Awaken! (1)
Posted on January 1, 2021 | Views: 613
„In my public presentations on future visioning, emotional healing, the ‘overview effect’…
…and living from the heart, I am often asked, “What sort of things can someone actually do to contribute to making it a more life-affirming world?”
I will sometimes reference the example set by Thoreau – something that my wife Linn and I have, in a small way, tried to follow by decluttering, by downsizing and by building and finally moving into a tiny house on wheels. But first, why Thoreau – who’s he?
Who is Henry David Thoreau?
In the spring of 1845 a brilliant twenty-seven-year-old schoolteacher and visionary writer, Henry David Thoreau, began a two year, two month experiment to live a simplified, more authentic life – “to live deliberately” as he put it, in a tiny one room, self-built cabin in the woods on the shores of Walden Pond, some distance north of Boston.
His foundational axiom of ‘simple living – high thinking,’ and the penetrating beauty of his writings – deeply soulful and down-to-earth practical – have for decades inspired and catalyzed numerous environmental revelations and life-style choices. Thankfully, they are continuing to influence the regenerative thinking of a rapidly growing fellowship of twenty-first century planetary-stewards.
His essay on non-violent civil disobedience powerfully impacted some of recent history’s greatest transformers including; Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., suffragist Alice Paul, and President John F. Kennedy.
At times it seems as if Thoreau is even strolling about with some of us right now; through woodlands and meadows, through crowded urban centers; running a succinct commentary from the clear streaming of his mind – past the extractive madness of greed – as he elucidates principles of self-sufficiency, and regenerative approaches to the life-support systems of our planetary biosphere. He’s delighted by the metaphor of ‘Spaceship Earth’ – and, he’s pleased by the continuance and embrace of his Walden experiment through the work of many awakening individuals in these late times.”
