Abstract
Most ecopsychologists recognize the importance of spirituality in human–nature relationships. This chapter describes one example of a practice oriented to the spiritual and transpersonal dimensions of ecopsychology, “Diamond in the Rough” retreats. These wilderness retreats are grounded in immediate experience, optimistic about human nature, and oriented to the natural world as a source of support, healing, insight, and transformation. Combining the “primitive ecopsychology” approach of Steven Foster, Meredith Little, and the School of Lost Borders with the Diamond Approach of A. H. Almaas, they demonstrate several elements relevant to a transpersonal approach to ecopsychology: open and open-ended phenomenological inquiry into immediate experience, the three-stage structure of rites of passage as a container to deepen experience, the Four Shields (or four directions) model of nature including human nature, and, most importantly, direct encounter with the natural world. The Four Shields model suggests four aspects of human nature (body, heart, mind, and spirit) and a number of capacities associated with each (e.g., instinctual vitality, self-reflection and wounding, rationality and will, and freedom and transformation), and the Diamond Approach identifies four aspects of individual consciousness or soul (dynamism, sensitivity, maturation, and potentiality). These retreats apply the correspondences between these two systems in the service of greater aliveness and freedom of experience. This chapter aims to provide a more precise understanding of the spiritual and transpersonal dimensions of ecopsychology and a concrete example which embodies this understanding.
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Acknowledgment
Thanks to Ann DeBaldo, PhD, who made suggestions on an earlier draft of this chapter and who has helped guide the retreats described in this chapter, to my partners in this work, and especially to my teachers.
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Davis, J. (2014). Diamond in the Rough: An Exploration of Aliveness and Transformation in Wilderness. In: Vakoch, D., Castrillón, F. (eds) Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9619-9_4
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