global oneness project The Great Turning There are a lot of people, when they look at the situation, the facts, the pollution, the economy and meltdown, Joanna Macy - San Francisco, California - Eco-philosopher and Activist the militarism, the generation of yet more weapons, the extinction spasms of this species, of course, who wouldn't be in despair? I mean, it seems like if you're not, you're out to lunch. But that's not the whole story. We have to really not be afraid of feeling pain for our world--number one; that we recognize that the anguish we feel for what is happening to our world is inevitable and normal and even healthy because how are we going to do the huge about-face psychologically and socially that we need to do to create, out of the present disarray, an exquisite life-sustaining, life-respecting society unless we ready to just galvanize everything. So pain is very useful. Just don't be afraid of it. Recognize that the anguish, the horror even, that we can feel over the devastation that we read about or see or experience that it's okay to feel that. We're tough. Because if we are afraid to feel that, we won't feel where it comes from, and where it comes from is love, our love for this world. That's what is going to pull us through. So know that the feelings of grief, anger, outrage, that can come as you look at how this world is being trashed--and its people-- that that pain is just the other side of love. And if you try to anesthetize yourself, then you numb your whole psyche, and that is so boring and ineffective. So this is the time for ourselves to reach and expand into our full humanity and in that humanity will be our anger and outrage, our imagination, our creativity, our laughter. We are going to come alive now, and we are. I call that The Great Turning. www.globalonenessproject.org - Footage courtesy of the Pachamama Alliance