Earth-Based Spirituality - Loving the Land and Sky
by Florence Gaia / Psychotherapist and co-founder of EverGreen Wholistic Center
I sit alone under a magnificent old ponderosa tree near the Continental Divide, a small wild rose bush at my feet, before me opens a landscape of sunlit mountain meadows and dark green forested hills. 24 women had come to this 8,000 acre Montana horse ranch in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains to study Native American spirituality with Brooke Medicine Eagle, our Lakota-Crow guide. I did not know these two weeks spent doing sweat lodges, drumming, dancing, vision questing and simply walking about would profoundly affect my life ... how much I would fall passionately in love with this wild, free land. Perhaps because it would touch that wild and free place in my soul.
So I sit alone on my vision quest for a day and a half with only water and my sleeping bag watching the bright white clouds move across a clear sky. My mind and body slow to a quiet that allows me to absorb everything. My heart and breathing rhythms change, coming in unison with the great planet's pulsing life. Nothing to distract me from this intimate connection, not food or writing, no place to go and nothing to "do". Just sit. I become fascinated by the life of the planet around me that has been going on for eons before my arrival. The petals of this hardy wild rose so small and soft, the scent so delicately sweet juxtaposed beneath this grandfather ponderosa with its brown-red shaggy bark. A breeze moves across the high grasses so they seem to wave hello to me. Birds twitter among the trees. Mid-day and the flies discover me, so I pull my jacket over my head like a hood and hide. I sit near an ant highway. Mindless of me, they scurry up and down the tree and out into the grass, very busy with their ant business. An eagle floats on the thermals above, its piercing call a signature sign of wild places. Blue sky outlines a line of evergreen trees on the opposite ridge . And the sky ... so incredibly ... BLUE. Each mini-scene imprints indelibly on me.
Dusk is a magical time as the light changes through a spectrum of colors: red, orange, pink, lavender, dimming to shades of gray. I hear the cough-bark of mule deer calling to each other in the growing darkness. The night sky turns black with a million points of light. I lie on my back wondering at this cosmic display, counting the falling stars. Somewhere in the night I hear a loud animal grunt close to me. We know there are bear, mountain lion, elk here. I curl up very, veery still, hardly breathing, mentally telling this creature "I'm not here ... I mean no harm". No further sounds ... I breathe normally again and fall asleep, only to half waken occasionally to see how the stars are changing. The first dim gray light of dawn creeps in long before the sun, slowly, almost imperceptibly, casting the shadows away. The light on the horizon gets much brighter, the fiery heart of the sky is rising! That bright yellow-white ball slips up quietly into view awakening all who still sleep, 2-leggeds, 4-leggeds and winged. A new day begins. I sit still, my heart filled with gratitude and love.
That was 12 years ago and began continual study in Native earth-based spirituality. Today I'm reading an interview with Joanna Macy, which reminds me of my time on the mountain and my own mission in life. Macy, eco-philosopher, Buddhist scholar, creator of the Council of All Beings and co-author of Thinking Like A Mountain, has been working for years to transform the way we think, feel and live to reverse the self-destructive environmental path we continue to walk. She names three dimensions of a vast human revolution going on today. Her language pulls no punches, yet is also uplifting and hopeful. The first dimension, Macy says, are the holding actions that slow the environmental destruction caused by our industrial growth society, which measures success by how fast it uses up the Earth's resources, her very body. Its present runaway mode is unsustainable because the Earth is being devoured faster than its capacity to replenish herself. New sustainable social and economic coalitions are sprouting as the second dimension, from local marketing and consumer co-operatives, ecovillages to renewable, off-the-grid energy generation.
The 3rd dimension is, at root, a spiritual revolution, a shift in consciousness in how we relate to each other and the living body of Gaia, the Earth. It is a new awakening that links us back to ancestral wisdom. I think it is a most critical piece because it fuels the other 2 dimensions. It is the foundation, the heart and soul that makes one keep on keeping on because you are truly in love with the Earth and all her children and cannot bear to see her endlessly abused and milked for everything she's worth. To protect something you love deeply is a natural instinct.
This shift in consciousness is what I experienced sitting on the mountain during my vision quest in Montana, though it was seeded in my childhood years on my Aunt's farm in western New Jersey and vacations on Cape Cod. One can get to a similar place by sitting quietly and observing your back yard life or contemplating the rising sun . Macy sees people searching for authenticity with an appetite for experiencing a reconnection with the sacred, not as God "out there", but taking the sacred back into ordinary life. This, she considers, the most vital movement of our era and shows itself in people starting their own prayer groups and sacred circles as well as in traditional religions, e.g., Christian Creation Spirituality. We are discovering what ancient indigenous people have always taught their children: that the land, the air, water, our brothers and sisters of other species, our own bodies reflect the sacredness of all life. From Brooke Medicine Eagle we learned that native people know that every step taken on sweet Mother Earth is sacred, so one must be conscious of walking/living gently on her. They end all their prayers with "We are all relatives".
To see all life as holy rescues us from loneliness and a sense of futility that comes with isolation, Macy emphasizes. Each of us able to say "I am indeed part of the sacred living body of Earth through all time." She calls greed, hatred and stupidity the real enemies that must be limited and transformed. The question of whether to work on yourself or be out on the barricades (buying time to save a few species or ecosystems) is a dead argument because all 3 dimensions must be activated and sustained together. There's no guarantee that we can pull off this tremendous shift to a new way of living and relating to the planet before our life support systems unravel irretrievably. Yet it is this very threat that draws forth our greatest courage, creativity and chutzpah. Macy stresses the time to come alive is right now, on this edge of possibility.
Macy has more to say about how often we repress our pain for the condition the Earth is in, not realizing it springs forth from our visceral connection to all beings, our mutual belonging to the web of life. Whether we deny or respond to that pain is key to how quickly and whether the Earth will recover. There are, of course, many ways to help but her list is very different from the usual to do list. She stresses speaking the truth of your experience of the world's suffering from your heart for this brings a natural mental clarity and eagerness which gives birth to new paradigm thinking. Don't be stymied by the vast array of seemingly competing issues. Choose a project that you love to work on, that gives you joy and link up with others. Being part of a joint project sustains your energy for the long run. Joy is an antidote to burn-out I might add. Environmentalists must find the time to enjoy the very thing they fight so hard to protect.
"As you put forth great effort and allow yourself to feel anguish, let there also be serenity in all your doing, for you are held in flows of energy and intelligence far exceeding your own." Macy says. To endure and to tolerate not always seeing the results of our labor, we must continually draw from a wellspring of gratitude and wonder at being part of the great circle of life. (for more of Joanna Macy: www.joannamacy.net) I believe it is this experience of connection and love, being alive on this beautiful sweet Earth, breathing deeply the air, walking the land with an open heart, feeling both the beauty and the mystery along with the despoiling that must be the basis of our actions on behalf of the Earth.
Gratitude is one of the first marks of a spiritual warrior Brooke told us. Native people express it in a simple morning ritual of sprinkling corn meal on the ground and giving thanks for all the gifts Mother Earth gives us that keep us alive. This is wonderment and thankfulness coming from a daily experience, an ongoing relationship with the land, the sky and all the critters.
These and other Native customs, as well as solo time on the land, will be part of a seven-day mountain retreat Florence Gaia is leading this summer in Southwest Colorado from July 1-7, 2002. The focus of this retreat is to experience the mystery of wilderness and beauty through the land, shamanic journeys, breathwork, drumming, singing - to fall in love with Mother Earth. For more information, call Florence at (978)462-5879 and see her web site at http://www.primushost.com/~fgaia. Florence is a Registered Nurse and psychotherapist with an M.Ed. from Boston College. Her study with Native American teachers imbues her work with a unique spiritual quality. She is co-founder of EverGreen Wholistic Center on Rte. 1 in Topsfield, MA.
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