Hi everyone! I wanted to share this series of questions from terrapsychologist Craig Chalquist in case you haven't visited the book club this month. I think they are highly thought-provoking and particularly significant as environmental changes seem (to me) to be speeding up along with the pace of our culture.

If you're looking for a topic for a paper (how about one for submission to Depth Insights e-zine?!) or a conference perhaps, these are very powerful. Take a read--and if you feel inspired, please hop over to the Book Club and post your reaction, or a comment or question or quote or website that appeals to you. It's been quiet there--and everyone in this group will likely find the topic of interest since it's earth-based and ecopsychological. Even if you don't have the book, we still have Craig's attention for two more weeks and it's a great opportunity to engage. He's so in tune with this particular field.

Here's the list:

1. Think about where you came from: the name of the place (look up the etymology), its dominant imagery and recurring motifs. See any parallels? To know where you were born and "why" thematically is to begin to understand your wider story of how to be in the world.
2. What objects follow you around? Not just precious ones, but ones that you can't seem to get rid of. If you thought about it from the object's perspective, what might it get out of being near you, not just as symbolic of some part of you, but perhaps you as helpful for whatever individuation objects might enjoy? (See the film The Red Violin for an example of an object's long path homeward to the person who can really hear its soul.)
3. Why are our cities so often ugly? What does building this way say to Aphrodite--and what can she tell us about why the world is beautiful, inviting us into deeper participation with it?
4. Whether you've left the place of your birth or are still living there, how might that movement parallel the travels (or rootings) of your ancestors? (Hint: I am descended from Clan Murdoch of Galloway, a place that occupies roughly the same part of Scotland that California does North America. Going further back, ancestral maps revealing the passage of ancestors from Africa fifty thousand years ago northward through past the Caucasus through the Middle East toward Spain trace out a giant question mark. Maybe the question is, "Where do we go from here?")
5. If you think of your home as a psychic structure--its facade a persona, its most-used room its ego, its attic or roof its superego, its unconscious either in the basement or out back in the yard--how would you analyze it? What shape is your back yard in? What sits above your head in the attic or on the roof?
6. Big question: What if it were possible to interpret natural events like storms, earthquakes, etc. as dream images? Is it possible that Earth and the unconscious speak the same symbolic language?

Thanks!