Earth Praise: Why it’s Important
As a species, we’ve reached a painful turning point. Animals are vanishing, ecosystems are collapsing, climate disasters are becoming commonplace, and even our communities are fracturing under the weight of fear and division. Beneath all of this lie two root causes: greed, and a profound loss of connection to the earth — the very mother who sustains us. Many Westerners dismiss shamanic and animist cultures as primitive or superstitious, yet these traditions hold something we desperately need to remember: relationship. Their songs, rituals, and offerings were never about persuading the earth or the sky to grant favours. They were about cultivating humility. About remembering that we are part of a living web, not masters standing above it. Praise, in this context, isn’t magical thinking — it’s an attitude. A way of keeping the heart soft and the ego small. A way of staying aware of our interdependence with everything that…
The World is Alive with Being: AI Art Music Video With an Animist View
Animism is the worldview that everything is alive, interconnected, and worthy of respect. Walking in nature with this perspective, you may feel the trees breathing with you, the stones holding memory, the stream carrying song, and even the ground beneath your feet pulsing with life. This is the feeling that inspired my latest AI Art Music video, Alive With Being. When I walk in the forest, I often sense that I am not alone. The air itself seems to shimmer with presence, as if every leaf, bird, and ripple of water is aware of me, and I of it. This is the animist view of the world: that all things—plants, animals, rivers, mountains, even weather and places—carry spirit. It is not a metaphor but a lived experience, a way of perceiving the world as ensouled. In this view, humans are not separate or superior; we are one kind of person…
The Hidden Forest: A Gentle Tribute to the Life Beyond Sight
There’s a kind of magic in the forest that doesn’t show itself to the eye, but can be felt in the body—especially when we walk slowly, quietly, and listen. When I enter the bushland near my home on the south coast of NSW, I don’t just see trees and birds and fungi—I feel a hum beneath it all. A kind of quiet, nurturing aliveness that seems to exist just beyond the visible. It’s as though the forest is full of hidden helpers—tiny beings that keep the energy flowing and the system alive. Not in a literal sense, but in a deeply felt one. That’s what inspired The Hidden Forest, my latest AI-generated music video. Set to Kris Newland’s meditative track Frozen in Time, this short video is a gentle celebration of that unseen world. Cute forest spirits, fungi sprites, glowing birds, curious koalas, and leafy guardians wander through dreamy digital…
Finding Peace Amidst Chaos: How Meditation Helps
Engaging my awareness is how meditation helps me manage my mental health in unsettling times. The Shifting World Order We are living through a defining moment in history. The world order has shifted. America, under the Trump regime, is no longer the leader of the free world. They are falling into dictatorship, suppressing opposition, spreading fear of speaking out, firing thousands of workers to make government support systems ineffective, deporting people into what are essentially off-shore concentration camps without any legal process, ignoring court rulings, controlling the media, interfering with the judicial system, and so on. The Trump regime is essentially following Hitler’s playbook for turning a democracy into a fascist dictatorship. The regime is gutting the government, raising prices inside the US with unilateral tariffs, and tanking the stock market. America is no longer a reliable ally of other Western democracies. They have broken long-held international alliances by voting…