This is wonderful, Veronika! ♥️ In my deep dive experience with comfort, I kept wondering about this obsession we (in the West) have about growth. As in, we have to get out of our comfort zones to grow. But I had to stop and ask why we have this inherent belief that we must always be growing in the first place. The Edward Abbey quote you used here perfectly summed up my feelings on the matter. But it's because I'd been associating growth with progress, with expansion. Growth as in growing something completely new from the compost of me is another matter entirely. Now this is growth I can understand. Growth as part of an ongoing life-death cycle. Thank you SO much for this insight! I'm lacking words for how much this has changed my perception, but this has opened something profound in me.
I agree; it is not a matter of reprogramming or weeding. This involves too much striving, too much work, which makes it unnecessary. It is actually both simple and hard. Allow ourselves the freedom to live within the natural world and the lessons it holds without the need to dominate it. But in symbiosis or in harmony with it.
It is simple because it does not require a program of study, but a matter of relearning what was lost as a child; it is hard because we have a system in place that says domination and competition is good and necessary.
And, yes, words and language can influence our perceptions. A greater awareness of language and the words we use can help us on our journey to reclaim our true selves.
Wow. Syntopia! Our natural habitat. I totally resonate with working from our inner wilderness that has been neglected. Growing from the inside out. Something tells me we know the way. In an act of uncovering the light we will flourish once again, in our remembrance. Thank you for always being a guide. Living into the questions. A symbiopoet. Uncovering the invisible. Every place needs a poet. Thanks for helping lead the way. Bless you Veronika. 🙏❤️
“What we do need to do is learn to work with the inner wilderness, which has been neglected and suppressed and threatened with extinction by the Anthropocentric paradigm.” This chapter resonates on a very deep level. I’m always wary of psychological “wellness” language that tries to visualize away or root out unwanted qualities. In my experience, that never works anyway. The worst thing to do with anxiety, for example, is to try to make it go away. To use your language, instead, we breathe life and space into the anxiety, allow it to become compost in the umimagined, unstudied symbiosis of our internal and external existence. Then and only then can it become something entirely new…and nurturing.
Yes, Yes, YES. Out of everything you’ve shared so far, this one viscerally tugged on the ‘ole heart strings the most. Although that phrase doesn’t totally serve - less of a tugging and more of a resonance. The resonance of recognition.
As well, the selection of quotes in this ‘wordcast’ is stellar.
Syntopia goes against, it would seem, the binary thinking of utopia and dystopia, so I'm on board. I love the idea that there's another choice that sits firmly in reality. Although, I'd argue that one of the reasons why Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek was so appealing was it imagined a more utopian world. But now that I'm armed with syntopia, perhaps that is a much better fit for the United Starfleet Federation.
I'm also in awe/reverence of wild-word-compost, that healing can happen if we DO NOTHING, if we let things sit, decompose, and rest.
This is wonderful, Veronika! ♥️ In my deep dive experience with comfort, I kept wondering about this obsession we (in the West) have about growth. As in, we have to get out of our comfort zones to grow. But I had to stop and ask why we have this inherent belief that we must always be growing in the first place. The Edward Abbey quote you used here perfectly summed up my feelings on the matter. But it's because I'd been associating growth with progress, with expansion. Growth as in growing something completely new from the compost of me is another matter entirely. Now this is growth I can understand. Growth as part of an ongoing life-death cycle. Thank you SO much for this insight! I'm lacking words for how much this has changed my perception, but this has opened something profound in me.
I agree; it is not a matter of reprogramming or weeding. This involves too much striving, too much work, which makes it unnecessary. It is actually both simple and hard. Allow ourselves the freedom to live within the natural world and the lessons it holds without the need to dominate it. But in symbiosis or in harmony with it.
It is simple because it does not require a program of study, but a matter of relearning what was lost as a child; it is hard because we have a system in place that says domination and competition is good and necessary.
And, yes, words and language can influence our perceptions. A greater awareness of language and the words we use can help us on our journey to reclaim our true selves.
Wow. Syntopia! Our natural habitat. I totally resonate with working from our inner wilderness that has been neglected. Growing from the inside out. Something tells me we know the way. In an act of uncovering the light we will flourish once again, in our remembrance. Thank you for always being a guide. Living into the questions. A symbiopoet. Uncovering the invisible. Every place needs a poet. Thanks for helping lead the way. Bless you Veronika. 🙏❤️
“What we do need to do is learn to work with the inner wilderness, which has been neglected and suppressed and threatened with extinction by the Anthropocentric paradigm.” This chapter resonates on a very deep level. I’m always wary of psychological “wellness” language that tries to visualize away or root out unwanted qualities. In my experience, that never works anyway. The worst thing to do with anxiety, for example, is to try to make it go away. To use your language, instead, we breathe life and space into the anxiety, allow it to become compost in the umimagined, unstudied symbiosis of our internal and external existence. Then and only then can it become something entirely new…and nurturing.
Yes, Yes, YES. Out of everything you’ve shared so far, this one viscerally tugged on the ‘ole heart strings the most. Although that phrase doesn’t totally serve - less of a tugging and more of a resonance. The resonance of recognition.
As well, the selection of quotes in this ‘wordcast’ is stellar.
Syntopia goes against, it would seem, the binary thinking of utopia and dystopia, so I'm on board. I love the idea that there's another choice that sits firmly in reality. Although, I'd argue that one of the reasons why Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek was so appealing was it imagined a more utopian world. But now that I'm armed with syntopia, perhaps that is a much better fit for the United Starfleet Federation.
I'm also in awe/reverence of wild-word-compost, that healing can happen if we DO NOTHING, if we let things sit, decompose, and rest.
Thank you!! 👏👏👏