But this is not a campaign that can be waged just with the conscious mind. Just as the scientific study of ecology is documenting the vulnerability of Earth's ecosystems to human-caused disruptions, the study of eco-psychology is revealing the damage that modern civlization is doing to our "inner ecology" —that web of spiritual integrity that is essential to our health and sanity. At the same time, the suffering of the natural world at our hands mirrors our inner suffering. Our aloofness from the natural world began over ten millennia ago with the introduction of agriculture and urbanization. But in the the last couple of centuries of industrialization we have all but lost the visceral sense of being held in the bosom of our Great Mother that our ancestors took for granted. Consequently, we find it harder and harder to rise to her defense, even when confronted with mounting evidence that she is is being mortally wounded. To remedy this growing crisis of psychic disconnection from the earth, many of us are experimenting with personal practices, such as Earth awareness, in an effort to shed the "cultural armoring" that is preventing us from experiencing who we truly are and knowing how to be truly at home on the planet. (Of course, if more of us actually lived in harmony with the earth, we might not need to develop such programs, any more than a person whose daily life required a healthy amount of strenuous physical work would have any use for a gymnasium. But until we figure out how to radically simplify our lives, we need to take steps to regain our psychological fitness through regular exercises in Earth awareness.) In this section we offer two articles from the QEW book,
We also recommend the following books on applied eco-psychology/Earth awareness:
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