For an animist the world is alive, so that rocks, trees, animals, plants, mountains and rivers could all possess personal attributes, desires, fears and needs, just like human persons. From an animist perspective, ecosystems can be understood as complex communities of persons in reciprocal dialogue with one another, and we are participants in this dialogue as well.
~ Jack Hunter
Autumn River Landscape – photo by rdonar, bigstockphoto.com
In the continuous flow of blessing our heart finds meaning and rest.
~ Brother David Steindl-Rast
Lotus – photo by Terésa Stern
Humanity has forgotten where we came from. We actually came from the earth. This is the truth that has been forgotten by humankind. She is Mother Earth. She is the Creator. She is the giver of everything. Everything that we know of. You are holding a cup of tea there in your hands. That cup came from Mother Earth. You are wearing warm clothes because it is cold; all these clothes came from Mother Earth. And your body is from Mother Earth. When this body leaves the soul, it goes back to its mother. What comes from Mother Earth goes back to Mother Earth.
~ Baba Mandaza Augustine Kademwa
Mt. Ama Dablam, Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal – photo by Daniel Prudek, bigstockphoto.com
The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth.
~ David Attenborough
Coral Life, Papua, New Guinea – photo by desant7474, bigstockphoto.com
Find out what makes you kinder, what opens you up and brings out the most loving, generous, and unafraid version of you, and go after those things as if nothing else matters.
~ George Saunders
Autumn Forest, Czech Republic – photo by Jiri Igaz, bigstockphoto.com
There are also all the subtle realms. For some extraordinary reason, we as a culture have dismissed, forgotten rejected. And yet they belong to all of the different spiritual traditions—the shaman who works with the spirit world, the Tibetan Buddhist who works with deities, devas, and the land, or the Christian monk who prays to angels and icons of the saints, and even the Zen monk immersed in the Void in this realm
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Interview with David Nicole
Aurora Borealis, Iceland – photo by Ragnhildur Johnsdottir
May the sun bring you new energy by day.
May the moon softly restore you by night.
May the rain wash away your worries.
May the breeze blow new strength into your being.
May you walk gently through the world
and know its beauty all the days of your life.
~ Apache Blessing
Canyon de Chelly National Monument – photo by Terra Tirapelli
Everything around you is alive: believe it. Tell stories to stones, sing to trees, start conversations with birds. Build relationships. You’ll never be lonely again.
~ Sharon Blackie
Autumn Forest – photo by Subbotina Anna, bigstockphoto.com
Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.
~ Albert Einstein
Waterfall in Autumn Forest, Crimeo – photoi by denbelitsky, bigstockphoto.com
We need to change our way of thinking and seeing things. We need to realise that the Earth is not just our environment. The Earth is not something outside of us…You realise that your consciousness is also the consciousness of the Earth. Look around you–what you see is not your environment, it is you.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Sunset, Arches National Park, UT – photo by Radomir Rezny, bigstockphoto.com
The way we live and act is determined by the perceptual lenses that are shaped by our beliefs and values. Our belief that it is our right to use as we wish, any part of the biosphere—air, water, soil, other life forms—has created problem after problem. If life is sacred, then we cannot treat other organisms as if they are cars or computers, we must act with humility, respect and love.
~ David Suzuki
Iguazu Falls and Rainbow – photo by 135134717, bigstockphoto.com
The difficult magic of animistic perception, the utter weirdness and dark wonder that lives in any deeply place-based relation to the earth, is the felt sense of being in contact with wakeful forms of sentience that are richly different from one’s own—the experience of interaction with intelligences that are radically other from one’s own human style of intelligence.
~ David Abram
Brazilian Jaguar – photo by Photocech, 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…
What quantum physics teaches us is that everything we thought was physical is not physical.
~ Bruce H. Lipton
Earth from Space – photo by Nasa.org
Without inner change there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.
~ Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams
Japanese Maple in Autumn – photo by landio, bigstockphoto.com
The earth is a living thing. Mountains speak, trees sing, lakes can think, pebbles have a soul, rocks have power.
~ Henry Crow Dog
Mountain Forest Sunrise – photo by 163948157, bigstockphoto.com
