'Now we must look for mythologies of sustainability, of collaborative relationships with the earth'

From: Homo Luminous: The New Human by Alberto Villoldo

This new mythology has yet to emerge, but we have the traditions of the Earth Peoples to provide us with models of the kind of world our children's children can truly inhabit. The Earth People have an animistic relationship with all of life. Animism is practiced by people who believe they can speak to the rivers and to the trees and to the canyons and to the mountains and to God. This is what we were able to do before we were cast out of the garden. We were still in relationship with Spirit and with the natural world. Spirit is actually talking to us all the time. But we, in the west, don't open our ears to hear. If we are to find that self that still walks with beauty on the earth, that speaks to the rivers and to the trees and to God, and to whom the rivers and the trees and the voice of spirit talks back, we need a great kind of soul retrieval.