A Deep Breath Amidst the Storm

Not your average climate leaders' retreat

Embody Your Light is a newsletter written by Brooks Barron exploring how to come fully alive and build a more beautiful world from a place of alignment, presence and peace. Join the adventure:

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I’m co-leading a climate leaders’ retreat in the forested hills above Boulder, CO this November 9-10. It is bound to be an intrepid adventure as we voyage together into the exploration of what it looks like to step into climate action from a place of alignment, presence and peace — and in mystical, animistic relationship with nature.

Participants will walk away with a renewed sense of community, connection, and clarity that will empower them to operate more effectively and live more vibrantly as they continue their work on this important issue.

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We are past the point of climate change being a scary but distant future possibility. It’s here now, and it’s impacting the entire planet. Forest fires are burning at an astounding scale and geographic reach, glaciers are disappearing, new temperature records are piling up, and extreme weather events are becoming the new normal.

The world’s leading climate scientists tell us that we are barreling in the direction of climate catastrophe. There’s still time to avoid the worst possible impacts of climate change, but to do so at this point would require drastic action — on the order of slashing global emissions in half by the end of the decade.¹ And despite all the technological and economic progress we herald, that global emissions curve just continues to climb.²

Perhaps it’s time we approach this challenge from a different frame of consciousness.

I know many climate leaders. I dedicated three degrees (AB, MBA, MS) and the first major chapter of my professional life to this issue. I am well aware of all the incredibly brilliant, passionate, creative and dedicated souls out there who are working night and day and bringing amazing visions to life, all in the name of saving our home planet — and preserving our livelihood as a species in the process.

To all you climate leaders out there: I honor you. I offer you a deep bow of gratitude for your big heart and your selfless commitment to a very important cause much greater than yourself.

Missing Ingredients

Based on what I see out there in the climate movement today, I believe there are two key missing ingredients whose absence plays a major role in how relatively small our progress seems to be compared to what we know we need to do. These ingredients are 1) creator consciousness and 2) active engagement with the animate world.

Creator Consciousness

When grappling with such a big, complex and scary issue, it’s easy for any of us to slip into a state of threat and victimhood — what my mentors at the Conscious Leadership Group call being “Below The Line.” As I shared in a recent post, this was the place from which I oriented to the issue of climate change for more than the first decade of my adult life.

While it’s completely natural, normal and understandable to exist in this state with regards to climate change, it also significantly limits our ability to create transformational results. We waste a lot of energy blaming, complaining, and defending our righteous beliefs. We tend to operate on overdrive and burn ourselves out. We are blind to the deeper unconscious currents in our psyche that are perpetuating our experience of threat and drama. As such, the solutions we achieve typically provide temporary relief at best, while failing to actually shift the underlying patterns that are creating the issue in the first place.

Creator consciousness — existing Above The Line in a state of trust, openness and curiosity, and living from a place of alignment, presence and peace — is the antidote and the alternative. It means taking 100% responsibility for our experience of reality and letting go of being right. It means learning to trust and follow the wisdom of our bodies and emotions, and embracing the world and all of its actors as allies here for our growth. It means appreciating life exactly as it is, and releasing our entitlement to things being different. It means living in our genius, being guided by our Whole Body Yes, creating win-for-all solutions, and being the resolution to what it is that we see missing.

For a deeper exploration of what all this actually looks like and feels like, see this recent post where I share some more of my own journey of shifting from victim consciousness to creator consciousness around the issue of climate change, and/or check out the book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.

Active Engagement with the Animate World

So you’re dedicated to protecting the natural world… but when was the last time you directly sought guidance from it?

Perhaps you espouse your love for wild beings and wild places, and that love is at the core of what drives you in this profession — but are you intimately in relationship with those beings and places? Do you treat them as you would treat a human being you love — as sentient, conscious, full of intelligence and wisdom, and open to co-creative possibilities? Or do you appreciate them only from a safe emotional distance, sensing deep in your heart that they could be animate, aware, and even watching you — but not being willing to truly act like it?

There is a whole universe of possibility — one that includes a beautiful, harmonious and symbiotic relationship between humans and the natural world — that lies on the other side of remembering and coming home to our animist roots. Animism, in short, is a worldview that recognizes the existence of spirit in all things. As beautifully articulated by Joshua Michael Schrei of The Emerald Podcast, the vast majority of all human beings throughout time have been animists, and as such, he makes the case that animism is normative consciousness.

When we remember that, unlock the dormant animism that’s always been within us, and come home to our inner knowing that we are intricately interconnected members of the great family of Life — everything shifts. And new co-creative possibilities emerge in which we don’t need to figure everything out all by ourselves.

A Deep Breath Amidst the Storm

I don’t know exactly what it will look like for a collective of climate leaders to step into action from alignment, presence and peace, and in deep animistic relationship with nature. That is a tapestry that has yet to be woven, and that can only be created through the field of co-creative possibility that will emerge when a critical mass of such leaders commit themselves to the journey of finding out.

However, I have unyielding trust that such a possibility is not only out there — it is imminent. We have the tools and the level of collective awakening to make it happen. We can take solace in the wisdom of the tracker, as shared by South African lion tracker Renias Mhlongo, mentor to the well-known life coach Boyd Varty: “I don’t know where we are going, but I know exactly how to get there.” We just keep following the next track — the next moment of alignment, presence, and peace — and the future we are seeking will emerge.

Come join me for A Deep Breath Amidst the Storm: A Climate Leaders’ Retreat in Boulder this November 9-10 to discover exactly what I mean by that, and how it feels to apply it to your own life and career.

“The times are urgent; let us slow down.” - Bayo Akomolafe

Amidst another summer of climate records, it’s critical for those dedicating themselves to the much-needed and diverse work to address the climate emergency to take space to re-center, rejuvenate, and reconnect with the more-than-human world.

My colleagues and dear friends Dom Francks, Tina Fields and I will be hosting A Deep Breath Amidst the Storm: A Climate Leaders’ Retreat in Boulder, November 9-10.

Hosted at the beautiful Starhouse in the foothills of the Front Range, this two-day retreat will be a nexus of community, connection, and clarity for climate leaders.

Drawing on our experience as wilderness guides and leadership coaches, and in Tina’s case over a decade of experience as a Professor of Ecopsychology, we’ll embark on group and individual practices to connect with the wisdom of nature. Employing the powerful toolset of Conscious Leadership, we will dive deep into the challenges each of us face through direct and actionable group coaching.

We’ll also hold a grief ceremony to honor the depth of loss that many of us feel (or avoid feeling) towards the ongoing devastation of ecologies and communities both close to home and around the world.

Those that join us for this retreat will leave feeling grounded in the truth of this moment and their agency to make change, supported by a powerful and caring community, and connected to the wisdom and beauty of the animate world.

Please reach out if you’re interested or would like more information, and share far and wide with any people or communities you think would be a good fit!

Early bird pricing ($100 off) is available until October 1.

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With hope and inspiration,

Brooks

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Embody Your Light is a newsletter written by Brooks Barron exploring how to come fully alive and build a more beautiful world from a place of alignment, presence and peace. Join the adventure:

1. Hersher, R. (2023, March 20). Cut emissions quickly to save lives, scientists warn in a new U.N. report. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/20/1162711459/cut-emissions-quickly-to-save-lives-scientists-warn-in-a-new-u-n-report

2. (2023, March 02). Global CO2 emissions rose less than initially feared in 2022 as clean energy growth offset much of the impact of greater coal and oil use. IEA. https://www.iea.org/news/global-co2-emissions-rose-less-than-initially-feared-in-2022-as-clean-energy-growth-offset-much-of-the-impact-of-greater-coal-and-oil-use