The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.
~ Terry Tempest Williams, “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place”
Cathedral Rock, Sedona, AZ – photo by alexeys, bigstockphoto.com
Devadana Sanctuary
Click thumbnail to view larger image.
One of the basic experiential assumptions of shamanism is that I am not a separated physical being: I am an energy field or I am part of the whole. Actually, from a more genuine shamanic perspective, the entire notion of I, seen as separate from you and them, does not make any sense at all.
Contemporary human beings have confined themselves almost exclusively to the identification with the physical body and the idea of being a fragmented unit. Shamanic experience is one way in which it is possible to perceive others, the world and ourselves in their original united forms again.
~ Franco Santoro
La Sal Mountains, Arches National Park, Utah – photo by Dean Fikar, bigstockphoto.com
We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits.
But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe.
We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.
~ Wendell Berry
Merced River, Yosemite – photo by durktalsma, bigstockphoto.com
Whenever you come upon Water in its natural state, you approach it with respect; you introduce yourself to it. Take time to pay respect to it. For Water gives life, we live inside Water for nine months in our mother’s womb. Then we follow the Water into this world. It is sacred, we depend on Water for the rest of our life. Water is Life…
Allow for a moment of gratitude the next time you take a drink of Water. Then, hope will flicker within – hope that allows us to envision a way, a path towards a more compassionate and caring society that heeds the consciousness that Water is Life.
~ Mona Polacca, Havasupai/Hopi/Tewa Nations, Arizona
Mountain River – photo by Ale-ks, bigstockphoto.com
Louise Fowler-Smith, in “Hindu Tree Veneration as a Mode of Environmental Encounter”, writes: “Historically, sacred trees have been connected with rites of renewal, sexuality, fertility, conception, birth, initiation, death and rebirth. Throughout India, Hindu communities have their own individual deities…which are regarded as synonymous with the locality and everything within it…The deity is not visible to the local community, so a specific place or object is chosen to direct the act of worship. The…shrine…is usually connected with an important feature of the natural world such as a hill, a rock, a stream or pond. These shrines are most commonly associated with a tree or grove of trees, with the tree embodying the local goddess.” Hence, as far as India and Hinduism is concerned, the worship of a tree is not only a very ancient practice, but it is also a current living reality.
~ Ninthin Sridhar, “Natural oneness: Why trees are revered in Hinduism”
California Redwoods – photo by Virrage Images, bigstockphoto.com
Different places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, a different vibration of chemical exhalation, a different polarity with the stars; call it what you like. But the spirit of a place is a great reality.
~ D. H. Lawrence
Yosemite Sunset – photo by Anton Foltin, bigstockphoto.com
Earth is not a platform for human life. It’s a living being. We’re not on it but part of it. Its health is our health.
~Thomas Moore
Crater Lake National Park, OR – photo by stashek, 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, AZ – photo by SeanPavonePhoto, bigstockphoto.com
The deeper we look into life the more it unfolds itself. It is not only human beings who speak; plants and trees and all nature speak. Nature reveals its secret. We communicate with the whole of life. We are never alone.
~ Inayat Kahn
Sunlight Streaming Through A Tree – photo by Zoltan Pelle, bigstockphoto.com
…every act we make, every word we speak, every thought we think is not only affected by the other elements in the vast web of being in which all things take part, but also has results so far-reaching that we cannot see or imagine them.
~ Joanna Macy
Seljalandsfoss Waterfall, Iceland – photo by World Image, bigstockphoto.com
Redeveloping the capacity for heart-centered cognition can help each of us reclaim personal perception of the living and sacred intelligence within the world, within each particular thing.
– Stephen Buhner
Archangel Falls, Zion National Park – photo by Pung Pung, bigstockphoto.com
Over the last few months the outer landscape of our lives has changed with the coronavirus pandemic, economic distress and lengthening food lines, and demonstrations for racial injustice. Meanwhile, now seemingly in the background, is the constant drumbeat of the climate crisis, a long-term devastation with unforeseen consequences. And yet the inner journey continues as before, its light even more needed. The soul continues to cry for a return to the Source, for the lover to return to the arms of their Beloved. We carry in the depths of our heart a longing to throw aside the illusion of separation and step into the oneness that is the true reality of life and love. And now, as the world goes through these upheavals, there is a vital need to stay true to this inner calling, this love story that underlies all of life.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sunrise – photo by firewings, bigstockphoto.com
Just as we have forgotten how to deeply listen to the Earth, so we have lost the knowing of how to speak to Her. We no longer have rituals that bind us together, nor do we listen to the wind or the sound of plants growing. And we no longer know the words that can commune with Her, or the stories that sing to Her. All this is waiting to be rediscovered, because it is our heritage, belonging both to our past and our future, our shared journey together with the Earth. The beat of the drum and the cry of the flute, the sacred song and the sound of feet dancing, all these are the ways our ancestors knew to commune with the Earth. Different music, different songs for the seasons, for times of planting and harvesting, for the hunt. The scent of ceremonial tobacco hanging in the night air. And so we need to relearn how to speak to the trees and the rivers and the stars, to whisper our deepest secrets to the still night air, and remember how we are all one family, bonded from the very beginning.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Quaking Aspen Grove – photo by Gatego66, bigstockphoto.com
The world is magic, not a little bit, one-hundred percent. Every atom, from one end of the cosmos to the other, is magic, magic, magic.
~ Terence McKenna
Marble Caves, Patagonia, Chile – photo by Manon van Goethem, bigstockphoto.com
Mystical experience of nature can be of particular relevance to our troubled age, bringing deeper into our consciousness and emotions the logic that nature sustains humanity as humanity must, in turn, sustain nature. Rationality alone, however, cannot be our guide in the task of restoring our environment. A spiritual connection to nature must inspire the emotional commitment that is the yin, complementing the yang of intellectual understanding.
~ Carl von Essen
Setting Sun, Half Dome, Yosemite National Park – photo by durktalsma, bigstockphoto.com
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- …
- 304
- Next Page »