SUE's Blog

Becoming Magnificent by Adruma Victoria A quarter of a century ago, I made the determination to begin honoring the inherent magnificence of ME. I became convinced at that time that even the most immature individuals possess within themselves qualities of infinite magnificence. My challenge became how to peddle this treasure of realization….at all times and in all directions? I knew that if I lived this truth and listened to the frequencies of my soul song, that this vibrancy would multiply. And it did! Now, mind you, I was not alone. Every day I encountered people who felt courageous enough to love self, others and the creation……..just as the sun shines and the palm trees dance. I teach music at a private school. Music theory gave me a wonderful platform to impart onto my students far greater access to their inner light and their own magnificence. My daughter, Kiah, bought me singing bowls for my birthday. I used them to help my friend, John, who was struggling with cancer. After he received just a few sound baths, his wife called me and shared that his diminished blood count had greatly improved, and that the cancer was disappearing. I was amazed at how sound and positive intention had worked to support John’s healing. I wept tears of appreciation at how the magic of sound and positive energy can afford the most benevolent of outcomes. I believe in angels and have vast experiences of how they have healed me and made me strong, so I began to expand my thinking in this area and asked these angels to co-create with me to produce energy resonance that would multiply love and light. My Rock/Soul band, Side Hustle, plays at clubs and festivals. I invited the angels to dance and to inspire the spiritual surrounding of the many individuals who come and enjoy our music and asked them to multiply in their lives. Somehow, we tapped into the forces of light and love beyond the veil. Behaviors of respect and equity for women, the elderly and any group that was so often marginalized began to spread like wildfire. The beauty that seemed dormant in each soul started resonating and vibrating at higher frequencies, such that love stimulating beauty coupled with respect and gratitude became more common. I had to change ME, and the world changed as I evolved. The true beauty of living expanded. Here in the year 2050, each of us embrace the calibration of our unique inner song of love with harmonic overtones. Just as ten thousand birds can fly like a wave and change direction in beautiful harmony, the sentience of all created beings of Mother Earth share the poetic dance of tension and release resolving to beauty within the earth and sky people. The intelligence of water ripples in human consciousness and throughout atmospheres beyond our human scope. The memories of stars that long ago smacked into planets, affording us the elements of the human body and its support systems vibrate joy. The individual sound signature of each of us is as infinite as numbers affords endless stimulation, passion and discovery of life. We live also as masters in the art of living and masters in the art of loving. I lived more and more with focus on my own magnificence and that of every human being. I sought to honor the feminine aspects of the natural world, and, although I am rather masculine, those of myself. The universe cross-pollinated the heart-centered living that was once dormant in our species. Here in 2050, we love living and giving, and we marvel at the myriad of beautiful expressions of love within our global community of the heart. The mountains and trees sing new songs of joy heard and desired by multitudes.

All conflict and suffering arises from identifying with “me, myself, and my story.” This is true no matter where on earth we live, no matter the color of our skin, the language we speak, the culture are raised in, or our religious beliefs or practices.

When things are going well in our view, we feel good, but when things aren’t going well, we spiral down into worry, anxiety, self-doubt, and often despair.

The fastest and surest way to true freedom is to learn to love—or at least accept—our triggers, those times when we have an emotional reaction to someone or something.

We learn to say, “Ah, I welcome this, it is showing me where I am not yet free.” Then we affirm the mantra: “I am the awareness in which everything comes-and-goes…” and relax into the awareness we are.

Then, from a place of alert yet relaxed presence, we look inwardly at what is true. We notice how thoughts, beliefs, “stories,” and even the ego “I” itself—along with its associated feelings and emotions—do come-and-go in the awareness we always are.

Imagining ourselves facing the triggering incident again, but from presence this time, we come increasingly to the realization that our true nature is pure, thought-free awareness.

This is felt as a current of peace, harmony, and flow here, now—and a deep love for all humanity. Our ego is still there when we need it, stronger and more powerful, and our thinking is much more creative.

Amazing, huh?

Autumn’s gentle touch is evident even here, in my cozy nook of a floating garden city. The view outside is a canvas of warm oranges and reds, blending seamlessly with the lush greenery of the forest below. Inside, the room is a quiet sanctuary, adorned with simple, earthy elements – a wooden table, a couple of well-loved chairs, and a small, thriving potted plant that captures the essence of the outside world.

It was on a similar autumn day, years ago in a bustling city, when I first heard the music of a street cellist. Despite his slightly ragged clothes, he had a distinguished air about him, his face etched with lines that spoke of years spent perfecting his craft. His melodies were a vivid stroke of emotion amidst the clattering urban monotony, and I felt a stillness come over me as I listened. The man’s silver hair, neatly combed back, gleamed softly in the streetlight, adding to his aura of quiet, unassuming tenderness.

When the man’s performance ended, I found myself walking up to him, a mix of apprehension and admiration swirling within me. As we stood in the fading light, I took a breath, my voice tinged with an unusual vulnerability. “I know this might sound strange, but would you like to come to my home for a meal? I can’t explain it, but your music… it moved me.”

He smiled, a hint of surprise in his eyes. “That’s quite an offer to a stranger,” he said, his voice warm. “But yes, I’d like that. Thank you.”

That afternoon, as we shared a meal of bread and cheese in my modest kitchen, the air was filled with a sense of curiosity and exploration. It wasn’t just a meal: it was an act of stepping into the unknown, a bridge built on a foundation of trust and a shared appreciation for life’s simple beauties.

It sounds strange now, but that simple act of hospitality, in the heart of an ordinary kitchen, became a catalyst for extraordinary change. I began to make it a habit, a practice: encountering a stranger, offering them welcome, breaking bread despite all our mutual difference. There was something oddly radical about it – in this gesture almost as old as the world. And as my own practice expanded, it brought on a kind of domino effect: many of my guests began hosting their own encounters, with their own sets of strangers, and these in turn led to more encounters, across class, race, religion, ethnic background. Across geography and imagination. First across the city, then the country, and – with surprising, almost magical speed – beyond, homes opened up, community gatherings flourished, and shared experiences became the norm. This burgeoning culture of openness and empathy began to heal deep-seated political divisions and polarization, transforming the fabric of political engagement with empathy and collaboration.

Even in the face of climate change, these small acts played a pivotal role. Local initiatives for sustainability sprang up, evolving into a global movement of environmental stewardship. Mental health improved on a broad scale, as people found solace and support in their newly forged connections. Society began to value emotional intelligence and empathy as essential qualities, nurturing them in educational systems and professional environments. Cities and towns were redesigned to encourage community living, fostering interaction and connection.

By 2050, the world had transformed in ways once unimaginable. The global community, once fragmented, now thrived on principles of empathy, understanding, and collaboration. The threats of environmental disaster and social upheavel were addressed with a newfound sense of urgency and unity.

One morning, as the first carbon-scrubbing garden city rose into the sky above Nairobi, I shared a cup of tea with a member of the global housing initiative. She turned to me, curiosity sparkling in her eyes. “Did you ever imagine your small act would lead to all this?”

I looked around at the lively, diverse gathering, feeling the kind of awe that is kin to prayer. “Honestly,” I said, “I just hoped to make a difference in one person’s day,.”

Now, sitting in the quiet of this nook, as the first stars appear in the sky, I realize that the radical acts of hospitality and connection we embarked upon didn’t just change individual lives; they reshaped the destiny of our planet. They were the seeds of a global movement that healed, united, and propelled us into a future where humanity and nature thrive together. Sometimes, the most profound journeys begin with the simplest steps, taken with an open heart.

Here I sit, looking at trees of many species I planted in my food forests back in 2024, and the years after, using ranch properties I was able to buy in New Mexico and Oregon. My first site had 708 acres of land, and it was followed by many others, over a hundred thousand acres were turned into food forests, and off grid communities of Earth stewards who joined me, from many nations. I had gathered a seed collection with over 550 species and cultivars, and was happy to get them planted and growing into mature specimens of their kind, giving us seeds and propagative material to continue growing them.

As a former Navy journalist, I know how to find information on many things, including producing clean energy, food and water, to end thirst, hunger, homelessness and energy deficits, and I found those answers, by 2024 I was ready to showcase them to prove what was possible to do in every nation, and for all people, of every generation. Over many years I had gathered a database of companies that provided systems for fuel less power generation, air to water generation, high density growing systems, perma-culture to design and plant food forests that would be around long after we were gone to dust.
https://foodforestabundance.com … https://freedomfarmacademy.com … www.foodnotlawns.com

Years earlier, I helped form the Primary Water Institute to teach people about water, how it forms constantly in the crust and mantle of the planet, why we will never run out of clean, safe water to use,
untouched by surface contaminants. I shared a free eBook .pdf of a suppressed volume,”New Water for a Thirsty World” by Michael Salzman, published in 1960, with over a century of research in fields and labs where people found water in fractured bedrock strata, made by volcanic, tectonic and geochemical processes in the crust and mantle of the planet, trying to end the lie of clean water scarcity.
www.primarywaterinstitute.org

By 2024 I had gathered a merry band of inventive folk, engineers, designers, eager to bring to the world the clean power and propulsion tech they had spent decades working on. We knew that with energy we could produce pure water from atmospheric moisture, and even use sunlight, it was being used in HydroPanels, like solar panels, but these produced pure water. www.source.io One company offered both ‘air to water’ generators, and the new DMIG (Digital Magnetic Inverter Generator) units that could provide off grid power to homes, businesses, farms, entire communities. https://quenchinnovations.com

It was amazing when we had it together, off grid power, water, food forests, homes made with Cob, Earthbag, Compressed Earth Bricks, Strawbale, and shelter domes, even our own PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) railways to move our people, and produce, around as needed on our sites, linking them to nearby communities where our co-op members could hop on for a ride to our food forest sites. Our interns, guests and visitors from many countries helped us to reach people back home, and to let them see what was possible to do in their communities. By this year of 2050 we had helped to bring a world at peace, with abundant clean energy, food, water, materials that went back to compost when we no longer needed them. We had achieved a truly ‘circular economy’ where nothing was wasted. We were lucky in 2024 to gain the financial means to buy ranches, and buildings zoned for industrial use, using our 3d printers to print what we needed on our sites, cottage industries, and R&D / education centers, with biopolymers from the plants we grew. https://berri-llc.com …. www.telfordinc.com …. https://3dwasp.com …. What we discovered was that there are a lot of people around the world who
are looking for answers, and once they have those amazing things happen.

Becoming Rhizomes in the Midst of Biospheric Collapse

What have they done to the earth, what have they done to our fair sister?
When the Music’s Over, The Doors 1967

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.
Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell 1970
Where We Are: Dissociated from the Biosphere

I’m six years old – it’s the height of modernity; vegetables are frozen; appliances are hawked on TV, transistor radios crackle, the sun gleams off of car fenders. I’m home with my mother and tell her, “I want to go home.” What do you mean, she asks. Cadwalader Avenue? “No. I plead, I want to go h-o-m-e.” The word, Solastalgia was coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht in his 2003 book Solastalgia: a new concept in human health and identity.[1] He describes it as “the homesickness you feel when your environment is changing in ways you find distressing.
Today the sheer Real is saturating our psyches with multi-faceted pandemics related to the Cartesian mindset which separates, exploits and extracts resulting in ecological degradation, habitat destruction, species extinction, biospheric collapse commonly known as climate change alongside mass shootings,a viral pandemic, rapacious inequity, the rise of facism and a war which has brought the other “n” word (nuclear) to the forefront of our consciousness. As though there’s not enough suffering from the slings and arrows of daily living within the context of the Great Matter of LIfe and Death.

How We Got Here: Divide & Conquer
I and many of us would not be alive today were it not for advances stemming from a Cartesian mindset and I honor that; nevertheless, it’s this very mindset that has brought us to the brink of biospheric collapse.
Cartesian dualism coursing through our culture. We operate by separating, by spliting – from splitting atoms to separating calves and their mothers and from separating our minds from our bodies and ourselves from nature; in short by objectifying subjects aka othering – this in tandem with the delusion of a permanent I who must always win, results in ends used to justify means; for example, a manager at work advises: Don’t administer the questionnaire until after the treatment plan is written so as to delay the clock from ticking on our metrics, which is tied to bonuses. The Organization Man now sports blue hair. Moreover, this fetish for metrics is reinforced by the reigning paradigm’s belief in unlimited growth and consumption so that consuming is now an expression of patriotism. Self-restraint is tantamount to sedition. What was Bush’s advice after 9/11? Go shopping.

We’re acculturated into an excess of individuality. Excess in the ecological sense of coping capacity, a concept describing the limit of stressors that a system is capable of carrying adaptively. And excess in the sense that lack is manufactured in our ever TB-like consumptive society – there’s never enough – there’s always something new and improved to buy and then some. A consumptive jouissance that can never be satisfied and keeps markets open 24/7 with disregard to our circadian rhythms, to the fact of our being earthlings. In his book, The Nutmegs Curse, Amitav Ghosh writes about omnicide as the outcome of the Cartesian, colonial mindset. We’ve only recently started to extradite ourselves from falsely separating our minds from our bodies and from nature to reclaim relationship as an essential condition of existence, consistent with indigenous and Buddhist wisdom of interdependence.
The way we’ve been living for the past 250 years is maladaptive in the long-term; a seven-generations mindset such as held by the Iroquois, who consider the effects of our actions on subsequent generations as distinct from our society’s quarterly shareholder gain mindset. Excessively separating ourselves from nature is boomeranging to bite us. It’s as though the natural world after patient, long suffering is in the midst of a fierce transference neurosis. Please be so kind as to indulge my animisitic explanation: Despite Cartesian dualism, we are in a relationship with Nature, one in which we’ve been chronically abusive. For a long while Nature cowered, all the while resentment seethed to coalesce and rise up against the oppressive Other, occasioned by serial hissy fits of flood and fire that kill and destroy. The biosphere is raging, sobbing, convulsing. We didn’t set limits on serial, ruthless exploiting and now the violence is coming back to haunt us. And just as with our patient’s, we’re not the original offender, but we bear the brunt of it – the intergenerational transmission of trauma isn’t limited to humans.

Exploitive, extractive industries view nature as a resource that Others through commodifying, through monetizing soil, air and water, the very sine qua non of life. Moreover, there’s a new obscenity called, Natural Asset Corporations (NACs), which the World Bank touts as, “Harnessing the power of capital markets to conserve and restore global biodiversity.” Environmental concerns are hijacked by NACs representing themselves as the solution to climate change whereas their mindset of making a buck in all situations problematizes their so-called solutions. The neoliberal, rational, enlightened mindset performs the slave/master function to posit nature as out there, to be conquered and mastered and couches this as in the best interest of the enslaved. The insidious appellation Human Resources was coined to refer to office Personnel. Employee’s energy is extracted so that we go home completely exhausted, good for nothing and who is the silent partner? Human Resources. HR is a forceful driver in the world, a kind of sub-global corporation in its own right, deciding our health plans, our pensions, our benefits. It would be progressive to reclaim the term, Personnel. There’s a confusion of pricing and value in the reigning paradigm; however, not everything has a price. Value is inestimable.

To accomplish the nefarious task of monetizing nature, the world outside our doorstep had to be othered, objectified, desouled, desacralized, deadened, a Cartesian machine existing as resources for our use without regard for the inherent value, dignity and uniqueness of every grain of sand, every blade of grass, existing within the web of universal life.

What is the psychology of those who have a choice of vocation and choose to engage in the extractive industries? Is the earth a mother, a child or simply a resource? What is being enacted here?

In 1947, the Mont Pelerin Society* began to sculpt today’s reigning economic world order. The intention was to integrate the global economy with minimum regulation and without planning. The metaphor, “market forces,” is reified now to such an extent that it is experienced as a literal force of Nature but is in fact a force by design, by policy.

How We Transform: Two-Eyed Seeing The Ecological Third and the Rhizomatic Theory of Mind

Transforming the current wealth-based paradigm to a life-based, ecocentric paradigm requires “two-eyed” seeing; that is, dialectically intertwining indigenous knowledge and wisdom traditions with current science such as advanced systems thinking and interpersonal neurobiology. Truth emerges paradoxically via the pataking of alleged opposites. Affirming dialectically intertwined, disinterested disciplines circumvents the audacity of reductive, autocratic certainty of mechanistic dualism.

There are four characteristics of indigenous culture shared by Indigenous people around the world, according to Comanche activist LaDonna Harris: relationship, responsibility, reciprocity and redistribution. All are our kin, including animals, plants and the living earth and we are responsible to nurture and care for them. Taking and giving are reciprocal: We share – skills, time, energy and material wealth. And as Daniel Wildcat advises, we relate to flora, fauna, all that is as relatives, not resources.
People who live indigenously experience flora, fauna and entities such as rocks, minerals, soil as living, ensouled beings with their own subjectivity, which fosters intersubjective relationality, a living network that I call the Symbolized Real. Symbolized because nature appears as characters in indigenous storytelling, growing out of a felt, experiential relatedness. There is a felt porousness
with the surround. I harm only what I need to harm in order to survive and conduct myself with reverence towards those whom I need to harm. All beings and entities are a who – not an it. Let’s each of us ask, What is my relationship with the biosphere starting with the shrub outside my door? And whatever it is, does it, and if so, how does it affect my work with my patients?

Just as the clinician and patient create a third intersubjective reality, let us now admit the biosphere into the clinician/patient relationship. Let’s call it the Ecological Third. And not just because of the calamitous crisis but because this is our reality as beings in the biosphere, with other beings, many embodied, many not in what we would commonly identify as a body. We’re here together in one massive bio-heap, composting together. We’re rhizomes, continuously growing horizontal underground stems which put out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals, rooted in the Wood Wide Web. Like the quote from John Muir which Joseph will share, we’re all threaded together. We are the natural world. The biologist Merlin Sheldrake writes, “The mycelial web looks like a network of neurons . . . extending through the dirt, sending molecular messages between plants, like the electrical impulses of the nervous system. These signals can confer greater resistance to disease for the plants.” Resilience is strengthened when we relate & communicate as part of the web of life, such as rhizomes do by forming networks, which relate and communicate laterally. This is significant towards our goal of creating an equitable world. Trees are great. Who doesn’t love a tree? But trees have become stand ins for hierarchy as shown in umpteen corporate organizational charts. By the by, I hope that we start to call Case Conferences, Emerging Conferences to reflect a rhizomatic trajectory of the psychoanalytic experience as the concept, case seems to me to be stuck in positivist, reductive thinking, connoting something that’s encased, ossified in space and time and objectified, denying the ongoing, emerging evolution of an intersubjective field.
Our minds are distributed throughout our body and beyond; these are the vibes we pick up from one another. Such intuition implores us not only to do no harm, but to assume sentience in all who are – fish & wood, water & soil – yes, let’s use animate pronouns to indicate sentience in all matter, including inorganic.

Because I’m disheartened by extractive capitalism, don’t think for one moment that I’m heartened by how socialists or communists treat the fauna and flora dwelling in their midst as their economies operate in an human-centric register; that is, I have a prefrontal cortex and opposable thumbs and therefore can do what I want, when I want, to whom I want whereas an ecocentric civilization reflects the reality of our existence: we’re one species in a vast network of myriad interdependent species. Similarly, let’s consider the psyche as distributed not only throughout our body but throughout the planet.

Psychotherapy is a liberatory experience as it strengthens the capacity for choice. It seems to me that a critical psychotherapy would engage with liberatory social transformation. We are the shamans of our culture. We create realities. Our job now includes being doulas to midwife a ecocentric civilization as we transform from a wealth-based to a life-based economy. How do we listen to our patients in the midst of the pervasive ontological insecurity ripping through the world today. Do we have the will to engage adeptly with multiple subjectivities? Do we have the courage to dwell in uncertainty, in interstitial limbo? With Todd we ask, What stories will emerge, shepherding us into this new paradigm of symbiotic holobionts as one jewel within the web of life?

A plethora of organizations worldwide is percolating to address all aspects of living such as regenerative energy, economics and agriculture and includes indices for well-being and flourishing economies to replace the GDP, an index of the monetary economy.

I realize now that my homesickness expressed at age 6 was a longing for a loving relational experience with the natural world. Now, decades later I have a word for it, solastalgia. Let’s create a world where matter matters, where the well-being of all beings matter & every entity, organic and inorganic is and feels at home.

Write as if it’s 2050 and Earth is a cooperative place. How did that come to pass?

 

Looking back, few would have believed that such a simple concept would change so much.  And yet, the idea of bringing neighborhoods together as Villages caught on like wildfire.  

 

But few saw what would happen next, as local connection ushered in a more resilient, more tolerant, more connected era of society.  Many now agree that the huge steps in our grand reconstruction were made possible because of this powerful movement for local connectivity.

 

It all started when I finally accepted my calling.  

 

In a moment of clarity, I realized that as much as I loved thinking about the grand problem, and how to orchestrate a grand solution, I wouldn’t be of much help without focus. 

 

I’ve always enjoyed and been good at bringing people together.  So that’s where I focused – through the forest of ideas to save the planet, I saw the tree of my contribution – bringing people together in their local neighborhoods.

 

Next I started forming Villages in workplaces, nonprofits, and neighborhoods.  I got to know people with very different views on things, and instead of selling an idea or action, I simply became a friend, and offered a space to stay connected.

 

It was a strange concept to most – that we would come together with no agenda, only to connect.  Most on the left really wanted to talk about environmental disasters, vegan diets, and minimalism.  And on the right, folks wanted to avoid the politics and just get to know each other.  Could such a divide be crossed?

 

New Villages sprung up, led by passionate community organizers who also saw their tree in the forest of solutions as local organizing.  The first gatherings were sparsely attended.  Those who showed up were either new to the area, or already invested in the idea of community building.  

 

Still, each core group turned into hot furnaces of leadership for their neighborhoods, and within a few short years, they attracted hundreds to join their Villages, with weekly gathering attendance between 20 and 30.  

 

Villages began to spring up in neighboring neighborhoods and cities, and national media helped form a narrative and generate excitement for folks to give Village a try.

 

The secret to the Village model, and why it was accepted by such a diverse group, was its liberating structures: just enough to keep things orderly, but not so much that people felt preached to, patronized, or constricted. 

 

What happened next was truly remarkable – emergent.  After building relationships within these neighborhood-based Villages, members who had passions for specific causes or ideas had space to share these, and other members listened.  Minds were opened, and people began to change, slowly, to find value in the ideas others were sharing.

 

A decade later, when the proposal to change the national base powerload from coal to nuclear was being debated, Villages had spread to every state, and became the place where the many sides of this debate were discussed.

 

And when the Refugee Reformation Act was proposed to begin accepting millions more South Americans into the States, local communities responded quickly by offering to host new residents.  And as they arrived, they quickly found a home at their local Villages.

 

Step by step, through the waxing and waning of wars, the changing of presidents, Villages continued to grow and connect people in ways that felt right, and respected the values most hold dear to their hearts.

 

Today, we are at a monumental place in human history, having finally released the shackles of greed and corruption that has burdened our journey towards justice for eons.  For the first time, we have faced our demons as a united human race, admitted our wrongs, and are working productively to correct them.

 

As this grand project of healing our planet and our collective traumas unfolds over the coming generations, thanks to Villages we may also deeply enjoy each moment of life, connected, playing, creating, and sharing experiences together.

 

How did we do it? It took a Village.

—

OLD

 

It all started back in 2020, when I invited a bunch of friends together for a potluck, and a gathering. I pitched the idea of starting a Village that would meet every month, so we could deepen our relationships and learn about and from each other.  I wanted the feeling of a church without the doctrine or preacher.  Much to my delight, people loved this idea!

 

Our gatherings moved to virtual and weekly during the COVID lockdown, and while many of the original group ended up leaving, new people joined with passion for the project.  We became known as Village Seattle.

 

I kept experimenting by starting Villages in others communities, then things really took off in 2024, when pilot projects in Seattle and Boise began bringing neighbors together in regular gatherings.