“Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.”Ģ6. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Love the world as your own self then you can truly care for all things.Ģ5. Ask questions from you heart and you will be answered from the heart.Ģ4. They are not dead who live in the hearts they leave behind.Ģ0. ― Chief Luther Standing Bear from the Lakota Siouxġ9. They know that man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard they knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to a lack of respect for humans too. Poverty is a noose that strangles humility and breeds disrespect for God and man.ġ8. Before eating, always take time to thank the food.ġ7. It will free your mind of sorrowful thoughts.ġ6. It is easy to be brave from a distance.ġ3. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself.ġ2. You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.ġ1. We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.ġ0. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.ĩ. When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. “It is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand.”Ĩ. “One’s true nature is revealed in time of difficulty.”ħ. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”Ħ. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. “We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”ĥ. “We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.”Ĥ. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready.”ģ. When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. If you don’t realize the source, you stumble in confusion and sorrow. Watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return.Įach separate being in the universe returns to the common source. If we never wonder, knowledge will never find us.”Ģ. “If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come. Here are some extraordinary nature quotes and ecology-oriented proverbs that are perfect for contemplation. One of the best ways I’ve found for shifting thinking paradigms is spending time unplugged and deeply immersed in the wilderness for long periods of time… another way is simply contemplating profound wisdom about our place in this magical and mysterious world. We have the power to change our story and live a new story of a living Earth, a story that demands we learn again to live responsibly and ethically so there is a livable world for our future generations. When the stories being told by our culture aren’t making much sense anymore, we must all become storytellers. How we choose to tell those stories determines our collective experience of the world. We are storytelling animals and our ability to communicate through oral storytelling and later written languages is something special that makes us unique in nature. Since the beginning of time, all societies have had proverbs that disseminated important ecological wisdom and gave human beings insight into who we are, why we are alive and where we come from. Judging by the state of the “environment” today and the growing mental health crisis of meaning and identity that is slowly tearing apart the most “developed” modern societies, the hyper-rationalism that grew out of Cartesian dualism is not only insane but also self-destructive on an unthinkable scale. What sounds more insane? That we are storytelling animals immersed in a web of relationships with other sentient beings, or that we are just detached observers finding ourselves stuck living in a meaningless and mechanical Universe. Yet, this was considered common sense for most of human history up until the late 18th century in Europe. To both the hyper-rationalist intellectual who lives in their head and the anti-intellectual modern fundamentalist who takes ancient mythologies literally, the idea that we are part of our environment is considered insane. The Earth is our extended collective body.
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