006, Morgan Caraway: Ecological Awakening

When we identify the things in life that we could not live without, the things that create true success, life becomes simple. Learning to deal with our own inner landscape and making our own healing a priority impacts how we treat others and view the world. Today we discuss trauma, sustainable living, and awakening with Morgan Caraway, a natural building instructor, multi-media artist, musician, author, and a co-founder of Bottom Leaf Intentional Community and Sustainable Life School. He and his family live off-grid in an earth bag house they designed and built. Through Sustainable Life School, they offer workshops with the goal of empowering people and modeling different modes of building and other possibilities.

In this episode...

• Trauma as the source of humanity's destructive tendency
• Nature as a tool to help us through trauma
• Social taboos against expressing emotion
• How belief shapes experience and experience shapes belief
• Heart awakening
• Ignorance (belief in separation) leads to fear (vulnerability), which leads to greed (attempting to deal with that vulnerability)
• Self care is a central tenant of sustainable living
• The crucial components of life: air, water, food, community
• True success
• Intelligent building design
• The "trauma feed" of news and social media

Resources

• The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure by Joseph Jenkins
• The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage: The Real Goods Solar Living Book
• Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• sustainablelifeschool.com
• morgancaraway.com
• The Book of Leaves: Reflections on Dying and Change and Ecological Awakening by Morgan Caraway