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Volcano On The Horizon
When I diet, or even spend an extended period of time in the forest without dieting, I realize the frightening extent to which I have been conditioned by my media-saturated, data-hungry, progress-obsessed culture — and how very difficult it is for me to do nothing. My need to fidget and distract myself from stillness feels nothing short of pathological.
From years of working with communities of the forest, I’ve come to see boredom as a uniquely Western affliction — a kind of luxury of affluence — striking those who are simply incapable of being still. For this reason, I find the shamanic practice of dieta to be deeply challenging and nourishing, even without the plants. — Sophia Rochlin
We have to pay attention now. It’s a matter of life and death. Living as we do in a superficial culture of distractions, we have mental habits of focusing on effects, on controlling pain and discomfort but ignoring relationships that create the pain. Cultures that know how to establish communication with the intelligences of life forms sound like a fairy tale to us.
We “know” that matter is dead. Our model of existence is a giant machine. We’re still debating whether animals feel pain, as stupid as that sounds.
We’re not very deep, not very bright, we modern humans. We have far too much power and far too little sense. We don’t deserve our…
