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Created: Jan 23, 2008
Updated: Nov 15, 2008

stefa roth

stefa
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Email: sr [at] art-ecology-education.org
Address: berlin
Germany
I Speak: german, english, french, spanish
I Am: Artist, Educator, Physician
Member Since: January 23, 2008
Local Time: Wed Nov 19 02:47:19

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About



Fragmentation is what I know from my up-bringing, from the society I live in. My search/my path led me to integration.
The sensation of connectedness, of centeredness, is the red line; I feel when I am in it and when I am going away from it.

The acting work gave me a save playground to explore and experience in a way I was not able to do in real life. I got into sensory work, emotional work, all connected to my physical body and understanding. On a personal level I learned to integrate emotion, senses, intuition and intellect, it had a lot to do with being in the moment as well. The acting offered me tools to do it. The process effected not only my acting but as well my being, my way of living.

Another precious source is nature, experiencing and observing nature, the rhythms and patterns of it. Being in nature brings me into another rhythm and awareness; I would say it helps me to be in my natural state. It connects me to simplicity; it connects me to the consciousness of being one part of nature, integrated in the whole system. An intuitive awareness of the intrinsic value of every being arises, an intuitive understanding of living with nature (as supposed to exploiting it) grows and along with it the wish to protect it.
This kind of understanding will root all the intellectual insights humankind has by today. It was/is alive in many indigenous peoples/tribes which had/have consequently a sustainable culture. It got lost when the human being regarded himself as separate of and superior to nature, that being the ground on which all the quick changes within the last decades could happen. It led to an unbelievable dimension of exploitation and destruction of nature and as well of human beings.

The human being has the capacity of thinking, of intending, of choice. To be aware of and disidentify from the mind process enables me to be connected to intuition and integrated in the natural cycles and rhythms of my surroundings as a part of it. For the quality of my own live I am learning to reset my mind, to integrate systemic perceiving and thinking.

In this process I came across permaculture when I was spending several months on organic farms.
Permaculture is based on observation of nature, how life evolves, organizes and sustains itself. From this process it derives design principles and tools which one can apply to any system, let it be a garden, a farm, a career, a social system.
I began to observe myself the same way I would observe any other ecosystem. This meant that to questions like: how do I function? How do I go about things? How do I get what I need? How do I perceive the world around me? How do I think and why?..... I would add: what is the connection between this and that, what resources do I have (on any level), what do I need and what can I give, where can I create cycles, what is my network, can I support important functions in my life through various elements, etc....
So I am using nature’s principles and the tools of permaculture to create a dynamic and resilient system: my life.

As everything is naturally evolving in cycles, also my learning process is not a linear one.
Now I am at a point where I want to share my experience and knowledge, to give to people and nature since I got so much from them.

With Lars Schmidt I am facilitating and developing workshops to give access to an integrated view of life and we elaborated a vision of a place where we can materialize our thoughts and experiences to share it with other people, a center for transformative learning.



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WildCherry 4 days ago
Thanks for the invite Stefa :-) I'm very interested in your ideas about applying permaculture to your life in general...Have you written anything on that that I could read? It would be great to feature on What We Grow :-)
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dirk 5 months ago

I like the way you seem to think for yourself, rather then following some kind of school.
Some thoughts about it:
The distinction between fragmentation and integration is yet another fragmentation.
This might seem overly intellectual, but it's an important point since the mind tends to merely shift from one kind of fragmentation to another.
Where we perceive connectedness, centeredness or oneness, this perception itself is another kind of fragmentation and thus is another variation of being fooled by our own mind.
It's a good approach to "be aware of and disidentify from the minds process", but what is it that is aware and disidentifies?
This is still the same mind, isn't it?

It creates clever dictinctions between the usual mind and intuition on the other side...
Even "my life" is already things falling apart. Where is the "life" apart from "my".
Again this might seem just a silly intellectual pun, but in fact is the very source of ALL problem, I believe.
Well, sorry for adding more confused fragmentations.
Have to get out to the lake now!
Cheers with loads of sympathy for you.

            a foolish monk

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oblio69 5 months ago


In April we cannot see sunflowers in France, so we say the sunflowers do not exist. But the local farmers have already planted thousands of seeds and when they look at the bare hills they may be able to see the sunflowers already. The sunflowers are there. They lack only the conditions of sun, heat, rain, and July. Just because we cannot see them does not mean they do not exist.

Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

 

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