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by
Dr. Leslie
Gray
 Excerpts
of "Shamanism and Eco-Psychology: Ancient Answers for Contemporary
Concerns," Leslie Gray's CUUPS Keynote Address given at the
1995
General Assembly in Spokane, Washington. Of Oneida and Seminole heritage,
Leslie Gray practices as a
clinical psychologist and shamanic counselor.
My purpose tonight in
speaking is to
suggest that the re-inclusion of the ancient
world view
expressed in the American Indian
statement "all my relations" is
precisely our greatest hope for the future, ecologically and
psychologically. I'll say a little bit about the situation we are in. I
would describe it as nothing less than imminent global catastrophe.
Ecocide if you will. As a species we are destroying our life support
systems. The air is becoming increasingly unbreathable. The hole in the
ozone grows larger. Water becomes undrinkable, the oceans are dying, the
soil is eroded and turning non-arable. Toxic nuclear waste is leaking into
all three elements just mentioned from unthinking, short sighted attempts
to harness the fourth element, fire.
No one escapes the daily
recitation of the facts of planetary destruction in the media. They are
voluminous. But whether it is the loss of a hundred species to our
ecosystem a day or the destruction of old growth forests equal to the area
of Pennsylvania each year or even the information that due to pesticides
sperm counts of American males today are 50% that of their grandfathers,
we seem to respond to these facts with denial, repression or despair
rather than conscious action. Although planetary restoration is still
possible, no one expects modern science or conventional state religions to
turn this situation around. Indeed, many leading edge thinkers are coming
to the conclusion that it is only through the formation of an empathic
relationship with the Earth that we will survive. This is what
eco-psychologists are saying.
This points to the main
problem of the ecology movement. Ecologists don't know much about changing
human behavior. They have been relying primarily on fear and guilt tactics
for almost thirty years now. And they don't work. We're all scared to
death. But the tactics haven't worked. I actually saw in a recent
advertisement that I think was meant to encourage you to join the Sierra
Club a large black and white picture of the face of an owl with piercing
yellow eyes and underneath it said in bold letters, "Make my
day." I found myself saying what's the image here? The natural world
as Clint Eastwood? Intimidation doesn't work either.
Psychologists know that
reality is dependent on our perception of it. Therefore we must appeal to
people compassionately and positively or they won't change. But the field
of psychology has its own tragic flaw. It has remained exclusively focused
on human beings and their relations with one another. Regardless of
theoretical orientation—psychoanalytic, behaviorist, humanist, or
transpersonal the focus has been on human beings. The consequences of this
anthropomorphism for psychology have been at the very least that it seems
to have made itself irrelevant to the central question of our time,
whether life itself will remain sustainable. Another consequence is that
there is no model of mental health which includes the natural world.
If visitors from another
planet came here and were to read the DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual Four, the one that has the diagnostic categories
required, where you pick the particular flavor of disturbance that you
diagnose someone with if you are a psychologist (and which is required by
all insurance companies, even if you are going for just a couple of
visits), they would possibly conclude that you could raise a human being
in a broom closet as long as there was a mother and a father inside there.
The DSM-IV has exactly two references to the natural
world—seasonal-affective disorder and the other is bestiality.
I really see both these
problems of ecology and of psychology as world-view problems. Both fields
are acting as if they are not related to each other. Indeed the slogan of
the eco-psychology movement has become ecology needs psychology and
psychology needs ecology. I think at its best, eco-psychology says that
you can't have sanity without a sane relationship with the natural world.
Eco-psychology proposes a shift of consciousness from the atomistic to the
synergistic. For example, Theodore Roszak says in his book, Voices of
the Earth, "Eco-psychology holds that there is a synergistic
interplay between planetary and personal well-being. The term synergy is
chosen deliberately. The contemporary ecological translation of the term
might be that the needs of the planet are the needs of the person, the
rights of the person are the rights of the planet." And I say that's
a good start, Doctor Roszak, but what's missing from this picture?
Spirituality. And that I should say right away is my greatest fear about
the eco-psychology movement, that it will become merely the combination of
environmentalism with academic psychology. Right now the field is so
nascent that whether or not that happens hasn't been determined. There are
many people introducing ideas of Earth-based spirituality into
eco-psychology and there are many who say there is no place for
spirituality in eco-psychology.
Eco-psychology can be
described as an attempt to bring the rest of the social sciences into line
with the insights of modern physics about interconnectedness. These
insights are often described as a new paradigm. A new paradigm? It seems
to me that this paradigm is the paradigm of the oldest psycho-spiritual
cosmological system there is—shamanism. The shamanic world view is
perennial. It has been acknowledged continuously for forty thousand years
and continues to be so by the more than three hundred million indigenous
peoples in the world today. This perennial indigenous world view is
powerfully stated in the Chuckchee saying, "Everything that is, is
alive." In a universe of living things intimately related the
biosphere is our family. In this family are ourselves, the two-legged, the
four-legged, the creepers, crawlers, rock people, the plant people, the
tall-straight people, the rolling hills, the grasses, the cloud people,
planets, starry nation, galaxies, all my relations. And this family has
values, family values. Let's just look at the traditional family values of
this land, Turtle Island. The traditional family values of America have
been held for thousands of years. They are respect for life, harmony with
nature's cycles, gratitude, balance, and above all, reciprocity. Don't
take anything without giving something back. The spiritual tradition of
Native America is one of reciprocal relations with the Earth. I have no
doubt that the failure to honor this American tradition will result in our
destruction. Just as the re-inclusion of our Earth-based spiritual
tradition is the key to restoring our land and our sanity. So I would say
dominate the Earth or treat the Earth as sacred. This is the central
spiritual question of our time. 
 Dr.
Leslie Gray, executive director and founder of the Woodfish Institute, is
a Native American psychologist who has studied with medicine people and
elders from various tribal backgrounds. She advocates (and embodies) a new
vision of health care—the integration of ancient healing and modern
medicine.
Dr. Gray has a private practice in San Francisco, California,
teaches workshops and seminars worldwide, and conducts travel/study
programs to ancient sites. She has lectured at various universities
including the University of California at Berkeley and the Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology. She consults with individuals and organizations
on the practice of ecopsychology, and her work has been featured in such
periodicals as East-West Journal and Re-Vision Journal, as
well as in the book Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the
Mind. Dr. Gray has served on the board of directors of the Association
for Transpersonal Psychology, and is currently an Associate of the Milton
Erickson Institute of the Bay Area.
www.woodfish.org
Reprinted
by Wellness Goods under
expressed
permission of the author.
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