"One essential ingredient of our receptivity ... is reverence ... [t]here is no room for hubris in the new consciousness ... [T]he age of separation has eroded our sense of reverence for the sacredness of life. The poet John O'Donohue sees reverence as the pathway to an appreciation of beauty and believes the embrace of beauty in our lives to be the ultimate healer and true source of compassion and serenity:
To live with reverence is to live without judgement, prejudice and the saturation of consumerism. The consumerist heart becomes empty and lonesome because it has squandered reverence. As parent, child, lover, prayer or artist - a sense of reverence opens pathways of beauty to surprise us. The Earth is full of thresholds where beauty awaits the wonder of our gaze. (2003:31)" (p.115) Dr Gillian Ross