In an information-based universe, none of us ever takes the journey…alone. We all are part of the enfolding collective consciousness of humanity that consists of the combined awareness, experience, and wisdom of every human being who ever lived, including both positive and negative elements of human consciousness.
~ Nancy Napier, “Sacred Practices for Conscious Living, 2nd Edition”
Winter in the Woods – photo by Yanika, bigstockphoto.com
The entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth’s atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts.
~ James Lovelock
Cathedral Rock, Sedona, Arizona – photo by alexeys, bigstockphoto.com
In our perception all life is equal, and that includes the birds, animals, things that grow, things that swim. All life is equal in our perception.
~ Oren Lyons
Coral and Fish, Ao Sane Beach, Phuket, Thailand – photo by Windofchange64, bigstockphoto.com
We must have the courage to live with paradox. The strength to hold the tension of not knowing the answers and the willingness to listen to our inner wisdom and the inner wisdom of the planet which begs for change.
~ Maureen Murdock
Monument Valley Sunset – photo by alexeys, bigstockphoto.com
One of the greatest sovereign powers that we all wield as human beings, although often unknowingly or without awareness, is the power of choosing where to place our attention.
~ Paul Levy
Dziki Wodospad Waterfall, Karkonosze Mountains, Poland – photo by Pav-Pro-Photography, bigstockphoto.com
We need to face the reality of our outer ecological crisis. We also need to sense inwardly the loss of the sacred, all the ways in which as a culture we have lost our sense of “interbeing” with all of creation.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Mount Bromo Eruption, Java, Indonesia – photo by muslian, bigstockphoto.com
A portion of an article, “The Earth is Just As Alive As You Are”:
Every year the nearly 400 billion trees in the Amazon rain forest and all the creatures that depend on them are drenched in seven feet of rain — four times the annual rainfall in London. This deluge is partly due to geographical serendipity. Intense equatorial sunlight speeds the evaporation of water from sea and land to sky, trade winds bring moisture from the ocean, and bordering mountains force incoming air to rise, cool and condense. Rain forests happen where it happens to rain.
But that’s only half the story. Life in the Amazon does not simply receive rain — it summons it. All of that lush vegetation releases 20 billion tons of water vapor into the sky every day. Trees saturate the air with gaseous compounds and salts. Fungi exhale plumes of spores. The wind sweeps bacteria, pollen, leaf fragments and bits of insect shells into the atmosphere. The wet breath of the forest, peppered with microbes and organic residues, creates ideal conditions for rain. With so much water in the air and so many minute particles on which the water can condense, rain clouds quickly form.
The Amazon sustains much more than itself, however. Forests are vital pumps of Earth’s circulatory system. All of the water that gushes upward from the Amazon forms an enormous flying river, which brings precipitation to farms and cities throughout South America. Some scientists have concluded that through long-range atmospheric ripple effects the Amazon contributes to rainfall in places as far away as Canada.
The Amazon’s rain ritual is just one of the many astonishing ways in which living creatures transform their environments and the planet as a whole. Much of this ecology has only recently been discovered or understood. We now have compelling evidence that microbes are involved in numerous geological processes; some scientists think they played a role in forming the continents…
~ Ferris Jabr
Costa Rican Rainforest Floor in Rain – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
We dedicate enormous talent and knowledge and research in developing a human order disengaged from and even predatory on the very sources from whence we came and upon which we depend every moment of our existence. We initiate our children into an economic order based on exploitation of the natural life systems of the planet.In reality there is a single integral community of the Earth that includes all its component members whether human or other than human. In this community every being has its own role to fulfill, its own dignity, its inner spontaneity.,
Our educational institutions need to see their purpose not as training personnel for exploiting the Earth but as guiding students toward an intimate relationship with the Earth. The planet itself that brings us into being, sustains us in life, and delights us with its wonders…
~ Thomas Berry
Rainbow at Iguazu Falls, Brazil – photo by lovelypeace, 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
Sunrise, Monument Valley – photo by Melissa Kopka, bigstockphoto.com
Is it too much to ask, to live in a world where our human gifts go toward the benefit of all? Where our daily activities contribute to the healing of the biosphere and the well-being of other people?
…We are not just a skin-encapsulated ego, a soul encased in flesh. We are each other and we are the world.
~ Charles Eisenstein
Upper Antelope Canyon, AZ – photo by vichie81, bigstockphoto.com
Consciousness permeates reality. Rather than being just a unique feature of human subjective experience, it’s the foundation of the universe, present in every particle and all physical matter.
~ Olivia Goldhill
Sri Lankan Leopards – photo by sonnydeez, bigstockphoto.com
Our chest, rising and falling, knows that the strange verb “to be” means more simply “to breathe”; it knows that the maples and the birches are breathing, that the beaver pond inhales and exhales in its own way, as do the stones and the mountains and the pipes coursing water through the ground under the city. The lungs know this secret as well as any can know it: that the inward and the outward depths partake of the same mystery, that as the unseen wind swirls within us, so it also whirls all around us, bending the grasses and lofting the clouds even as it lights our own sensations. The vocal cords, stirred by that breath, vibrate like spiderwebs or telephone wires in the breeze, and the voice itself, laughing and murmuring, joins its song to the water gurgling under the grate.
~ David Abram, Becoming Human
Yosemite Valley Sunset – photo by jeffbanke, bigstockphoto.com
Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go – to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.
~ David Whyte
Fitz Roy Mountain, Patagonia, Argentina – photo by Tadas Jucys, bigstockphoto.com
Our spiritual practice, our aspiration and awareness, are part of the lifeblood of the planet…If spiritual life is not about the whole, it has lost its true nature; it has instead been subverted by the ego and its patterns of self-concern.
~ Llewelyn Vaughan-Lee
Jungle in Serra dos Orgaos National Park, Brazil – photo by Tupungato, bigstockphoto.com
A closed heart creates a barrier between heart and mind that allows us to tell ourselves that we are all separate and different, rather than feeling the pain of how much we share similar hurts and yearnings. To experience compassion and lovingkindness as integral parts of daily life means to allow our hearts to open and let in the reality that we all have the capacity to feel rejection, humiliation, fear, rage, love, desire, hunger, and joy.
Fortunately, there is a comforting paradox at work here: the more you open your heart, the more flexible and resilient you become in the face of life’s daily challenges and unexpected demands. What develops is similar to the difference between a tree that is stiff and brittle and one that is supple and able to bend. The first tree is at risk for injury in high winds and storms; the second has a much better chance of surviving intact.
~ Nancy Napier, “Sacred Practices for Conscious Living, 2nd Edition”
High Mountain River, Nepal – photo by denbelitsky, bigstockphoto.com
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