Hi friends, it’s been a while since I’ve brought my voice into Substack. I’ve been in deep processes of creation and becoming, and life with a toddler has made the deep focus of writing hard. But I have been able to experiment, in quiet mornings and the depth of the night, with podcasting. This is my first episode, and I would love to hear your thoughts. Much more to come.
Key Takeaways:
Lichen represents a model of symbiotic relationships, highlighting how collaboration enables survival in challenging environments.
The principles of symbiosis found in lichen can inspire human partnerships, advocating for slow, steady progress and shared creativity.
The concept of interdependence is crucial to understanding ecological systems and can extend to inform societal structures, including marriage and community building.
Ganga Devi Braun's community platform, EMUNAH, offers an exemplar of mutualism in practice, providing a forum for collective growth anchored in ecological insight.
By embracing the living world's wisdom, individuals can create fertile grounds for personal and collective development.
Notable Quotes:
"Mutualism enhances survival. So by combining their capabilities, lichen can survive in extreme environments... where each of them would actually struggle on their own."
"Slow and steady, we go far."
"Symbiosis and collaboration are the truest forms of what I call magic in this world."
"The closer we get to lichens, the stranger they seem. To this day, lichens confuse our concept of identity and force us to question where one organism stops and another begins."
"Lichens are living riddles... they have provoked fierce debate about what constitutes an autonomous individual."
Resources:
Ganga Devi Braun's platform, EMUNAH: emunahliving.com
Discount code for EMUNAH subscription: LICHEN
Book reference: "Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake
Poem: "The Third Body" by Robert Bly
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