I often speak to other animals. Many people don’t understand why I do this. That’s okay, the other animals understand why.
~ A.D. Williams
White Peacock – photo by Karel Gallas, bigstockphoto.com
Devadana Sanctuary
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If we are interdependent with everything and everyone, even our smallest, least significant thought, word, and action have real consequences throughout the universe.
Throw a pebble into a pond. It sends a shiver across the surface of the water. Ripples merge into one another and create new ones. Everything is inextricably interrelated. We come to realize that we are responsible for everything we do, say, or think, responsible in fact for ourselves, everyone and everything else,and the entire universe.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Stream Cascade, Zlate Meso, Czech Republic – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Awakening to the Feminine means becoming protective of the whole of creation; dying to all the divisive ways of looking at life and each other; being born into an utterly different vision of reality. As it becomes more conscious in us, we are already becoming aware of our dependence for our continued existence on the integrity and sustainability of the planetary biosphere…
~ Ann Baring, Awakening to the Feminine
Lotus – photo by Ange DiBenedetto
Life clearly does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes. Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.
~ James Lovelock
Lion and Tree Branch – photo from bigstockphoto.com
It was not that the jagged precipices were lofty, that the encircling woods were the dimmest shade, or that the waters were profoundly deep; but that over all, rocks, wood, and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths.
~ Thomas Cole
Yosemite Valley, CA – photo by Gary Tognoni, bigstockphoto.com
…deep ecologists seek to emphasize that all living beings should be permitted, whenever possible, to purse their own evolutionary destinies. In contrast to anthropocentrism, in which things have value only insofar as they are useful for promoting human ends…ecocentrism calls on people to respect individual beings and the ecosystem in which they arise.
~ M. C. Zimmerman
Bialowieza Forest, Poland – photo from bigstockphoto.com
In becoming aware of the spiritual dimension of reality, the shamanic practitioner knows and sees the sacred in everything and experiences the direct knowledge that everything comes from the same divine source—that everything is the Source.
~ Claude Poncelet
Grape Leaves – photo from bigstockphoto.com
simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.
~ John O’Donohue
Garden of the Gods, CO – photo by R. Kimbrow, bigstockphoto.com
Water has a memory and carries within it our thoughts and prayers. As you yourself are water, no matter where you are, your prayers will be carried to the rest of the world.
~ Masaru Emoto
Iguazu Falls from Argentine – photo from bigstockphoto.com
I have chosen to define subtle activism in terms of spiritual or consciousness-based approaches simply because I want to emphasize the potential of these usually overlooked methods to contribute to positive social change.
~ David Nicol, from “Subtle Activism: The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation”
Bryce Canyon – photo from bigstockphoto.com
Standing alone on a mountain top, it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make–leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents of piled stone–we all dwell in a house of one room…
~ John Muir
Lake of Mountain Spirits, Park Ergaki, Siberia, Russia – phoro by Evigenly Ivanov, bigstockphoto.com
Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode…
~ Lawrence M. Krauss
Milky Way, Crimea – photo by Den Belitsky, bigstockphoto.com
The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time…
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
Australian Landscape – photo from bigstockphoto.com
No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
~ Nelson Mandela
Blue Cave, Island of Zakynthos, Greece – photo by Krivosheev Vitaly, bigstockphoto.com
Everything interesting happens at the edges. As we are moving to restore our relationships with nature, including one another, in an extremely diverse and globally connected planet, the knowledge we need is held by those who are crossing boundaries between fixed viewpoints, restoring relationship with place, holding multiple ways of being, and reintegrating feminine wisdom…
It is unreasonable to assume we will re-enter a collective state of healing that is based on a common, seamless view. Instead, wholeness and healing manifest when we honor our collective wounding and allow our brokenness and resulting stories and diversities to be seen and held. It is our cracks, our brokenness, our edges that reorder our vision of the world, so that we may see more clearly, from a perspective that is much larger than a myopic view.
~ Jeanine M. Canty
Sunrise, Hunts Mesa, Monument Valley – photo from bigstockphoto.com
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