It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon mens hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Sequoias, photo by Devadana Sanctuary
The earth and all its life forms and processes are sacred. We belong to them and they to us – we are kin. We should, therefore, act lovingly, reverently, and respectfully toward them. We must not unnecessarily injure these beings and processes when we take from them what we need to live. The key to contemporary earth-based spirituality and ethics is, therefore, a felt sense of “connection,” kinship, and loyalty to earth, her life forms, and living systems.
~ Bron Taylor
Arches National Park – by KR Backwoods Photography – used with permission
We have all but forgotten that life is a rich and mysterious coming together of many worlds. We have lost sight of what the ancient priestesses and shamans knew, that the forms of our visible world have their roots in unseen dimensions, and that it is in these unseen dimensions that the primal energies of life lie. In our forgetting, we have lost the wholeness of life, and we have cut ourselves off from the real forces that shape our world. But when we are present in life, free from demands or agendas, when we allow life to unfold according to its own inner principles, we open up a doorway again between the worlds. Within our consciousness the inner and outer, the visible and the unseen worlds, can come together and speak to each other, and our split-apart world can become whole again.”
– Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Air Delivery – photo by Thomas Dawson Photography, used with permission
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts,
her pockets full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before,
a stone on the riverbed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts,
and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me,
the insects and the birds
who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom.
By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.
~ Mary Oliver
Lower Gray Wolf River – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
Modern peoples…have mainly forgotten that we live in relationship as brothers and sisters with all the beings and forces of the natural world. Our scientific redefinitions of the “unseen” as the “unreal” have caused us to forget that we are all luminous strands in a giant web of belonging.
~don Oscar Miro-Quesada
Stars Over Ruby, Ruby Beach – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
If humans were to model the lifestyle displayed by a healthy community of cells, our societies and our planet would be more peaceful and vital.
~ Bruce H. Lipton
Horsetail Fall Reflection, Yosemite – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
Our natural state of being is in relationship, a tango, a constant state of one influencing the other. Just as the subatomic particles that compose us cannot be separated from the space and particles surrounding them, so living beings cannot be isolated from each other… By the act of observation and intention, we have the ability to extend a kind of super-radiance to the world.
~ Lynne McTaggart
Photo by Zastrozzi Dh Photography, used with permission
Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything – even mountains, rivers, plants and trees – should be your teacher.
~ Morihei Ueshiba
Storm’s End, Tunnel View, Yosemite – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
Every tradition includes teachings that expand the self in widening circles of identification. You can learn to draw the circle of the self so wide that the body of earth becomes your larger body, with the rivers like your veins, the rain forests your lungs. Through our desire to protect what we love, we can recognize our interconnectedness with all life.
~ Joanna Macy
Quinault River – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
A change is needed in every phase of human life. This lies mainly in recognition that the micro phase, the particular or national traditions, must find their context and fulfillment in the macro phase, the global or panhuman phase of human existence. The future rests in the religious, political, economic and cultural capacity of humans to establish this larger context in which the particular traditions will find both support and fulfillment in a functional global community.
~ Thomas Berry
Frozen Juniper and O’Neill Butte, Near Mather Point, South Rim, Grand Canyon National Park – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.
~ Terence McKenna
British Columbia, Canada – photo by Thomas Dawson Photography, used with permission
The law is that all life is equal in the Great Creation, and we, the Human Beings, are charged with the responsibility, each in our generation, to work for the continuation of life.
~ Traditional Circle of Elders
Great Blue Heron, photo by Marcel Pepin Photography – used with permission
It is true that many of the old ways have been lost.
But, just as the rains restore the earth after a drought,
so the power of the Great Mystery will restore the way
and give new life.
We ask that this happen not just for the Red People,
but for all people,
that they all might live.
In ignorance and carelessness they
have walked on Ina Maka, Our Mother.
They did not understand that they are part of all beings,
the Four-legged, the Winged, Grandfather Rock,
the Tree People, and our Star Brothers.
Now our Mother and all our Relations are crying out.
They cry for the help of all people.
~ Black Elk
Dawn Moonset, Dead Horse Point State Park, UT – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
There is a new story waiting to be born, waiting to redeem the planet and nourish our souls. It is a story of a oneness that includes the diversity of creation in a self-sustaining whole, a story that can bring back the magic within nature that is needed to heal our damaged planet. We can sense it in the re-emergence of the goddess Gaia, whose archetypal energy and numinosity speak to us of the world as a living being. Her image and the sense of an animate earth has re-entered western consciousness and acquired a life of its own.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Lower Gray Wolf River Trail – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows ones perception of reality.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Grey’s Arch, KY – photo by Fultz Fotos, used with permission
