Separation

We are used to thinking of ourselves as solid separate individuals yet nothing could be further from the physical and energetic truth.

Our psychological viewpoint is now as antiquated as the flat earth theory. Our bodies are more than two thirds water and even our densest structures show fluidity at the cellular level. At the atomic level we are more space than matter. If we were to squeeze all the space out of our atoms we would be tiny, about the size of the head of a pin. We are not as solid as we think.

And as for separate, 99.9% of all our DNA is the same as every other human being. Only 0.1% of our DNA makes us appear separate from anyone else! And the majority of our DNA is the same as other animals, plants and even mushrooms, the oldest life form on this planet.

• Consider the air you breathe, created from sunlight by every green leaf, flowing to you and out again, to be breathed in by other people and animals all over the Earth and finally reabsorbed by those same plants and trees. The same air has been circulating through all living things for millions of years.
• The water that constitutes the majority of your body falls as dew, rain, ice and snow. It trickles and flows, it seeps and cascades, it meanders and pounds, it freezes and feeds all the surfaces of the planet. We catch the water in rivers and dam, we drill for the groundwater and we direct it where we mishit to be so we can drink it, irrigate with it, pollute it and wash away our soils. Then it flows back out to sea to evaporate, recrystallize and fall down again. This water flows through ALL living things. You are drinking water that has been through the physical body off every living creature!
• The matter that constitutes our bodies comes from the planet but originally, it came from exploding stars eons ago. We are made of stardust and unto dust we shall return.

We are so connected in the web of Life, we have never been separate.

Self-Care

Trauma happens to all of us humans. It happens to animals and plants too. What makes human trauma so difficult is that we stay stuck in it, acting and believing that we cannot change what happened to us and that it is still happening in our heads and hearts. The best way to stop recreating old traumas is to self care, for it is through nurturing that the restoration of beauty begins.

In our world, the generally accepted duality is that women naturally have well-developed capacities for empathy and for nurturing; men have more developed capacities for the perception of space, distances and speed. We firmly believe there are differences between the genders. When we consider the destruction of the world, people do not appreciate that there is a biological imperative for the feminine force within us all to bring things together, to give and nurture Life, and for the masculine force to create the balance by separating and by being the hunters and destroyers. When we are so out of balance, as we are now, we threaten our own survival as a species by being predominately masculine. In its extreme expression we call this the patriarchy, a system of behaviors and beliefs that discount caring men and women and values power, money and self interest over the rights of all citizens.

In the last three generations of civilization, we have tried to obliterate the biological template that allows women to be feminine: to give birth to children naturally, to breast-feed them for as long as both babies and mothers actually need. Women are generally not cherished as the Life givers. Once past a mysterious definition of age, they are considered less attractive, less valuable as beautiful human beings and they do not always enter old age with purpose, health and dignity. Women have become very vulnerable to advertising and misinformation propagated by the medical, health and fashion industries, and by both the corporate and feminist definitions of what it means to be a woman. This has caused a distortion in women’s relationship to their own bodies and a fundamental erosion of the value of the feminine principles of love and care for life in our civilization.

Many women in the so-called civilized countries give birth to their children in a manner that is creating a horrific legacy for our children and our cultures. Women now age with a multitude of ‘dis-eases’ caused by a lack of education about female biology. In war torn countries, women bear the brunt of torture, abuse, starvation and slavery. When the nurturers of the world are not able to nurture themselves and be cherished by their men, the world is out of balance and massive suffering results.

There are profound shifts afoot across the globe with people working to integrate their feminine and masculine energies and create balance through bio-remembering. The re-education of women about their own biology is critical to the rehabilitation and restoration of our life cherishing principles. What a different world it would be if men too were cherished, supported in their vulnerabilities and not forced into stereotypes that are fragmented and diminished.

Eco-Psychology

New fields of study including eco-psychology are merging environmental awareness with psychological healing.

When we really ponder the web of Life, we realize that we are so connected to each other and to all of Life that there are only tragic consequences to think otherwise. We still have a long way to go to address the reductionism and adversarial attitudes of our times to restore the industrialized human psyche to its natural, rightful relationship with this world. Or perhaps it is as close as a step through the doorway of the heart?

Industrial Ecology

There is now a growing movement called Industrial Ecology, which measures the full cost of transforming raw materials into products and recognizes that economics and ecosystems are essentially the same.

Having sponsored industrial, business, cultural and religious values that saw the Earth as an unlimited resource for consumption, we now know the truth. The full cost of what we have been doing to ourselves and the environment is finally beginning to be included in the economic process.

There are fresh incentives being formulated for businesses to go green, not just because it is the competitive thing to do or because they could go to jail if they don’t do it. It is also the right thing to do and consumers are responding. Now that’s my version of sacred shopping!

Many major international corporations are leading the way, consulting with biologists, environmental scientists and social justice leaders to understand the full benefit of natural resource usage. The levels of investments into innovative green technologies in now is the billions of dollars.

Biomimicry

Terra Psychology

In the search for life-sustaining manufacturing, transportation, energy and financial processes, biomimicry is leading the way.

There are new applications of nature’s incredible structures and processes being found as we desperately seek the means to continue our survival as a species. Life has already solved pretty much every function we humans perform, in ways that are more elegant, non-polluting and better than anything we have come up with in our technological brilliance. The challenge we humans face now, are the same challenges the rest of Life has figured out over billions of years of evolutionary trial-and-error.

Imagine:

• Methods of farming that are not only organic and sustainable and more productive than our petrochemical farms, and methods that generate more life, not deplete the land.
• Organic glues that work in water; spider silk and other fibers stronger than kevlar and iridescent paints with no heavy metals, toxic pigments or polluting manufacturing processes.
• Computers that are made of carbon not silica and process information with exquisitely diverse designs.
• Incredible nano-towers with paint-on thin films that can capture sunlight and process it directly to appliances, in the same way that plants capture energy during photosynthesis.
• Animals know how to find the medicines they need amongst the vast array of plants in the rainforests and oceans. They even know how to regulate their reproduction through what they eat. What if we can learn from them what we have forgotten.
• Nature knows how to reduce turbulence – the designs of owl wings and shark fins are being used to reduce drag on planes, windmills and turbines.
• By studying slime moulds, planners, emergency response teams and urban designers are creating way more efficient optimization networks of all kinds.

AskNature helps innovators understand how these adaptations work, empowering them to emulate forms, processes, and systems that have evolved to thrive in balance with Earth’s complex systems. This invaluable site has hundreds of examples of Nature’s designs, from manufacturing ideas, materials sciences, behaviors and product design, engineering and financial systems, to relationships and whole system designs.

This is the masculine side of Life, the material and the visible. As we evolve, hopefully biomimicry will also explore the feminine side of Life’s designs – relationships and feelings, spiritual processes in Nature and how Nature heal of hearts and minds in the quantum field.

Another emerging idea in the west, is that places have souls and that these energies infuse us and effect us.

Indigenous peoples have always appreciated this fact and garnered knowledge and wisdom to honor their relationships with the land. Certain places were acknowledged healing centers and sacred sites whilst others were known to harbor evil spirits and were avoided. Just because it was described as a subjective experience, in the past, it was dismissed as superstition and judged uncivilized by so called educated people. It seems so ironic to me. We are the ones who have been living in denial of ancient truths.

Indigenous peoples practice regenerative agriculture, giving thanks for the bounty of the land with offerings as well as gardening organically without restructuring the whole ecosystem. The best food I have ever eaten was simple vegetable soup, grown in Andean soil that had been farmed and prayed over for thousands of years. It tasted of a love so alive that reverent silence was the only possible response!

There is a direct relationship between our ill health and how we live:

• Breathing in the air and all its miasmas, we now see an epidemic of asthma and it’s hard for city folks to breathe fully. This corresponds to a lack of ability to feel the depth of what is happening around us. When we stop breathing deeply, we stop feeling. And to add to the troubles, we now know that certain viruses can spread through the particles of air pollution, spreading diseases around the world.
• Just as our nation’s topsoil and fertile land have been destroyed through industrial farming, logging and mining practices, and we suffer a pervasive emptiness, a shallowness in our lives and a blindness to the damage we support. We lack the deep roots and fertile sense of connection, which leaves us feeling depressed and isolated.
• By scouring our homes with a plethora of chemical cleaning products, we ignore the fact that the majority of these industrial products are toxic to our health. The vast majority of consumer products, transport equipment and furnishings are so permeated with scents that we can no longer smell feelings in others, we cannot scent who or what is good for us and what is not.
• Such is our susceptibility to marketing and our fears of what is supposed to be good for us that we have lost the ability to determine what is good for us. Many people suffer from a lack of healthy boundaries, people who act as if what is bad for them is OK. Yet Life would not exist on this planet if it weren’t for the atmosphere creating a safe boundary between us and the sun, and we are destroying it. We cover ourselves in sunscreens, unaware that many of them cause skin cancer. We expect ourselves to be able to care for ourselves, yet corporations continue to hoodwink us into believing in the culture that they only profit from.
• We saturate ourselves with dead, plasticized and polluted water instead of making sure everyone has access to clean, fresh water. This is the most critical political, industrial and human rights issue of our times. Believing what corporations tell us, we no longer trust our own needs or know how to deeply care for ourselves or our children or how to ask for what we need from those we perceive to be the larger authorities.

Terrapsychology explores the ways we absorb the spiritual properties of the environment around us (whether we are aware of it or not) as our very souls and psyches are penetrated by the unhappiness or the delights of the places where we live. Everything we see, smell, touch, taste and hear becomes part of us. This is reflected in our feeling bodies as well as our physical bodies.

Is it any wonder that so many people feel afraid, or have a vague (and at times not so vague) feeling that something is wrong. Many people internalize this and believe something is wrong with them. Constant concerns about personal safety or national security may be appropriate given the way the Earth is responding to the way we have treated Her. With the ever increasing frequencies of violent hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and earthquakes, perhaps our psychological disturbances and spiritual agonies are not just ours alone. What if the pervasive feelings of conflict that beleaguer our hearts and relationships are also those of the souls of our own backyards, the very Earth we forgetfully walk upon every day, crying into us to make amends?

The Urgent, Loving Response

If we fully consider the implications of our radically changing Earth, it becomes obvious that we need to align with the consciousness that is this planet in order to become the most adaptable and responsive creatures we can become and survive the coming changes.

It has been my experience and those I am working with that the spiritual consciousness of Life is just waiting for us to pay attention to it, so that IT can bring us into greater alignment with what is natural, healthy and loving, under any condition. There are so many ways to do this and Life already gives us all we need; it is the best guide you can have.

Under the pressure of the imminent, human beings have an amazing capacity to respond to crisis and I see evidence of that around me. The serious existential questions such as “What I am I going to do with my life?” take on a whole new definition when considered in the light of our rapidly changing Home.

Life feels its way into creation so, by remembering on a feeling level our original connection with our own soul and that of this world, we can come into relationship with the incredible vastness of the consciousness that constitutes this web of Life. It is the experience of the most profound awakening to the illusion of separation. All we need to do is set our intentions, focus our attention deeply into the heart, relax and listen.

When we are ready, Life is waiting for us to help resolve our deepest fears and greatest hopes. Imagine addressing your separation anxieties from this perspective. Imagine feeling safe in this world, deeply at peace with yourself and your life in amongst all this change. The bliss we seek is already here.

Life does have the answers we are searching for and our task is to ask the right questions and then pay attention, like a lover excitedly awaiting the arrival of her beloved. Relax, soften, become still … and listen, with all your heart.