Three levels of 'why'...

...and three levels of 'who'.

I was listening to something, can't recall what, and the person said that we should ask ourselves why three times to find out what really matters. He said that most of the time and most of communication focuses on one level, the second is rare and the third we seldom bother with.

Here's an example:

Why do I want to volunteer for the Wildlife Trust?

Because I want to do something beneficial for the more-than-human world.

Why do I want to do something beneficial for the more-than-human world?

Because I hate how we humans have sacrificed all else for our desires.

Why do I hate how we humans have sacrificed all else for our desires?

Because I genuinely believe that we humans are of no more consequence than a Poplar, a Crow or a Butterfly.

The three levels of 'who' comes from an article on Aeon.

This piece is wonderful... it sums up for me what I have been thinking about regarding a kind of 'nature consciousness'. In an interview I did with Ecopsychotherapist Mary-Jayne Rust, we talked of this. A sense of being part of a process not an unchanging atomised individual.

I love this section of the article:

What’s needed is not-knowing in a particular kind of way: with a sense of wonder, of mystery and, perhaps above all, of belonging here. In the undifferentiated space of spiritual experience, we are not interlopers in a strange land, we are simply of this place. We are, and can only be, home.

In my little poplar copse, watching the birds and hearing them, I experienced this. Wonder, mystery, belonging... I wanted to stay for ever. Looking up at the blue green canopy, seeing birds fly through as though I were looking down at a sea with fish passing through the kelp.