Earth Spirit Dreaming: Shamanic Ecotherapy Practices - Elizabeth E. Meacham 2020

From Earth-Connection to Earth-Care
Introduction: Waking Up to Earth
Introduction

The idea that we are interconnected with all life on Earth is becoming common knowledge. We understand that we are part of the larger ecological systems on the planet. We know that these systems must come into balance to remain viable for much of life on Earth. More and more people understand that we must respect and care for the “balance of nature.” However, after almost two centuries of increased industrialization, we are just beginning to realign our civilization with the Earth.

There are many books available today on why we need to restore our balance with nature, and many on how to “live green.” These books include ideas such as using compact fluorescent light bulbs, shifting to a vegetarian diet, taking our own bags to the store and creating less trash. These kinds of actions are very important. They establish the moral commitment to living sustainably. Unfortunately, many of the “live green” books offer changes that are too small to get us where we need to be in terms of consumption to mitigate the global damage perpetrated by industrial civilization. Even if we do everything these books suggest, which leads to cutting our overall consumption almost in half, it is still not enough to keep our growing population within the limits of our Earth.¹ It is only through profound changes in our underlying meaning structures that we will muster the strength to make the necessary changes to maintain our home on Earth (note: Earth will go on with or without us).

Outside, “in the world” changes are an essential part of the puzzle of sustainability. Inside changes — the underlying beliefs and experiences of who we are in relation to each other and the Earth — are equally important, and too often overlooked. Western belief systems encourage a blind spot in our collective recognition of the depth of our interconnection with the Earth. We must shift our beliefs about what is meaningful and important to live sustainably. To become engaged citizens of a regenerative civilization, we need to align our psychological and spiritual selves with the rhythms of life: we must learn to live in ways that cultivate appreciation of our connection with Earth. Earth Spirit Dreaming offers one path to establish the awakened rootedness needed to become citizens of a whole planet. The step-by-step Earth Spirit Dreaming process guides the readers through a progressive actualization process toward integral connection with ourselves, each other and the planet.

Many environmental thinkers see reconnection with the Earth community as a path toward caring for the Earth community. Aldo Leopold, in his influential essay “The Land Ethic,” argued that connecting with the land is essential to caring for the land.² Leopold took from Darwin the idea that human ethics evolved from the care inherent in human societies. According to Darwin, human survival depends on care relationships, such as those between mother and child. Darwin postulated that societies with better “rules” of care, or ethics of care, were stronger, thereby making ethics an essential element of furthering the species. Based on Darwin’s view of ethics, Leopold reasoned that the development of an Earth ethic required fostering care for the Earth.

Deep ecologists Arne Naess and Joanna Macy, two influential environmental thinkers who came after Leopold, also value care for the Earth as the most important ingredient for an Earth ethic. Their notion of the ecological self, discussed in more detail in the next chapter, focuses on the need to identify the self with the Earth community as a form of self-actualization. The care developed through this connection with Earth, according to Naess, is the only means by which we will come back into balance with the Earth. Duty is not a strong enough impulse to make the necessary changes to live in balance with the Earth. Only seeing the Earth as an extension of ourselves will lead us back into balance with nature.

But how do we reconnect with Earth? Indigenous knowledges offer examples of social structures that foster ecological consciousness: Earth-consciousness. In Western culture, these forms of experience are often considered “extrasensory.” What we think of as extrasensory experiences in Western culture, however, are considered a part of the normal sphere of reality in many indigenous cultures, and even in Western culture prior to the Enlightenment. To live in balance with the Earth, according to central environmental thinkers, we will need to realize these capacities once again to create a society that incorporates an Earth-honoring ethic.

Part of our task is to discover perceptual abilities that were written off as “primitive” by early ethnographers encountering indigenous cultures.³ The increased interest in indigenous ways, and in “shamanism,” represents an impulse to restore these lost modes of experience. Earth Spirit Dreaming offers practices to develop what we may think of in Western cultures as non-ordinary experiences that fit the common themes of shamanic cultures. We need to come back to our ancestral shamanic heritage: living lives deeply interwoven with the life-world, through “spiritual” modes, on a daily basis. In Berry’s words from The Dream of the Earth:⁴

In moments of confusion such as the present, we are not left simply to our own rational contrivances. We are supported by the ultimate powers of the universe as they make themselves present to us through the spontaneities within our own being. We need only become sensitized to these spontaneities, not with a naïve simplicity, but with critical appreciation. This intimacy with our genetic endowment, and through this endowment with the larger cosmic process, is not primarily the role of the philosopher, priest, prophet, or professor. It is the role of the shamanic personality, a type that is emerging once again in our society.

...Not only is the shamanic type emerging in our society, but also the shamanic dimensions of the psyche itself. In periods of significant cultural creativity, this aspect of the psyche takes on a pervasive role throughout the society and shows up in all the basic institutions and professions ...

This shamanic insight is especially important just now when history is being made not primarily within nations or between nations, but between humans and the Earth, with all its living creatures. In this context all our professions and institutions must be judged primarily by the extent to which they foster this mutually enhancing human—Earth relationship.⁵