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As the world grows more and more out of balance, we urgently need to regain a relationship with the planet based upon the understanding of the world as a sacred living whole, and to reclaim a consciousness that is centered in that understanding.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Senja Island, Norway – photo by Taiga, bigstockphoto.com
All the models [of fields of information and consciousness] share the understanding that there is a reciprocal relationship between the individual and the collective field, that is, the individual and the field are seen to mutually influence each other (the capacity of the individual to influence the collective field is obviously a crucial element in any theory of subtle activism)…
Such a process can be understood in terms of morphic resonance—the unified field being seen as common for all people, when it is activated in one person it begins to vibrate in another.
~ David Nicol
El Capitan, Yosemite – photo by jeffbanke, bigstockphoto.com
…when we place our emphasis and consciousness on the soul of the world, we’re embracing the world as something sacred, as something that has its own essence, its own purpose and destiny that might very well be different, bigger, and more mysterious than anything we suspect or anything we could understand.
~ Geneen Marie Haugen
Volcan Arenal, Costa Rica – photo by Kevin Wells Photography, bigstockphoto.com
[Per Christopher Bache} …in certain profound states of inner work, the therapeutic effect of the healing process extends beyond the psyche of the individual to aspects of various collective levels of consciousness in which the individual is embedded.
~ David Nicol
Monument Valley Sunset – photo by alexeys, bigstockphoto.com
We breathe in oxygen given to us by the trees, drink water from lakes and springs, take in materials from trees and plants that grow in the earth, their leaves gathering energy from our local star, the sun. Every moment of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not, we live in unity and intimate connection with the creative wisdom of the natural world.
~ Christopher Chase
Giant Sequoias – photo by Jairo Rene Leiva, bigstockphoto.com
And so it is this, we might say, that defines a shaman; the ability to readily slip out of the collective perceptual boundaries that define his or her culture—boundaries held in place by social customs, taboos, and especially the common language—in order to directly engage, and negotiate with, the multiple nonhuman sensibilities that animate the local earth.
~ David Abram
Bryce Canyon National Park, UT – photo by RuslanKphoto, bigstockphoto.com
The Sun
Have you ever seen anything in your life more wonderful than the way the sun, every evening, relaxed and easy, floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills, or the rumpled sea, and is gone– and how it slides again
out of the blackness, every morning, on the other side of the world, like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils, say, on a morning in early summer, at its perfect imperial distance– and have you ever felt for anything such wild love– do you think there is anywhere, in any language, a word billowing enough for the pleasure
that fills you, as the sun reaches out, as it warms you
as you stand there, empty-handed– or have you too turned from this world–
or have you too gone crazy for power, for things?
~ Mary Oliver
Sunset over Bucura Lake, Romania – photo by rechitansorin, bigstockphoto.com
For each act of hatred that makes the news, a dozen of acts of goodness go unseen in our world.
~ Bishop Desmond Tutu
Sunrise – photo by firewings, bigstockphoto.com
Love is the real power. It’s the energy that cherishes. The more you work with that energy, the more you will see how people respond naturally to it, and the more you will want to use it. It brings out your creativity, and helps everyone around you flower. Your children, the people you work with–everyone blooms.
~ Marion Woodman
Moonrise, Carmel, CA – photo by Rinderart, bigstockphoto.com
We cannot step outside life’s songs. This music made us; it is our nature.
Our ethic must therefore be one of belonging, an imperative made all the more urgent by the many ways that human actions are fraying, rewiring, and severing biological networks worldwide. To listen to trees, nature’s great connectors, is therefore to learn how to inhabit the relationships that give life its source, substance, and beauty.
~ David George Haskell, from The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors
Trees of Yosemite – photo by CreativeEdge, bigstockphoto.com
With a cosmology of a living universe, a shining miracle exists everywhere. There are no empty places in the world. Everywhere there is life, both visible and invisible. All of reality is infused with a vital presence and this creates a profound relatedness among all things.
~ Duane Elgin
Lake in Snow – photo by arcadi62, bigstockphoto.com
Water sustains all life. Her songs begin in the tiniest of raindrops, transform to flowing rivers, travel to majestic oceans and thundering clouds and back to earth again. When water is threatened, all living things are threatened.
~ Indigenous Declaration on Water, 2001
Niagara Falls, NY – photo by lucky-photographer, bigstockphoto.com
We are caught in a period of ‘technological entrancement’ where the worldview of the Global North has become dysfunctional and destructive, creating a radical separation between the human world and the natural world. The dream of the West must be transformed.
There is a different dream that is emerging, a worldview that acknowledges the interconnectedness of all living things, where often, one of the most important roles a human being has is to act as caretaker of the environment and protector of the natural systems that give us life.
~ Alexis Lassman
Seahorse – photo by lanaid, bigstockphoto.com
There’s only one being shining out of all of our eyes. We spend all day finding reasons to hate people or feel better than other people, but it’s not true. There’s only one being.
~ Krishna Das
Sunset, Durdle Door Natural Limestone Arch, Dorset, England – photo by ianwool, bigstockphoto.com
We can be inspired by [the] scientific view of nested interdependence—from galaxies and stars to planets and ecosystems—so that we sense how personally we are woven into the fabric of life. We are part of this ongoing journey…We can thus recognize ecological, economic, and social change as not only necessary but inevitable.
~ Mary Tucker and Brian Swimme, “Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth”
Spiral Galaxy – photo by NASA, ESA, and the LEGUS Team
