Being Stoned.

Ha!!  Did that title catch your attention?? Sorry, but it may not be what you think!

Today’s quote is taken from The Fruitful Darkness by Joan Halifax (1993) pg. 67

“sitting in the cave, I at last know what it was to be stoned, to move at a rate of speed like that of rocks, stones, and mountains.  Things were going very slowly.  I now understand how a place can shape the human psyche.”

Carl Jung wrote about a world ensouled.  He even equated Nature with soul.  As I have studied ecopscyhology, that posits a relationship between the human psyche (soul) and the soul of nature, I have begun to wonder just how that relationship becomes manifest.

In this quote, Halifax has addressed that which I have become curious about.  The place in which we live does impact us at a soul level.  In any relationship there is some mingling of soul to varying degrees.

While doing some research I was surprised to find that the percentage of people living in urban areas has risen from 3% to 80% over the last 100 years.  Therefore, fewer and fewer people are living in places in which their souls are substantially influenced by nature. Consider the ramifications of their psyches  being shaped by urban places.

And finally, if place can shape the human psyche, how might the human psyche shape place?