Discussion and links for topics around earth, nature, and place. NOTE: if you want others to be able to RESPOND to your comments, DON'T use the comments box--click "Add a Discussion" above it instead. (I know!--it's not intuitive. Apologies!)

124 Members
Join Us!

You need to be a member of Depth Psychology Alliance to add comments!

Join Depth Psychology Alliance

Comments are closed.

Comments

  • TODAY is the day to support eco-journalists in a global fundraising effort!

    In honor of the Brower Center where this inspiring conversation that Bonnie just mentioned took place, I am joining many people to support efforts of independent journalism and The Earth Island Institute, which is housed in the Brower Center and puts out a great eco-journal Earth Island Journal. from the editor:

    "Every morning when I sit down at my desk at Earth Island Journal, I consider two important facts that remind me why the magazine’s work is so important:

    First, the planet and all of its habitants – plants, animals, us – are in trouble. The steady murder of Earth is the most important story for humanity in the twenty-first century.

    Second, there are fewer professional reporters who are working to tell that story. The newspapers are dying, thousands of journalists have lost their jobs in recent years, and in-depth journalism is becoming harder to find – even as the Internet floods us with infotainment.

    To keep publishing our style of advocacy journalism, we’re asking you to support our work and become a subscriber to the magazine today.

    On February 15, thousands of people around the country will be taking part in “Support Your Media Day” – a national fundraising challenge to help independent media like Earth Island Journal. Every donation and new subscriber we get in the next 24 hours will help us claim our share of more than $10,000 in cash awards. Donate now and you’ll be helping to sustain our unique blend of investigative journalism, incisive commentary, interviews, and art.

    Since you already read the Journal online, you know our work. We were among the first magazines to examine the consequences of geo-engineering the globe’s atmosphere, and also one of the earliest to investigate natural gas fracking. Last year we published a major investigation of the Canadian tar sands, anticipating how the issue would galvanize environmentalists to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline.

    Original reporting takes money. Our goal is to raise $5,000 with this campaign. If everyone receiving this email made a $10 contribution, we’d clear that in no time. So please make a donation to Earth Island Journal today and help ensure that independent media doesn’t become an endangered species.

    Onward ever,Jason Mark
    Editor Earth Island Journal

    Founded by visionary environmentalist David Brower in 1982, Earth Island Institute grows environmental leadership through education and activism. With 50 projects under our fiscal sponsorship, our quarterly Earth Island Journal and website, educational programming at the David Brower Center, our New Leaders Initiative and its annual Brower Youth Awards, and the grant making of our Restoration Initiatives, Earth Island supports the biological and cultural diversity that sustain the environment. 

    www.earthisland.org

  • Had the opportunity to attend a wonderful event offered by the San Francisco Jung Institute last night -- David Abram and Jungian analyst Patricia Damery in conversation on Earth, Ecology, and so much more.

    If you're not familiar with either of them, both are published authors with quite remarkable books which I highly recommend. David Abram is well known for his work "Spell of the Sensuous" and more recently, "Becoming Animal". Patricia's masterpiece, in my opinion, is "Farming Soul" (she's also a biodynamic farmer in addition to being an analyst" and her new novel "Snakes' which is quite a profound and informative read.

    I did an interview with Patricia back in the Fall for Depth Insights radio. In case you missed it, it can be found here:http://www.depthinsights.com/pages/radio.htm#damery

  • "The Eye of His Storms" is an interesting Art review of Van Gogh's work via his relationship to nature in today's NYTimes.  Slides of his landscapes included!

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/arts/design/van-gogh-up-close-at-...

    Excerpt:

    " Vincent van Gogh was shaken but also calmed by nature. The natural landscape inspired some of his most implacably innovative paintings, roiled of surface, ablaze with color and steeped in feeling. They are blunt, irresistible instruments for seeing. Yet nature — and its tiniest details in particular — also sharpened his visual acuity and soothed and comforted his often unstable personality. In the catalog to “Van Gogh Up Close,” a succinct, revelatory exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the art historian Anabelle Kienle notes van Gogh’s repeated references in his letters to “a blade of grass,” “a single blade of grass,” “a dusty blade of grass.” He not only thought that something this small and modest was a worthy subject for art — as demonstrated by the spare works of the Japanese artists he so admired — he also invoked it as a kind of centering technique for regaining concentration. Writing to his sister-in-law, he recommended focusing on a blade of grass as a way to calm down after the tumult of reading Shakespeare.

  • "In this forest, everything caresses you..."
    If you have ever loved Mexico, this is a short film worth viewing on youtube...
    What one 'middle class ' woman is doing, and her desire to be buried, at the end of it all, under a tree.

    Earth from Above film

    Renowned French filmmaker and photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand has made a lovely 11-minute documentary, Vu du Ciel, La Sierra Gorda (Earth from Above, the Sierra Gorda) that captures the incredible beauty and life of the dynamic and colorful Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, as well as the extraordinary passion that characterizes those working to protect this region. The documentary, which features Earth Island project Viva Sierra Gorda’s co-director Patricia Perez-Arce, aired on national TV in France and is now freely available on YouTube. This year, Viva Sierra Gorda takes a larger role in the challenges facing North America, specifically immigration and climate change. Visit their website to learn more.

  • Bonnie - thank you for posting in the DPA daily the Article from Grist titled: Honeybee problem nearing a ‘critical point’.  So very maddening that the main problem seems to be the use of pesticides like neonics on GMO crops infiltrating and killing bees far and wide.  The last paragraph is hopeful to me only because it seems that the bee population in Sonoma COunty has rebounded, thanks to small farmers and apiaries who have worked on the problem here.

    "Ellis, for his part, thinks that figuring out a way to solve the bee crisis could be a catalyst for larger reform within our agriculture system. “If we can protect that pollinator base, it’s going to have ripple effects … for wildlife, for human health,” he said. “It will bring up subjects that need to be looked at, of groundwater and surface water — all the connected subjects associated [with] chemical use and agriculture.”

  • To me this poem, as I now realize does much of Rumi's work, speaks to and of my experiences with ayahuasca and indigenous healers in Peru.
  • Paul. What can I say? This poem by Rumi which you posted is one that touched me deeply a long time ago. I have not heard it in ages. For me, it's something about the idea of an invisible world...which I KNOW exists though I sometimes forget. I am reminded, though, each time I see a honeybee, carry a rock in my pocket, thrust my hands into the dirt of my garden, shapeshift into a four-legged that roams the earth at will.... Thank you so much for sharing. What is it about this particular work that strikes you?
  • A WORLD INSIDE THIS WORLD

    There is another world inside this one--

    no words can describe it.

    There is living, but no fear of death;

    ...There is Spring, but never a turn to Autumn.

    There are legends and stories

    coming from the walls and ceilings.

    Even the rocks and trees recite poetry.

    Here an owl becomes a peacock,

    A wolf becomes a beautiful shepherd.

    To change the scenery, change your mood;

    To move around, just will it.

    Stand for a moment

    And look at a desert of thorns--

    it becomes a flowery garden.

    See that boulder on the ground?

    It moves, and a mine of rubies appears.

    Wash your hands and face

    in the waters of this place--

    The cooks have prepared a great feast!

    Here all beings give birth to angels.

    When they see me ascending to the heavens

    every corpse springs back to life.

    I have seen many kinds of trees

    growing from the Earth,

    but who has ever seen the birth of paradise?

    I have seen water, but who has ever seen

    one drop of water

    give birth to a hundred warriors?

    Who could ever imagine such a place?

    Such a heaven? Such a Garden of Eden?

    Whoever reads this poem -- translate it.

    Tell the whole world about this place!

    ~ RUMI

  • Which is to say, I need to embrace the computer technology to which I am at once allergic and autistic...Learn to use it to connect with other spirits on this free roaming sphere such as yourself, and not be discouraged that i fall so short so often.
  • Give me the CAVE!!! oh, lordy! Really, i do want to move back towards that primal resonance. Sometimes I think my young students drug abuse is about a desired to bust through and get back to those root realities. The shortcut being, of course, just destructive becuase..."We Carry the City in our Psyche"...that's my thinking at the moment, it takes much sitting and stretching of the body and mind...and really, really trying to learn and tangle with technology without becoming a robot in the process...Oh, it's so Hard!!! for me, i'm 50 yrs old, it's hard to keep learning and sprouting the dendrites and dealing with the sort of blushing of shame when i mess up and eterenal adolescence as I strive for not obsolecscence but some kind of SENSE in this AI age, when i so fear that the VOICE OF GAIA is truly muffled under the very awful utilitarian psuedo-scientific decapitation of which you wrote!!!!
This reply was deleted.
Education Institution

Scientists Warn of Perilous Climate Shift Within Decades, Not Centuries

In light of this new story from the New York Times, Thursday's (3-24-16) free webinar on Depth Psychology and Climate Change with climate scientist/Jungian Dr. Jeff Kiehl is even more important... NYT: "Scientists Warn of Perilous Climate Shift Within Decades, Not Centuries" Climate scientists agree that humanity is about to cause an equal or greater rise in sea level, but they have tended to assume that such a large increase would take centuries, at least. The new paper argues that it…

Read more…
0 Replies

Article: Why Being Near The Ocean Can Make You Calmer And More Creative

So appreciated this article which articulates something I often feel implicitly--but don't always acknowledge explicitly.... "We are beginning to learn that our brains are hardwired to react positively to water and that being near it can calm and connect us, increase innovation and insight, and even heal what's broken".... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2016/02/25/mental-benefits-water_n_5791024.html

Read more…
3 Replies

This is how many trees are left on the planet

' These statistics are yet another voice that will touch you in the cry to take notice of what's going on on our planet: "There are currently 422 trees per person in the world but, if current trends continue, that will fall to 214 in 150 years. It’s a sobering thought to realise just how much of an impact we are having on this relatively tiny ball of rock we call a planet..." Read the full article here: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-how-many-trees-are-left-on-the-planet-2015-9

Read more…
2 Replies

An Indigenous Approach To Healing Trauma.

An Indigenous Approach To Healing Trauma (via Alliance member Lori Pye, founder of Viridis Institute (Grad programs for Ecopsychology)) People have always experienced pain, and in the vast span of time before the colonial expansion of western culture, indigenous cultures weren’t without their methods of dealing with trauma. For centuries we’ve largely ignored the wisdom of those among us who are still directly connected to ancestral ways of knowledge. As our modern lifestyle collides with the…

Read more…
1 Reply