“We don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children” – Chief Seattle
Living in harmony with nature, honouring all of Life, is essential for our well-being and the planet’s. Everything is interconnected. To thrive, we must remember this interconnectedness and return to a sacred relationship with the Earth—recognizing that all life is sacred, conscious, and precious.
Deep Ecology invites us to expand our consciousness beyond the ego self, embracing a larger, ecological identity. It encourages us to place Life at the center of everything we do—regenerating ourselves, building resilient communities, and nurturing the environment. By caring for what sustains us, we ensure the abundance of Life for generations to come.
We are Nature. The Earth is our larger body, and our well-being is intricately linked to the health of the planet. Soil, air, water, plants—all these elements nourish and sustain us, and we, in turn, are responsible for their care. Deep Ecology calls for reverence toward all forms of life—human, animal, plant, and mineral. We are not here to dominate or deplete the Earth, but to honour every living being, regardless of its utility to us. What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves as planetary and personal well-being are not separate but completely intertwined, a fundamental truth humanity seems to have forgotten at a huge cost.
“Deep Ecology,” coined by Arne Naess in 1973, is a philosophy that many cultures, particularly indigenous ones, have lived by for centuries. It offers a radically different approach to life than the modern, industrial mindset. In a world where ecosystems are collapsing and species are vanishing, our only sustainable way fourth is to turn toward more regenerative ways of living—moving away from endless economic growth and toward a future that nurtures, rather than exploits, Life.
Joanna Macy created a direct path to awaken and embody our ecological consciousness or our deep ecology through the Work that Reconnects. Her work is her legacy to these decisive and prophetic times.
“We stand now where two roads diverge. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road – the one less travelled by – offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.” ~ Rachel Carson, Silent Spring – author and conservationist, pioneer of the ecological movement in 1960s.