When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
~ John Muir
Milky Way – photo by paulista, bigstockphoto.com
Stories, myths, and legends have existed since the beginning of humanity. They tell us about the world around us and give us a different filter to understand how things came about. For indigenous cultures who hold the longest relationship with life and natural surroundings, everything is alive and divine––even things we consider inanimate. And everything has a story of how they came to be what they are today. Even acorns.
~ John P. Harrington
Forest Owl – photo by Martin Grossman, bigstockphoto.com
Watching their cycles of growth, shedding of leaves, and re-flowering in the spring, people have long perceived trees as powerful symbols of life, death, and renewal. Since the beginning of time, humans have had a sense that trees are sentient beings just like us, that they can feel pain, that they bleed when they are hurt. Trees even look like us. People have a trunk; trees have arms. And so we innately feel a deep connection to them.
Many people say they can feel a tree’s vibrational energy when placing their hand upon its bark. With their deep roots, trees carry significant grounding energy. We naturally feel peace and serenity when walking in the shade of trees or on a forest trail.
~ Judith Shaw
Tree People of Central Park – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
TO COME HOME TO YOURSELF
May all that is unforgiven in you,
Be released.
May your fears yield
Their deepest tranquilities.
May all that is unlived in you,
Blossom into a future,
Graced with love.
~ John O’Donohue
Sunset, Cliffs of Moher, Ireland – photo by Patryk Kosmider, bigstockphoto.com
A quick look at the condition of our world shows the devastating impact of this pervasive denial intrinsic to the Western, scientific, materialist worldview, both upon the quality of life for much of humanity, as well as upon the biosphere as a whole…Our understanding of the world we live in determines the ethics we live by. Living a life based on a worldview that is an illusion can easily lead to living the wrong life. In re-visioning our idea of the world we live in, we change our perception of the possibilities available in our world, thus opening up previously unimagined pathways of creative and effective action.
~ Paul Levy
A New Dawn – photo by Dean Fikar, bigstockphoto.com
What should be our response to the generosity of the more-than-human world? In a world that gives us maple syrup, spotted salamanders, and sand hill cranes, shouldn’t we at least pay attention? Paying attention is an ongoing act of reciprocity, the gift that keeps on giving, in which attention generates wonder, which generates more attention—and more joy. Paying attention to the more-than-human world doesn’t lead only to amazement; it leads also to acknowledgment of pain. Open and attentive, we see and feel equally the beauty and the wounds, the old growth and the clear-cut, the mountain and the mine. Paying attention to suffering sharpens our ability to respond. To be responsible.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
Green-Crowned Hummingbird – photo by Watch the Birdy, bigstockphoto.com
We are always part of something, belonging to a greater wholeness. In fact, we always stand deeply connected with the entire world around us…Nothing can thrive in seclusion. We all depend on each other and we are nurtured in the web of connectedness—organically and in consciousness.
~ Soren Hauge
Sunrise, Serengeti, Tanzania – photo by bennymarty, bigstockphoto.com
One of the most important contributions of the ecological movement is that it has made us conscious of the interdependence of all forms of life, the delicate web of creation…Nor do we realize the degree to which our intention, our attitude, our individual participation can affect the life of the whole and the way the future will unfold.
~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Kalalau Valley at Sunset, Kauai, Hawaii – photo by BackyardProductions, bigstockphoto.com
Every being has its own voice. Every being enters into communion with other beings. This capacity for relatedness, for presence to other beings, for spontaneity in action, is a capacity possessed by every mode of being throughout the entire universe. So too every being has rights to be recognized and revered…
~ Thomas Berry
Coral Reef – photo by mychadre77, bigstockphoto.com
Trees are a fascinating species on Earth. Unlike other creatures, trees can live for thousands and thousands of years. The oldest tree on record lived for over five thousand years! Unbelievable! It was still three thousand years old when Rome was at its greatest point. It’s amazing to think about and it’s absolutely crazy how long trees can live. They are amongst the oldest living creatures on the entire planet.
We know that trees are alive because they use energy to create their own energy. Even though they lack the organs that creatures like mammals have, trees still have their own set of unique organs.
~ Brandon Prows
Giant Sequoia, Sequoia National Park, CA – photo by Radomir Rezny, bigstockphoto.com
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
Peacock-Eye Butterfly – photo by Elkov, bigstockphoto.com
When the earth is sick and dying,
There will come a tribe of people
From all races…Who will put their faith in deeds,
Not words, and make the planet
Green again…
~ Cree Prophecy
Dawn, Snake River, Wyoming – photo by Dean Fikar, bigstockphoto.com
There are theoretical descriptions showing how tasks can be accomplished by entangled groups without the members of the group communicating with each other in any conventional way…Some even propose that the entire universe is a single, self-entangled object.
~ Dean Radin
Milky Way – photo by raphoto, bigstockphoto.com
The elder within us feels her interdependence with all life and how she is, in essence, summoned into existence through her relationships with all other beings. Her heart naturally breaks open over the suffering of the world, and she will go to whatever lengths necessary to protect life, especially at the species and habitat levels.
~ Geneen Marie Haugen
Monument Valley, UT – photo by javarman, bigstockphoto.com
Felice Wyndham is an ecological anthropologist and ethnobiologist who has noted that people she has worked with can intimately sense the world beyond their body. “It’s a form of enhanced mindfulness,” she says. “It’s quite common, you see it in most hunter-gatherer groups. It’s an extremely developed skill base of cognitive agility, of being able to put yourself into a viewpoint and perspective of many creatures or objects – rocks, water, clouds.
“We, as humans, have a remarkable sensitivity, imagination, and ability to be cognitively agile,” Wyndham says. “If we are open to it and train ourselves to learn how to drop all of the distractions to our sensory capacity, we’re able to do so much more biologically than we use in contemporary industrial society.”
~ Jim Robbins, “Native Knowledge: What Ecologists Are Learning from Indigenous People”, published in Yale Environment 360
Lady Bird Johnson Grove – photo by shoenberg3, bigstockphoto.com
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