We might perceive the world’s beauty

Opening up the pores of sensation – or the doors of perception, as Blake called them – we might sense more in the world than can be seen with the literal eye. We might perceive the world’s beauty, its presence as a whole and in parts in relation to us, and our family relationship to it. We might sense a stirring there, a spark – a scintilla, the ancients called it. We might sense, as Meister Eckhart said, an eye looking back at us as we look into the world. 

Thomas Moore, The Soul’s Religion: Cultivating a Profoundly Spiritual Way of Life  

oneness with the earth and its life forces

[In the past] I discussed a few terms collected and invented by the Australian sustainability professor Glenn Albrecht that may help reorient modernity’s approach to the rest of nature.

Today, I’d like to add another of Albrecht’s terms to the discussion — eutierria: “a good and positive feeling of oneness with the earth and its life forces.” It arises when “the human-nature relationship is spontaneous and mutually enriching (symbiotic).” (The prefix eu comes from the Greek word for “good”; the root tierra means Earth.)

Eutierria refers to secular experiences but echoes the “oceanic” feeling identified in various world religious traditions. When it occurs, your perception of the boundaries between yourself and all else — the thoughts and feelings setting you off from the rest of the cosmos — seem to evaporate. The distinction between you and nature (or in the religious versions nature and God) breaks down. You become one with the universe. A reassuring sense of harmony and connection with the world infuses your consciousness. It’s an experience that matches up with the knowledge of your own dependence on and connection to the world.

How might you experience eutierria? Perhaps you already have. One way might be going deep into nature, using all your senses to hear, see, smell, feel, and even taste the engulfing and enriching natural world in all its depth and splendour, creating a moment when the sensing mind quiets and overtakes the thinking mind. I believe under such conditions, it’s actually rather easy to forget the self and instead become so wrapped up in sensing that ironically you, the sensor, disappear into the sensuous world of nature.

Kenneth Worthy, Ph.D.

Eutierria: Becoming One With Nature

Psychology Today 3^rd July 2016