New Self New World

An essential book by Author Philip Shepherd 

 The history of Western culture over the last eight thousand years follows a broad exponential curve—beginning with the Neolithic Revolution and accelerating precipitously into and through the twentieth century—in which man increasingly stepped back from the world of nature, acquired technological mastery over it, and gained specific

knowledge of it that enabled him to evict wonder and kinship from every pine needle and worm and drop of rain, until now he finally stands alone: a world unto himself, superior to all he surveys, without peer, he also finds himself lacking spiritual relevance, purpose and affinity for his world—lacking even the assuring sense that his own experience is real. Of course, reality is fulfilled only through relationship—and how can any of us relate to a world to which we believe our lives are fundamentally irrelevant? That is the problem we have created for ourselves.

The trajectory of the arc that brought us here has been driven by the urge within the male element to assert itself and refute its dependence on anything feminine. As we have seen, that urge has uprooted us from our own sensitivity, and our diminished sensitivity has in turn numbed us to the body, to the earth, to its wisdom, and to the guiding imagery and intuitions of conscious being. As the child individuates and separates from its mother, so too has modern man individuated and separated from maternal Being. Today we are witnessing a slow and reluctant awakening to the crisis to which our separation from Being has brought both us and our planet. As a species that prides itself on reason, you might think we could have anticipated that being without Being would be a problem.

~ Philip Shepherd, from the book New Self New World

#crisis #being #kinship #spirituality #earthwisdom