Upgrading XR’s Principles & Values, reflections on Conscientious Protectors and some funky stories
Ten years ago, I took a trip to Costa Rica to pray for the birth of mass civil disobedience. At the psychedelics conference — Breaking Convention — I shared part of what happened there, including the somewhat famous "codes for social change" story and a prophetic vision of being held to account for superior activisty behaviours [1]. Other things I've kept private; they could have been misread, distracting from Extinction Rebellion's purpose. Some have taken years to make sense of. One vision returned recently and still resists interpretation. It is a Great Mystery.
Part of that experience involved a feeling of flying across communities in these lands, whispering “Rebel, rebel”. A calling for a collective body to emerge. A Spirit of resistance, being evoked.
Conscientious Protectors — a film about the April 2019 Rebellion organised by XR in London — has recently been released on YouTube. It's worth watching; it really captures the moment. It has been critiqued for its focus on white male organisers, and there is I think a "male gaze" in how certain moments were edited — moments that mattered to me, and that I experienced rather differently to how they appear on screen. Leigh Bloomfield [2] named the film after the words on a patch I was wearing, without asking about their origin. (The term was coined by my dear friend Polly Higgins, the lawyer who championed Ecocide Law.) The emphasis, then, tends to land on what the guys were doing or saying — and we were genuinely blessed with some fantastic men on the team. We had detailed, well thought through organising that drove our momentum: the social media work, in-person talks, circle-based structures for getting things done — much of it drawn from the Ayni Institute and wider traditions. What Conscientious Protectors captures beautifully well, is something more essential though — it captures the Spirit of the movement.
A container was co-created: initiated through prayer, shaped by principles and values that drew so many people to the movement. There was community, longing, purpose, sacred intention — beauty and mischief. The Vision Team, led by Skeena Rathor Kashmiri, actively encouraged imagination of a more meaningful way to be together. An arrow of organising was driven through this Spirit container — a potent alchemy for sparking change.
What does any of this mean — prayer, Spirit — and why does it feel so relevant now, ten years on, as things unravel? We are turning the curve on so many exponential changes. Consequences arriving from centuries of “choices” rooted in domination, coloniality and greed. The normalising of daily transgressions against dignified, respectful human behaviour. Despair, numbed-out grief, impotence, distraction.
As Josh Schrei said recently on the Emerald Podcast:
"There is a weight to modern existence — perhaps you've felt it. In a world in which social and environmental crises only seem to be deepening and our familial, communal and spiritual support systems are steadily crumbling, individuals are buckling under the weight... When the web of relationships that traditionally hold human culture together is fractured, sociocultural, ecological, and even cosmic burdens are funneled to individuals to carry."
It's hard to imagine navigating these times — as individuals, within groups, movements, collectives, communities — without some form of spiritual practice. The form I sit with takes its lead from the land, honours earth, air, fire and water, and holds all of life and creation as relatives. We need practices to root into, to draw strength from, to resist and repair. Solutions of any meaning, durability and efficacy will be co-created with the wider intelligence of Life, of Mystery.
No spiritual leader or academic theologian here. Trained a scientist, running experiments and interpreting data, this territory has been no different. And for those who find these terms uncomfortable or unconvincing, western science does offer ways to make sense of the mystical [3]. Indigenous cosmo-visions and ways of being — animist, prayerful, rooted in a sense of life lived within a greater Mystery — are among the most sustainable ways of existing, enhancing rather than depleting the world around them.
Extinction Rebellion was born from prayers — over several years, and in a particularly extreme way in Costa Rica. That involved a small initial session with Iboga (which gave an insight into the formation of universes, confirmed a few weeks later by my first husband who was working with Brian Cox on a book on the multiverse). It also drove me to despair and illuminated the inner workings of biochemistry and neural pathways — relevant to the large flood dose the following day, which rewired my brain and helped me recover from trauma. Then Kambo — the monkey frog poison — and three ayahuasca ceremonies. Five ordeals in two weeks. Not something to recommend to anyone.
Prayer, as I've come to understand it, is a process of communing with a bigger Consciousness: asking, almost like an innocent child, for guidance and help, with difficulties, understanding, plans. Prayers made in this spirit — in service to life, in service to something larger than the self, with love and peace as intention — appear to be answered. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes with a checking quality: do you really mean this? It pays to stay attentive after a prayer is made, to put things in place, to give it room to emerge. There are teachings, if we listen. Some of what is communicated is wordless; the body understands.
Josh Schrei continues:
"Traditional cultures, by contrast, tend to be constructed around networks of support — not only in their sociocultural and spiritual systems, but in their understanding of a cosmological and ecological mandala of animate forces, gods and goddesses and spirit helpers that literally bear weight... Such figures invite us into a deeper vision of support that is not generated or borne by us alone... The tendency of the modern individualist mind to put itself at the center of the cosmos and try to bear universal burdens on its own has roots that go back to the creation story that lives at the heart of western history — a story that still plays out unconsciously, across the social and political spectrum, in wellness narratives, psychotherapeutic narratives, and even in the stories we tell about how it's our imperative to 'save the world.'"
Are we clear about what our service to life involves, and where we are drawing support from — or are we carrying it as a burden? A prayer, it seems, is something you walk: a commitment, a responsibility, but not meant to be crushing. It becomes crushing when ego-driven by unresolved trauma, the wish to belong, the need to feel safe — operating from a paradigm of separation that underpins the very systems of domination and control we seek to dismantle.
Parts of me feel small and insignificant, and reach to feel "special", even adored. Familiar enough territory to understand these as wounded, traumatised places — ones that lead, at best, to distraction and, at worst, to jealousy and shame. Healing them is part of the journey. But the greater orientation is to return to prayer: asking what is needed now, asking for guidance and help, offering words of care to all our relations, staying in a posture of service, of not knowing, of humility and willingness. These last two words have been guiding themes on the Vision Quests I've sat these past two years on Dartmoor, held within a spiritual community.
Boudica's Obelisk and averting the collapse of the rebellion
During the Costa Rica retreat, I asked, specifically, who was there to support and guide the work. Spirit guides might be the term. Not a comfortable thing to do, or talk about — the idea of "Spirits" helping raises obvious questions: what does that even mean? I hope to hold healthy scepticism. Perhaps what it means is that consciousness operates beyond the individual brain and can access information stored in some wider field [3]. Shamanic practice, in any case, attends to the felt sense of Spirit rather than requiring an explanation for it — a distinction that maps, roughly, onto the difference between holistic experience and verbal interpretation, or between right and left hemispheres.
With what practitioners call "Grandmother Ayahuasca," the visions were strong and repetitive. One was an ethereal presence felt to be Quan Yin — a deity associated with compassion. The other was the image of an obelisk, with a felt sense of Boudica: the Iceni Queen who united various tribes and led resistance against the Roman occupation of Celtic Britain. The two together perhaps made sense — the prayer had been for "a compassionate revolution." The obelisk returned again and again, and a medicine woman advised calling this presence into the body and noticing how it feels. What comes is a clarity — an uprightness, a strategic quality, a feeling of women's leadership and of connection between the heavens and the earth. Cleopatra has three Obelisks (Needles) named after her. An obelisk was later carved on a sacred instrument, though the direct connection with Boudica herself remained elusive.
At moments of strife, or in preparation for encounters with the attack-dog media, that obelisk-informed quality has been called upon — asking something bigger than oneself for support, and feeling accompanied. The words that come in those moments seem to be fed from a wider relational field.
When Conscientious Protectors reaches about an hour and four minutes in, it documents a particular moment — a critical transmission at a point of potential rupture.
Rachel Lunnon insists, in the film, that Roger or I go immediately to meet what is unfolding: our precious pink boat in Oxford Circus is being carted away by police. It had been the symbol of joy, playfulness, and a rare experience of collective power. Big and pink, I marvelled when I first saw it and immediately claimed it represented a vagina! At first there was resistance to getting involved — the people on the ground were delegated to make the call, it wasn't for us to step in. But Rachel insisted. Things were getting hairy. It could go belly up at any moment. All the megaphones available were broken. In the end, a plastic green horn was grabbed, bikes were jumped on, and we set off.
The atmosphere on arrival was pretty dire. Over 300 rebels together on the street, over 1,000 police officers. As we arrived, a rebel launched himself at the boat to try and recapture it — he was thrown to the ground violently, head pressed down. It could get very nasty fast. The critical agreement to hold nonviolent discipline was at risk. Violence would cost the movement its credibility; the powers-that-be would have profited. People would leave. The relative safety of nonviolence — moral for some, tactical for others, a condition of participation for many — would be gone.
Roger went to liaise with the police. My task was to support our rebels, somehow. Standing in front of around 300 people, the sense of anger, despair and disarray was palpable. The thought that arrived was very distinct: whatever happens next will make or break this rebellion, it’s all down to me and I don’t know what to do. A feeling of utter aloneness. No clarity whatsoever.
After reaching for and blowing the daft green horn, something arrived — a transmission beyond my mind: this was a moment of grief, and there would be many such moments of grief and loss to face. Our movement needed to learn how to meet them. I led a people's assembly framed by these thoughts. After some time, a way was found together to say goodbye to the precious pink boat — accompanying her with a song led by April Griefsong. Dignified, beautiful, and then humorous: rebels had reoccupied Oxford Circus with a huge banner reading We Are the Boat! Of course we are. And boats are held in water. Life is carrying us. That situation wasn't addressed alone. There was help when it was most needed.
A Vision Returns
Can we relearn trust in Life, in a bigger Mystery, and face into the storm? In a winter solstice ceremony in 2019, another transmission arrived: Enough of the misery. Life wants to be lived. Somehow we need to sit with and hold the beauty and the mess at the same time.
"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." — Friedrich Nietzsche
The meanings we make, as we build culture together, matter. But it’s easy to lose faith, to feel literally disenchanted.
And so, ten years on, there I was: searching the internet again for Boudica, Obelisk — still wondering what the connection might be. Blow me. There it was. She has not one but two Obelisks in Epping Forest.
A visit — and my sincere respects — will be paid.
Upgrading XR's Principles and Values
XR's principles and values were pulled together over many months — Stu Baden particularly supported that process, and it included listening to everyone within Rising Up, the organising crew behind XR. Specific values carry the fingerprints of specific co-founders; in that sense they were never "mine." And yet there's a felt responsibility for the shortcomings and miscommunications within them. As with all of us, the systems of domination and control, patriarchy and white supremacy, run through us in ways we are often blind to. There has been much learning in recent years — a lot of listening, processing, practising, reading.
Whilst organising with XR Being the Change, work began on upgrading these principles and values: improving on the mistakes, the missteps, the blind spots, and the things compromised under pressure — including the sidelining of spirituality and the necessary details of regenerative cultures. A review had been built into XR's guiding strategy for 2022, though this was sidelined. Stu Baden and I have continued working on this, and a full set of ten Dedications — intended to seed transformation — will be launching soon. To be clear: these could be adopted by any organisation, network, or individual; they are not specific to XR, though XR groups are free to adopt them. As a teaser, and in the spirit of this piece, below is the first one in its current draft form.
Embrace the mystery of life with gratitude & humility
Rooting into pluriversality and reaching to fully embrace our diversity
We swirl in the mysteries of life, putting aside certainties, embracing our ability to be surprised. We recognise that which is greater than ourselves, whether that is named as Great Spirit, God, Gaia, Great Mystery, Wacan, One Love, the Tao, or any of the myriad names given to the unnameableness, including through western science’s grappling with consciousness and the underlying principles of physics.
We exist within an interconnected system, something larger than ourselves, there is more that we do not know than that we do. We open our wholehearted and soulful selves, allowing ourselves to feel awe and be humbled.
We express gratitude frequently, remembering that all that has been given to us, including our lives, is a gift. Gratitude is radical and life-affirming. It reminds us of our place amongst the flow of existence, it reminds us to live humbly and to seek to serve Life. We seek to serve our communities, refraining from seeking fame or self-aggrandisement. This includes tending to our own well-being and sovereignty.
The current dominant civilisation universalises its ways of being and knowing, arrogantly claiming its ways as the only (legitimate) ways of being and knowing. Western philosophy, religion, science, medicine and economics attempts to impose itself as the only truth, by attacking, ignoring and undermining the reality of other cultures and cosmologies. The West’s claim to universal and objective truth has been used with devastating effectiveness to assert power over Peoples around the world.
Western science, which includes the empirical method – checking predictions against observable results, then adjusting theories and models to fit the data – has been an incredible endeavour in exploring life and our universe. However, an overemphasis on reductionism, over holism, has held it back. Western science has also been co-opted and captured by the domination system, through mechanisms of funding, corporate control, and intellectual property hoarding. Western science then becomes disconnected from ethics and the negative impacts of profit making technologies, whilst belittling other forms of knowing and being (scientism). Western “science” has brought us plantation monoculture, deforestation, polluted rivers, and oceanic dead zones; the more holistic approach of Indigenous science has brought us thousands of varieties of seeds, drinkable rivers, and flourishing food-forests. Which approach to science is more ‘true’? Which science is better?
Pluriversality, a concept reinforced during the Zapatista uprising, challenges scientism and the Western claim of universalism and opens a decolonial path out of the West’s claims of universal truth. Pluriversality asserts the reality and legitimacy of the myriad ways of being human. Cognitive justice requires the adoption of pluriversality.
Pluriversality points us towards the possibility of many truths being true at the same time (without suggesting “anything goes”). We acknowledge that each of us, and each culture we emerge in, brings a valuable perspective. Our life-journeys and socialisation matters – our millions of interactions with other people are shaped by our unique and changing bodies and our position from which we perceive, and thus we are shaped by them. Every interaction we’ve ever had has been influenced by the intersection of our age, sex, gender, race, class, appearance, childhood experiences and other factors.
Practice of valuing many voices, both/and thinking, yielding the need to be right
We acknowledge that we are all positioned relative to others, that the making of an observation affects what is observed, and that how we ask questions affects the answers we get. We appreciate that there are many ways of being, many ways of knowing, many voices; and we delight in our diversity. We especially welcome life affirming ways of being and knowing, and cultures that cultivate collective wellness. We lean towards ‘both/and’, and question ‘either/or’ thinking.
When we find ourselves trying to “be right”, we reflect on what might be driving us to “win” such a competition of words. We value togetherness more than being right or self-righteous. As a practice, we do not try to find “The Truth” and convince others of our cleverness. We do not try to impose Truth, and we actively deconstruct claims of absolute, universal, ultimate or objective Truth.
Suggested practices, sources of information and inspiration
Tiokasin Ghosthorse defines the Lakota word Wacan as “to consciously apply mystery to everything” (a verb, rather than the more common translation as the noun ‘Great Mystery’). According to Ghosthorse, the Lakota language does not contain nouns. To get a sense of this, consider a table, which we call ‘table’, as a noun, a thing. Consider that what you think is a table can be more accurately described as tabling, as a process – an emergent buzz of sub-atomic particles in continual interaction and mutual (re)creation, that are in a pattern of (relative) stability allowing you to perceive the tabling as seemingly settled and stationary. The brain’s left hemisphere conceives of it not as a process but as a thing- a table, freezing it in our minds. As a practice, let go of the word “table” (or any other “object” and seek to be with what is occupying space with you.
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Consensus Reality, Dreamland, Essence — Amy and Arnold Mindell www.aamindell.net
Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge, edited by Bernd Reiter
Pluriverse. A Post-Develompent Dictionary, edited by Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, and Alberto Acosta, 2018.
Designs for the Pluriverse. Radical Interdependence; Autonomy and the Making of Worlds, by Arturo Escobar
The Story of Gaia: The Big Breath and the Evolutionary Journey of Our Conscious Planet, Jude Currivan, 2022.
Zapatistas: Lessons in community self-organisation in Mexico, by Anya Briy, 2020.
Work with Source: Realise big ideas, organise for emergence and work artfully with money, Tom Nixon
FOOTNOTES
Anthea Lawson's book How Not to Save the World, doing good without annoying everyone looks at some of these shadows in organising
I hold no grudges on any missteps in the film, we are all part of patriarchal systems and learning as we go
The Matter with Things Iain McGilchrist and The Cosmic Hologram, Jude Currivan are places to look