In the modern world, where urban and technological landscapes often overshadow the natural world, there is an ever-increasing disconnect between humanity and the environment that sustains us. The consequences of this detachment are far-reaching, impacting on the very essence of our well-being. Jung saw our relationship with nature as essential to the development of consciousness and wholeness (Sabini 2001). Jung stated that in the “civilization process, we have increasingly divided our consciousness from the deeper instinctive strata of the human psyche” (Jung, 1964, 36).
The process of ‘othering’ has allowed humans to treat Nature as a mere object instead of a living organism with its own organizing intelligence. Carl Jung recognized that ‘We are Nature’ - that the natural world is important for the development of consciousness and wholeness...
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Pachamama is the Great Earth Mother. As supreme and eternal goddess she represents both the living earth (physical planet) and the Universal Feminine Energy - the cosmic matrix of all life...
This embedded ecological awareness of origin-in-the-sentient-land (earth as mother) and the connection to other life forms as sentient beings and kin is a custodial ethic - a template for how to live in accord with nature based on reverence, responsibility, reciprocity and respect.
In the early 1970’s James Lovelock proposed the ‘Gaia’ hypothesis. He argued that earth is a dynamic self-regulating system where all life is interrelated, interacting through complex feedback loops. Life on earth is “a network of inseparable patterns of relationships”. Jung saw our relationship with nature as fundamental to the development of consciousness and wholeness.