Homework from Chris Reynolds - teacher, musician, and traditional healer - in this collection of his favorite books connecting the power of creativity and the power of one's ties to the land, both integral to the economic and cultural renewal of regions.
…so I would like to introduce you to a thinker named, Richard Tarnas, and in particular, his book, “Passion of the Western Mind” which is followed by “Cosmos and Psyche”. For Tarnas, the falling apart that we’re doing right now is the end of a twenty-five hundred year arch. And for him, the passion of the Western Mind, what he calls the ‘Western Development’ has been predominately masculine, predominately male.
And the proof he uses for it, is the names of the human being in all languages in the West are, ‘man’, ‘lum’, ‘wom’ – it’s all, when we talk about a human being we say, ‘man’. For him, at this time in history, we are going through the end of man.
That doesn’t mean the end of human beings; it means the end of a way of life. And for him, the future looks like a completing of the masculine in the feminine or a sacred marriage where there is a balance between the two.
And I like to think of what we’re going through now in those terms. If you look through our culture through that lens, you will see all the qualities that were cultivated over the last twenty-five hundred years have reached a point where they no longer work. There’s this old way that’s dying around our feet and at the same this new way is rising up.
So, I would like to say again, the way it looks regionally is, where the new ground is breaking through, through what’s falling apart, is these healing centers, these places where the people who fell apart and who are coming back together. So, it’s right in our midst. The important thing for us as leaders is to be able to allow what wants to die, to die. And that which is being born, that’s where we would place our interest.
Learn more from Chris about the relationship of creativity, traditional rites of passage, and the cosmos to mindfullness, passion, and meaningful civic engagement at his page on I-Open.
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