I don’t think that I am able to relate the quiet awe that possessed me the first time I came upon a pond filled with tadpoles, or the wonder at playing in the river with baby fish that were so tiny I caught several of them in a pop can. I cannot accurately describe my state as I combed the beach with my father as we gathered oysters that we would be eating just a few hours later. These experiences are difficult to put into words because words are not expansive enough to capture that state of presence that is so grand, that exists in absolute quiet.
I can remember picking up trash while playing in the woods. At first this was an unconscious act; I was simply gathering that which was out of place. It was much later on, when I was old enough to be a Cub Scout, that I was told we should always leave a place cleaner than we found it. By being respectful in this way we would assure we would be welcome back and besides, it was the right thing to do. My innate bearing had just been bolstered by an ethic. What had been an action that was compelling unto itself had now become a command that would foster guilt and judgment.
The next ten years of my life, from eight to eighteen, were very informative. A conversation was emerging in the collective of society. I was personally noticing changes in our landscape. There were fewer and fewer places where tadpoles could be found. The little newts that were once so plentiful were not as ubiquitous during my walks in the woods. “Race to Save the Planet” was airing in primetime and repeats of Jacques Cousteau specials foretelling of dire consequences to our oceans were a fitting addendum to the reports that our coral reefs were ailing. President Reagan jokingly retorted when asked what we would do about acid rain, “We’ll issue rain jackets!” Words like organic and sustainable were creeping into our lexicon. I was saddened that there were now signs posted along the beach warning us not to consume the shellfish.
This was also the time when I became solidly identified with “victim consciousness.” I was a victim of the carelessness of others. I wasn’t angry yet, I was merely underpowered. I believe it was Gandhi who said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win.” I was a believer who was being ignored, and I remained quiet about it. I was nowhere near amending my actions to support my beliefs. I was not making the connection that my lifestyle was also contributing to the problem and that I could contribute to the solution. The causes and perpetrators existed “out there,” and I was their victim. And then I joined the Army.
Serving in the military was one gigantic blessing. It was during the two years of my active enlistment that I began to solidly define who I am now. My confidence and pride were fully nourished by becoming a paratrooper and serving in the 82nd Airborne. My experiences during this time provided me with so many lessons that now, almost twenty years later, I am still realizing them. I was able to put aside much of the blame and victimization that I had taken on and simply be. I also reconnected with that same quiet sense of awe that I had experienced as a child. I learned what it means to be a sovereign individual who is part of a greater institution and how each affects the other. I was twenty years old when my enlistment was complete and it was 1990.
It was during the winter of 1990-1991 that the waves of guilt and judgment would first wash through me as I witnessed with horror of the ecological aftermath of the Gulf War. The images of burning oil wells were iconic from the first time they aired on television. What appalled me most was the absolute disregard and short-sightedness of the impact such an act would have on the environment. I was deeply saddened at our collective inability to avoid this conflict, and deeply angry with those who had organized it. The arrogance of our leaders was only matched by my own in my exalted understanding that I, of course, knew better.
The decade of the 1990s was when I really began to pair my values with action. I learned a great deal about the virtues of being vegetarian and of eating local food in season. I started my first organic garden with several friends and we were sorting our recycling to take to the transfer station. I went for a few years without driving a car in an effort to live sustainably. I was quietly better than others because I was living a principled existence according to superior ethics. I also found friends whose beliefs matched my own and together we bolstered the fundamentalism that we encouraged to overtake us.
In our efforts to live by our principles we grew to be restrictive and closed. Our “healthy” lifestyle was evidenced by our closed-minded superiority and caustic conversational style. We were also, fairly consistently, stoned through it all. I felt completely justified in my judgments because they were born from a principled place. It wasn’t necessarily the fault of others; for the most part they were just uninformed, but unfortunately they were unwittingly making a mess that we all had to suffer; because I knew better, I was their martyr. It was my response(ability) to bear this burden and I could not, in good conscience, wash my hands of it. I was a full-on fundamentalist and yet I knew, internally, that I didn’t feel right. I was aware that the superiority and anger I felt were born from the sadness and victimization that resulted from my own lack of confidence and perception of being under-empowered. I knew I was in a place I wasn’t happy with, but had absolutely no idea how to change it.
Deepak Chopra said that the transition from dis-ease to health happens in a nanosecond. It happens in the very instant that we shift our mindset away from sickness and toward health. From that point onward, we are just putting ourselves back where we belong. It sure would have been nice to have experienced some critical moment that could mark the transition point from which I turned that corner, but my own experience of it has been much different.
My late 20s were the beginning of what would turn out to be the most heroic endeavor of my life. I believed my perception was determining my condition. I had noticed I knew people whose pessimism was corroborated by the way that events would uncannily play out to reinforce their perspective, sometimes in the last moment, as if by magic. I also knew people whose positivity was downright obnoxious, only dwarfed by the observance that luck seemed to seek them out. When I sought to apply this understanding to my own situation, I was left with a Catch-22 question: “How do I shift from depression and victimization, under-empowerment and self-defeating mental chatter to a different experience of positivity and health and vitality? How can I live my values in a constructive and open, loving way? And, most incredibly, how can I make this transition from within the place I am residing?” After all, it wasn’t like I could just flip a switch and turn my entire mode-of-being off while I rebooted it!
I was still in the throes of this struggle when I landed in Seattle amid the most downtrodden and financially strapped time I have ever experienced. The millennial New Year was upon us and every direction I turned all I could see was astounding abundance and grandiose consumption that did not include me. I was at once envious and repulsed.
What were we doing to ourselves and our environment? There were no longer any shellfish to find on the stretch of beach I had known as a child. There was no longer a need for the sign warning us not to consume that which was no longer there.
It was early in the spring of 2000 that I was introduced into an occupation that would turn out to be my vehicle for turning my situation around. By the end of 2001 I had my own business and had just received my first recognition from the city for being an “Outstanding Business in the Green.” This was the first time I had heard the brand-word “green.” I was still a bit of a victim, still a bit under-empowered, but I had dropped the fundamentalism. My frustration had given way and made room for a more constructive and positive, life-affirming approach to being. My oppressions had been transmuted into challenges; my self-defeating perspectives that had been the walls of my prison were now just annoying piles of clutter I could sort through and clean out. And my vehicle to play this out was my own green window cleaning business.
It could not have been any more perfect. I had found an occupational pursuit that reflected and encouraged my own personal pursuit of seeking clarity and allowing the light to shine. I was clearing whatever was in the way of accurately seeing truth, both inside and out. Each and every job became a meditation. Windows allow us to see out as well as in, and that is exactly what I was doing while I worked. My own beliefs and very process of being were becoming increasingly transparent with every job I completed. Everything was becoming illuminated. I was learning to have a conscious, realized how inter-connected the inside world is to the outside, and how I could work in both realms simultaneously. In fact, I don’t believe it can be any other way.
In 2005 I received another rather prestigious award from the City of Seattle, followed in late 2006 by recognition from King County. During this time, I also completed the Master Gardener course and yoga teacher training. The yard where I live that had been overgrown with a decade’s worth of blackberries and weeds had been transformed into a series of organic gardens and flower beds using nothing but scavenged materials and for the first time in my life I purchased a vehicle that runs on diesel fuel made from recycled vegetable oil. My dream of living sustainably was coming together from every direction and it would seem that life was getting a bit easier- but what I encountered was much different.
I had been so used to living in a state of restriction and poverty that I did not recognize the end of its relevance! I was still living in a state of reactionary existence. I denied myself many experiences based on the understanding that I could not afford them. There were also many things that I put off until a later point in time for fear of the financial cost, only to end up paying much more later on. The realization of this was a humbling experience in itself. I was supposedly all about thrift and conservation of resources, but had not been applying my stated beliefs to one of the most powerful aspects of my existence: how I handle my money. I had been living based on an inaccurate perception of my condition. I had embraced abundance in some areas of my life but was still operating out of lack in other areas. My sustainability had been compartmentalized.
One of my great frustrations while serving in the military was the extreme focus on the absolute perfection of completely inane tasks. Was it really necessary to have the shower drains so shiny that you could see your reflection in them? Or to have every pair of socks folded to exactly the same size? What I learned was that there was a deep reason for that particular organizational psychology. I was told the focus on attention to detail was practiced and expected in every area so that it would become so ingrained in our psyche that in the crucial battlefield moments there would be no mistakes made due to sloppiness. Understanding this shifted my awareness such that polishing the drains became an exercise of a greater endeavor.
It was in the attempt to reconcile the different, disparate aspects of my behaviors that I came to recognize a new awareness of how interconnected each of them was and how they could either reinforce or dilute the power behind each of them. By handling my finances as I had handled my search for third-party recognition for having a green business I could be that much more effective. By switching from being reactive to being proactive in every area of my life, no matter how seemingly insignificant, I was able to be a more complete individual. I was also radiating a different energy that was being noticed by others in my life. I began to look at this even further.
In my quest to recognize how the parts affect the whole, I began to look outside of just myself. What patterns could I find and what would be the implications? Here are a few of the key points of my present understanding: just as Gandhi had said, being green was at first largely ignored. More recently, it has been simultaneously laughed at and fought. Indeed, part of the fighting has been to influence others to laugh at the whole idea that green has any relevance. There has been a campaign from both sides arguing whether or not humans have had any impact on climate change and whether we can or should do anything about it. The right suggests that it is bogus and that the left is trying to use fear to dictate how we should become increasingly restrictive. The left accuses the right of spreading disinformation for its own self interest. While both sides are entrenched in the argument of this umbrella issue we hear nothing in the conversation dealing with much more obvious and certain issues. Epidemic levels of asthma, increasing toxicity of our soils and watersheds, obesity and Type II onset diabetes, as well as the ongoing strength of our local economies are all liabilities that can be addressed and dealt with within the context of being green. And yet, these incredibly important issues have been compartmentalized and relegated to the sidelines of our public discourse. If Gandhi was correct, then after the fighting we should win, but I’m personally not so sure that it will play out that way.
I believe that we are engaged in something analogous to the grieving process. In the first phase we were in denial. Collectively we seem to be toward the end of this and moving through the next phases of anger and bargaining. Anger is interesting to me because it is so often associated with victimization. “I am angry at what you are doing to me!”
Bargaining is where we, as a collective, appear to be. Going green has been the recent advertizing zeitgeist but I have serious doubts that we will be able to confront our challenges merely by replacing one product with another. Didn’t Einstein say, “The problems of today will not be solved at the same level of thinking that got us here”? Great change is never made without some sort of sacrifice preceding the gains that follow, and great changes in behavior and policy are never made while the status quo remains appeased. Regardless of how we proceed, I expect that for many of us depression is the next inevitable phase before acceptance can begin. We may hope for the best and simply downgrade depression to recession, or explain it away as some sort of cyclical occurrence but one thing is certain; we have been living based on some constructs whose relevance is coming to an end.

If you recall, it was the skin lesions that were not healing which led us to recognize that the belugas had completely compromised immune systems, largely due to environmental toxicity. We later found AIDS in our own population by, again, investigating why some people had sores that were not healing. If we look at aerial photos of both our land and seas we see increasing desertification and dead zones in our oceans. There is not a single ecosystem we have looked at in the last several years that is still supporting homeostasis. Our land and oceans have an auto-immune disease. Our air sheds are displaying the wheezing that is symptomatic of our asthma as both our individual and environmental filtration is overtaxed. We are making the connections between our own reproductive cancers and environmental toxicity. We are beginning to re-awaken to the relationship of microcosm to macrocosm- as above, so below. We continue to behave as transcendent little demi-gods who exist completely separate and removed from the very world that we are nourished by, taken within by the open circuits of our mouths and nostrils, to our peril. As our sense of affinity with our planet and each other dulls, we elevate heart disease to first place on our list of killers.
As seen from above, our development of the landscape appears much the same as a tumorous growth does. We have all heard the analogy of our behavior being likened to that of a cancer that ultimately consumes its host. Our predominant mode of treatment is to bring the host near to the brink of death in an effort to kill the cancer and then to revive the individual after chemotherapy has worked its wonders. Although it is painful and gruesome in its process, there is hope for a better condition after treatment is complete. We may be headed in that direction. There is also another possibility.
Great strides have been made in alternative, holistic treatments of cancer that deal with the entire individual. Addressing the diet, psychology, emotional states, perceptions and values of the patient and engaging other people in the patient’s life have been met with rewarding success. As our understanding of this holistic approach increases, so too does its mainstream appeal. We appear to be very close to reaching a tipping point threshold. There is a new understanding being embraced. I am presently operating under the premise that I am one of many who are engaged in the greatest of tests. My neighbor has a bumper-sticker that says, “Evolve or Die!” It has been my experience that every step of my own personal evolution has involved some sort of death. I have witnessed the death of much that has been dear to me. This has often encouraged me to take a hard look at my own values, thoughts, feelings and behaviors which have in turn been my own personal oracles which led me to reconcile who and where I am within it all. I have never made any great leap of growth without it involving a death of some former aspect of myself. It has been the paralytic fear of this death that has kept me from change when it has been upon me. I think the bumper-sticker should more appropriately read, “evolve AND die,” for one cannot truly happen without the other.
I wish I knew where we are headed, but there is a great amount of uncertainty about that. I like to be pro-active with investments of my time and resources, but I am also aware that within such great uncertainty I am wise to not possess a high degree of attachment to outcomes. I am learning there is virtue in being as pro-active as I can be, as re-active as is necessary to be fluid with changes, and most importantly, simply active in my ongoing mission to make connections that feed my growth and understanding and enable me to live in a harmonious condition of being while the pillars of my life’s temple buckle and sway around me.
I will not give in to fear and slip backward into a state of reactionary fundamentalism. I will also not engage in zealotry and presume to have an exclusive lock on the answers we must all embrace. I will not go about business as usual with blinders on in the erroneous belief that some greater altruistic minds are working on my solutions for me. What I will do is continue to lovingly challenge myself with the awareness that I am always simultaneously working on both the inner and the outer and what I do in one place has an impact in others. What I do to myself affects others and what I do to them impacts me as well. How I care for my world is how I care for myself. With every conscious action the Golden Rule is realized.
I will go forward with all of this in mind and heart and have faith that maybe, just maybe, when a tipping point has been reached, on the other side of this greatest of tests, we may find the cure for our cancers. We may see the end of self-annihilation and free ourselves and our world of auto-immune conditions. We may breathe life in deeply without wheezing.
We may once again be able to walk along our shores and gather the oysters that we will later eat, and the stream that I caught baby fish in so small they were captured in a pop can will once again be able to sustain the salmon they grew up to be. All of these are within our reach.
I recognize that we got to where we are by adopting a series of choices that seemed to be good when we chose them. It is only with hindsight that we recognize what the consequences turned out to be. Some choices may have been bad from the get-go; others may have simply outlived their relevance. It is often the case that medicine that works well in small amounts becomes a poison in greater quantities. One challenge that every generation faces is the correction of the choices made by the generations before them. Our grandparents made decisions that they believed would create a better world and for their time they largely did. It is now upon us to attempt the same.
Within every movement lie the seeds of its own demise. If I am to embrace the true spirit of what living green is reaching for then I must also be prepared to embrace the end of its own relevance. I must seek to engage a whole new level of thinking; one that operates beyond the modes of thought that have landed us here. I must accept the death of what I have known if I am to evolve and grow into this new level of thinking. I must understand that my work in the extrinsic, outer world corresponds to my work within my own intrinsic, inner self and that each and every one of us is a sovereign, individuated part of a greater whole and that what affects one of us has an impact upon us all. I must also remain mindful that although this new level of thinking has yet to be realized, my actions just might be in service to it and I am wise to not be discouraged. I understand that there is virtue in polishing the shower drain because it just might save my life. I cannot tell you where the green movement is headed or how long it will last. All that I can say is that I am attempting to live it to its fullest with the understanding that what I am hoping to accomplish will probably not be the ultimate outcome. I will continue to engage the process because only by going through it will I come out the other side and hopefully live long enough to arrive at a new level of awareness.
The oracle rarely tells us what will actually be, but it does tell us what we need to hear to get us to respond to what we need to do. Looking back we often see that it was the journey that was of ultimate importance. It is hardly ever the destination.
I cannot tell when it was, exactly, that I became “green”, but at present I am. It is of the highest importance. It is absolutely critical, and in the end, it may not matter.