The Institute for Contemplative Ecology (I4C) is a not-for-profit, land-based initiative located in Edmonton and central Alberta exploring how modern humans can learn to live in respectful, regenerative relationships with their local ecologies. The Institute offers educational workshops and spiritual retreats, explores sustainable agriculture practices, hosts ecological and ecospiritual research, and partners with like-spirited organizations.
“Right now we are facing a manmade disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”
David Attenborough
2018 UN Climate Summit
I4C is the acronym for the Institute for Contemplative Ecology and also a pun: “I foresee...”
In the spirit of Gandhi’s famous quote “Be the change you want to see in the world”, but informed by the urgency of the many and converging crises of our time
– global climate crisis, global ecological crisis, civilizational collapse, and more –
“I foresee” the need for change and transformation.
Our time of crisis is a call to the human spirit to wake up, to transform, to consciously evolve. We must change our politics, our economics, our agricultural practices.... we believe a corresponding spiritual change is needed as well, the challenging change to an earth-based spirituality. A critical mass built up through many small changes
can become a global whole greater than the sum of its local parts -
and become the change the world needs.