Sunday, December 22, 2019

Chellis Glendinning: To Open Our Hearts


To open our hearts to the sad history of humanity and the devastated state of the Earth is the next step in our reclamation of our bodies, the body of our human community, and the body of the Earth.

Some of the technologies that were created during the Industrial Revolution were appalling, such as capitalization, investment, social hierarchy, sexism, racism, and ecological destruction.

If we cannot envision the world we would like to live in, we cannot work towards its creation. If we cannot place ourselves in it in our imagination, we will not believe it is possible. 

It is not just contemporary industrial society that is dysfunctional; it is civilization itself. We humans are born to be creatures of the land and the sea and the stars; we are relations to the animals, cohorts to the plants. Our well being, and the well-being of the very planet depend on our pursuance of our given place within the natural world.

Most pointedly, nature-based people manifest the very qualities that contemporary psychotherapy, the recovery movement, and spiritual practices continually aim for: a visible sense of inner peace, unselfconscious humility, an urge to communal cooperation, and heartfelt appreciation for the world around them. 

The important thing is to go back to wholeness. It's time for human beings to come into a sustainable world. 

Chellis Glendinning

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