Ep.37 Do I Have EcoAnxiety?

Welcome to ReConnect with Plant Wisdom. I am your host, Tigrilla Gardenia, Nature-Inspired Mentor and Leadership Coach. In this podcast, I share ancient and modern knowledge, from biology to spirituality, about the wondrous ways plants can help you lead a Naturally Conscious Life.

But in a lot of ways, only because you would think I would think about this all the time, but honestly, I haven’t thought about ecoanxiety in that perspective in a long time. And my answer even surprised myself. So I wanted to come here and I wanted to share it with you because I feel like for those of you that might be struggling right now, or seeing yourselves in the midst of, you know, fear of climate change of the climate crisis of all these other aspects. It could be helpful, hopefully useful to you. So let me get into it. Okay. Ultimately, I’m human. And every once in a while, I have to admit that there are moments of like, panic around what my life will look like over the next you know, whatever rest of my life I guess is the best way of saying it.

And without any doubt that connects into what’s going on with the climate in the sense that even even today right now, I am filming this. It is the November December period. It should be cold where I am and it’s a beautifully sunny day, which is that part is kind of normal. In this period, but it’s warm like warm enough that I haven’t turned on any heaters I’m still wearing you know just a long sleeve shirt and it’s not something that’s normal from what normal has been since I’ve been living in this part and in domande her in this part of Italy. So when I think about that, continuing to accelerate, continuing to heat up and I see we’ve had massive flooding in the area. If you’ve seen the news around Italy, there have been multiple points of massive types of flooding.

I’ve had friends displaced I’ve had all kinds of different situations around me and I’ve watched this happen very close. And, and so yeah, of course there are those moments of of, you know, how, what, what is going on? And will this continue to escalate as we go forward. And so there is a certain amount of ecoanxiety that is kind of there and it hits me every once in a while but I have to say that on the whole I don’t feel like it paralyzes me for a few different reasons. And this is really what I wanted to share with you. So the first one is that my spiritual path you know, as you know, I live in DME and her I’m I’m very active, I’m a teacher of our metod action initiate school. I also am very participatory and in various different groups and projects that are connected to the community and the growth of the community, especially at an international level.

And the tenants of our initiated path of our esoteric school really helped me get a greater understanding of our universe of our cosmology you could say of the machine that is our entire world. And when I say world I’m not just talking about our planet, I’m talking about a greater perspective of everything we see the world form, you might say, and this really helps me ground in an understanding of how part of this as I call it, the giant game of life is playing out and what are who are the players involved? How are those players? How can those players interact with the system? What is it that we’re here to do a gives me a mission that is beyond my life, and that’s the reason why I am a diamond Hurrian right to be a part of that greater mission.

To to move humanity forward to increase our evolution or complexity, all of these aspects. So everything that I do always fits in on on a greater level to that perspective. It also helps me understand my own past lives. where I’ve come from what has been the overall mission of my soul, you could say my soul mission that I’m looking to fit into, and then what this life that I’m having right now, where does this life fit in? So and in particular, it helps me kind of consolidate this this idea of what is my own deep pattern right the my elements my way I express myself and what is my kind of role in there. So understanding the kind of greater game on some hands can actually be even more anxious because I see the mission that we’re trying to accomplish.

I see what is at stake if we don’t achieve that mission within the the the world of this form that we’re living in. I can understand now much better many of the biological principles that we see around extinction and cataclysmic events and how they fit in to that greater understanding of what’s playing out on a universal level. So, where on one hand, it gives me peace of mind because I feel like an active player in this so I don’t feel like what is happening is happening to me, but I feel like I’m part of this giant game. And so therefore it gives me a sense of empowerment. It gives me a sense of it’s not control because we can’t control really but it helps me understand my piece in that puzzle.

It helps me see that what is playing out actually has elements to take it where we where we need to go to save humanity to enhance humanity not just save, but to evolve and grow and, and really we awaken our divine spark and really step fully into the divineness with meaning and with understanding and with action. So all of this really helps me remain. I don’t want to say maybe hopeful is the right word, or at least it helps me see that there is a greater, it’s like there’s rules to the game, and therefore I can learn those rules and I can interact with that game. And so therefore, I’m not a helpless bystander to what is happening. It also makes it much easier for me to understand some of the choices that I need to make some of the how is it when do I interact as a collective?

When do I interact as an individual, all of these different aspects and so as a person who has an inherent fear, like I was born with an inherent fear of certain elements like death and other aspects, being an initiate and all of my spiritual studies has really helped me understand what is what is going on how do multiple lives happen? What what do they mean? Where do I put my energy into and has actually given me a sense of peace? That doesn’t mean that I’m always happy about how things are going, but at least I feel a sense of peace and therefore that type of low level anxiety and especially that ecoanxiety many people live with, I don’t I don’t necessarily experience it all the time. I get bursts.

When I when I think about one specific thing or I realized that we’re kind of headed in the wrong direction and I’m not sure how to course correct, neither for myself but nor humanity. Then I get those moments where it takes my breath away. But I don’t necessarily feel it on the greater scale on a regular basis because I feel empowered to do something and I feel more than anything that I’m in a place in my life in other words, my choice of being dumb and hurry and the way I live out my dumb and Hurrian ness and my inner sciatic path, the way that I interact with the world makes me feel like I am making a difference and I am doing something and therefore I that is what really gives me I focus on that that’s that’s what really gives me purpose and gives me an understanding.

Before I tell you about how the plants fit into this, I want to share with you one of our Eco conscious business partners because again, choosing and working with these individual partners has been also another area it’s really helped me understand that there are more people out there doing the right thing for our lives for humanity but also for all of the different beings that we share this planet with. The first time I connected with a plant and actually received a response I got chills it is such an invigorating sensation when you break through like that and realize just how connected we are and that we are nature.

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Okay, so I want to help bring also where the plants fit into this because obviously that’s that’s kind of what we’re here to talk about. Right but the plants have been instrumental in helping me on this understanding of eco consciousness at a different level. First and foremost. The plants have helped me understand my deep patterns, right when we look at Super organisms, we understand that they all have these overarching patterns that they carry out. And these overarching patterns that they carry out are really the their sense of, of being the way that they interact and what they bring to the ecosystem in which they’re in identifying and domitor we call it one of the 163 elements. And so understanding really what is my element? What is my deep pattern? What is it that I’m supposed to? How am I supposed to carry out my life regardless of all the individual passions that I have and how those passions weave together has helped me understand my life purpose, and getting to my life purpose has been instrumental in tapping into that soul mission that I was talking about.

So my life purpose in this life, that I’m able to then see how it connects to the life purposes and the multiple lives I’ve lived, and then how that all fits into my sole purpose and then how that sole purpose is a tiny little piece of what is the overarching kind of game of life. That we’re playing for the universe and for the evolution of humanity and the evolution of really everything that we see and everything that we are right now. And when I say we I mean we with the W with a capital W all of life with a capital L that has been life changing and I wouldn’t have reached I wouldn’t have gotten there without the plants if it wasn’t for working and being able to remember walking in the sacred Woods temple one day, and I was walking through the temple and I I had this understanding I was looking around it was I was just being immersed in that environment. And I was able to kind of put together an understanding of the life and the death cycles that were happening in the woods at that time. The multiple lives being lived by the plant and where myself where I was fitting into all this even where the nature spirits and other types of beings were fitting in from the fungi to the bacteria.

It was it was oh there’s no other word was beautiful because it was so it allowed me to completely open rather than sinking into fear which is very closing and that opened me to a path of greater understanding of what I had been learning in the school. Right as an initiate as a catalyst in all my different studies. It was able it was it allowed me to start to weave these together and put them together in a greater form. And this was so liberating. Also, you’ve heard me talk in the past and I’ll probably talk more about it here on the podcast about how I did survival training, how I have worked hard to get to learn survival skills because I feel like that’s another aspect of low level fear. The idea that we don’t know how to change with our planet, we don’t know how to interact with our planet, outside of going to the supermarket and going to a store to buy something.

So really spending all of that time understanding my life purpose, getting survival skills, having the big picture from my initial sciatic path and from my Kabbalistic work, all of these perspectives, it is the plants that opened up the ability for me to see how these fit together. And I really believe that the way that this happens in a great part, besides the fact of learning then how to communicate with them and so being able to dialogue, two way conversation on these topics, which I’m gonna get to in a second. But being with and immersing myself with plant friends, has helped me maintain a positive mental health. So we talk about this all the time, right fight asides and terpenes and all the different chemicals and the lowering of cortisol levels, and the lowering of depression and the raising up of feelings of altruism.

These are all aspects that we live when we immerse ourselves in the natural world. And I think and I feel that this has created for me but also I see this in my clients. This creates the opening that it squashes all of that fear and the opening for you to start to bring together all these pieces of information of knowledge of being of sensing of life, purpose of soul mission of everything. It helps him naturally weave it together for you in whatever way feels good. And that is part of what the evolution is. It helps you see the cycles of life. It helps you understand change management. It helps you look at life with a capital L as this constantly changing and adapting thing that we think it’s not a bit or energy force life force. And this is where we play into that. So again, it’s not that I don’t feel those moments of impact of life and death and all those things but then I can sit back into my understanding of what is evolution and what is destruction and this, it’s not always easy, but it is possible.

And I think that that positive mental health that comes from that really close relationship with the natural world of allowing myself to be immersed in natural elements of seeing nature in every single little thing around me whether it’s the table that I’m sitting at right now or this cloth, you know, this this scarf that I’m wearing, I am able to see nature there and I’m able to connect to that nature, when I feel like that anxiety rises, because that is what gives me clarity of purpose and of mind and I feel like this is really important. And also being on this path and being able to dialogue with plants helps me also understand what is where is it that I am contributing to evolution, even if it’s scary, even if it’s changed? Where is these? Where are the elements or the events that are happening around us natural evolutions that we need to learn how to adapt to and when instead are they destructive tendencies of an out of control world. They’re not always the same and I think we lump them in together.

And so when we’re able to separate them out, I feel like I’m on purpose. I feel like my purpose is connect to what my soul is journeying to do. I feel like that journey of the soul contributes to the whole game of life with a capital L that is evolving out and that is becoming more complex. And this gives me a sense of peace, a sense of deep happiness and fulfillment. And it also helps me feel empowered to be a part of the solution instead of the problem. So all of these elements come together. And this is why I feel like I don’t really struggle through what we think of as ecoanxiety on a regular basis. Or even dwell in loss. I used to a lot I lived a lot in the past. But all of this brings me into the present. And I look at what’s happening from the optics of where am I supposed to fit into this? What is my role in whatever it is that I’m seeing whether it’s giant climbing, am I supposed to be protesting on the front lines, or am I supposed to be working with a small group of people?

I feel like I’m in the right place. I feel like what I am doing is helping the world move forward in the right way. I’m helping people adapt. I’m helping people act. I’m helping the plants get their voices heard. I’m helping persons people of all sorts human persons and plant persons and rock persons and nature spirit persons. I’m helping them become united all of these parts of my sense of understanding and purpose of who I am, then, again, is able to take all of that fear and just dissolve it and step into a place of empowerment and this is why I am so incredibly passionate about working with individuals in order to help them find their own way to this path because it’s different for everyone. And the naturally conscious community is the place where we can have these discussions we can go really deep we can go really shallow we can play we can work at it directly we can address it from so many different angles. And this gives you the group collective dynamic which we know that everything that in nature evolves faster when there is mutualisms, and when there’s interaction, right that interaction is pushes us to evolve at a greater speed and at the same time, you need to then bring it all into yourself and apply it to your personal life
and that’s where the one on one work was goes.

And this is why I love that combination of working with me one on one, and then everything that is inside of the naturally conscious community from the writing group. To the budding artists tree to the creative greenhouse to the book club to expand your understandings, and then see where your place is in that understanding. So this is really the heart of for me what I see as the winning formula to go beyond ego anxiety. And into ego Empowerments. So I’d love to hear how is ecoanxiety affecting you? How do you feel about your path to evolution to eco empowerment? Where are you going and where are you struggling? I really want to hear I want to hear your thoughts and I want to hear your experiences. So please leave me a comment or better yet join the discussion in the naturally conscious community. I’ve all keep telling you NCC is your supportive ecosystem to explore all of these types of topics to explore new ways of living, and being and doing in collaboration with the plant King home for you to reawaken your plant nests and reenter the world as a being of nature. That’s me today I got Danny out remember, resist the urge to hold back you’re evolving green brilliance, and we will talk again very soon. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of reconnect with plant wisdom, Intro and Outro Music by Steve Shuli and poinsettia from the singing Life of Plants. So join me to give you like our Dania and my plant collaborators next time on reconnect with plant wisdom