“The power and majesty of nature in all its aspects is lost on one who contemplates it merely in the detail of its parts and not as a whole.”
— Pliny the Elder
Yes! It’s in the inter-relationships between the supposed parts, where the magic of this world is illuminated for me.
When I learned about a bumblebee whose wings vibrate at the exact frequency to unlock a flowers hidden pollen chamber…
or about the trophic cascades of Yellowstone National Park, where the reintroduction of wolves resulted in the whole ecosystem coming back into balance…
Or how seemingly destructive occurrences such as forest fires or a strangler fig killing off another tree, could actually be key to the health of the wider ecosystem…
It’s the intricacy, complexity and shining intelligence of this world, the way each life reverberates across the whole web, the inability to affect one thing without affecting everything else in turn… that is becoming increasingly clear to me… it’s this that makes me want to cry out at the wonder, beauty and perfection of it all.
“All forms, from quanta to cosmos, from self to collective, remain interrelated and yet truly unique. When, through sacred mind, we recognize how deeply interconnected we are in our dazzling diversity, and how impermanent those exquisite expressions are, we devote and dedicate ourselves to their care.”
― Julie J. Morley
When I touch this luminous web, I feel less alone and also less afraid of dying… because death is terrifying when you mistakenly perceive yourself as something separate and unchanging… When death is removed from its context within the whole system, then we lose sight of how death feeds back into life…
Somewhere along the line, my people traded their awareness of this web and their place in it- for a story of separation and domination, a story that created the conditions for reckless consumption and control without concern for the far-reaching implications… this story has made us sick. It’s made us lonely. It’s made us insane and it will be the end of us all if we don’t come back into remembrance of our interbeing.
No amount of consumption or power over others will ever make up for this loss of perspective, those are just the unskillful ways we have been taught to try to fill a hole that can’t ever be filled…
“As humans begin to awaken to an animate and sentient universe, our attitude toward reality will change accordingly, and so will our systems.”
― Julie J. Morley
Don’t buy the lies of this culture, we are not all ‘red in tooth and claw’- competition is natural, yes, but so is synergy, mutual co-operation and empathy… and in fact, those qualities are foundational to the existence of all complex lifeforms… I believe a culture of connection and regeneration is possible for those of us who have lost our way, but it’s going to ask us to surrender this delusion of separation at the door and step back into our awareness of our radical interdependence.
Deep Earth Dreaming 