The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you can alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change the world.
~ James Baldwin
Northern Lights, Sweden – phtoo by contas, bigstockphoto.com
How, in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again?
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
Blue Lake, Spain – photo by vicenfoto, bigstockphoto.com
If we were to adopt a relational attitude, and interact with rivers, streams, trees, animals, soils and so on as if they are persons, our behaviours and actions would also necessarily be altered as a consequence.
~ Jack Hunter
Winter River Landscape – photo by elenathewise, bigstockphoto.com
Looking behind I am filled with gratitude,
Looking forward I am filled with vision.
Looking upwards I am filled with strength
and looking within, I discover peace.
~ Apache prayer
Sedona, AZ – photo by ftlaudgirl, bigstockphoto.com
I feel the spirits of the earth moving around me, at night, when I am alone beneath the watchful moon. I feel the presence of life encircling me: spirits of animals, spirits of plants, spirits of air and water, the elements of life, the expressions of life, embodied as a spirit of creation, as much a part of the natural order as you or me. My ancestors and your ancestors knew these spirits well. They lived with them for centuries. They worked with them, celebrated with them, learned from them. The great wheel of life has turned many times since then, but at night you can still feel the spirits gathering, gathering beneath the moon.
~ Steven Charleston
Mysterious Night, Ukraine – photo by 226777828, bigstockphoto.com
The Navajo teach their children that every morning when the sun comes up, it’s a brand-new sun. It’s born each morning, it lives for the duration of one day, and in the evening it passes on, never to return again. As soon as the children are old enough to understand, the adults take them out at dawn and they say, ‘The sun has only one day. You must live this day in a good way, so that the sun won’t have wasted precious time.’ Acknowledging the preciousness of each day is a good way to live, a good way to reconnect with our basic joy.
~ Pema Chödrön
Mesa Arch Sunrise, Canyon Lands National Park, UT – photo by twildlife, bigstockphoto.com
Sometimes people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a separate department of life, the penthouse of existence. But rightly understood, it is a vital awareness that pervades all realms of our being.
~ Br. David Steindl-Rast
Purple Orchid – photo by PricelessPhotos, bigstockphoto.com
We and all living creatures are not just inhabitants of Earth, we are Earth — an outgrowth of its physical structure and an engine of its global cycles. Although some scientists still recoil at the mention of Gaia, these truths have become part of mainstream science.
~ Ferris Jabr
Earthrise – photo by By NASA/Bill Anders, wikipedia.com
If we are interdependent with everything and everyone, even our smallest, least significant thought, word, and action have real consequences throughout the universe.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Aurora Reflections, Iceland – photo by stroop, bigstockphoto.com
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
At Old Man’s Cave, Hocking Hills State Park – photo by KennethKeifer, bigstockphoto.com
In Shamanic tradition respect for all spiritual beings that inhabit the earth moves well beyond animal forms. Shamans believe that plants are also sentient and that they can speak to us—they call to us, if we listen. By listening to plants Shamans have intuited the kinds of plant medicine that can heal on mind, body and spirit levels.
~ Naturesheart.org
Bell Path, Sedona, AZ – photo by Accidental Photographer, bigstockphoto.com
When we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.
~ Wendell Berry
Monument Valley Under A Starry Sky – photo by paulista, bigstockphoto.com
In honor of Thich Nhat Hanh, a revered and beautiful being who gave so much to our world…
True love does not just choose one person. When true love is there, you shine like a lamp. You don’t just shine on one person in the room. That light you emit is for everyone in the room. If you really have love in you, everyone around you will profit – not only humans, but animals, plants and minerals. Love, true love, is that..
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Huyen Khong Cave, Marble Mountains, Vietnam – photo by DR_Flash, bigstockphoto.com
…I know that there is a deeper truth to our journey together with the Earth, a truth older than any belief or ideology, and far from the discords of today. It does not offer a solution to today’s problems, because it is too simple and radical. It is a doorway into a way of being with each other and the Earth that carries the secrets of our shared existence, where we are a part of a living tapestry that stretches to the stars and beyond. And it is here, all around us, present in the most ordinary things.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Winter Waterfall, Big Kaverzinsky Falls, North Caucasus, Russia – photo by apogee_krd, bigstockphoto.com
The word ‘animism’ refers to something so commonplace, so taken for granted in tribal cultures, that most don’t even have a word for it—it is the foundational belief that spirit and matter are one. That all things are imbued with a soul; not just humans and animals, but mountains, thunder, shadows, and even the wind. If we learn to listen to and engage in a dialogue with that diversity of voices, we begin to see how there is a constant dynamism taking place between waking and dreaming, seen and unseen, mundane and holy. Like a tree whose roots are hidden in the rich darkness of the soil, human beings are meant to take our cues from the inner life—not the other way around.
~ Excerpt From Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home by Toko-pa Turner
Mount Rainier, Washington – photo by aft2015, bigstockphoto.com
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