A profound possibility happening right now is that humanity is awakening to the realization that we do not know who we are.
We are realizing that our concepts about self and reality have somewhat missed the mark.
For those living in cities, this is particularly accented. Surrounding us at every turn are constructions of the human-mind, prejudiced in colonial constructionism of cities, where nature is far out-numbered by the creations of humans. It’s not inherently bad but it is imbalanced.
Over such a time, we become more identified with the egotism of the human mind and gradually have lost touch with seeing nature as not only of equal importance (which would lead to cities being more interfaced with the natural environment) but also revering it as our ancestors so mightily did and many indigenous peoples still hold to as a lovely law.
I say lovely because to honour nature, to honour the Earth, Mother Earth, opens up a whole other sense of the world that modern humanity has slowly lost strong touch with. And that world pours in a lot more beauty and truth. It’s the beauty many of us are so moved by when we witness an indigenous person speaking about Spirit or leading a prayer song that gives thunder-wings to our hearts, or to witness the sagacity and care by which they tend to all their relations, meaning honouring and respecting the many diverse life-forms and elements of the land and this natural and wonderful world.
I’ll come to it again: we don’t know who we are. A large swath of humanity has been so civilized that it was lost connection with the equally inherent and significant wild in them. Or another way would be to say we’ve lost touch with the Earth, with Mother Earth, Her.
As we witness many of these egoically human-centered systems now be jostled by its former and frustrated dance partner (Mama Gaia), I’m sure many of us are having liminal moments, even just going about the mundanity worldly tasks that litter daily life, where we might stop in our tracks and stare at a bunch of human-constructed buildings, with all those straight lines that Picasso said were blasphemy. And we might wonder enough to feel a strange loneliness there that has been howling deep in our soul for some time but simply covered with so many images, videos, digitized mediated information that we lost utter touch with it. So distracted that we don’t know anymore about just being or letting waves of contemplation in tiny hours amongst trees to bring us the balm of self-reflection.
We may find ourselves, as if magnetized, being pulled to parks, to the countryside, to travel to pristine environments where the Earth and Her wild are pure, with no real intellectual reasoning rather than a call in our heart so captivating that our will seems to be gliding into the grace of flowing there with a sweet surrender.
We may in those moments, wherever we are (for all is Her world), wonder so much that suddenly we are mysterious. The world is mysterious. And, aye, that might make us twinge with a mediated fear of suddenly being somewhere else where the human ego is no longer dominant, where there is another, a presence all encompassing that we are both deeply aware of and somehow familiar, and yet also profoundly anxious and even fearful of.
We got so busy, obsessed, fascinated, lustful about knowing about the world in a reasonable way, with numbers, and even with the strange affection for flexing our power and seeing how far we could dominate and fuck with nature, not ever thinking for a moment that She could fuck back. Well…welcome to Her fuck-back.
She won’t tolerate this for long. Long to us may be a couple of millennia and seem, well yeah quite a chunk of time. For Her it’s maybe the space for a long, exultant sigh, a shake of Her head, perhaps even to make one resolute decision.
Photo by Jason Ortego (Unsplash)
Did She wake us up?
Some prophecies say powerful and magnificent things to the like. Either way, it’s clear now as Her waters rise, Her winds grow ferocious, Her fires burn, Her communication grows louder, that She’s getting our attention. And by attention, also informing us of something supremely important: you need me.
Need is a weird concept to most of us but it shouldn’t be. We all have needs. We need to eat, to breathe, and as science continues to hone in on the psyche more needs are found in the cultivation and sustenance of a delighted human being (which I think is a beautiful summation of how a healthy mind-body-souled human should be—delighted, in that sonorous contentment when all is well and trusted to be well). We need cuddles, we need to be and feel loved. And touched. Lots of touching. Skin touched and soul touched. And, lordy, we need dancing, I would conjecture too, and that singing is eternal medicine. Ancestors know oh how they know.
There might be some high on AI and techno-fanciful ideas that we can just fly off to Jupiter or something and live as galactic beings. But I don’t think that would go over well with most of us. We love the Earth too much. We need Her and we know it and the deep of that knowing is opening like an ocean right now.
We need Her for life. And I think that is startingly clear as much as transhumanism (the peak of the human supremacy complex) might try and rub Her out. Heck, they even named, knowingly or unknowingly, the first robot after one of Her ancient names: SOPHIA. Truly, we are all of Her names…
But we don’t just need Her for life but a beautiful life. The most potent indication of this is in the rife cynicism and downright fear we have about the world, which is largely the human-constructed world (don’t miss that beat). Modern civilization is just not fulfilling at a deep enough level for us to touch the rare jewel of contentment, which the Taoists define as natural joy. Now that is something worth pondering.
The meaning of this world, our world, just doesn’t satisfy. And all the division, the rioting, the frustration and teeming fear, is but telltale signs.
And yet, the moment we go to the wild, in nature, hiking a pastoral trail, before behemoth mountains and the unparalleled and cuddly quietudes of wilderness, nuzzled by birdsong and the mystical symphonies of insects, suddenly a soft and slippery meaning begins to materialize deep in our hearts. We begin to feel peaceful. The air, clear and true, cleans the noise of our minds. The armour we inevitably wear to go about modern life in all its (touchless) hardships melts away. Our body gets to a little melting. Relaxation blankets us and paradoxically feeds a vital regeneration. We are more energized but not in a caffeine-crazed sharpness but a deep and dense filling up that is just delicious.
If our phones are away from us, even sleeping in our pocket, and we maybe sit, even with friends, to take it all in, turn up the volume of our sensuality, we might just start to sigh with Her and feel a natural goodness bubbling up like a spring from the Earth into our blessed bodies.
We may become so full with wonder at all this magical seeming happening that we start to feel wonder-full. The fear of not knowing what we are, that is the ground of our constructed being, trembling as always in cities and the human-centered world, dissipates slowly.
She reaches out and coddles us to the bosom of nature and though our intellect can’t quite grasp why, we resiliently feel more beautiful.
We might just be able to be brave enough to inquire. Why do I feel so beautiful? And the heart might be attended enough to be heard: because you’re with the Earth.
We are part of the Earth.
We can’t know what we are without knowing about the Earth, deeply, continually, like a lifelong relationship.
Because we are the Earth…
A wise woman friend was riffing beautifully before me about deep matters. She said: I am the Mother. I am the Mother moving through me. Her eyes flashed like wolves dashing under a full moon.
It can be wonderful to not know. Imagine that?
The human-centered world is jostling to be sure and She is breaking through, just as foliage is in constant rebellion of containment, as we humans are prone to do to it. Sure, we can make boundaries for our dwellings but when those dwellings become mega-cities and whole industrial civilization, that containment of nature gets overwhelming, domineering, over-controlling, which leads to all kinds of troubles.
Yet, She is too powerful. She is law, as much as the civilized don’t know. But indigenous peoples know.
Something I adore about the indigenous peoples I have met and some befriended is that those wise in their Earth-devoted ways carry that natural joy everywhere with them. It doesn’t matter what the adversity, no matter how terrible, they always exude a great trust in being a part of it in some meaningful way that always provides hope and courage.
That natural joy is one of the most beautiful things to witness embodied in a human being. And it’s based on knowing the Earth so well and wonderfully that we always feel Her care. The mother is moving through them and that sacred power is palpable.
Is it any wonder that many Native Americans regard the divine as The Great Mystery? Braid that to the culture of Mystery Schools of the ancient worlds of Eurasia and perhaps even around the world and we start to get somewhere. Yet, mystery in the modern world is something we need to always figure out, quantify, science it. And sure, we can peer into nature and discover awesome knowings but the wisest know that there will always be something out of reach, where that reaching hand just melts into the ethers and it all becomes well, you really have to find that one out for yourself…
Who are we? What is humanity? What is our purpose in this mysterious universe and on this enigmatic Earth? Is there a purpose? …and who am I in this all?
Those questions are such blessings. It’s such healing humbleness to let them in. Because as our human-centered world is broken through by burning forests, tidal waters and fierce storms, we might just want to wonder if it’s not the end of the world but the beginning. Perhaps it’s just Mother Earth breaking on through so that we remember Her; re-membering with Her, and in so doing another world starts to bloom after a long dark age, which to Her might have been the time for one cosmic frown.
Who are we? Maybe She’s racing close to the ears of our hearts to tell us. Maybe. May it be. For Goddess knows, She knows something, I would daresay. They didn’t call Her wisdom for nothing.
So I invite you, the next time you are with Her, in Her wilds, before something natural that beckons you to the holiness of spontaneous reverence, open wide the sails of your heart, and ask that question about us, the holy WHO, and wait until Her winds come to take you somewhere. And I promise you, from many moments of my own subsequent sailing, that wherever She takes you, it will be beautiful…
