Choosing Earth

[Larry Robinson]

Duane Elgin is making this PDF of his new newly updated book "Choosing Earth" available for free in hopes that readers will help spread the word by leaving a rating and brief review on Amazon. 

At this critical juncture in human history, “Choosing Earth” offers a realistic assessment of the choices we face and a profound and hopeful message for those of us whose eyes and hearts are open.

Below is an excerpt of the preface to Duane’s book by my friend Francis Weller and the PDF is below.
I hope that you will read this and pass it along.




PREFACE

At the Threshold: Grief, Initiation, and Transformation

by Francis Weller

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”

—Theodore Roethke




We are living in turbulent times on this beautiful planet. All pretense of immunity is collapsing as we realize how com- pletely entangled our lives are with one another—with kelp beds and calving glaciers, with wildfires and rising sea levels, with ref- ugees and the anxious dreams of young people everywhere. The disequilibrium shaking the world feels like a continual tremor along the fault lines of our psychic lives.

Very few things feel stable. It is like a fever dream. Maybe we have reached the initiatory threshold required to wake us up. Whatever is happening, much will be asked of us if we are to make it through the whitewater of this narrow passage. We do not know what lies ahead, but one thing is sure: This is a time for bold gestures. It is time to wake up and humbly take our place on this stunning planet. The future is speaking ruthlessly through us.

James Hillman, the brilliant archetypal psychologist, wrote, “The world and the gods are dead or alive according to the condition of our souls.”1 In other words, the vitality of the animate, sensu- ous world and our encounter with the sacred depend on our souls being fully alive! A soul that is awake is entangled with the living world—its beauty, allure, and wonder, its sorrows, rips, and tears. Given the state of the world and our soulful lives, we must pause and ask, “What is the condition of our souls?” From all observable accounts, the prevailing condition is desperate, empty, ravenous, impoverished, and grief-stricken. In the language of some tradi- tional cultures, we would diagnose our times as one of soul loss. To lose soul is to feel emptied of wonder, joy, and passion. It is to feel cut off from the vitalizing relationships with the living world, leav- ing one stranded in a deadened world. The long-standing intimacy with the multiple folds of the Earth—her myriad of creatures, the stunning profusion of color and fragrance—would be forgotten. In place of this, we substitute a frenzied striving for power and material gain. This is the dominant reality for much of white, tech- nological, late-capitalistic culture. Soul loss leaves us flattened and empty, always wanting more—more power, more things, more wealth, more control. We forget what truly satisfies the soul.  


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