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The world is preparing for a big change and the responsibility to bring this about lies with us… Our progress is not measured by the amount of inventions we create…but by the amount of the world that we are able to reintegrate and recognize as ourselves.
~ Sri Aurobindo
Bull Elk at Sunrise – photo from bigstockphoto.com
At our most elemental, we are not a chemical reaction, but an energetic charge. Human beings and all living things are a coalescence of energy in a field of energy connected to every other thing in the world. This pulsating energy field is the central engine of our being and our consciousness, the alpha and the omega of our existence.
~ Lynne McTaggart
Aurora Reflections, Stokksnes Black Beach, Iceland – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Life now includes the larger life of the earth, individual freedom requires responsibility to community, and happiness is being defined as more than material goods. A sense of a larger common good is emerging: the future of the planet and its fragile biosphere.
~ Mary Tucker and Brian Swimme, “Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth”
Sunset, Winter Mountain – photo by Pung Pung, bigstockphoto.com
Life always gives us an opportunity and a choice. For those who can read the signs it is not difficult to see that great changes are constellating in the inner and outer worlds. We can see it in the unprecedented loss of species as well as in global political changes suddenly happening around us. Many of us also sense it in our dreams—see an inner tsunami coming. What really matters is that we are awake in this moment of our planet’s time. Are we like the Mokan, attentive to the changes happening around us, and thus able to access a deeper wisdom that knows how to respond. Or will we be like the sailors who were destroyed by the tsunami, “who did not know how to look.”
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sunrise, Mount Kanchenjungha, Himalayan Mountain Range – photo by Rudra Narayan Mitra, bigstockphoto.com
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.
~ Vaclav Havel
Baobob Trees, Madagascar – photo by Dudarev Mikhail, bigstockphoto.com
Reality is woven from strange, “holistic” threads that aren’t located precisely in space or time. Tug on a dangling loose end from this fabric of reality, and the whole cloth twitches, instantly, throughout all space and time…The bottom line is that physical reality is connected in ways we’re just beginning to understand…When you drill down into the core of even the most solid-looking material, separateness dissolves.
~ Dean Radin
Sunrise, Bungan Beach, Australia – photo from bigstockphoto.com
…nature teems with consciousness through and through. Matter itself tingles with the spark of spirit, and therefore nature, in all its forms and glory, is sacred to its deepest roots.
~ Christian de Quincey, “Radical Nature: The Soul of Nature”
Grand Canyon at Dusk – photo from bigstockphoto.com
…in reality everything in the universe is deeply interconnected. Experiments have repeatedly demonstrated that subatomic particles are able to communicate instantly with one another, regardless of the distances that separate them.
~ Duane Elgin
Milky Way, Manaslu, Himalayas – photo by Den Belitsky, bigstockphoto.com
To the Western mind, participation with the non-human Others and with the numinous might suggest mysticism, or something unavailable to ordinary people. Yet this kind of participation is, even now, an everyday mode of being for at least some people—indigenous and others—who have not entirely succumbed to the age of reason.
~ Geneen Marie Haugen
Hvitserkur in the Midnight Sun, Iceland – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Animal communicators have most likely existed for a long time, probably in every single culture in the world. It is only in our modern Western materialistic culture, which has been influenced by mainstream institutions of religion and science based on perceiving a reality of separateness, that such a possibility seems so outlandish. However…animal communication, also known as interspecies communication, is a very real phenomenon.
~ Makie Freeman
Giraffe, South Africa – photo by Chris Kruger, bigstockphoto.com
Wisdom requires not only the investigation of many things, but contemplation of the mystery…The rational approach starts from the idea that everything is explainable and that mystery is in some sense the enemy. This means that it prefers pejorative, and even wrong, answers to admitting its own lack of understanding.
~ Jeremy Narby, “The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
Zion National Park, Utah – photo by Pung Pung, bigstockphoto.com
We seldom notice how each day is a holy placeWhere the eucharist of the ordinary happens,Transforming our broken fragmentsInto an eternal continuity that keeps us.
Somewhere in us a dignity presidesThat is more gracious than the smallnessThat fuels us with fear and force,A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.
So at the end of this day, we give thanksFor being betrothed to the unknownAnd for the secret workThrough which the mind of the dayAnd wisdom of the soul become one.
~ John O’Donohue
Halong Bay, Vietnam – photo from bigstockphoto.com
We Need an Education of the HeartMy wish is that, one day, formal education will pay attention to the education of the heart, teaching love, compassion, justice, forgiveness, mindfulness, tolerance and peace. This education is necessary, from kindergarten to secondary schools and universities. I mean social, emotional and ethical learning.
We must learn that humanity is one big family. We are all brothers and sisters: physically, mentally and emotionally. But we are still focusing far too much on our differences instead of our commonalities.
Intolerance leads to hatred and division. Our children should grow up with the idea that dialogue, not violence, is the best and most practical way to solve conflicts. But this can become reality only if we educate, not just the brain, but also the heart…
~ H.H., the 14th Dalai Lama
Morning at Matheson Lake, New Zealand – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life. Ask permission before taking.
Abide by the answer.
Never take the first.
Never take the last.
Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half.
Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully.
Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
Snow-Covered Forest, Ontario, Canada – photo from bigstockphoto.com
…shamans around the world believe that we are dreaming the wrong dream. For everything that occurs in life is a dream. Inasmuch as we have forgotten this teaching in the West, we end up focusing our thoughts and our imaginations on feeding the problems and challenges in the world. We must practice using our imagination to dream the dream of the earth, that we embrace love, peace, light, abundance, equality for all.
~ Sandra Ingerman
Sunset on the Serengeti – photo from bigstockphoto.com
