As a species on the brink of many sorts of environmental disasters that threaten our world and our lives, we need an ecopsychology. We need it now. Consider this.
The spiritual urge is so strong in us humans because in our incompleteness we are bound to ask about the meaning of life and the ground of our existence.
But what is this ground? As a network of relationships the natural world is not a thing at all, but a constant flux of interweaving processes, lacking in any permanence or ultimate solidity. In standing apart from nature, this nonsolidity, groundlessness, or “emptiness” to reality is revealed to humans as such- which makes us anxious.
In the face of the so-called void, the separated self or Ego then seeks security through creating the illusion that it is an immortal substance exempt from the law of change or impermanence.
As an illusory structure, however, the Ego is haunted by the void— by a sense of lack, emptiness, insecurity, or tenuousness; by the agitated prospect of its own annihilation.
As the word suggests, what we ultimately avoid with our fearful and rigid life-patterns is the void. The fear of our future death derives in fact from this implicit dread or more basic anxiety of being suspended over the abyss at every present moment. – Andy Fisher
, from Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life
More:
- Ecopsychology
- The best natural healer turns out to be nature
- A way to be on this earth and not shy away from the pain
- No apologies for being sensitive to the earth and its suffering
- I am the oppressor
Also from Beyond Meds, posts that feature Joanna Macy’s work with ecopsychology:
- The great turning: the shift from industrial growth society to a life sustaining society
- We can come home again
- Transforming Despair
- Action
- On Staying Sane in a Suicidal Culture