inner ecosystems

The question is, do you want to do to your own psyche what humans have done to ecosystem after ecosystem? With the best of intentions, just trying to take care of yourself, fit in with your needs and your environment, you can practice jhanas and set boundaries and get massages — and at some point, you look around to find your inner wilds paved, you... See more

By creating a container and allowing the deeper, dreamier, more instinctive and strangeful parts of yourself to mingle, synergize, fight, wither, and attract new creatures into their branches — you allow something special and robust to assert itself. You allow yourself to become the Psyche, not just the ego.

You’ve got a lot of forces in you, a lot of sub-personalities and competing currents; a lot of patterns, schemas, habits, and memories; a lot of urges and energies, eros and ire. Each of us is less of a consistent individual than an ecosystem, thronging with profligate life.