Earth Rebels Session 5 - The Living Earth

Let us remember that we are part of this planet. That is the purpose of this session. To remember, and to see in our history how we could ever forget this essential fact. If the bees suffer, we will suffer. If the trees suffer, we will suffer. But if we take care of nature, it will take care of us in the most beautiful ways.

Transcript

The suffering of the earth is also our own suffering.

We can feel it in our heart,

But we don't have to let it weigh us down.

We can let it inspire you instead.

Inspire you that there is so much beautiful work to be done.

So many trees to be planted and hearts to be healed.

People to be stirred and awakened from their slumber.

In this session we will look at the many ways we can remember that we are a part of earth and not apart from it.

I say remember because that's actually all we have to do.

We don't have to invent a new way of living.

Only remember the old ways of our ancestors.

For hundreds of thousands of years we lived without stressing the ecosystems,

Without forcing other species into extinction.

And in many parts of the world we lived in great happiness.

Somewhere within us we still have ancestral memories of this time imprinted in our DNA.

Memories from a time when lakes and rivers were alive.

When the forests and mountains were our temples and the animals our brothers and sisters.

Then it happened.

The great turning.

The rise of civilizations.

As our empires grew we turned our eyes to the top of the pyramid and beyond even that our gaze fixated on the heaven and the All-Father.

The one masculine god.

And we forgot about the Great Mother beneath our feet,

Not just forgot her but killed her as men went to war to claim land and people as their own.

During their conquests they forced the conquered people to abandon their pagan gods and goddesses.

Whole pantheons and mythologies were destroyed in the wake of these crusades and missionaries.

In the end the female goddesses were killed and everything was pushed away beside the one masculine god,

The All-Father.

And God said unto them,

Be fruitful and multiply,

Replenish the earth and subdue it,

And have dominion over the fish of the sea,

Over the fowl of the air,

And over every living thing that move upon the earth.

This heavenly god gave us the heavenly mandate to dominate and subdue.

So that's what we did.

As empires rose and the culture of domination slowly spread around the earth and history repeated itself.

In Europe the old gods of Celts,

Of Goths and Norsemen and their relationship to nature were abandoned and suppressed with the rise of Christianity.

Witches and wise men burned.

The wisdom keepers were cut off from their communities.

And this is exactly what the European ancestors passed on to their children who then began the conquest of the whole planet through colonialism.

All in the name of the one masculine god who gave them the mandate to rape,

Slay and dominate all other people.

And history repeated itself in Africa,

America,

Australia and Asia,

Whole cultures were conquered and the traditions outlawed.

Whole cultures,

Cultures were conquered and their traditions and songs outlawed.

Cultures who still lived in harmony with nature.

Just like the Europeans once lost their connection with the living world.

So did the colonialists force other people away from this connection with the living earth.

And then we killed God as well.

In the secular age God is dead as Nietzsche famously put it.

The brightest minds of the Enlightenment age came to the conclusion that God is unnecessary.

Even a hindrance to the development of our knowledge.

And as Father God was slain,

The last little remnant part of the Earth Mother was dropped in the dust as well.

Because when we removed God from our cultural consciousness,

We didn't just remove the rituals,

The prayers and what the Western mind labels as superstitious beliefs.

We removed divinity as well.

We took away the sacredness of nature.

The little part of that reverence for the natural world that had still survived within the culture of domination.

In the materialistic view of this new emerging belief system,

The precursor to modern science,

Nature became a neutral set of patterns and reactions.

Cause and effect.

There is no longer any spirit moving things,

Just the laws of gravity and electromagnetism.

There is no miracle of life.

Life is simply a result of randomized mutations which created humankind and all other species on Earth.

In this age we turned our attention completely to the physical world and began the conquest of the realm of matter.

To achieve control of the invisible domains,

Control over molecules,

Atoms and photons.

Within this new world order,

Living beings and dead matter are distinct,

Separated by their degree of consciousness.

Rocks are simply stones made up of the elements and the oceans are just salt and water.

Natrium chloride and H2O,

A set of symbols and letters put together.

Nothing more,

Nothing holy,

Just water.

Humans however,

We are somehow different.

Much like in Christianity where humans are made as the image of God,

In the scientific paradigm,

Humans are the pinnacle of evolution.

The pinnacle of complexity.

Our uniqueness among species is determined from this property we possess called consciousness.

Remember,

In the scientific world order,

Consciousness is what separates living matter from dead matter.

Humans and animals are considered alive,

Unlike that dead rock over there,

Which is ours to dominate and manipulate according to our will.

Everything that has a consciousness,

That resembles our own,

Are therefore of course worth saving.

Monkeys,

Horses,

Dogs,

Whales,

Any animal that we deem involved and complex,

We naturally want to save and care for.

The trees,

Mushrooms,

Insects,

Species we consider less evolved,

Evoke less consciousness in us.

Ironically,

We still have no idea what this consciousness is.

No scientist can prove what consciousness is and where it comes from.

We don't know how our thoughts are generated,

Even though many like to believe it happens in the brain.

We don't know why the first humans could think,

Or if a tree can think or dream as well.

And this is only one of the dead ends in the materialistic belief system that we are all brainwashed by.

The second dead end came with the rise of quantum physics.

It turns out that even if we know everything about a particle,

We are not separate from it.

The mere witnessing,

The observation of the finest particles changes them.

The most delicate level of reality,

Consciousness and matter are not two separate entities.

The observer and the observed are not distinct and separated.

And here is the good news.

The illusion of separation that many of us live in is falsified even in physics.

To observe is to be part of.

There is no way to be outside of this world.

No way we can simply watch.

Everything we do,

Feel,

Think and act upon changes our world.

And this is paralleled by the karma of Buddhism,

The mental laws of cause and effect.

This idea that consciousness and the material world are not separate is known as non-dualism.

And if you would ask any native shaman about this,

They would probably smile.

In the old cultures everything is alive.

Thoughts are not just made in human brains.

Trees and stones can think and communicate with us as well,

If we only learn to listen.

Maybe this is the moment we are waited for.

As the old masculine god died and materialism turned on its own head,

A new divinity can rise from the ashes.

A sense of reverence for the natural world with all its complexity and beauty.

A new culture where we honor the feminine as much as the masculine.

Honoring the earth as much as the sky.

Caring for the spiritual and emotional well-being of humankind as much as we care for the material standard.

Finding this balance between Jin and Jan.

We can even go beyond the old gender roles and stereotypes.

Everything was far from perfect in our tribal ways of living.

And perhaps a fusion of the old and new can bring us to a never-seen-before era of harmony.

First where we have some problems to take care of.

We are all destroying the earth,

Collectively.

The problem right now isn't just a problem.

It's the way we are trying to solve the problem.

Paraphrasing Einstein,

We can't solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it.

We can't solve a problem by changing our materialistic behaviors.

One of the biggest challenges with the environmental movement is not just that it's lacking vision.

It's been hijacked.

It's been hijacked by the individualistic and materialistic belief systems that has put us in this mess in the first place.

We try to solve climate change by putting the blame on the individual and reducing behaviors considered bad.

We should consume less,

Drive less,

Eat less meat,

Fly less.

We are being sold an individualistic remedy for a problem that is created by the whole system.

A problem being kept alive collectively by all of us by our loyal obedience to the systems of injustice.

One example is the campaigns about flying less.

In Sweden it's becoming more and more popular to stop flying to protect the environment.

But if you stop flying because fear of being shamed for doing so or from fear of not living up to collective ideals about how a good person should behave,

Have we actually gotten somewhere?

Do you believe that collective shaming can take us to this new world that we all dream of?

And from the simplistic,

Materialistic view of our situation,

Even carbon dioxide has turned into something bad,

Something we have to reduce.

Every time we breathe,

We exhale a carbon dioxide.

So if you take things to the extreme,

The best human is a dead human,

Not breathing.

I heard that some people even hesitate to have children because of the climate effect new humans have.

All of this builds upon the belief that human presence on Earth is innately bad and destructive.

So how can we create a different belief about humankind?

How can we create and live the belief that humanity is a healing presence on Earth?

How can we integrate ourselves again in the web of life,

In the myriads of ecosystems that we were once part of?

And one way is to see through the illusion of separation,

The separation between ourselves and the Earth.

We are the Earth,

Killing ourself.

And to see through the separation between the conscious and unconscious matter.

You and I are air,

Earth,

Sunshine and water.

Unconscious matter coming together as conscious matter in the human body.

We are air,

Earth,

Sunshine and water that thinks and feels among our older brothers and sisters of the indigenous people.

Rocks are alive just as much as birds and fish are.

There are stone people just as there are human people.

And this world view of the living Earth,

Gaia,

Has been kept alive to this day despite 500 years of persecution.

We can still sense it.

We can still awaken to this beautiful view of the world,

Glimpse it,

Taste it.

In this perspective where nature itself is alive,

It makes perfect sense to give rivers and mountains rights,

Because they're also living beings.

And every day you can remind yourself of this unity with the natural world.

As you eat you can remind yourself that you are part of nature.

All that you take in become a part of you.

As you drink,

All the water you take in become a part of you.

And as you breathe,

All the air you take in become a part of you.

And all that leaves you as you exhale returns to the air.

As you pee returns to the water and as you shit returns to the soil around you.

From Earth you come and to Earth you shall return.

Reviews

Tack Albin ♥️

Thank you for speaking directly to my heart.