I've recently harvested a nice crop of potatoes and carrots from the garden. This year I've gardened more mindful of how well the Earth works to produce its wonders. No matter how we rise above the earth's dirt as we go through the stages of human development it can be very rewarding to come right back to the Earth. And put our hands and noses against it as we partake of its fruits with renewed gratitude. The Earth seems not guided by any perfect hand but more by one that eventually gets the job done. June was horribly wet and threatened to rot the tomato plants but the hot weather came in time for an abundant tomato crop.
I'm more aware that it took the processes of creation some 10 billion years to give birth to the Earth and another four billion for human consciousness, the only consciousness yet that can be aware of these things, to come into existence. Before human consciousness there was nothing in nature that 'observed' the rest or was able to know of the world and its wonders. The Earth now seems run not by a perfect mind but one that only has a strong hint of where it wants to go. We now know the evolutionary process, though seemingly guided by mind at some deep level,* made many false starts, wrong turns and ran into innumerable dead ends as it made its slow way forward to produce the human consciousness which generates continuous questions about our origins and sustainment.
I've a growing sense, since the Earth
appears to have some kind of mind within it, that some level
of consciousness belongs to the Earth. Perhaps the Earth is more
correctly thought of as having Soul. This might change how we relate
to it. We humans being this final high level of the Earth's birthing
, with our exceeding measure of consciousness, are potentially able
to be so open as to comprehend the idea of the 'whole ' of the
Earth and to recognize just how good 'it seeks' to be to humanity.
This in spite that its many wrong turns and disastrous accidents
such as tornadoes and tsunamis kill thousands of plants and
animals and innocent humans every year. The 'Earth's mind' shows
itself to us as imperfect and not always moral or just.
Yet if the Earth might feel as a Soul it must be horrified that with its best, however imperfect, efforts in nurturing us humans to this present state of consciousness that humanity has treated her terribly. Since science came of age with the great jump in the human capacity for objective reasoning, instead of humanity turning to the Earth with gratitude and care for her wonders and complexities, humans have treated her as a thing only to be used for self interest. Her glories have been used as a garbage dump. Her high places mutilated for a year's coal supply or for someone to 'own' a beautiful view.
The oceans are viewed as a permanent sewage system. Humans, the only mind in nature capable of seeing just how wondrous the Earth has been to us all, have treated her with contempt in acts of ignorance and abuse. Instead of protecting her capacities, seasons in and out for millennia , to replenish herself with clean water , air and soil we have seen just how far we can go to destroy her capacities for such cyclical renewal. We are literally killing her and taking her remains as spoils as if we were some victor in a conflict with her. We have, in the space of a few centuries, used our growing technological capacity of control over aspects of nature to greedily use up Earth's finite resources and turn them against her. We have drastically and unthoughtfully interfered with her fragile, millions of years in the making, ecosystems.
Science is clear we are far from understanding the deep complexities of the Earth's ways, how one change can affect a whole complex. We truly have acted as ones who 'do not know what they do.' Is humanity, especially its representatives who are most in control of our most powerful technologies, becoming conscious of these cruelties toward the Earth and willing to make amends?
None of this is brand new. Our own sound knowledge has issued continuous warnings for several generations but we have barely heard. There are numerous well articulated and informed voices in the world saying these things. But we obviously have not reached a resolved consensus so that we are turning away enough from our abuses of the Earth and becoming finally its truly conscious caretakers. There should be the same collective response as the individual response once the abuse of a spouse becomes fully conscious: 'There will be no more of this, ever.' If this needed collective leap in consciousness does not happen our own species, and likely all others, will certainly face extinction. We will be but another failed turn in the efforts of of evolution to arrive at a creature's state of consciousness capable of understanding that it alone can gaze on the Earth with a conscious, appreciative face and become a lover of the world.
Yet if the Earth might feel as a Soul it must be horrified that with its best, however imperfect, efforts in nurturing us humans to this present state of consciousness that humanity has treated her terribly. Since science came of age with the great jump in the human capacity for objective reasoning, instead of humanity turning to the Earth with gratitude and care for her wonders and complexities, humans have treated her as a thing only to be used for self interest. Her glories have been used as a garbage dump. Her high places mutilated for a year's coal supply or for someone to 'own' a beautiful view.
The oceans are viewed as a permanent sewage system. Humans, the only mind in nature capable of seeing just how wondrous the Earth has been to us all, have treated her with contempt in acts of ignorance and abuse. Instead of protecting her capacities, seasons in and out for millennia , to replenish herself with clean water , air and soil we have seen just how far we can go to destroy her capacities for such cyclical renewal. We are literally killing her and taking her remains as spoils as if we were some victor in a conflict with her. We have, in the space of a few centuries, used our growing technological capacity of control over aspects of nature to greedily use up Earth's finite resources and turn them against her. We have drastically and unthoughtfully interfered with her fragile, millions of years in the making, ecosystems.
Science is clear we are far from understanding the deep complexities of the Earth's ways, how one change can affect a whole complex. We truly have acted as ones who 'do not know what they do.' Is humanity, especially its representatives who are most in control of our most powerful technologies, becoming conscious of these cruelties toward the Earth and willing to make amends?
None of this is brand new. Our own sound knowledge has issued continuous warnings for several generations but we have barely heard. There are numerous well articulated and informed voices in the world saying these things. But we obviously have not reached a resolved consensus so that we are turning away enough from our abuses of the Earth and becoming finally its truly conscious caretakers. There should be the same collective response as the individual response once the abuse of a spouse becomes fully conscious: 'There will be no more of this, ever.' If this needed collective leap in consciousness does not happen our own species, and likely all others, will certainly face extinction. We will be but another failed turn in the efforts of of evolution to arrive at a creature's state of consciousness capable of understanding that it alone can gaze on the Earth with a conscious, appreciative face and become a lover of the world.
I trust many are coming to see that
the goal of a world where humans love each other so effectively
that we no longer are a threat to each other likely calls for an
indirect approach. We have too long assumed we can simply exert our will
and, with a prayer, manage to directly 'love others', even our own
families, well enough to do our part of helping the world to survive
its present violence. But the Christian story of stimulating such
love has clearly not worked well enough so far. Humanity is far
closer to destroying itself and its Earth than it was when the
founders of our major Western religions exhorted us to 'love one
anther.' I strongly suspect that we are predominantly attempting to
love one another, our families, friends and our human species without
first falling in love with the source of it all, ... the
Earth...without seeing ourselves as its only assigned caretakers.
We learned once to call her Mother Earth but do we really believe now strongly enough that the Earth is our mother, who stands always attempting and desiring, with her imperfect consciousness and sometimes failed omniscience, to sustain us so succeeding humans can more participate in where evolution will guide humanity in the centuries of a new millennium? It appears from the best scientific data, along with religious and mythological stories of Earths' destruction, that it is the level of present human consciousness about these very matters that will determine if there are to be more centuries ahead.
These understandings are totally within the human's intellectual and technological capacity so we are enabled to act appropriately and urgently. Or if this does not happen significantly in rather short order the evolutionary effort to reach new plateaus of advanced human consciousness,with the bonus of an expanded quality of intimate love, will be a dead end. We will have no one to love if we have failed to 'so love the world.' Humanity will become a history which will never be told.
We learned once to call her Mother Earth but do we really believe now strongly enough that the Earth is our mother, who stands always attempting and desiring, with her imperfect consciousness and sometimes failed omniscience, to sustain us so succeeding humans can more participate in where evolution will guide humanity in the centuries of a new millennium? It appears from the best scientific data, along with religious and mythological stories of Earths' destruction, that it is the level of present human consciousness about these very matters that will determine if there are to be more centuries ahead.
These understandings are totally within the human's intellectual and technological capacity so we are enabled to act appropriately and urgently. Or if this does not happen significantly in rather short order the evolutionary effort to reach new plateaus of advanced human consciousness,with the bonus of an expanded quality of intimate love, will be a dead end. We will have no one to love if we have failed to 'so love the world.' Humanity will become a history which will never be told.
*Quantum Physics is now making
discoveries that point to some' kind of mind' present in matter.
Resources: Some writings which
support the ideas of this essay can be found in these books:
Sacred Universe by Thomas Perry
An Undivided Universe by D. Bohm and
B.J. Hiley
The Earth Has A Soul by C.G. Jung
The Individuation of God by
Peter B. Todd
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