I’m back in Sydney attempting to sort out the debris and detritus of my desertion of Sydney for Asia last year. It’s been a strange journey I’ve placed myself in scenarios that reflected my first family, seen the weather patterns on this little planet of ours morph into sinister patterns of the planet shaking off the increasingly infective infestation that is our heritage and found a place to work in Cambodia. Storms, unseasonal temperatures or rainfalls, flooding, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes , etc. I met them all in the months I travelled, Europeans telling me the Scandinavian countries are having an uncharacteristically warm winter, Americans complaining about changes, storms and droughts. Here is a link to a USA summary: http://www.epa.gov/climate/climatechange/science/indicators/weather-climate/index.html

Weather patterns change daily but climate change is slower if we look at the trends you will find that change has accelerated in the last 40 years exponentially. I’m sure that those of you who are reading this are aware of these problems and doing what you can to recycle, limit your car emissions, wear warm clothing rather than as a knee jerk reaction turn on or up the heater as it gets colder.

Often in working as a therapist with men and women on an individual basis I’ve noted that generally change comes with a crisis. An accident or illness galvanises a man to take stock to exercise and eat more healthily. The death of a friend or relative often moves you to consider your own mortality and how you live your life. A broken limb puts you on notice to strengthen your body. A personal crisis can become a turning point towards personal evolution. The word crisis comes from late Middle English denoting the turning point of a disease: medical Latin, from absorbs ‘decision’, from krinein ‘decide’. The general sense ‘decisive point’ dates from the early 17th century.

Do you need a crisis to change personally and act locally to effect a better environment within yourself and in your environment? Each of you has an area of understanding that engages your interest, absorbs and engages you so that you lose your sense of individual self absorption enabling you to act with compassion and dispassion. To change you need to consider your beliefs and take action. It can be as easy as suddenly understanding something that has influenced you or a more brutal brush with death.
Here are some inspiring links:
A talk on inspiration:

A man who could help clean up the environment with fungi:
http://ewao.com/a/1-he-holds-the-patent-that-could-destroy-monsanto-and-change-the-world
A young student with ideas to clean up the plastic in the ocean.
http://inhabitat.com/19-year-old-student-develops-ocean-cleanup-array-that-could-remove-7250000-tons-of-plastic-from-the-worlds-oceans/ray-collection/

What interests me is what hold each of you back from action and activity towards positive change. The main emotions that cloud your judgement and contaminate your actions are:
FEAR
SHAME
GUILT
GRIEF
DECEPTION
ILLUSION
ATTACHMENT

E Emotions are strong feelings deriving from your circumstances, mood, or relationships with others. They are an instinctive or intuitive feeling that leads to reactions as distinguished from responses that are reasoner knowledge based : responses have to be based on historical insight, not simply on emotion. The origin of the word comes from the 16th century meaning public disturbance, my point being the belief in and actions resulting from private emotions more often than not lead to public disturbances.

If you do not give yourself some time for introspection and question your conditioned beliefs then you will react to your thoughts as real and feel small and vulnerable and in the prison of that self deception catapult into the most primary of emotions FEAR and perpetrate hostility to those around you and more especially towards your most sacred possession on this planet your body and the body of your home EARTH.