What I mean by place is similar to what ecologists mean by niche, which refers to the position or function of an organism within a community of plants and animals. A niche consists of a set of relationships with other creatures and with the land and sky and the waters. It's a particular node in a living web.

What's so great about being human? It might be this: The ability to know that we know gives us the ability to know ourselves, the ability to know that we exist and that we exist in an astonishing universe. It gives us the ability to fall in love with every thing and with eternity. If we are the only beings who know that we know, then we are the onl

Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown explain that the Great Turning is happening simultaneously in three areas or dimensions that are mutually reinforcing and equally necessary. They identify these as “holding actions” to slow the damage to Earth and its beings; analysis of structural causes and the creation of alternative institutions; and a fundamen

Thomas refers to the latter perspective as “the time-developmental model.”13 His larger point is that our approach to the development of anything must now embrace both models — both circle and arc (in a sense, both feminine and masculine), which together describe a spiral progression through space and time.

In contrast to those presented in most other developmental models, the stages of life portrayed here are essentially independent of chronological age, biological development, cognitive ability, and social role. Rather, the progression from one stage to the next is spurred by the individual's progress with the specific psychological and spiritual ta

There are two general approaches to alleviating psychological problems: pathology-centered and wholeness-centered (holistic). (This is also true for medical problems more generally.) Using the pathology approach, we ask, “What symptoms of dysfunction is this person exhibiting, and what can be done to eliminate these symptoms and/or this dysfunction

Wisdom traditions worldwide say there's no greater blessing than to live the life of your soul, the source of your deepest personal fulfillment and of your greatest service to others. It's what you were born for. It's the locus of authentic personal power — not power over people and things, but rather the power of partnership with others, the power

nature's intention for us is not static. This intent itself has been evolving from the very beginnings of the human story: how we are presently designed to grow whole is not quite the same as how we were designed to grow whole in the past. For example, one of the things I've learned from Thomas Berry is that modern science and cosmology require us

For four hundred years now, Cartesian thinking and language have gotten us into all sorts of difficulties — scientific, religious, spiritual, and educational. I'm joining the many others who are practicing an alternative way of thinking and speaking within psychology, philosophy, and ecology.6 So, for example, rather than say that we humans are phy