An appreciation of 'Double Vision: The Gestalt of our Environmental Crisis',
Marianne Fry Lecture by Mary-Jayne Rust, Bristol, 9 July 2011
Kamalamani, July 2011

Each year a lecture is held in Bristol in memory of Marianne Fry, a well known and well loved Gestalt trainer. The lectures began after Marianne's death in 1998, when her friends and students wished to perpetuate her values and interests for the benefit of later generations of Gestalt therapists and trainees. The Marianne Fry lectures tend to focus upon the relationship between Gestalt and spirituality, Germany and the Holocaust, dialogue, and family therapy.

Last Saturday I was fortunate to attend the 2011 lecture by Mary-Jayne Rust, Ecopsychologist, Jungian Analyst and Art therapist. Mary-Jayne opened her lecture by linking her talk on 'Double Vision' to the themes that the Marianne Fry lectures focus upon. She talked of how deeply spiritual her own path has been as an Ecopsychologist. She named how we are in the midst of a current Holocaust, in terms of the global challenges we face, including the environmental crisis. She noted how difficult it can be to talk about what's going as we are in the midst of a Holocaust, because of the deep pain and fear of the situation. She personally feels that we have gone beyond the point of being able to reverse the effects of climate change, although remains open to something happening which is beyond our current conception or realm of experience - a miracle perhaps. She voiced Joanna Macy's words:

"we do not and cannot know whether we are here to serve as deathbed attendants for our world or as midwives to a new chapter of life on Earth" (1)

Mary-Jayne pointed out that it is particularly difficult to face the current times because we are both victim and perpetrator: staring into the face of the Gorgon. She borrowed the words of Thomas Berry; we are 'living between' the stories of progress and a new unfurling story of how we face the crisis we are in, finding a new way, a new language, a new way of being. We have each been living 'on top of' rather than 'inside' the land and we need to journey back to living inside the land. In doing this we reconnect with intimacy with ourselves, realising greater embodiment and thereby re-experiencing our intimacy with each other and the other-than-human world. In Mary-Jayne's words, coming back into 'right relationship' or intimacy with ourselves, others (humans and other-than-humans) and our environment.

Much of the lecture consisted of stories, for example, the incredibly moving story of Aldo Leopold and the shift he made in his own world view as he made eye contact with the wolf he had just shot and killed. Leopold went on to become an early founder of the environmental movement. Mary-Jayne talked of the myth of the fall. She also drew upon amazing images which themselves reflected the theme of 'double vision': how each image could be seen in its beauty and potential horror. For example, an image which looked to be a beautiful sunset was in fact a humungous storm lit up by the light of the failing sunlight. She showed the image of a pregnant woman suspended in the waters of a shallow wave. Mary-Jayne's response to this picture was one of being moved by the earth's waters holding the woman and the woman's waters holding her unborn child. Her partner however was spooked by the picture: 'it looks like a dead body!' Another collage picture showed startling images of the eyes of a variety of beings: human and other than human, arranged around an image of the 'eye of Africa', the mysterious land formation in Mauratania. 

In bringing the richness of stories and myth, Mary-Jayne drew out their relevance to the situation in which we find ourselves. In going deeper in exploring coming back into 'right relationship' or intimacy with ourselves, she named the self hatred we feel, often focused on body hatred, due to the loss of our connection with ourselves. She suggested that it is important and timely to welcome an integration of our (in Buddhist terms) 'original nature'. She invited us to bring in that which is at the margins and the borders of our experience and consciousness in this 'right relationship', even though that can be a daunting task. She drew upon the Fool archetype, pointing out that those who have the knowledge and capacity to speak out at times like these are often called fools by wider society. As therapists, she urged us to recognise that we have a significant role to play in riding the waves of grief we feel as a species. We need to allow emotional responses to our own grief and the grief in response to the suffering we have inflicted upon other than human life. In remembering and honouring the extinction of species she drew our attention to two memorials marking this: one near Lewes in Sussex and the other near Portland in Dorset.

At this point in the lecture Mary-Jayne paused and invited us to process what we had heard for a few minutes with those around us, particularly linked to the theme of grief and making amends for the consequences of our actions. After this pause she moved on to explore how consumerism has been the dominant human 'story' for several decades. She explored how the western world in particular has a 'giant eating problem' with an emphasis on consumption. She pointed out the losses we feel in attempting to lessen our carbon footprints and the guilt we feel as a result of our greed. Mary-Jayne also noted how striking it is at present that very often sustainability is approached with a diet mindset, this time, a carbon, rather than food diet, with 'good' and 'bad' behaviour and foods, and the accompanying body hatred when we can't stick to being 'good'. She talked of how 'obese' people can cop the projections of others in this distorted consumerism.

Mary-Jayne pointed out how: 'feelings of lack are hard to admit in a culture obese with privilege', drawing out a key point about craving and consumption not being satisfying, but leading to an even stronger sense of lack. She noted how even our crucial rites of passage are now linked to consumption, for example, learning to drive and owning a car being a key rite of passage for many in their late teens, as a ritual in growing up, and how, when one gives up one's car for carbon reasons, it can feel like a loss of status in the current climate. She paused and asked us to reflect: 'what are we really hungry for?' When do we feel contentment, rather than hunger? Perhaps in nature or through connection.

In terms of consumerism, Mary-Jayne explored how we are in recovery, recovering that which we have previously projected onto others. When we project out, we lose something of our own nature, as well as a sense of connection with self and other. So when we project wildness onto nature, we lose our own wildness, when a white man projects onto a black man, he himself becomes colourless. At this point in the lecture she again paused and invited us to share our reflections about consumerism and a sense of recovery.

Mary-Jayne drew the lecture to a close in highlighting the old/new story. How we need to re-tell old stories in finding a new story in responding to the environmental crisis. She pointed how our work as therapists can become 'far too private practice', as we miss making connections with our wider environment, thereby perhaps perpetuating the disconnections in our experience and our relationship to the world and other than human life. She explored the hero myth -an important myth - in looking at how the hero seeks to conquer fears of his own and others' natures. How we collectively need to balance the hero myth with experiencing a re-embodying, a stronger connection with intimacy with self and other, a re-discovering of our animal, mineral, vegetable nature and power with rather than power over.

It's hard to do justice to Mary-Jayne's talk in the written word because the thing I appreciated most (and have appreciated most in her hearing past talks) is her presence and her skilful weaving of global themes. Mary-Jayne has a gentle yet strong presence. She invites rather than confronts, standing with integrity. She explores rather than preaches and introduces without shock tactics or through inducing guilt or blame. She introduces mind-blowing themes in a mindful, spacious and skilful way: through the beauty/horror of stories and images. It is absolutely evident that she does her own work in relationship to this theme, 'talking from' rather than 'talking about', providing enough holding to keep the whole engagement of the audience without somehow trying to water down the impact of the themes being explored.

I particularly appreciated Mary-Jayne introducing two pauses in the course of her fifty minute talk, giving us the chance to absorb the magnitude of the themes. My experience of this was that it gave me a moment to come back to my own body, experience, and enter into relationship with my neighbour in processing the material, rather than having to 'consume' more and more information with no space for digestion. This reflected what we need to do in recovering from consumerism: taking time to reconnect with ourselves and each other, a central theme in her lecture. Perhaps this is a skilful way of facing the present situation collectively as a species, in relationship with other species: to balance our being-ness and our doing-ness with mindfulness and compassion.


(1) Joanna Macey's online letters: September 7, 2005 edition. See:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HSR1VD07dNkJ:www.joannamacy.net/joannasletters.html+joanna+macey+deathbed+or+midwives&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&source=www.google.co.uk

For more information about Marianne Fry lectures, please see: http://www.mariannefrylectures.co.uk/



Return to the main homepage. Return to Kamalamani's page of articles. Go to the page about spiritual work.