. We don’t know how it all comes out. We do know we are authors.

Thus oriented, our actions, our commitments take on a different meaning. Awake to our context, destructive choices become impossible, and life-affirming choices become the only thing we can do. As developing EcoSomas, our actions increasingly align with these possibilities. We become generative authors of an emerging story.

This is the work of our generations.