Earth Wisdom: Making Peace with out Planet

Ever since paddling a canoe down the Amazon and seeing pristine rainforest devastated by cattle ranching and oil wells in 1980, I’d had a strong sense of the ecological crisis. It was as if we were at war with our life-support system. How could we heal our relationship with nature?

  I’d been exploring various paths of personal development: meditation, counselling, rebirthing and dances of universal peace. All of them had helped, but I wanted something to transform the way we related to the planet. Then a friend recommended a course on contemporary shamanism. ‘You’d love this’, she said, ‘Because it’s all about getting to know ourselves by getting to know nature’. I took her advice, and that’s how I came to my first ceremony of earth wisdom teachings. I stepped into a darkened room and into a circle of smiling people sitting around an altar of candles, feathers and crystals. Someone was shaking a rattle in time to a drum. But what surprised me most – this was before I’d ever heard of ‘smudging’ – was that they were passing round a fat green cigar with clouds of aromatic smoke. ‘No’, they told me. ‘This is sacred sage, and it cleanses your auric envelope’. I’ve since found out that smudging is a ritual way to cross the psychic threshold into ceremony. A ceremony is an energy container that allows people to drop deep within. It’s the beauty of our words, the skill of our hands and the clarity of our heart’s intention that create this container. Within it, our thoughts, words and actions expand our state of consciousness so that we touch the Mystery of all life. After that initial encounter, I felt drawn deeper and deeper into earth wisdom teachings. I was intrigued by the adventure of self-discovery and healing. We sat together in circles, and the teachings were arranged in circles. They mirrored the many circles in nature – such as the cycle of seasons, the ebb and flow of tides and phases of the moon. This circular way of being was very different from the education I’d received before. It was holistic in essence and revealed the deep truth that all things are interrelated: all things are reflections of the One.   What is earth wisdom? When we are in deep communion with the earth and all her other offspring – plants and animals, rocks, rivers and so on – we can come to profound insights. For much of the human story our ancestors have lived in close relationship with the earth, taking time for contemplation. Ancient and indigenous peoples all over the world have had direct knowledge of nature’s aliveness, of the mysterious spirit behind and within all things. Traditions of earth wisdom have evolved on every continent – amongst the druids in Europe, for example, or the Bön religion in Tibet. The earth wisdom teachings which I study and carry flourished among the Olmec, Toltec and Maya in Middle America. But all these traditions have similarities because they come from the earth. They recognised that as well as providing us with food, clothing, shelter and tools, the Mother Earth is our greatest teacher. Contemplation means coming into a state of inner stillness and enabling wisdom to surface from the depths. Being in nature can help us find stillness because nature’s full of stillness. Actually, nature is everywhere, even in city streets and electronic devices, for these are made of Earth’s minerals. But wild nature has a quality of primordial balance that reconnects us with our own primordial balance. When we walk in the woods, hills or mountains, or when we sit by a river, or listen to the rhythm of waves on the seashore, we can relax beyond ordinary thinking and commune with the life-force.     Thinking and perceiving On my journey with earth wisdom there have been many ‘light bulb moments’ of illumination. One important realisation came when a teacher told me that ‘thinking’ is not the same as ‘perceiving’. When you direct your attention to your sense perceptions and let go of labelling or thinking about them, you come more fully into the present moment. This leads to inner stillness and spaciousness, and your awareness becomes heightened. Thoughts may come and go, but you’re not completely absorbed in them. This allows you to notice other faculties of consciousness. Nature can guide us to deepen many of our innate faculties. In addition to thinking and perceiving, we can heal and transform. We can access inspired creativity and the unlimited potential of spirit. We have predictive intelligence to dream and co-create the future. We’re able to activate emotional power to respond to life’s challenges and we have gut feeling, body-mind intelligence and heart-knowing. Heart-knowing isn’t the same as brain-thinking. The brain is wonderful for memory, processing information and rational thinking. But we need to connect it with our heart and all our other intelligence to access wisdom. The heart is a tremendous field of intelligence. It’s our primary organ of healing and it enables us to know directly, without thinking. It’s through the heart that we know that the earth is sacred and that we are always in relationship with her. And it’s through the heart that we can fall back in love with nature. The realisation that consciousness is much more than brain-thinking has helped me find peace and deepen my relationship with the earth. At times I still get caught up in trying to do too much, and I can be as much of an information addict as anyone. But I’m training myself to find space within, by noticing my sense-perceptions and noticing the gaps between thoughts. When you put your attention on the spaces, spaciousness grows, and you realise your relationship with the universe and all its powers. For many of us, ordinary thinking seems to go on all the time, and our waking consciousness is dominated by internal dialogue, information and concepts. This kind of consciousness has allowed us to create the world as we know it, but it comes at a cost. It disconnects us from nature and from our deeper being. A lot of our destruction of nature comes from feelings of lack and separation. It’s as if there’s a hungry ghost haunting humanity, telling us we don’t have enough, driving us to relentlessly extract from the earth. But we can heal these feelings of lack and separation by coming into stillness and accessing our greater intelligence. When we’re in our wholeness, we’re able to be nourished by the earth and don’t need to over-consume. In spite of all the chaos in our world, I feel we’re undergoing a huge evolution into ecological consciousness, expanding from ego to eco. Many strands of spiritual wisdom – both ancient and modern – are supporting this transformation, and as each one of us heals and grows, we’re shifting the whole collective field of humanity. The seeds of potential are within us, and we can germinate them by giving them attention. Through spiritual practice we can nurture them to allow our consciousness to flower.     Our Winter Issue is now available to purchase! 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