Each indi­vid­u­al’s sub­jec­tive exis­tence pro­vides the frame­work for a sus­tain­able life-cycle in con­nec­tion with every­thing else in exis­tence. When one cycle comes to com­ple­tion, anoth­er cycle begins again in renewed form. Every cycle is an expres­sion of creativity.

“Well, I won­der if we won’t notice that thought can do some­thing oth­er than pre­scribe to peo­ple what they have to do. It would be quite nice if thought could come to entire­ly think itself, if think­ing could unearth what is uncon­scious in the very depth of what we think.” — Michel Foucault

Our bod­ies and our envi­ron­ment share the same mate­r­i­al com­po­nents. Oxy­gen not only appears all through­out our atmos­phere but it also moves through­out our blood­stream. Atoms and mol­e­cules in just the right con­fig­u­ra­tion pro­vide the nec­es­sary con­di­tions for our air, food, water, and shel­ter, and these atoms com­prise the fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks nec­es­sary for new life to emerge.

We can train our own envi­ron­men­tal con­scious­ness and help oth­ers to do the same. To live sus­tain­ably, we must envi­sion ways to act in bal­ance with nature.

Con­scious­ness pro­vides the foun­da­tion for this essen­tial work. Holis­tic, inte­gra­tive sys­tems, incor­po­rat­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices in ecology—as well as in edu­ca­tion, health, cul­ture, and economy—all hinge upon the pow­er of the mind to reshape our inter­ac­tions in rela­tion to inter-being.

The mys­ter­ies of con­scious­ness are being mined to uncov­er poten­tial heal­ing prop­er­ties. Psy­chol­o­gist, sci­en­tist, and social entre­pre­neur, Dr. Shami­ni Jain explores sys­tems-based heal­ing process­es from the per­spec­tive of per­son­al and soci­etal empow­er­ment.¹⁵ As an intro­duc­tion to her work on her web­site, Jain asks, “What if there real­ly is no divide between sci­ence and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty? Is the abil­i­ty to heal our­selves sci­ence fic­tion, or actu­al­ly sci­ence-based? What would the world look like if we were tru­ly awak­ened to the depths of our heal­ing poten­tial?” Explo­ration toward these answers takes place through Jain’s foun­da­tion, the Con­scious­ness and Heal­ing Ini­tia­tive (CHI).¹⁶ Accord­ing to her foun­da­tion, inves­ti­ga­tions into how human­i­ty might come to exhib­it the capac­i­ty for self-heal­ing emerges through what’s known as biofield sci­ence. This branch of study con­sid­ers how mol­e­cules, cells, and organs of liv­ing sys­tems com­mu­ni­cate through fields of ener­gy to main­tain health.

Launched from a hypoth­e­sis that the biofield activ­i­ty of organ­isms can be altered to self-reg­u­late the process­es of a healthy liv­ing sys­tem, the impli­ca­tion is that our ener­gies influ­ence var­i­ous facets of our phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal, and spir­i­tu­al integri­ty. But biofield sci­ence is just one of many emerg­ing fields of study blend­ing sci­ence and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. What we are most fas­ci­nat­ed by is how this area of inves­ti­ga­tion offers a holis­tic approach toward strength­en­ing the rela­tion­ships with­in our bod­ies, with­in our com­mu­ni­ties, and between our species and every oth­er life-form on our planet.

There is no rea­son why sci­ence and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty should not work in har­mo­ny. Sci­ence can back up spir­i­tu­al insights with data. Spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions can help guide sci­en­tif­ic inquiry into the unknown. To achieve sus­tain­abil­i­ty as a mind­set, we believe in the impor­tance of being open to receiv­ing wis­dom from many sources, from not only the ele­ments of wind, water, fire, and air, but also from the plants, ani­mals, and peo­ple who inhab­it this world.