Meeting the Great Unraveling

The day Hurricane Helene hit, in late September 2024, my husband, Mark, and I woke up early and settled into morning meditation. At 9:00 a.m., Mark walked the land to ensure that our gardens and tiny trickle of a creek were faring well. The rain and wind had intensified. We had kept an eye on weather reports and had innocently stocked up on extra candles in case the power went out for a few days. With the internet down, we were unaware that the storm had changed course dramatically in the middle of the night and that our region was about to become its bull’s-eye. Everyone, including elders who had inhabited these mountains for eighty years, believed the mountains would always protect us. 

Suddenly, the loudest crash we had ever heard erupted, and a river of debris cascaded down from the mountain above with no warning. We watched it pick up my office at the back of our house and carry it away, then begin pushing mud into our home through the open wall. Time slowed down and sped up simultaneously as the flooding then destroyed my husband’s office. There was a quickening in our hearts as we prepared to escape and entered the micro-moment awareness of mindful witnessing and action, when a huge tree crashed into the living room and punctured the propane tank. 

Just as we were running out, the entire house crashed down upon us. My husband dove out the front sliding glass door while I was swallowed up by the landslide and flooding. As I tumbled into the underworld beneath our home, I suspected I was dying. Yet a few minutes later, a slight opening of light emerged in the muddy dark in which I was tumbling. With that light as a guide, I quickly slid out. In the chaos of the storm, I heard my husband screaming my name as he pulled me out of the mud he thought had killed me.

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None of my old subconscious fears about where danger and harm could come from touched my near-death experience. My home—the place where I believed I had the most safety and control—assaulted me, alongside the trees, earth, and water I had so lovingly stewarded. 

I’ve been a student of climate change since I was a teenager. I’ve helped others metabolize the grief, frustration, and desperation of witnessing society’s resistance to addressing both the clear and the more subtle signs of the climate crisis. I’ve long devoted my dharma teaching to bridging the timelessness of practice with a conscious response to the polycrisis we face today. 

Yet my own experience of natural disaster held myriad surprises. Seeing the walls, roof, and foundation of our home dissemble before our eyes, and all our belongings wash away, both shocked my human orientation and affirmed the truth of impermanence. Through a near-death experience, I met the threshold to death with curiosity, innocence, and beginner’s mind. This has ever-deepened my trust in life and practice. Practice had prepared me for this like nothing else. Practice equips us to meet what my mentor Joanna Macy has long called The Great Unraveling. 

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In the first week following Hurricane Helene, an indescribable sobriety and simultaneous awakening rippled through our mountain community in western North Carolina, an experience I suspect only people who have witnessed an entire region transformed by natural disaster, war, or a climate event can understand. With access roads destroyed by landslides, our community was trapped on the mountain where we lived. We had limited resources, many neighbors in need of help, and no clue if the storm’s ferocity had run its course.

As I nursed my injuries and served in the initial recovery efforts by being emotionally present and making sure people were fed, I was aware that my life and perspective would be forever changed by the unimaginable events I had just experienced. 

I took these notes on the back of an envelope:

What is resiliency? Community resiliency is our willingness to both give and receive support from one another moment by moment. Bodhicitta is the seat of our resiliency. The bodhisattva in today’s world is adaptive, fluid, vulnerable, collaborative, and willing to soften rather than harden in the face of disaster. 

What is preparation? The only true preparation is within oneself. We cannot fathom what direction the creative-destructive force of Earth’s storms might take. Emergence is the organizing principle of life on earth, and presence is the only preparation for emergence. There is no planning. You must flow. So commit to practice. You may not know what the escape route might be. 

What is revealed in the wake of a climate event? A climate event takes us beyond the thin veil of separation between oneself and one’s neighbor, and beyond the false divide between oneself and those events that happen “out there.” The social constructs and built environment we often find security in are revealed as just that: constructs. In the wake of a storm, what remains is the naked truth that we are all in this together, at ground zero. 

While love thy neighbor was already a value in western North Carolina, Hurricane Helene seeded a community awakening in our region. It was as if people were starving to embrace one another with a quality of unconditional kinship that appeared only when social constructs were stripped away.

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Throughout the liminality, discomfort, and complexity, I have taken refuge continually in stillness. The still certainty that comes with strong intent and years of practice has given me a foundation throughout my journey of displacement. I’ve continued to teach while living out of a suitcase and not knowing where I will land, and this has been invaluable for my sangha. 

Teaching in full transparency in the aftermath of the hurricane has normalized for many in my sangha that it’s OK to be messy. That’s our collective reality. I’ve been showing up and modeling the reciprocity of holding community while allowing community to hold me. This has offered me an honest teaching about resilience.

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Bodhicitta, referred to in Mahayana Buddhism as “awakening mind,” is our immeasurable magnitude for care and kindness toward all of life. We are sometimes only partially aware of its potential in everyday life. Bodhi means “awake,” or “completely open.” Citta means “mind,” “heart,” and “attitude.” Bodhicitta is about tenderizing and softening rather than hardening. It is the foundation for vulnerability in moments of gratitude, radical generosity, and building bridges in the relational field. It is about protecting what we love rather than defending against what we fear. 

The potential of bodhicitta was exhibited by neighbors, strangers, and sangha who organized with a joy of service. I was reminded of my training as a Zen monastic. Everyone rallied for the common cause of care for all. The specific ways the Buddhist community co-organized affirmed that sila and sangha should be core teachings in these times. 

While my Zen mentor Pam Weiss started a GoFundMe for us before we were even off the mountain, my colleague Kritee Kanko organized help for our escape from the mountain. Ivan Meyerhoff, a Buddhist chaplain from Davidson College, heroically responded and drove hours to rescue us as soon as the roads were partly clear. Another knock on the door of the neighbor’s house in which we were sheltering revealed a sangha member from Tennessee, who drove a long distance on dangerous roads to deliver supplies to the Buddhist sanghas he was connected to. 

Our relationships matter, and our dharma must focus on nourishing them. Systems are unraveling. Any attempt to spiritually bypass by trying to hold on to an individual island of peace is useless. We are all in this together.

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A few weeks after we lost our home, my husband and I flew to Los Angeles from New Jersey, where we had been staying with family after leaving North Carolina. While we were in New Jersey there were ten wildfires and days of 75-degree temperatures. Our last day in California was January 7. As we waited on the tarmac for our plane to take flight, large billows of gray smoke suddenly appeared over the Pacific Palisades, just a few miles away. This was the start of the Palisades fire that would devastate a community, with the Eaton fire destroying another nearby community in Altadena just a few days later. 

This is a time that requires our consciousness to change. Just as we might consider ways that Covid was an ally shaking us out of our slumber and helping us to awaken, these climate events are also our allies. They are helping us to wake up—if we are willing. People have been blind to the impact of our actions and interconnection on this planet for too long. As the earth heats up, the invitation is to open our hearts in a bigger way. 

The polycrisis points us to radical acceptance of reality. These storms are not going to stop anytime soon. As we move more into acceptance, our fragility can be supplanted by the knowledge that we’re part of the natural feedback system and the web of interconnection on planet Earth. Let’s support one another to awaken to the teaching of this time. Let’s show up for one another and those who are most vulnerable through this chaos, welcoming the reality that everything is cracked.

GROUND ZERO: When We Have Nothing But Our Connection To Source, Which is Everything

Mark and I arrived in Ojai 10 days ago. A community member generously offered us their guest cottage for a few weeks, shaded by the maternal presence of oak and sycamore trees. The Chumash name Ojai translates to nest. This nest, a valley of stillness, sheltered by the TopaTopa Mountains, drew my grandparents to live here decades ago. It is the place where Mark and I first met in 2013 and the place we called home for 5 years.

This morning, while on a walk at the river bottom, we had the shared realization that it had been exactly seven years — to the day — since we had left Ojai and driven cross-country to resettle in North Carolina. 

We had chosen the mountains of western North Carolina through our appreciation of the deep green forests, the warmth of the people, and the affordable land. We hadn't known the timing yet of our move date, but when we each actually had consecutive dreams about a big wildfire coming through Ojai, the kind of dream that carries the instructive clarity of a premonition, we packed our belongings and began our drive. Exactly two weeks later, the Thomas Fire came through Ojai moving through our neighborhood first, and our entire community back at home was catapulted into trauma.

Though Ojai and our community here have all recovered, returning to this place on the anniversary of the day we left feels particularly tender. Having been flung out of our home and community in Black Mountain, NC, by Hurricane Helene (the most unexpected series of events), this fall has been for us a period of profound displacement and disorientation; yet it has also been a re-awakening. Being cast out of the sanctuary we had created there — and the land we were in constant communication and interrelatedness with — has made us even more aware of the fragility of this life… and the vulnerability of the human built environment. 

Our larger community has been sheltering us, as we have traveled from the East Coast back to California, yet it has been disorienting to be in a different place every week, knowing there is actually no home to return to. We still have raw moments of feeling in complete shock. 

It has also put us more in touch with our compassion and solidarity for displacement as a collective experience. There's an increasing number of beings displaced on Planet Earth right now, ranging from climate refugees to refugees of war, the homeless, those who are incarcerated, children who are displaced through the child welfare system, and animals displaced by desertification and other ecological phenomena. Here in the US the displacement and deportation of millions of immigrants has been announced for 2025, a fact that chills me to the bone. 

I believe we all feel some degree of disorientation as we meet the year’s end, through the cataclysmic changes we are bearing witness to in our world… the aftermath of the elections, the continuation of wars in Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, and across continents, and a dismantling of systems we have relied upon in our world. 

Before we left western North Carolina, Mark and I bore witness to the dismantling of an entire region as we had known it. The sheer amount of debris, Armageddon-like destruction, and chaotic devastation cracked open my mind beyond possibilities I had imagined before. It is the closest thing I’ve seen to a war zone and our community there will be in recovery for years.

I’ve heard stories of military volunteers coming back to the US only to find existential confusion and disconnect in the process of returning home to a society immersed in normalcy. Having had such an expanded experience of service and unification, of life and death, coming home to the relative world concerns of people back home often hasn’t made sense to us. On some days, Mark and I are navigating a similar experience to veterans returning from war zones. Given a second chance at life, we are more present than ever each day to the expanded state of being and the fundamental question: What is of essence and what is not?

Alongside meeting the responsibilities of endless forms to fill out seeking aid, constant running of errands, and tangling bureaucracy, we are guided by a fierce, primal calling to prioritize Truth as we simultaneously engage with the relative world’s demands. We were flung out of our home but also flung out of familiar habit patterns and life as we knew it. We are in a liminal process of dismemberment which opens the door to all possibility.

Yesterday, I prepared to lead a teaching online about Luminous Darkness. That morning, I had reflected on and outlined certain excerpts and practices from my book. I had created a comfortable setup for teaching on Zoom in the tiny cottage where we are staying, and picked wildflowers and sage for the vase beside me. Just as I was about to go live, my computer unexpectedly crashed and the connection entirely disappeared. Gone were any notes or documents I had prepared. The group of international participants was left waiting. The host was left wondering. 

My body responded with sensations of disorientation and surprise, alongside a familiar relief. I felt the symptoms of the now familiar experience of everything in the relative world being stripped down unexpectedly. Expectations being erased. Plans dissolving. Communication disappearing. Ground Zero. We all know the experience of our expectations dissolving, through storms and power outages, through COVID-19, through the recent election, through life changing dramatically before our eyes; but still we forget… The crash felt symbolic of the spiritual teachings of the Hurricane Helene experience and my lived experience of displacement. 

None of us know what will happen next. The only preparation for Life is living in the Now. The only real preparation for Life is our Self. This is the teaching of Zero.

Everytime Life strips away that which is human-made and puts me in touch with the distilled nakedness of being human without the external trappings we’ve come to assume are dependable, I feel a glimmer of freedom, alongside the jolt of loss. I recognize the truth of Zero as our home base.

There is nothing external that we can rely upon all of the time, nor that can save us from our vulnerability as human beings. We can spend a lot of time investing in preparations and fears that take us entirely away from the only thing worth investing in: The present moment. Ground Zero. Groundlessness.

In the hurricane, my husband and I had the life/death experience of everything being lost. Our house fell apart with me inside it. Our life’s belongings disappeared into an unfathomable landslide and flood. Access to water was gone. My life was nearly taken by the home I considered my safest place. For the entire week after (and weeks for many), communication lines were down. Roads were disrupted. The modern human world was stopped in its course entirely. Everything was stripped down to Zero. There was no one “out there” to save us. 

When I first emerged from the mud where I was buried and tumbled and nearly died, I felt the benevolent presence of St. Francis and Clare, two saints who have been inspirations for me since my time as a Buddhist monk. St. Francis offered, in his time, a teaching called holy poverty, in which he renunciated all of the material trappings of his life and devoted himself to radical Trust in Life, inspired by the teachings of Jesus Christ. Similar to Buddhism, the teaching of renunciation reminds us that being overly caught up/invested in the material world and world of appearances/attainment (in ways we might not even realize) distracts and blocks our access to what we most long for: Trust in Life. 

I've lived as a monk and I’ve lived as a lay teacher in this lifetime… and I’ve come to understand that it doesn’t matter what context we are living in…

Ground Zero is the place of emptiness where we have nothing but our connection to Source, which is everything. 

Meditation teaches us to anchor in Source even when there is no solid ground beneath us. 

We have a choice in every moment to let go of every shiny, colorful object, thought, distraction, and identification that takes us further away, rather than closer to our connection to Source.

We can start with exactly what is in front of us, here and now, and be intimate with Life as it is.

Perhaps the collective changes we face, alongside loss and discomfort, are inviting us to clarify our understanding of who we actually are, what is important, and deepen our trust in Life. This is a time for all of us of letting go of expectations we didn’t even know we had. We don’t, as an example, know the exact ways climate change will impact us. But we can show up in ways that affirm our trust in emergence, in the reciprocal circle of interconnection, outside our bubble of separate self. We do know that there's an opportunity to come home to ourselves and to each other through each breath and each moment… and to invest in our connection to Source, which is real and can be sustained through everything we will ever experience. That is what is real. 

As we approach the year's end, I feel evermore present to the teachings of Zero. I feel more gratitude than ever to simply be alive. Sometimes this post-hurricane journey has been uncomfortably bumpy, and I’ve found myself exhausted from living out of luggage for so many weeks or triggered by not being able to find socks in my suitcase. But we have not lost sight of the liberating nature and spiritual invitation of this time. Our desire is always to be of service, to deepen our connection to Source, and to trust in Life.

4 Vital Principles of Sacred Activism

These are reflections from a dharma talk Eden gave as part of Embodied Changemaking and Sacred Justice on Behalf of Life, a course offered through Barre Center for Buddhist Studies March-July 2024, to be offered again in 2026. Her next Sacred Activism offerings are a residential retreat in October and a 6-week course November-December.

So many of us are holding questions in our hearts about how to respond consciously to the times we face, and what being of service looks like now. Sacred Activism is based on 4 vital principles of embodied change-making.

PARTNERSHIP WITH NATURE: The key to effecting long term sustainable change within ourselves and our world is always partnership with nature. In the words of Vandana Shiva, “You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder, it is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.” Partnership with nature - as a way of life and leadership - opens up dimensions of our being beyond the rational, linear mind, beyond the conditioned mind of limitation, beyond egocentricity and anthropocentricity. It awakens us to a much larger perspective and sense of possibility. Only when we listen more deeply to the natural world can we remember the ecoliteracy that allows us to receive guidance and support from every form of life.

RIGHT HERE FROM THE MUCK, WITH THE RESOURCES WE’VE GOT: It can be easy to believe the story that we are inadequate, or have limited resources to effect change. The circumstances we face can feel overwhelming, especially given the demands and constraints of racial capitalism. Yet throughout history, time and time again, sacred activists have modeled a “right here from the muck” mentality that says, regardless of the resources I have, I know I'm here to serve. And I choose to respond to this call on behalf of life. When we accept the muck we’re in and question the habit of perceiving insufficiency, we recognize how much energy that story was draining. We gain access to a well of vitality, and resilience with which to serve Life.

PROTECT WHAT WE LOVE, RATHER THAN DEFEND AGAINST WHAT WE FEAR:  From the microcosm to the macrocosm, from our personal daily interactions to our efforts to address systemic injustice, there is a vast difference in how we show up when we are defending against what we fear versus protecting what we love. Defending requires that we put on a shield and maintain the false lens of self and other. Consciously protecting Life is only possible when we connect to source and recognize interdependence. It’s not what we do but how we do it. Showing up with relational presence is an expression of sacred activism and allows us to act in a more effective way than fear-based actions. This inspires us to bring conscious to how we relate with ourselves and  grow movements and to impact change. 

RELEASING THE BINARIES OF COLLECTIVE CONDITIONING: Every ism that we face today is based in the distortion of binary perception: light v. dark, good v. bad, superior v. inferior. Through binary perception we falsely separate the sacred and activism, restoration and action, receptivity and our engagement with the world. Expanding how we relate to these elemental principles in our lives and on behalf of what we love opens us up to deeper power. Centuries of ingrained biases and patriarchy have elevated the principles of brute force, action, strategic thinking, rationalization, winning, and scale while devaluing stillness, embodiment cooperation, humility, care, compassion, and listening. Sacred activism invites us to see what is possible when we see clearly from the heart. perceiving through a lens of wholeness rather than separation.

Please consider joining Eden and her beloved colleague Nina Simons for 2 upcoming offerings to empower our sacred activism.

• SACRED ACTIVISM: WEAVING NATURE, CULTURE & SPIRIT with Deborah Eden Tull & Nina Simons, October 23rd-27th, 2024 at Art of Living Center. Register here.
  

• SACRED ACTIVISM: MEETING OUR CHALLENGES AS GATEWAYS FOR CULTIVATING RELATIONAL LEADERSHIP, a Bioneers Learning Course with Deborah Eden Tull and Nina Simons, a 6-week online series, on Wednesdays, October 30th - December 4th, 2024 from 1pm-3pm EST. Register here.