Arnold Mindell – Earth-Based Psychology: Path Awareness from the Teachings of Don Juan, Physics, and Jungian Psychology
Main Idea
Mindell proposes that psychology must expand beyond the human mind to include the living earth itself. “Earth-based psychology” means recognizing that our thoughts, dreams, and body experiences are expressions of a larger sentient field — the dreaming earth. Personal and collective issues mirror ecological and planetary processes.
1. From Inner Work to Earth Work
Mindell extends Jung’s and Castaneda’s insights:
- Dreaming happens in rocks, rivers, weather, and cities as much as in individuals.
- A gust of wind, an earthquake, or an animal encounter can carry messages parallel to our inner experience.
2. Quantum and Field Analogies
Drawing from modern physics, Mindell uses quantum metaphors to describe this interconnectedness:
- Observer and observed are inseparable.
- Just as quantum fields manifest particles, the earth’s dreaming field manifests events, people, and weather systems.
3. Path Awareness
- Path awareness — that is, our innate ability to sense where to turn at a given moment — is actually an ancient concept. Our bodies sense direction in ways that merge our personal psychology with the real and imaginary nature of the earth around us.
- Vector walking: Using path awareness, earth-based psychology has developed a walking meditation based upon our sense of the earth and of directions.
4. The Core Message
The Earth is dreaming through us.
Our task is not to dominate nature or transcend it, but to blend into it — becoming conscious participants in the world’s self-awareness.
Earth-based psychology thus merges spirituality, physics, and ecology into one process: awareness itself as the living field of earth.
Mindell, Arnold (2007). Earth Based Psychology: Path Awareness from the Teachings of Don Juan, Richard Feynman, and Lao Tse (English Edition). Kindle Edition.
Ruth Weyermann + Josef Helbling