THINKING LIKE A MOUNTAIN: LIVING IN JOY, GIVING AND RECEIVING IN ABUNDANCE

by Mark A. Shryock

We are living through the collapse of a world built on a lie. The old way of surviving, the one we have been trained to accept as natural, is running out of road. The old survival model is a system designed around transaction, extraction, and a deep, systemic selfishness. We can see the collapse in our degraded ecosystems, our broken economic structures, and the quiet desperation of our daily lives. We call this the three-dimensional world, and the defining characteristic of the three-dimensional world is narcissism.

The baseline question of the transactional world is simple and predatory. What is the absolute least I can give you to get the absolute most out of you?

You see this predatory question in our workplaces, where corporations squeeze maximum labor from human beings for minimal pay. You see this question in our relationship with the land, where industrial agriculture strips the soil of every nutrient to maximize short-term crop yields. You see this question in our personal relationships, where people treat each other as resources to be mined rather than souls to be known. The transactional model is a math of depletion. The transactional model assumes that resources are scarce, that we are all isolated individuals, and that the only way to secure our own survival is to take before we are taken from.

But a new paradigm is rising from the wreckage of the old. Some call this rising paradigm a shift in dimension, a move toward a unified state of consciousness. This new way of being does not operate on the mathematics of extraction. The new way of being operates on the law of communion.

The question of this new paradigm is fundamentally different. What is my gift to give, and how can I give it for the greatest good of all, including myself?

The shift is not soft sentimentality or naive self-sacrifice. The shift is a precise description of how the physical universe actually works when we stop trying to force the universe into a mechanical box. To understand this shift, we must look at the thinkers who saw through the illusion of separation long before the current crisis forced the issue. These thinkers looked at the dirt, the stars, the animals, and the deep history of the cosmos, and these thinkers all found the same underlying truth. We are not separate pieces bumping into each other on a dead planet. We are cells in a living body.

Aldo Leopold, the pioneer of modern ecology, spent his life watching the consequences of the transactional mindset on the American landscape. In his landmark work on the land ethic, Leopold realized that our environmental crises stem from a refusal to see ourselves as members of a larger community. Humans treat the land as property, as a commodity to be owned and exploited.

To explain this shift in perspective, Leopold wrote about the necessity of thinking like a mountain. Leopold recalled watching the fierce green fire die in the eyes of a wolf he had just shot, an action taken under the transactional belief that fewer wolves meant more deer and a hunter’s paradise. But Leopold watched the mountain strip itself of its vegetation as the deer population exploded without its natural predator. Leopold wrote that only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf. To think like a mountain is to have a deep, ecological appreciation for the interconnectedness of all elements in an ecosystem, rather than viewing those elements as isolated pests or resources.

Leopold argued that we must expand the boundaries of our community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals. Leopold called for us to stop viewing the land as an adversary to be conquered or a resource to be plundered. Instead, we must see the land as a living system to which we belong. Leopold summarized this relationship in his classic definition of the land ethic: A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

When you look at the land through the eyes of Leopold, the question of what you can get out of the land disappears. You begin to ask what you can contribute to land health. You realize that your own well-being is completely dependent on the well-being of the forest, the river, and the soil. A person cannot be healthy in a sick world.

This ecological realization matches the cosmic scale of the universe story told by evolutionary cosmologist Brian Swimme. Swimme, along with cultural historian Thomas Berry, looked at the history of the cosmos not as a collection of random physical objects, but as an unfolding communion of subjects.

Swimme identified three core cosmological principles that have guided the evolution of the universe since the first flaring forth thirteen point eight billion years ago: differentiation, interiority, and communion.

Differentiation means the universe is driven to create absolute uniqueness. No two stars, no two leaves, no two human beings are identical. The universe abhors a monoculture.

Interiority, or subjectivity, means everything has an inside. Every entity, from a single atom to a human being, is a self-organizing center of experience and holy essence.

Communion is the principle that holds it all together. Nothing exists in isolation. Everything is connected in a vast, unbreakable web of relationships.

Swimme pointed out that when these cosmological principles are in balance, evolution moves forward creatively. When hydrogen and oxygen are in communion, the elements differentiate into something entirely new: water. The universe builds in this manner. The universe does not build by parts conquering other parts. The universe builds by unique identities entering into deep relationship to create new levels of reality.

You can see the same principle in your own body. Trillions of individual cells, each with its own biological history and function, work together in communion to produce a single conscious being. None of those cells dominates the others. None of those cells survives alone. The self you call “you” is not a static thing. The self is a relationship.

When humans operate under the transactional model, we violate these cosmic principles. We try to force differentiation into flat conformity. We ignore the interiority of the world, treating trees, animals, and other people as objects rather than subjects. And we deny our communion, pretending we can harm the web of life without harming ourselves.

The theologian Matthew Fox took these ecological and cosmological insights and brought them directly into our spiritual lives through his work on creation spirituality. Fox challenged the traditional religious focus on original sin, which often framed the physical world as a corrupt place of exile and humans as inherently flawed. Instead, Fox pointed to original blessing.

Creation itself is the primary revelation of the divine. Every creature, every rock, and every star is a unique expression of holy love.

Fox wrote extensively about the path of the mystic, which involves moving through awe, darkness, creativity, and justice. In the spiritual framework of Fox, the ultimate goal of spiritual development is not to escape the world, but to enter into deep, creative communion with the world. When we realize our original blessing, we stop acting out of fear and scarcity. We stop hoarding. We begin to understand that our creative work, our art, and our daily labor are meant to be gifts offered back to the community for the renewal of the earth.

This perspective of a living, breathing, unified universe was also documented by the pilot, journalist, and scientist Guy Murchie. In his monumental book on the mysteries of life, Murchie spent seventeen years researching the deep interconnectedness of all things across biology, physics, and philosophy.

Murchie identified key mysteries of existence, including the abstract nature of matter, the omnipresence of life, and the profound interrelatedness of all creatures.

Murchie showed that under the microscope and out in the cosmos, the boundaries we draw between things are completely arbitrary. A tree does not end at the tips of its leaves; the tree is constantly exchanging gases with the atmosphere, drawing water from the deep earth, and communicating with other trees through underground fungal networks. The earth itself behaves as a single superorganism.

The work of Murchie reveals that life is not something that occasionally happens on a dead rock. Life is the very nature of the universe itself.

When you bring all these pieces together, the boundary between the three-dimensional transactional world and the five-dimensional world of communion becomes clear.

The old world is a construct of fear. The old world is the world of the separate self, trying desperately to protect its boundaries, secure its resources, and control its environment. The old world is the world that asks how much it can take while giving up the bare minimum. The old world is narcissism, plain and simple. The transactional world is a dead end. The transactional world is a closed loop that eventually starves itself to death because it destroys the very relations that sustain it.

The new world is a construct of love. The new world is the world of the connected self. The new world begins with the realization that your identity is not limited to your physical body. You are a localized expression of the Earth, an eye through which the universe looks at itself, a mind through which the cosmos thinks.

In this state of awareness, the desire to extract and hoard makes no sense. You do not try to extract resources from your own lungs, or charge your own heart interest for pumping blood. You simply allow the life force to flow.

The transition requires us to ask those two central questions.

First: What is my gift to give?

This question assumes that you are not empty. You are not a consumer waiting to be filled up by the market. You are a unique, differentiated subject, born with a specific medicine, a specific voice, and a specific perspective that the universe spent thirteen point eight billion years preparing. Your gift might be growing food, teaching children, writing code, building houses, or simply holding a space of deep presence for those who are suffering. Whatever your gift is, the gift is yours, and the gift was given to you to be spent.

Second: How can I give it for the greatest good of all, including myself?

The inclusion of yourself is critical. The old paradigm often presented a false choice: either you are selfish and take everything, or you are selfless and sacrifice yourself until you are depleted. Both options are based on separation. Both options assume that your good and the good of the community are separate things.

In the new paradigm, your good and the good of the community are identical. When you give your gift fully, you experience the deepest joy and satisfaction possible for a human being. You are alive. You are in your right place in the ecosystem. At the same time, the community is nourished by your contribution. The gift circulates, supporting you in return through the natural reciprocity of a connected system.

To put this into practice, you must learn how to do this in your everyday life. The entry point is simple. You do this by doing what you love and following your joy.

You must seek out and commit to whatever it is that commands your complete attention. Look for the spaces and activities where you are so focused that you are no longer thinking about the past or worrying about the future. In those moments, you are deeply in the present moment.

When you align with this state of deep presence, you create with love. You are no longer performing a transaction or seeking approval. You are simply allowing your special gift to flow through you.

By doing what you love, you anchor light to the earth. Your actions become a physical point of connection for a higher frequency of existence. From that grounded point, you throw out light in every direction, radiating influence like a rock thrown into a quiet pond. The ripples travel far beyond your immediate sight, touching lives and shifting environments you may never directly see.

You do not have to overhaul your entire life overnight to begin this work. If you begin by practicing doing what you love even a tiny amount daily, tremendous changes will occur. This consistent, daily devotion to your joy dissolves the old programming of scarcity. Daily devotion alters your personal ecology, and you will naturally begin to move into a much more abundant life.

We see this economy of communion starting to break through the cracks of our failing institutions. We see the new economy in communities rebuilding local food systems, in open-source creators sharing their designs freely with the world, in the rise of mutual aid networks during times of crisis, and in the growing realization that our economic systems must be redesigned to serve life rather than interest-bearing debt.

We do not have to wait for this transition. No distant government or future technology has to implement this transition for us. The transition occurs every time we change the question we ask the world. Every time we step out of the calculation of exchange and into the presence of communion, we anchor the new paradigm. We stop treating the world as a dead resource and begin treating the world as a sacred home.

Copyright © Mark A. Shryock. May be shared with attribution.

SOURCES

Swimme, Brian, and Thomas Berry. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994.

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949.

Fox, Matthew. Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality. Santa Fe: Bear & Company, 1983.

Murchie, Guy. The Seven Mysteries of Life: An Exploration of Science and Philosophy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978.

Photo by Mark A. Shryock, Rainey Mountain, Clayton, Ga.

Copyright © Mark A. Shryock. May be shared with attribution.

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