RECOMMENDED READING
To help you prepare for or consolidate the learning from our programs and mentoring services, we recommend the following titles – extraordinary prose and poetry that will take you deeper into your mystery journey.
Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (2008), Novato, California: New World Library.
Addressing the pervasive longing for meaning and fulfillment in this time of crisis, Nature and the Human Soul introduces a visionary ecopsychology of human development that reveals how fully and creatively we can mature when soul and wild nature guide us.
Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (1988), San Francisco: Sierra Club Books
A touchstone of environmental, ecopsychology, philosophy and religious literature, Berry’s ode to the Earth reminds us – and guides us toward a deep knowing – of our responsibility to be in right relationship with the rest of the Earth Community.
Wade Davis, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World (2009), Toronto: Anansi
In his celebrated CBC Massey Lectures, Davis reminds us that human cultures are disappearing across the world at a shocking rate, and makes a passionate and persuasive argument about the risks to all of humanity if these cultures vanish.
Loren Eiseley, The Star Thrower (1978), London: Wildwood House
The poet-scientist arguably saved his best for last. Published shortly after his death, this book presaged so much of the deep ecology and sustainability movements that would begin to gather momentum in the 1980s and 1990s. The title essay is an extraordinary metaphor for what humans must do to save the more than human world – and in doing so, perhaps save themselves.
Russell Lockhart, Psyche Speaks
Lockhart, a noted Jungian analyst, asks an essential question in this masterful book: What is the psyche trying to say in our time? He argues convincingly that the “new myths” have to do with Eros. This Eros also requires a re-casting of our normal distinctions between "inner" and "outer," because psyche speaks from a space between these realms. Essential reading.
John O’Donohue, Beauty: Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity, and Hope (2004), New York: Harper Perennial
The late Irish poet and theologian exhorts us to open our eyes, hearts and minds to the multifaceted and multidimensional nature of beauty – and reminds us that beauty is ultimately a homecoming to the human spirit.
Bill Plotkin, Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche (2013), Novato, California: New World Library
Essential reading for Plotkin’s explanation of the nature-based map of the human psyche, the four facets of wholeness, and crucially, the subpersonalities that can highjack us out of our wholeness.
W.S. Merwin, Migration: New & Selected Poems (2005), Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press
A distillation of poems from the most eloquent American poet of the past fifty years. For a Coming Extinction is a piercing example of how his poetry captures the disconnect between humans and the more than human world.
Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (2003), Novato, California: New World Library
This poetic and powerful book is already seen as a landmark in helping to shift the trajectory of the human species. So much more than a guide to the wilderness of soul, Soulcraft is a beautiful synthesis of thought and action, practices and principles that lights the way ahead for those who know in their bones there is a better way.