The Western notion of individuality maintains that we are separate individuals experiencing something unique to each of us and others are disconnected from our experience. However, it is likely that in many cases, we have simply bracketed out the “outside,”—the collective memory of traumatic events that has accumulated over generations. Presumably, others with whom we have relationships are also experiencing the same trauma but it is unconscious, marginalized, silenced, and therefore invisible. (…)

Even decades ago, Jung pointed out that our collective culture mirrors an individual who is suffering deeply from soul loss, manifesting in symptoms such as falling into conflict with himself, fragmenting into splinters in his pursuit of goals, interests, and occupations, and forgetting his own “origins and traditions…even losing all memory of his former self” (Jung, as cited in Sabini, 2005, p. 182). Disregard, numbing, or not wishing to see or feel the distress and negative effects that soul loss brings also moves us ever further away from deep connection an into a society where meaning is hard to find, compelling us try anything to fill up the gaping sense of emptiness that results, staving off the fear of annihilation that is core to the experience of trauma. Jung correctly diagnosed our compulsive, cultural tendency toward hyperactivity, saying, “we rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness” (as cited in Sabini, 2005, p. 141). (…)

Ostensibly, western culture is founded on displacement and disconnection from place, from land, from home. The New World is built on immigration, on people leaving home to make a new place for themselves in the world, and on colonization, the displacement of indigenous people for whom the new land was already home. Craig Chalquist (2009) points out that America is built on the archetype of the pioneer, always moving, conquering frontiers and the threats that accompany them—always designated as “the other”. Though sacred sites connected to earth and place along with the spirits and ancestors who dwell there have always deeply situated indigenous peoples, those of us whose living ancestors migrated to this place have no such history, no living landscapes. It is no wonder why we easily devastate ecosystems, deforest mountains, or destroy bodies of water. We are not, for the most part, deeply tied to home, nor to the holding context the landscape provides. We don’t know the myths nor do we engage with the spirits that live in the landscape. We don’t listen in through our dreams or our moods when in specific areas.