• Every culture has historically gathered,  through rituals and ceremonies to remember and honour all our relations. This is not just a feature of modernity — it reflects something essential about being human. As “holy amnesiacs,” we need ways to reconnect, and experiential deep ecology offers such a pathway.
• Indigenous practices are not just cultural expressions; they are vital reminders and tools for sustaining connection with the living world.
• Young children often perceive the world as fully alive — we’re born with this awareness but are quickly socialised out of it by cultural norms.
• What’s required is a fundamental transformation in human consciousness.
• When people come together with a shared intention to heal the illusion of separation between humans and nature, profound shifts can happen.
• Intention itself is powerful — any practice that aligns with it becomes a vehicle for reconnection. Letting go of human exceptionalism and arrogance is key.
• We are inherently ecological beings — every atom in our bodies connects us to the Earth and the stars.
• Deep ecology provides one vital response to the ecological and existential crisis we face.
• The phrase “thinking like a mountain” expresses a shift from “I am protecting the rainforest” to “I am part of the rainforest protecting itself.”
• Acts of activism can serve as deep ecology ceremonies — identity-shifting experiences of connection.
• Human beings are just one among billions of species. Our intelligence is a small flower on the vast evolutionary tree.
• The question becomes: how do we feel ourselves as part of a rainforest, a river, a living Earth?
• Our feelings are a form of ancient intelligence. In deep ecology work, we move from gratitude into honouring our pain for the world — inviting grief, rage, fear, and despair.
• These feelings are not dangerous — they are human. When safely expressed, they create healing. Suppression, however, leads to suffering.
• The Cosmic Walk, based on the work of Thomas Berry and Sister Miriam Therese MacGillis, is a ritual that reawakens our place in the 13.7-billion-year story of the universe.
• From the level of our ecological identity, we realise we are all of it. This expanded sense of self transforms how we relate to life and wellbeing.
• The dominant culture pathologises feelings, seeing them as symptoms to be managed rather than wisdom to be heard.
• The “self” modern psychology tries to fix is often a social fiction. Only real, living things can truly heal - and they often self-heal.
• If we were educated through the lens of the story of the universe, we might perceive economics, religion, and culture very differently.
• Economics can be seen as a religion — based on bizarre assumptions like infinite growth on a finite planet — sustained by advertising as its form of religious education.
• Studies show that problems are more easily solved in groups than by individuals. We are social mammals, built for dialogue and collaboration.
• We need not just individuals who are reconnected, but whole cultures of connection.
• Finding a way forward depends on nurturing community and shared intention.
• Spend time in wild nature. Seek out — or create — experiences of deep ecology.  Don’t wait. Just begin. Start where you are.

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com