The universe is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events. None of the properties of any part of this web is fundamental; they all follow from the properties of the other parts, and the overall consistency of their mutual interrelations determines the structure of the entire web.
~ Fritjof Capra
Lower Falls of Yellowstone River – photo from bigstockphoto.com
The ancient human-Earth relationship must be recovered in a new context, in its mystical as well as in its physical functioning. There is need for awareness that the mountains and rivers and all living things, the sky and its sun and moon and clouds all constitute a healing, sustaining sacred presence for humans which they need as much for their psychic integrity as for their physical nourishment.
~ Thomas Berry
Russel Falls, Mount Field National Park – photo from bigstockphoto.com
The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another.
~ Joan Halifax
Giant Redwoods, Muir Forest, San Francisco, CA – photo from bigstockphoto.com
To the Western mind, participation with the non-human Others and with the numinous might suggest mysticism, or something unavailable to ordinary people. Yet this kind of participation is, even now, an everyday mode of being for at least some people indigenous and others who have not entirely succumbed to the age of reason.
~ Geneen Marie Haugen
Black Sand Beach Sunset, Iceland – photo from bigstockphoto.com
We cannot assume the sacredness nor spiritual livingness of the earth or accept it as a new ideology or as a sentimentally pleasing idea We must allow it to shape us, as great spiritual ideas have always shaped those who entertain them It is an invitation to initiation, to the death of what we have been and the birth of something new.
~ David Spangler
Sunset, Sedona, AZ -photo from bigstockphoto.com
The Green Cathedral represents the sacred places, the silent spaces. It elevates the natural landscape to the respectful position it deserves.
It replaces doctrine and dogma. The Green Cathedral recognises the ruins of the past as part of present and future narratives. It attempts to recalibrate the senses and reconsider time. It celebrates the joy of the rural reverie. It is in all countries. It is open to everyone.
~ Benjamin Myers
Green Moss, Milford Sound, NZ – photo by Mawardi Bahar, bighstockphoto.com
Every tree, every plant, has a spirit. People may say that the plant has no mind. I tell them that the plant is alive & conscious. A plant may not talk, but there is a spirit in it that is conscious, that sees everything, which is the soul of the plant, its essence, what makes it alive. The channels through which the water & sap move are the veins of the spirit.
~ Pablo Amaringo
The Dark Hedges, Northern Ireland – photo by VanderWolf Images, bigstockphoto.com
There is a pressing need to heal ourselves and the Earth – a call to return to a place of reverence, a way of living that honors life and all of its inhabitants. But first we need to rest in our busy lives and find silence.
Silence draws us inward, away from the clutter and distractions of our outer life, to the deeper roots of our being. Here our soul nourishes us, here we can be replenished, and here we can help replenish our world.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Erawan Waterfall, Kachanaburi, Thailand – photo from bigstockphoto.com
We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the Universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of Nature, a unique action of the total Universe…
You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.
~ Alan Watts
Sunrise, Porthgwarra Cove, Cornwall – photo from bigstockphoto.com
I want to feel both the beauty and the pain of the age we are living in. I want to survive my life without becoming numb. I want to speak and comprehend words of wounding without having these words become the landscape where I dwell. I want to possess a light touch that can elevate darkness to the realm of stars.
~ Terry Tempest Williams
Milky Way over Valley of Fire State Park, NV – photo from bigstockphoto.com
I define subtle activism as “spiritual or consciousness-based practices intended to support collective transformation.” subtle activism involves various forms of practices, where the practices themselves are seen to constitute a subtle form of social or political action.
~ David Nicol, from “Subtle Activism: The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation”
Autumn Forest – photo from bigstockphoto.com
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.
Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.
So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.
~ John O’Donohue
Sunset – photo from bigstockphoto.com
[According to Christopher Bache]… in certain profound states of inner work, the therapeutic effect of the healing process extends beyond the psyche of the individual to aspects of various collective levels of consciousness in which the individual is embedded.
~ David Nicol, from “Subtle Activism: The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation”
Crescent Beach, OR – photo by Amadeustx, bigstockphoto.com
From the animist point of view, humans belong in a sacred place because they themselves are sacred. Not sacred in a special way, not more sacred than anything else, but merely as sacred as anything else — as sacred as bison or salmon or crows or crickets or bears or sunflowers.
~ Daniel Quinn
Buttes of Monument Valley – photo from bigstockphoto.com
The Universe is one indivisible, dynamic whole in which energy and matter are so deeply entangled it is impossible to consider them as independent elements.
~ Bruce H. Lipton
Milky Way over Valley of Fire, Nevada – photo by Kris Wiktor, bigstockphoto.com
