Green Psychology Quotes

“When the anthropologist asked the Kwakiutl for a map of their coast, they told him stories:

"Here? Salmon gather. Here? Sea otter camps. Here seal sleep. Here we say body covered with mouths."

How can a place have a name? A man, a woman may have a name, but they die.

We are a story until we die. Then our names are very dangerous.

A place is a story happening many times.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“The fundamental reality of the universe is a continuum, a unitive field or fabric of energy and consciousness that goes beyond time, space, and all forms and yet lies within them. In traditional Asian religions, this unitive field is variously referred to as Tao or Brahman. Some Native North Americans refer to it as Wakan-Tanka, the all-pervading Creator Spirit. The pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons of the British Isles called it the Wyrd. In the systems language of postmodern science, it is seen as an infinitely complex system of interrelationships or a 'web of life.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“We were all wild humans before we became civilized in that peculiar process of self-domestication known as the Neolithic agricultural revolution. The word 'wild' is related to the word 'will'; the wild creature is self-willed, autonomous, not domesticated, living by nature's ways, not the laws of human beings.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“Wisdom comes from loving instead of fighting, from cooperating instead of competing, from partnership instead of domination, and from honoring and celebrating differences instead of fearing them. When we can dissolve the barriers of separation and conflict among nations, races, and religions, we unleash an unparalleled explosion of creativity in all areas of life.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“Spirituality is not separate or above nature—the spiritual is the natural. Spiritual practice consists in communing with the living intelligences perceived to be indwelling in nature, with conscious respect and reverence.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“The view of the blue-green Earth from space reminds us of two inescapable and challenging facts: first, that national boundaries do not exist on Earth, except in the maps and minds of humans; and, second, that Earth is finite and its carrying capacity is limited.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“The relentless pursuit of consumer goods feeds the entitled 'false self,' while the insecure and empty inner self remains anxious and wounded—driven then to buy even more goods to cover up the inner emptiness. The empty self seeks the experience of being continually filled up in an attempt to combat the growing alienation.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“Suffering or dissatisfaction is an inevitable feature of all human existence, and craving or desire is at the root of suffering.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“After the stormy disruption of the elements, there comes a great peace. The elements then shine with a wonderful clarity, fire has no searing heat, air is free of dense clouds, water does not rage and flood, and the earth is not fragile and crumbling. Sun, moon, and stars sparkle in brilliant illumination and beauty; they stand still, so that there is no night, but only day.

Since the body, as well as the psyche, is composed of the elements, there is great healing as the scattered and bruised fragments of our being are brought together again, in wholeness. The fiery aspect of our nature glows golden like the dawn; the air of our mind is clear and shining; the water currents of our body and the emotional currents of our psyche become transparent and still; the earthy part of our nature, our flesh and bones, becomes strong and well-proportioned. Here is revealed a vision of the total transformation possible for the human being—a psycho-alchemical transmutation of the elements from a state of disorder and conflict to a state of harmony and balance.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“Wars between people cannot be reduced or eliminated as long as the war with nature proceeds quite unconsciously. Both situations of war may ultimately be seen as externalizations of the conflicts and wars within human consciousness. If this is so, then our task becomes one of recognizing and confronting the 'inner enemy,' the inner antagonist. We need to recognize and withdraw the projections of this inner enemy onto external agents or forces—whether this be other human beings or the world of wild nature.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“The life and activities of the little world were for her not only the welcome object of sincere observation, but the individual being is always organically situated in the integrated macrocosm of the whole.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“The reckless application of technology, harnessed to greed, degrades and destroys the ecosystems in which the energies of the elements are maintained in exquisite balance. Since the elements constitute us, we are also being degraded in the process. We are engaged in an ongoing assault on the planetary elements, the decimation of species, and the relentless suicidal degradation of our own habitats. In short, the situation can be called ecocide. Humankind is at war with nature.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“Once we recognize our inescapable embeddedness in the living, organic ecosystem and our mutual interdependence with all other coexisting species, our sense of separate identity, so strenuously acquired and desperately maintained, recedes more into the background. Instead, the relationships, whether balanced or imbalanced, take the foreground and become the focus of concern. This is the perceptual basis for a new and ancient point of view: it is holistic and inclusive and inevitably accompanied by a sense of wonder and reverence.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“I found that visual and auditory imagery of the elements in nature consistently induced in people's experience the qualities of consciousness associated with the elements in the alchemical and other earth-based traditions:

Images and sounds of air and winds, of clouds and winged creatures, triggered associations of the mental realm, the expansive and swiftly changing world of thoughts and ideas, of words and poems and songs.

Images and sounds of the water element, of oceans, tides, sea creatures, waves, rivers, springs, lakes, and rain, often released powerful emotions and feeling memories, both positive and negative.

Images and sounds of fire energy, such as the sun, lightning, volcanoes, and electrical fields, were associated in people's experience with creativity, imagination, enthusiasm, vision, and intuition.

Images and sounds of the earth element, of rocks and mountains, land and forest, plants and minerals, induced associations of kinesthetic and somatic awareness, of sensory contact and pleasure, of solid and substantive form.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“We were mothered out of the substance of this planet. Her elements, her periodicities, her gravitational embrace, her subtle vibrations still mingle in our nature, worked a billion years down into the textures of life and mind. Logically, the individual human being is a living organic system that exists as part of the larger living organic system that we call the biosphere, or Earth.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“I noted that I was feeling a profound affection and admiration toward these people, whom I don't know and can't even understand. I also felt affection emanating from them toward me and toward each other. Those not participating in the ceremony were also included in this empathic web, as were the creatures and plants of the forest all around us—indeed, the whole world of sky and earth, rain and sunlight, wind and rocks, and trees. It seemed that by not understanding the words being said, I could concentrate totally on the waves of positive feeling that were washing through the group.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“The Lacandones have a prophecy that the world will be destroyed when the last mahogany tree is gone. The mahogany is the 'indicator species' for the rain forest; its health or death is indicative of the health or death of the entire ecosystem. The smoke from the burning of tropical rain forests can already be seen from satellites miles above Earth.

The indigenous people of the true, original First World are preparing themselves for the final struggle. Many have nothing left to lose, only the remaining trees and land, and their children, to fight for. As the Zapatistas declared: 'We are the dead, rising to die again so our people can live once more.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth

“The Lacandones have no way of saying 'hello' or 'good-bye'; when they meet they just start talking, and when they depart they just walk away. It's as if the bonds of family and friendship are not disconnected by distance and therefore do not need to be reestablished.”
― Ralph Metzner, Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth