After watching Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, like many viewers, I began thinking about the state of my home - planet earth.
I struggled to understand how we have allowed the world to come to a point of environmental danger. How upset I was to learn that coral reefs all over the world are being destroyed, that an entire island, home to 10,000 people, has sunk due to global warming and that the snowcap covering Mount Kilamanjaro has almost disappeared. And in the movie it is estimated that by the year 2050 almost a BILLION people around the world will be displaced due to global warming.
What bothers me the most is that destroying the environment has become a part of our daily routine, albeit unknowingly. Even writing what I have just written has wasted five entire pages of paper! Yes as I write about saving the environment, I am destroying trees.
I suppose it might save paper if I just wrote directly on the computer, but that too, has its drawbacks. The electricity required to run the computer originates at what I imagine to be a big, disgusting, money-hungry electricity plant spewing smoke and dumping toxic waste into a beautiful sea.
Even the very water that I'm drinking as I write is contained within a vile, plastic blue bottle which will take thousands and thousands of years to decompose!
The Kafkaesque neurosis that can develop from thinking about these issues is sometimes enough to make me want to sell my possessions (not that I have many anyway) leave the technological world behind, and move to an eco-hut in the desert where I would live off the fruits of the land, wearing nothing but an organic, toxin free loincloth.
The other day I was practicing yoga, still preoccupied with the movie about the world's pollution and then, bingo!, through my practice I saw how the movements I make in yoga reflect what is happening in the world.
Our body is naturally protective of itself. For example, when stretching out and releasing one muscle in the body (progress) there is generally another muscle which is contracting (resistance) in order to prevent the lengthening muscle from going too far (balance).
The muscle that is elongated enables the body to be freer in its movements and the muscle that is contracting is actually strengthened through its resistance. Both muscles are acting in beautiful synchronicity for the benefit of the whole body.
Progress + Resistance = Balance.
You can apply this idea to the environmental situation. With all of the advancements in technology, many of which promote our well being there is progress, and when we have higher awareness to the growing expenditure of natural resources and amount of potentially harmful waste emitted, and act accordingly, there is resistance.
These seemingly opposite movements are not working in opposition to one another; they are actually working together for the good of the whole. Progress and Resistance, two opposing forces, actually together create balance.
Which leads me to ask how can I create balance in my own life? When is it 'right' for me to embrace progress and when must I resist in order to not damage the environment?
Embracing progress seems to me the easy option - have technology at home to make my life more comfortable, use the phone whenever I need, take a flight for a trip abroad, use a washing machine to clean my clothes etc etc
Resisting seems to be the harder option - like remembering to unplug the tv and stereo when I go out or monitoring how much water I use. To be honest, if we're hot, we just press 'on' on the air conditioner and we mostly expect shops and public places to be air conditioned in these globally warmed hot days and nights that so many countries, even in Europe, are experiencing.
The fact is (and I'm basing this on a brief news flash I heard on CNN the other day) we need to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions within the next eight years in order to prevent imminent environmental disaster.
I believe there is a direct link between the environment and materialism. And that through non-materialism, we can resist damaging the enviroment.
When I emigrated to Israel a few years ago with nothing more than a duffel bag filled with my usual assortment of second hand clothes my dad said to me, "Isn't it about time you started acquiring things?" As if my progress as a human being was somehow marked by the things I possess.
In truth I don't feel the need to acquire things. Even as a child, though I felt like I needed new things to keep up with the other kids, the reality was that my favorite games didn't need 'things' - they were games like 'hide and seek.'
Years later, a young man living in a hut in Thailand, I had so few possessions, mainly a mat to sleep on and a hammock outside. With the bareness of my home I was really able to focus on my yoga practice and without the distraction of things I was able to have an intensely intimate and revealing relationship with myself. There I was alone with my fears and fantasies, my mind of thoughts and my body.
Our true nature is that we are simple beings; we need to eat and drink and we need a place to shelter. We need love, connection, and laughter. Why complicate things? We may feel a little more glorious when we fly around in a private jet, but ultimately that feeling of gloriousness passes and we are left with ourselves.
In coming back to my yogic metaphor of balance being a move between progress and resistance, I also understand that the natural order of the universe is a play of opposites.
As much as I am outraged and motivated by the environmental damage happening right now right here, I have come to accept that chaos and order, destruction and birth, darkness and light do exist side by side. And I trust that I will continue my journey, knowing when to accept what is and when to rise up and say - "this is not good enough. We need to act now."