My friend Patricia Seator, Ph.D. Eco Psychologist, wrote these beautiful paragraphs in an article that was published in Nature As Holding Environment (copyright 2000). She takes people into nature to help them with their lives.
One of our human capacities is the ability to feel deeply. We don’t simply smell the leaf or flower, we have a feeling about that perception that has the potential to be more subtle and complex than a positive or negative response that says “eat” or “don’t eat,” ‘move away” or “move close.” We see an eagle in the sky and we may record it as a fact, or we may feel deeply moved and honored to see it. What we perceive is more than texture, color, movement, and sound. We discern a greatness in the eagle that moves us- a dignity, a grandeur, a power. We have the capacity to perceive the essence of our true nature this way. Our whole soul perceives – the senses, the belly, the heart, the mind, our very cells. The heart, especially, is an organ that perceives the nuances of relationship and essence.
The human who does not perceive and appreciate essence is potentially a destructive entity. A whole culture that does not exercise this capacity is a destructive force. As long as we act from concepts rather than attuned perception and appreciation, we can act brutally. If we are attuned to the sentience and value of another, it is much harder to do harm.
That was beautiful .. thank you for sharing this.