Soul Guidance · Earth Belonging
What Does It Mean
to Experience an
Eco-Awakening?
A full-body, transformational return to our belonging within the sacred web of life
By Rachael Duffy
Opening inquiry
Awareness is rising - and with it, grief
For most people, awareness is rising quickly about the need to care for and protect the planet we all live on. It's hard to avoid or ignore the fact that we are living in a period of climate crisis. We see first hand that severe weather events, like flooding or drought, are becoming more common around the world. The causes of bio-diversity loss and the threat of species extinction have been clearly linked to human activity: the over-exploitation of natural areas (seen as 'resources' for human living, e.g. fishing, forests), habitat loss, large-scale 'conventional' agriculture, deforestation and climate change.
With this recognition can come deep grief, sorrow, anger and accompanying anxiety, as we start to see that human-designed constructs and systems, of which we are all a part, are life-threatening, rather than life-affirming. What future do we want to leave our children? And our children's children? And the children of all those more-than-human beings in the greater Earth community?
The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth.
Often attributed to Chief Seattle
A fundamental shift in consciousness
From 'Natural Resources' to Right Relation
I was reminded recently of a beautiful quote, often attributed to Chief Seattle: 'the Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth'. For me, this fundamental shift in consciousness is at the core of what will enable each of us to step up to the challenge of changing our relationship to nature, to no longer tolerate the term 'natural resources', as if this Earth were here purely to provide resources for our human lives. And to shift our way of being, of living on this Earth, towards being in right relation. This is what will enable the birthing of a life-sustaining future.
What is true eco-awakening?
A Bodily, Visceral Gnosis
True eco-awakening is when we have a bodily experience of ourselves as nature, not separate or distinct from it, but absolutely intertwined. It is a gnosis that this Earth is our primary place of belonging, rather than one's primary partnership, workplace, family, place of worship, or even neighbourly community. While connection with these groupings of other humans brings colour and vitality to life, it will always be secondary to our primary way of belonging to Earth, as integral beings in this ecological web of life.
This gnosis is visceral. This is the movement towards eco-centrism, a centre of gravity far removed from our Western ego-centric worldview and culture. Our loyalty will forever shift; from human-bound to Earth-bound. In the process we will likely also begin to experience our belonging to the greater Universe and Cosmos.
Thomas Berry - The Dream of the Earth
"Perhaps a new revelatory experience is taking place, wherein human consciousness awakens to the grandeur and sacred quality of the Earth process....in such a renewal lies our hope for the future."
Beyond the cognitive
A Full-Body, Transformational Experience
Eco-awakening is a full-body and truly transformational experience, not an experience that is merely cognitive. And for me that's why wide-spread eco-awakening has so much power to truly shift our human trajectory, and the future for all beings. Automatically, it will shift the Western worldview, the lens through which all human structures and constructs are built. Many would say eco-awakening is also a spiritual experience. As Bill Plotkin so eloquently writes 'it is the somatic, heart-rending, and world-shifting realization that you are as natural, as wild, as interconnected and related, and as magical as anything else on our planet.'
This simple movement of falling back in love and seeing the majesty, beauty, and enchantment of this Earth, has the power to completely shift our relationship(s) with and within Earth. By truly experiencing the animate and sacred nature of all life - ourselves as part of that - we can cultivate the heart-centered courage to give ourselves fully to this world and to enable the 'Dream of the Earth' to enact through us.
Simple practices
Want to Deepen Your
Sense of Eco-Belonging?
Be with the grief
The next time you feel that familiar ache in your heart or your belly when you take in what is happening to our world, stay with it. If it helps, place a hand where you feel the sensation, with the intention of really listening to what your grief is telling you. Our grief for this world is born of our love for it, and our capacity to grieve is itself a form of praise for what we know to be sacred. What happens when you allow yourself to feel both at once, the sorrow and the beauty?
Let the land welcome you home
Take a wander somewhere in nature, as wild as possible. Give your attention to what you find there: the texture of bark on a tree, the way light falls through leaves, the life teeming in the soil beneath your feet. There is so much life all around that, without paying attention, could go completely unnoticed. Notice what happens in your body when you immerse yourself deeply in this living world.
Notice the language of separation
Pay attention this week to how often you hear the phrase "natural resources," in conversation, in the news, in your own thinking. Each time, pause. What changes if you say "the living world" instead? This is a small practice, but it begins to dissolve the story that the Earth is here to serve us, rather than the deeper truth that we belong to her.