On Feb 14, Dr. Robert Romanyshyn will offer an online interview as part of a 10-day Global Summit: "Awakening to the Truth of Who We Are"
For info about the Summit, speakers, registration, click HERE (Recording available for 3 days after)
Dr. Romanyshyn writes:
My talk is based on my recently completed book, The Frankenstein Prophecies. For a PDF of a chapter from my book, click "download free" at the top of the page
Re-Membering Our Broken Bonds with Nature
“Western man has no need of more superiority over nature, whether outside or inside…What he lacks is conscious recognition of his inferiority to the nature around him and within him… If he does not learn this, his own nature will destroy him. (Jung. CW 11, Par 870)
One early morning in the late 1980s, I was in a hide in the Umfolozi wilderness in South Africa. It was cold and a blanket of thick mist still wrapped itself around the dark landscape. I was taken there to witness the drama of the coming of the animals to the water hole, a natural recurring cycle of nature’s rhythms. What I did witness was the mystery and beauty of one of Nature’s ordinary miracles. As if a curtain had just parted, scores of animals were appearing, as if congealing out of the formless vapor into form and visibility. The mist---a breath of the Divine stirring the waters of creation! It was dawn and it could have been the first day of creation.
In 2009 I travelled with my wife, Veronica Goodchild, to the Antarctic. That journey, which had begun 30 years earlier with a dream that I had forgotten, but which did not forget me, was an inner journey in the outer world and vice versa. Amidst those crystal cathedrals of ice, the ‘I’ that I was dissolved in the solitude and silence, the serenity and solace, and the stillness and slowness of that holy place. How strange to be drawn into this coupling and intertwining of psyche and world, and to discover in that landscape so far from home that I had been and still was an orphan who was now on the way home.
The capacity to wander in wonder, to drift within the rhythms, cycles and seasons of nature can awaken us to the cellular rhythms, cycles and seasons of the living body, to the con-spiracy of breathing together in harmony and rhythm.
This Global Summit gathers together speakers who, each in their own way, have been in-spired in the work of remembering the truth(s) of who we are. We come together to share with all of you our stories and experiences not as experts but as partners on the journeys of homecoming.
For my presentation I will use Mary Shelley’s story of Frankenstein and Guillermo Del Toro’s film The Shape of Water to explore how they offer ways to step back for a moment from the alienation of technology, which can allow us to appreciate its benefits—like this Global Summit—while not ignoring its darker implications. Each of them contains seeds of hope that can develop into specific ways to cultivate the capacity to wander in wonder, and which can be made part of a daily practice to remember the truth(s) of who we are. Such moments are occasions of anamnesis, the critical work of un-forgetting, a remembering that re-members who you are but have forgotten, that you that is still waiting by the side of the road.
Please direct questions to event host, Sacred Planet
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