This page offers some quotations and reflections on the need for 'Inner Transitions' from the perspective of the ‘heart and soul’. Please email us ( janesiran@yahoo.co.uk) if you have others to offer.

"...Therefore, we may consequently state that: this world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related." Plato, Timeus, 29/30; 4th century B.C.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one’s fear. The timid presume it is the lack of fear that allows the brave to act when the timid do not. But to take action when one is not afraid is easy. To refrain when afraid is also easy. To take action regardless of fear is brave.” Ambrose Redmoon

THE 'S' WORD - WHAT IS REAL SUSTAINABILITY? 'If something is sustainable,it means we can go on using it indefinitely. If it isn't we can't" - Jonathon Porritt, Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission and Forum for a Future.

"Sustainable development is about satisfying human needs without compromising the ability of the natural environment to support life now and in the future" - Charles Couzens, Director of the Ecos Trust (Somerset Trust for Sustainable Development) based in Langport.

"The essence of sustainability is using resources so that you renew them, not deplete or pollute them. And we need this not only for the environment: sustainability is vital for individuals,communities and businesses. Sharing resources and mutual support are vital for sustainability" Alan Heeks, The Threshold Centre, Gillingham,Dorset

All above quotes are from the Fosse Way Magazine P21 6/7/07

EARTH MY BODY

Earth my body; Water my blood; Air my breath; Fire my spirit;

-Traditional/Frankie Armstrong

THE GREEN MAN

"Our remote ancestors said to their Mother Earth 'We are yours'. Modern humanity has said to Nature 'You are mine'. The Green Man has returned as the living face of the whole Earth so that through his mouth we may say to the Universe 'We are one'. "

- William Anderson - 'The Green Man: archetype of our oneness with the Earth' (1990)

FROM SABBATHS 1987-90 BY WENDELL BERRY

"It is the destruction of the world/ in our own lives that drives us/ half-insane, and more than half. To destroy that which we were given/ in trust: how will we bear it? it is our own bodies that we give/ to be broken, our bodies/ existing before and after us/ in clod and cloud, worm and tree/ that we, driving or driven, despise/ in our haste to die, our country/ spent in shiny cars speeding/ to junk. To have lost wantonly, the ancient forests, the vast grasslands/ is our madness, the presence/ in our very bodies of our grief.

Extracts from THE SUN MY HEART by THICH NHAT HANH

"We are imprisoned in our small selves thinking only of some comfortable conditions for this small self while we destroy our large self. If we want to change the situation we must begin by being our true selves. To be our true selves means we have to be the forest, the river and the ozone layer..Because we inter-are with the trees, we know that if they do not live, we too will disappear soon"

"We have killed so many animals and plants and destroyed their environments. many are now extinct. In turn, our environment is now harming us. We are like sleepwalkers, not knowing what we are doing or where we are heading. Whether we can wake up or not depends on whether we can walk mindfully on our Mother Earth"

"Our Earth, our green beautiful Earth,is in danger and all of us know it. yet we act as if our daily lives have nothing to do with the situation of the world. If the Earth were your body you would be able to feel many areas where she is suffering"

"We have to discard all distinctions between self and non-self. How can anyone work to protect the environment without this insight?"

"Interbeing is the implicit order. To practice mindfulness and to look deeply into the nature of things is to discover the true nature of interbeing. there we find the peace and develop the strength to be in touch with everything. With this understanding we can easily sustain the work of loving and caring for the Earth and for each other for a long time"

THICH NHAT HANH stands with the DALAI LAMA as one of the great peacemakers and socially engaged Buddhists of our time. A Zen Master exiled from his native land of Vietnam for refusing to take sides in the Vietnam War whilst developing effective non-violent Buddhist social action programmes available to all sides he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr Martin Luther King. In the 1970s He was arrested and deported from Hong Kong for his direct action to save the lives of Vietnamese Boat People.

40 years on now based at the Plum Village community in the South of France this great teacher, writer and activist has founded the worldwide Order of Interbeing to provide a spiritual foundation for effective non-violent social action. Interbeing reveals our underlying connections to each other and to the natural world and teaches how we can live mindfully and compassionately out of the truth of our total interdependence with all life on Earth.

For more about Thich Nhat Hanh's life and work see A LIFETIME OF PEACE - Essential writings by and about Thich Nhat Hanh pub by Marlowe and Company 2003.

For a very gentle introduction to his approach to meditation and mindfulness in everyday life see his PEACE IS EVERY STEP in which he says simply "peace begins with a smile"....

JOANNA MACY - INTRODUCING 'THE GREAT TURNING'

"I consider it an enormous privilege to be alive now, in this Turning, when all the wisdom and courage we ever harvested can be put to use and matters supremely"

"It is the epochal shift from an industrial growth society, dependent on accelerating consumption of resources, to a sustainable or life-sustaining society. There is no guarantee that we will make it in time for civilization, or even complex life forms, to survive;but it is clear that there's no alternative, because now we are, in systems terms, "on runway", consuming our own life support system"

"Lester Brown of the World Watch Institute says that, while the agricultural revolution took centuries and the industrial revolution took decades, the ecological revolution must happen within a few years. At the same time, it will be, of necessity, more thorough-going - involving not only our political economy, but the attitudes and habits that sustain it"

"Scientists - at least those who are not in the pay of the corporations - see more quickly than the politicians that there is no technological fix. No magic bullet, not even the internet, can save us from population explosion, deforestation, climate disruption,poison by pollution, and wholesale extinctions of plants and animal species. We are going to have to want different things, seek different pleasures, pursue different goals, than those that have been driving us and our global economy"

"...The Great Turning is occurring on three simultaneous levels...Recognise how they are gaining momentum in your own life. On the most visible level are holding actions in defense of Earth, including all the political, legislative and legal work to slow down the destruction as well as direct action - blockades, boycotts, civil disobedience and other forms of refusal. Work of this kind buys time..."

"The second level of the Great Turning addresses structural causes of the global crisis and creates sustainable alternatives..new social and economic arrangements are mushrooming from local currencies to local marketing and consumer cooperatives, from eco-villages to renewable, off the grid energy generation. They may look fringe but they hold the seeds of the future"

"These nascent institutions cannot take root and survive, however without values to sustain them. they must mirror what we want, and think we are. The paradigmatic shift - at the third, most basic level of the Great turning - is happening all around us. Some choose to see it as an influx of spirit from above, others as "hitting bottom" in our doomed and addictive society. Either way we are opening our senses to the web of relationships, the deep ecology, in which we have our being. Like our primordial ancestors, we begin again to see the world as our body and (whether we say the word or not) as sacred....we hardly have words for the cognitive, spiritual and perceptual revolution that is occurring now at a stunning rate of speed"

..."we cant tell which will happen first, the final unravelling of life on Earth, or the moment when the elements of a sustainable world cohere and catch hold. But even if this Great Turning fails to carry this planetary experiment onward through linear time, it is still worth it. It is our homecoming to our true nature"

JOANNA MACY ( 'Interchange, Winter 1998)

Joanna Macy is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology. She became an anti nuclear activist in the 1960s when her research into the health hazards of uranium radiation and her involvement in a citizens lawsuit led her to understand the horrors of nuclear power and how we become psychically numb. She subsequently developed her despair and empowerment workshops to help people face these realities worldwide. A veteran leading voice for peace, justice and a safe environment she is now in her 80s and still developing 'the work that reconnects' to empower individuals and communities to address the global challenge of climate change and Peak Oil in their own lives.

For an updated interview with Joanna Macy about The Great Turning see PERMACULTURE MAGAZINE (solutions for sustainable living) No 45, Autumn 2005 - cover feature - 'Join The Great Turning". See also her books' WORLD AS LOVER,WORLD AS SELF' (Parallax Press 1991) and 'COMING BACK TO LIFE'.

ESCAPE

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in, and passion will make our bodies taut with power and old things will fall down we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper <<< D.H. Lawrence