006, Morgan Caraway: Ecological Awakening

What happens when we design from observation of Nature and not for human convenience? What would change in our experience if we decided to simplify our outer lives, while cultivating our inner life? In today's episode, we discuss these and other insights from meditations on the Holy Honey Bee. Skye’s first career was in theatre, and in her mid thirties decided to enter the temple life and become a Buddhist monk. Skye began the work of caring for and creating gardens, as well as researching various metaphysical studies including feng shui, tarot, astrology and the five great elements. Skye is motivated by the yearning for Beauty, for intimacy with the Holy, for a penetrating understanding of this strangely cruel and lovely world, and is constantly seeking the path from cruelty to Beauty.

Positive change doesn't come from the top-down, but from the bottom-up. When we the people make conscious choices and make those choices known with our dollar and with our time, only then will the forces that shape the world begin to shift.

• The Temple Hive, a home designed for bees
• What happens when systems are designed by observing Nature instead of being designed for human convenience?
• Learning from Wendy Johnson (trained under Alan Chadwick, who trained under Rudolf Steiner)
• How the Temple Hive materials relate to the planets (and how the planets correspond to the bees)
• We won't reach the tipping point of a regenerative, sustainable culture until the consumer realizes their power to direct change
• Temple Hive performance--the health this hive design, built as a gift, not built for extraction
• Rudolf Steiner's prediction of the decline of bee populations with the practice of annual re-queening
• How the life cycles of the bees correspond to celestial cycles and the Golden Mean (the Fibonacci Sequence)
• The importance of starlight for bees and humans--and the lack of it in our light-polluted world
• Guidance from the bees: learn to simplify, learn to appreciate the night and the wild world, pay attention, get quiet, be present
• If we don't pay attention to our inner lives, we need more and more distraction and stimulation in our daily existence
• The day is for serving, the night is for being nourished by Spirit; and the in-between moments, dawn and sunset, are especially auspicious for meditation and grounding

• A Monk in the Beehive by Skye Taylor
• https://www.skye-talk.com/
• San Francisco Zen Center (Green Gulch Farm)
• How to build a Temple Hive: Step by step videos: video 1, video 2, video 3, video 4, video 5, video 6
• Gardening at the Dragon's Gate by Wendy Johnson
• The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra