core intellectual pursuits: philosophy
As we navigate this strange and anxious world, choosing joy becomes more than a personal act of resilience – it becomes a radical gesture of hope. In an era where cynicism so often masquerades as wisdom, the decision to remain constructive, to trust in human potential, is itself a quiet but powerful form of resistance.
318 / Fighting cynicism, choosing joy
At the heart of exile, we must finally encounter the longing we have hidden in our own hearts. Longing is an impulse, born out of what is missing from us which we ache to return to, even if we’ve never known it directly. It aches too, for our homecoming.
Toko-pa Turner • Belonging: Remembering Ourselves home
What if the ‘negative’ emotions aren’t wrong, but totally in their own right? What if they have something essential to communicate to us and each other,
Toko-pa Turner • Belonging: Remembering Ourselves home
negativity is a prompt for deeper exploration of self
Jung has demonstrated that myths and fairy tales are symbolic manifestations of the unconscious, just as dreams are. In a sense they are the collective dreams of the human race: They reflect the collective unconscious of a tribe, a people, or a culture rather than the local, personal unconscious of one individual.
Robert A. Johnson • Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth
creativity is really an act of devotion to that which is creating us.
Toko-pa Turner • Belonging: Remembering Ourselves home
what a beautiful philosophy
Gardening is simply a framework for engagement with our world, grounded in care, action and intimacy with place. To garden is to care deeply, inclusively and audaciously for the world outside our homes and our heads. It’s a way of being that is intimately interwoven with the real truths of existence—not the things we’re told to value (money,... See more
Georgina Reid • Audacious Gardening: On Daring to Care - Wonderground
gardening as a way to enhance the mind, body, spirit, and connect with the outter world.
Only in this state of missing, of absence, can life be drawn into itself. Like the womb which is an empty vessel waiting for the seed of life, longing is the force that pulls potential towards it. Rather than a thing to be tolerated or gotten rid of, longing should be venerated as the elemental gravity that attracts towards us the life and world we
... See moreToko-pa Turner • Belonging: Remembering Ourselves home
They live in us, but even more importantly, we live in them. We can, therefore, find them by going inward (to our own dreams, fantasies, and often actions as well) or by going outward (to myth, legend, art, literature, and religion, and, as pagan cultures often did, to the constellations of the sky and the birds and animals of the earth). Thus,
... See moreCarol Pearson • Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World
every hero or heroine must endure a period of their own exile if they are to be initiated into the true medicine of their calling.
Toko-pa Turner • Belonging: Remembering Ourselves home
you do see this in literature, where the heroine has a backstory of much strife and suffering to overcome