Speak Out! 
Help Yourself to Healing
Listening to the Earth's signs
In the wake of Earth Day (2)
PUJA
We’ve seen how generous the earth is with her healing gifts and how easily we can receive them. (previous blog) Here’s the other side of the coin, so easy to forget, as we bask in these glorious spring days. There is a day of reckoning when we misuse nature’s gifts. The earth does have a voice of her own… and we would do well to listen to her signs… Far too often we’ve been taught to treat the earth as an object to be controlled and used, with no contemplation of her mysteries. Just as we humans are unique, multifaceted diamonds reflecting different aspects of ourselves to each other, so too the earth is a truthful and useful mirror to us. It's time to view the earth as a mirror to our inner world with truths to tell us.
Have you noticed how loudly the earth has been speaking to us during this year of extremes? - hurricanes, tornadoes, rain, flooding torrents, or drought, parched land, winds and fires. Rivers flooding like the Wallkill and the Missouri, remind me of T.S. Eliot’s words, “The river is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed, intractable, patient to some degree, … implacable, keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder of what men choose to forget.”
Have we already forgotten? Or dare we ask, “What are these happenings telling us? What is the earth mirroring to us?” I grew up close to nature—climbing trees, collecting, naming and pressing wild flowers. And, like most of my generation in Scotland, I assumed that the natural progress of civilization was not at all harmful. I never heard anyone talk as if the earth really had feelings and a mind of her own. Then one day, a friend from New Zealand confided that she could feel deeply the disturbance and distress of the Earth in the North of Scotland. A remote natural landscape had been bulldozed and scarred to make way for a huge dam and hydroelectricity scheme. Through her pain, I too began to sense the earth’s pain and to recognize that we humans are an interdependent part of “Gaia,” the earth, a LIVING planet, along with sentient beings of many kinds. It wasn’t so easy from then on to collude in being a bullying architect of change, molding, developing a so-called inanimate object—the Earth, regardless of the consequences.
As we understand the reality of the interconnection between all life, hopefully we will be able to hear the truths the earth mirrors back to us. If we look deeply, we will see that one level of human consciousness affects and even creates another.
Until we deal with our mental toxicity, will smog darken our skies? Until we recycle our emotional garbage into usable energy, will our forests and waterways continue to die? How about the relationship between the misuse of our bodies and the imbalance and neglect of our cities? It may be that by taking responsibility for our toxicity and garbage, we may learn to live in harmony with the interconnected web of life to which we belong.
If you are not sure what to do, can you remember if anything in nature touched your heart when you were young? Can you awaken that love again? As we learn to listen and respond to the Earth, we may yet be freed from many a blunder and foolish notion.
"O wad some power the giftie gie us
to see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us
An' foolish notion."
(Courtesy of Robert Burns in “To a Louse”)
Born and brought up in Scotland, Puja Thomson is founder and director of Roots & Wings in New Paltz. She's a holistic health care professional, educator, workshop leader and minister of healing. Her recently-published book AFTER SHOCK: FROM CANCER DIAGNOSIS TO HEALING -A step-by-step guide to help you navigate your way has been awarded the honor of FINALIST in the National Indie Excellence 2007 Book Awards( Health Category). GO to www.aftershockfromcancer.com for info, excerpts, reviews, how to purchase. This book is also helpful in helping anyone create their own wellness program.
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