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Jarv’s rules, summer ’23

Is the climate crisis the wake-up call we need for our collective spiritual awakening?
Jarvis Smith - My Green Pod
A group of multi-ethnic young adults sit cross-legged outside on the grass together on a sunny summer day.

This article first appeared in our World Environment Day Day 2023 issue of My Green Pod Magazine, published on 05 June 2023. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox

Reset Connect, the UK’s largest sustainability show and green investment event (and flagship event of London Climate Action Week) will take place 28-29 June at ExCeL.

The Sustainability Show, dubbed ‘a sustainable shopping event for planet lovers’, will open in Manchester Central the following weekend (08-09 July).

I’m grateful to have been asked to speak at both events, and was intrigued by both the subjects I was invited to discuss and the places from which I was invited to share. I’ll come to those specifics soon, but first we’ll need to step back in time.

Swimming in the mainstream

In 2007, before I’d entered the crazy world of business, the spiritual lifestyle I was drawn to didn’t seem capable of penetrating the psyche of the audience I wanted to reach – a citizen base that I now understand was living in the paradigm we know is driving us to mass extinction.

I could see that many people were stuck in an outside experience of self – one that missed a deep connection to nature, inner wisdom, intuitive insight and experiences beyond the ‘let’s all head down to the pub on a Friday night, buy new stuff at the weekend and flop back to work on Monday’ syndrome.

There is no judgement here: it’s a system we were all born into and the indoctrination continues on many, many levels.

I know these are sweeping statements and I’m aware that many people will disagree, but this was my experience of life in the mainstream – and in many ways it still is.

What’s the meaning of life?

Before getting into business I trained with a female shaman for well over a decade; she taught me the fine skills of deep listening through the art of mediation, yoga and the journey of the kundalini, an energy that dances through us, holding wisdom and insight, and giving us a taste of the biggest questions for mankind: why are we here, and what is our purpose?

Click to get free tickets to The Sustainability Show and Reset Connect

After a decade of hard lessons it started to become more straightforward: for me, we are here to experience life so that we can learn and evolve as a species along with the ever-evolving cosmos in which we experience ourselves.

There is, however, a deeper interpretation of existence: we are not simply on a linear experiential journey, we are also in active co-creation with it.

Simply put, the information that creates our experiences can create other experiences – a different way of life, individually and collectively.

What I wanted to do in business was be a part of the spiritual evolution we are now beginning to encounter as a species.

It seemed to me that the changing climate is perhaps the thing that will force us to wake up, become more spiritually connected and realise there is more to life than most of us are experiencing.

A shift in consciousness

I was guided to be a part of the sustainability movement and mygreenpod.com is the child of this commitment.

At that time, I discovered that most of the people operating in the sustainability sector were people who cared about more than business as usual and the fodder we were being fed by the advertising machine.

Business owners had joined the dots, making heart-and-head decisions in service to more than just profit for profit’s sake.

Social and sustainable business was popping like organic popcorn on a fire of awakening.

This, I knew, was stage one of a paradigm shift in consciousness, a shift that we are now seeing and beginning to experience as the norm.

My speaking sessions at Reset Connect and The Sustainability Show will involve mass meditations. I’ve also been invited to share my views on what climate change, biodiversity loss and the toxicity caused by human disconnection are teaching us about ourselves.

The bottom line will be how we can reconnect and honour this time we have named – and experience as – a crisis.

I hope to see you there and hear your views as well.

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