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This is the difference between worldviews: one that views a land as a rich ore body, or a playground, and another that views it as a source of great spiritual and cultural wealth…. This is the story of the time in which we find ourselves.
~ Winona LaDuke
Enchanted Forest, Innsbruck, Austria – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
… the first step is to acknowledge that the world is a spiritual being, just as you acknowledge for yourself that you are a spiritual being. And the next is to recognize the mysterious relationship between the individual and the world, known traditionally as microcosm and macrocosm, in which every human being is the microcosm of the whole.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Colorado Color – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
We are capable of suffering with our world, and that is the true meaning of compassion. It enables us to recognize our profound interconnectedness with all beings. Don’t ever apologize for crying for the trees burning in the Amazon or over the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies. Don’t apologize for the sorrow, grief, and rage you feel. It is a measure of your humanity and your maturity. It is a measure of your open heart, and as your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal. That is what is happening as we see people honestly confronting the sorrows of our time.
~ Joanna Macy
Photo by Zastrozzi Dh Photography, used with permission
Many of us experience longing, fear, and loneliness as a result of our illusion of separation. What if the separation was all part of the healing journey back to recognizing there is no environment?
Mother Earth Gaia is us, we are Mother Earth. There is no outside. That is all illusionary as well. Inside, outside is all the dualistic part of the modern daydream we are working with to get to “We are ONE BODY.”
~ Dr. Barry Taylor
Grand Tetons Oxbow Bend – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
all plants are intelligent They are all self-aware. They all engage in highly interactive social transactions with their communities.
~ Stephen Harrod Buhner, Plant Intelligence
Bunch Creek Falls – photo by Sandy’s NW Hiking Photos, used with permission
I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for one self, one’s own family or one’s nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival, it is the foundation for world peace.
~ H. H. the Dalai Lama
Wenatchee River Rainbow – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
the soil itself is our collective ancestry, and thus the soil should be as sacred to us. The water of the Earth is the blood of the planet
~ Bron Taylor
Rainforest near Hilo, HI – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
Don’t be like the leafy tree wishing to be still in a windy place.
Trying to stop the mind is like trying to stop the wind, dressed as a kite.
Let the mind-wind blow.
You be the space in which it moves.
~ Mooji
Pagosa Springs, CO – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
I long, as does every human being,
to be at home wherever I find myself.
~ Maya Angelou
Boquete, Panamá, photo by Devadana Sanctuary
And that is just the point . . .
how the world, moist and beautiful,
calls to each of us to make a new and
serious response. That’s the big question,
the one the world throws at you every morning.
Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?” ~ Mary Oliver Costa Rica – photo by Devadana Sanctuary Thanks for sharing these photos…
the pain we feel for our world is a living testimony to our interconnectedness with it We can open to the pain of the world in confidence that it can neither shatter nor isolate us, for we are not objects that can break. We are resilient patterns within a vaster web of knowing.
~ Joanna Macy
Jasper National Park – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.
~ Hermann Hesse
Redwoods – Photo by Devadana Sanctuary
You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
~ Jane Goodall
Lake Maligne, Canada – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
~ John Muir
Hidden Waterfall, Akaka Falls State Park, HI – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
If we recognize the sacred and embrace it within all of life, we will find that life will speak to us as it spoke to our ancestors. It will remind us of how to live in harmony with creation, and how to restore the balance that is intrinsic to life. This is the ancient wisdom of the Earth itself, the Earth which has evolved and changed over millennia, been through previous ecological shifts. Unless we return to this deep knowing, real sustainability will remain a concept rather than a lived reality. Thomas Berry speaks to this:
We need not a human answer to an earth problem, but an earth answer to an earth problem. The earth will solve its problems, and possibly our own, if we will let the earth function in its own ways. We need only listen to what the earth is telling us.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Mt. Rainier – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
