The seven activist addictions are symptoms of a deeper underlying issue: modern Western civilization has a kind of amnesia or dementia. We have forgotten our indigenous ways of interrelating with Nature and the Earth as family. We have forgotten the wisdom of women that connects us to natural rhythms and cyclical ways of being. We have forgotten the sacredness of all beings and creatures.
We suffer from what author John Philip Newell calls “soul forgetfulness.” In his book, Sacred Earth Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom for Reawakening to What Our Souls Know and Healing the World, Newell reminds us that the Earth is sacred, and that same sacredness is at the heart of every human being and life form.
True joy is the fruit of harmonious interrelatedness. It is a natural by-product of being deeply connected to and in the right relationship with all parts of ourselves, one another, and the Earth. Our individual fate is inextricably intertwined with the fate of the Earth.
The recent ecological, political, and social upheaval evidenced by devastating forest fires, epic floods, wars, political turmoil, and the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, have all been wake-up calls showing us what yet needs to change and how much is at stake if we continue to numb out through our business-as usual addictions.
The problem is that we constantly fall back to sleep, ignoring what matters most—the longings of our hearts and the wisdom of our souls. We ignore the deeper part of ourselves that knows that our religions, governments, and universities have left something crucial out of their picture of the world— the sacredness and interrelatedness of the human soul and the Earth.
To learn more about how the seven activist addictions numb us to the voice of our soul and how the wild remedies can heal our relationship with our soul, one another, and the Earth, purchase my book Joy as the Compass: Freeing Yourself from the Seven Activist Addictions. You can find it on Bookshop.org and Amazon.
1. John Philip Newell, Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom for Reawakening to What Our Souls Know and Healing the World (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2021).