Comments for Chase: A deeper form of environmentalism at http://lakeconews.com , comment 1 to 1 out of 1 comments http://lakeconews.com Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:05:17 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://lakeconews.com/content/view/6920/925/#comment-10179 not spending a couple of hours, or days, or weeks in the "wilds" of your choice, but two or three months at a time, to not just open the door to this sort of deep spiritual connection with the earth and all of its living elements, but to be slowly transformed, from the inside out, by these living energies...some of which are obvious and known by all, some of which are subtle and rather unknown in our culture, such as prana, such as chi. Living in our expensive and wasteful fancy boxes (our homes, offices), we are well protected from everything but cut off from a spiritual food that is very real and infinitely rich: the earth, the natural world are imbued with unknown spiritual-subtle energies we have so far completely ignored in the modern world (ancient cultures understood about sacred sites, and ancient traditions such as yoga or taoism knew about the necessity of connecting daily with the earth\'s energies for physical balance and spiritual progress). Our crass materialism and our religious stand of completely separating the sacred (the Spirit) from the profane (the so called physical world) has left our culture starved for spiritual nourishment and dangerously ignorant, destructive, deaf and blind, and out of balance if not mad. Thankfully, some individuals have not forgotten this necessary connection with real life (real as opposed to the artificial and rather toxic man-made environment we are still creating). Ultimately, it is when we know that the so called environment (nature) is not separate from us, that we are not "in it" but of it, that we do not come "into" this world but out of it, that we understand the obvious: not just a physical but a spiritual oneness with the natural creation that makes it very difficult to live in a state of disharmony with the natural earth, or in a state of antagonism as does western civilization, that still seeks to "conquer", "dominate" and "control" rather than cooperate intelligently and effortlessly with nature (as a sailboat cooperates with the wind, or a surfer with the wave). - Raphael Sun, 11 Jan 2009 06:58:15 +0100