Earth Day Notes
This Earth Day, I want to talk about the basics.
Human energy is often caught up in doing. Building. Fixing. Straightening. Aligning. Changing. Expanding. Controlling. But in all this doing, we have lost touch with something deeper- the practice of observation.
If there is anything I feel we need to practice this Earth Day, it’s how to simply look at our planet- not to fix it, not to manage it, but in order to understand ourselves more. The world we are so much a part of has always been our teacher, speaking to us through the infinite languages of temperature, colour, sound, memory, texture, touch, change, smell, light, sensation, pressure, time; the list goes on.
But we are too distracted to hear it.
The word ecology comes from the Greek for “home.” Nature isn’t a place we go, it’s where we live, and by treating our home as a relative rather than a resource we can remember the earth is an extension of our own body.
We are the ones interrupting and intervening with ourselves, weakening our own immune systems, depriving ourselves of nutrients and exhausting our systems.
The systems are strained because we have forgotten this is our body- and through our own conscious means of perception, we can find equanimity, harmony and rebalance on an individual basis first and foremost within ourselves.
There is so much talk of ‘re-connecting’ to nature, ‘relating’ to the natural world and ‘finding’ balance. But as soon as we leave ourselves to go and find it, we have lost the point.
The natural world is to be experienced, not found.
The ‘re-connection’ happens within us, by experiential discovery on a personal basis. What I am talking about is the simple act of actually going outside and spending longer than expected observing the living environment, a tree, an insect, the sky, a river. And really observing it, with no objective. Through noticing, the whole world can reveal itself to us as it is.. not how we want it to be, or how we’ve learnt it to be, but as it is. When we see a tree we may think we understand it. But what we understand is learnt through scientific concept, not through our own experience. By observing it properly, we realise how much we don’t understand, and we allow the tree to reveal its true nature to us, in turn revealing things about ourselves. This kind of deeper understanding only happens through experiential observation, and this takes time, patience and sensitivity. This is what we must do in order to address the relationship to nature within ourselves.
By learning to observe and harmonise with the biological laws of nature that exist all around us (and within us), only then can we begin to treat our world with true love, care, fascination and awe for the wondrous miracle it is - because through this process we will transform our selves first. As this transformation takes place, it will become foreign to hurt ourselves and be destructive.
We are trying to control what is outside of ourselves before observing what is inside of us.
So if we want to talk about repair, about regeneration, about futures worth inhabiting, this must start with ourselves.
And to stand barefoot in the soil and drop expectation is a great place to start.