Natalie Audelo

It is rare that anyone gets through an Earth School journey without collecting some pretty gnarly wounds. So rare, in fact, that it seems to me that trauma is an inescapable part of the Earth School curriculum. Not a bug, as they say, but a feature.

I’ve come to believe that the greatest sum of human wisdom on surrender resides in the spiritual disciplines that we find across religions and across time, like rest, silence, prayer, fasting, manual labor, pilgrimage, and community. And I believe that all of these can tune us to welcome the spirit of inspiration not just in creative work, but in a... See more

One lesson to learn from his death is that if we are to live well to the end, we need to be able to freely discuss when a life is complete, without shame or taboo. Such a discussion may help people to know what they really want. We may regret their decisions, but we should respect their choices and allow them to end their lives with dignity.

“Is what I’m about to do conducive to life?”

We design our lives by every choice that we make—from how we plan our days, to how we approach our relationships, to our interactions with our environments. The question we can all practice asking ourselves, she offered, is: “Is what I’m about to do conducive to life?”

And there are consistent patterns that emerge from observing other organisms—winning strategies for thriving that are nearly ever-present across the Tree of Life. The Biomimicry Institute outlined a number of them in what they call Life’s Principles. There are 27 in total, but I’ll give you a taste with their six overarching principles: 1. Evolve t... See more