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Cultivating an Ecological Consciousness

Lopa Mukherjee

Abstract
This article talks about the human disconnection from Nature and how it is causing pathologies in
man. It provides various solutions that eco-therapists can use and which can be taught in schools
to develop ecological intelligence. Some of the solutions already exist as traditional ecological
knowledge and have been re-purposed for modern situations. Some have been invented by
residents of urban nature-less zones. But above all, this article invites people to tune themselves
in to the nurturing vibrations of Mother Earth and her gifts of flowers and trees, not just for their
personal well-being, but for the future of the planet. There is an urgency in this calling, for man
has wronged nature long enough and, in the process, has hurt himself the most.

Ecological unconscious petrochemical lifestyle keeps her away. She
peeps in as creepers in cracked walls and
For many centuries, a large portion of shakes humanity with her weather tantrums.
humanity has lived segregated from nature in But before this age, when she is regarded as
technological Faraday cages, insulated from a woman who needs to be tamed, she was
bugs and germs, and beauty and sentience. worshipped as a mother and goddess. Five
The natural world does not penetrate hundred years of the Age of Reason is twenty
their habitat; and the concrete, steel and generations, which is a long time. Now the

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