Ecopsychology And Love Will Save Our Souls

Our ‘soul’ is our inter-connected Planet Earth

Solving our broken relationship with nature

We sort of broke Earth.

Everyone today, even the deniers, are feeling the heat.

It’s time to find one billion — or eight billion — ways to repair it.

By finding our belonging among our own kind, resisting tyranny, inequality, and injustice, and by remembering our belonging among every other kind (biodiversity supports life) we can have several of our species survive the coming crash.

Ecopsychology intersects with many stories

I write about ecopsychology. I have for years. Yet, people still ask me, Dr. Christyl, what is that?

It’s this: we belong to one planet.

The JWST, (J. Dubya Space Telescope )will find more, but this is our only home. There is no denying it.

We are connected by DNA, oxygen and water cycles, among other systems. We survive by loving and cooperating with one another.

We, as a species, are excellent story tellers. The trouble is, we often believe too many of our stories. We create false ones about race, gender, superiority, and our special purpose. We even invent entire systems outside of nature to support our stories. Among these are religion, borders, money, nationality, race, and sex, or gender roles.

Abstraction, our online lives, are not as sensually connected to the real Earth.

A few foundations of our stories come from nature, so we trust our own confirmations of this whenever we see it.

Share, in five easy steps

This is going to be extremely simple, …and difficult.

First, identify injustice and realize our belonging depends on us being more fair — both to other people — and to the living biosphere. Do not tolerate bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, extreme nationalism.

You will make mistakes, accept it, and move forward.

Second, in sharing resources, we improve our own self image. We currently have a major self-esteem issue in that those who care see ‘we are trash’ and those who don’t care, continue to trash it all.

Third, recognize that innovation, collaboration, and creation itself are how we became part of THE creation. We evolved with natural selection, we added artificial selection and eliminated lots of competition. Tool making is important, but no species can exploit or manipulate their environment excessively without facing periodic crashes.

Fourth, the aforementioned innovation involves technology. Our ability to drive our destiny has endangered us. We must realize technology must be for mutual benefit (Earth) or we will risk using it to destroy ourselves. We now use AI to track emotions and sell stuff. We have nukes. We have CO2 emissions that kill living beings daily. We burn. We waste.

Fifth, we must learn there are not separate problems, but just one problem: We have come to think of exploitation of other people and systems as ‘the norm.’ Although it does happen, — competition in nature occurs — it is only when we also utilize cooperation that the whole can thrive.

Let the world change you, and you will change the world

Cultures move through time in baby steps, but also leaps and bounds.

Due to our flaming world circumstances, it is time for a major leap away from the fire. If you must center yourself with a walk on the beach or the forest, then do it.

Recognize other humans, invite them to be with you. Recognize your other kin — plants and animals — that creates your breath.