4 Dependence of the blissful state of our existence on the most ordinary quality in our surroundings

Our existence — in its openness, clearness, and limpidity — depends to an immense degree on minute traces in the physical environment. It depends — more than is generally recognized — on the structure of the environment.
It is a deep harmonious feeling of belonging, something which makes us know that we are part of the Earth, that we are at home — wherever we are — truly at home, and that we are ourselves.

The world supports or does not support — supports in greater or lesser degree — this feeling of belonging. And it is only when it does support it that we may reasonably call it “life” in the environment.

Places have the capacity to deny us permission to be ourselves.

Only the adaptation of all kinds of subtle minutiae in the environment allows that wonderful thing — bliss, as I call it here — to emerge in us. And although this adaptation is very subtle, it has a huge effect.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/2 Our belonging to the world#