The Work that Reconnects- The Spriral

The Work that Reconnects (WTR) was developed by Joanna Macy and her colleagues. Joanna Macy, now 86 years old, is an Eco-philosopher, Buddhist Scholar and Living Systems Theorist. WTR is a set of experiential group processes that allows people to speak their truth about what they see, know and feel is happening to our world. WTR first began as a way for people to talk about nuclear war without depressing each other to pieces or turning other people off.  WTR is not only for social and environmental activists and concern about climate change; it is much bigger than this. Something larger is forcing us to look at the way we all live our lives. And pointing out how bad things are just isn’t enough!  Baked, waterless land, dirty air - this is a historical moment. Something is alive and delivering us a message – and not just that we are sinners! We have a chance to make things right. If the problems of the world are human made, they can be un-made.  WTR offers its participants a tangible way to access inner truth and wisdom. WTR has the ability to free up once suppressed energy; transmuting it into a strong sense of power and agency to act for the benefit of all. The WTR contains 4 stages of a spiral- Coming from Gratitude, Honouring our Pain, Seeing with New Eyes, Going Forth.

The first step is Coming From Gratitude. All wisdom traditions start with gratitude. Being awake, feeling alive and comfortable in your own skin is one of the most subversive acts you can do! It is our birth rate to feel happy and whole in our own skin, and this is exactly what the industrial growth society (igs) wants us NOT to do. Taken from Joanna Macy’s book, Active Hope, “corporations thrive on creating self- pity, making us feel like we are not enough.” Showing ourselves and daring to inhabit our life is a most radical act.

The greatest alchemical moment in the work is, Honouring our Pain for the World, which is pathologized in society. The message that we receive from the igs, “don’t get in touch with your anger, stay low and quiet” encourages buying into the system and turning to external, material objects for comfort. Not to mention, the spell-binding medications and cultural additions to numb our discomforts.  According to Joanna Macy, it is not possible for us to numb selectively. The whole body and person shut down when there is a disassociated response. When we numb ourselves from fear, we also suppress pleasure and the innate ability to respond to signals from our environment that something just isn’t right. Responding to feedback from the environment is a survival tool, and when things come to us we need to metabolize it and send it through, otherwise we just remain stuck and out of balance with our larger body. Joanna Macy believes that fear and love are two sides of the same coin, and when we suppress one, we suppress the other. When we allow ourselves to touch the bottom of our fear, it loses its effect, and frees us as it transmutes into its opposite which is love.

When we See With New Eyes, we gain insight into the radical interconnectedness of the entire web of life, and our place in it; not as its weaver but merely a strand. Seeing With New Eyes, allows us to break free of our present experience of time, of being on a conveyer belt that just doesn’t seem to let up. Participants have the opportunity to liberate themselves from the model of self as separate and reducible. Seeing With New Eyes reverses this thinking, turns us on and tunes us in to the right channel.

Going Forth with the insight of our radical interconnectedness (we are earth, earth is us) and the compassion to act for the benefit of all, are two of the necessary tools for action and creating change, according to Buddhist teacher, Choegyal Rinpoche. When we have the support of these two tools, our power is manifold.