"A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.

"I think ritual is terribly important."

~ Joseph Campbell, The Wisdom of Joseph Campbell, New Dimensions Radio Interview with Michael Toms

"We must be willing to get rid of 

the life we’ve planned, so as to have

the life that is waiting for us.

 

The old skin has to be shed

before the new one can come.

If we fix on the old, we get stuck.

 

When we hang onto any form,

we are in danger of putrefaction.

 

Hell is life drying up.

 

The Hoarder,

the one in us that wants to keep,

to hold on, must be killed.

 

If we are hanging onto the form now,

we’re not going to have the form next.

 

You can’t make an omelet

without breaking eggs.

 

Destruction before creation.”

 

~ Joseph Campbell

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”

~ Chief Seattle

"Wilderness is a place where the wild potential is fully expressed, a diversity of living and nonliving beings flourishing according to their own sorts of order. When an ecosystem is fully functioning, all the members are present at the assembly."

~ Gary Snyder

‘Oh, how can I say this: People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar. Wildness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully.’

~ Barbara Kingslover

#weboflife  #wilderness  #livingsystems #deepechology

"Don't ever 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. And it is an adaptive response."

~ Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

#weboflife  #interdependence  #deepecology

"We have to learn to look at things as they are, painful and overwhelming as that may be, for no healing can begin until we are fully present to our world, until we learn to sustain the gaze."

~ Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

#weboflife  #interdependence  #deepecology
 

"Wherever a story comes from, whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory, the retelling exemplifies the making of a connection from one pattern to another: a potential translation in which narrative becomes parable and the once upon a time comes to stand for some renascent truth. This approach applies to all the incidents of everyday life: the phrase in the newspaper, the endearing or infuriating game of a toddler, the misunderstanding at the office. Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories." 

~ Mary Catherine Bateson

“We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate; it oppresses.” 

~ C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

"Whenever we touch nature we get clean. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a bath in the sea... They... allow nature to touch them. It can be done within or without. Walking in the woods, lying on the grass, taking a bath in the sea, are from the outside; entering the unconscious, entering yourself through dreams, is touching nature from the inside and is the same thing, things are put right again."

~ C.G. Jung

The nine types of silence:

"Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos."

~ Paul Goodman, psychotherapist & co-founder of Gestalt

When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, and inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest and urge a vibrant life in the inner and outer worlds. When women are with the Wild Woman, the fact of that relationship glows through them. 


~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
 

 Man is much more than a ‘rational being’ and lives more by sympathies and impressions than by conclusions. It darkens his eyes and dries up the wells of his humanity to be forever in search of doctrine. We need wholesome, experiencing na­tures, I dare affirm, much more than we need sound reasoning. 


~ Woodrow Wilson, from On Being Human
 

"It’s no coincidence that just at this point in our insight into our mysteriousness as human beings struggling towards compassion, we are also moving into an awakened interest in the language of myth and fairy tale. The language of logical arguments, of proofs, is the language of the limited self we know and can manipulate. But the language of parable and poetry, of storytelling, moves from the imprisoned language of the provable into the freed language of what I must, for lack of another word, continue to call faith." 

~ Madeleine L’Engle