Chapter XV of the Rio Plus 20 Document by Cho Tab Khen Zambuling (Alfredo Sfeir-Younis)
XV. Live Earth, Live Consciousness
The Earth is a living entity. Every aspect of it is alive manifesting material aspects of higher consciousness. These have been understood and holistically integrated in many of the indigenous peoples’ cultures and values. This is why it is difficult to ignore those Maya Priests from El Salvador and Guatemala who teach and share unique instruments to enable someone to speak to the trees. As one would expect, it would be odd for a western trained mind to even entertain the possibility of speaking to trees. The western mind often judges this as not possible or, it thinks about this dialogue as something negative, and often concludes rapidly that this a scam. Whether this is true or not, useful or not, will depend in the end on one’s personal or collective experience.
Tapping into the infinite wisdom of nature is a privilege and a powerful spiritual experience.
It is not less important to recognize the relationship that some humans have developed with animals of all sorts. The forms, the procedures, and the actions behind those relationships are different and not always well understood. Recently, we observe the use of horses and other animals to cure children from depression. In our own observations we have seen that it is a two-way street!
Also, many indigenous nations relate in profound ways to the divine aspects of the Earth (Mother Earth), or to other planets, the sun, moon, pole star, plants, and animals. All is done in ways that capture deep and subtle states of our own existence. One of these traditional ways is by recognizing many of the important energy centres of the Earth and most particularly what human beings have recognized as sacred sites. These are often identified in relation to a non-material manifestation, a feeling, or an inner experience with or through nature, or via the connectedness with any other form of living reality. Most sacred books (e.g., Bible, Vedas, Guru Mantra, Koran, Torah) share plenty of examples of how nature and living beings are involved even in so-called miracles, teachings, signaling a path, and much more. The essences of spiritual dialogues are often presented in conjunction with a natural phenomenon, a dimension of natural law, or simply within a given natural environment. Thus, we would like to assert explicitly that the Earth is not a dead or an inert entity. For us, and based on our own spiritual experience, the Earth is a life-core, expressed materially and spiritually through a huge number of living beings.
In many ways, Earth is a special form of high consciousness (you may call it Divine or God Consciousness) expressed with an unbounded and an unlimited intelligence, all-manifesting in infinite diversity, wisdom and spiritual realities. Ultimately, we are the Earth, and the Earth is us. This is one of the true meanings of the spiritual phrase in the Bible: “from dust to dust”. The Earth is not something separate from us, even if we experience such a state and form of relationship that way. This experience of separateness is no more and no less than a sharp error of the intellect. It is the mirror image of our relatively low level of consciousness and coherence that do not enable us to truly embrace wholeness and unity. It is our experience that we are inseparable from all living beings and all living beings are inseparable from us.
The view that we humans are superior to nature is just a wrong cultural perspective, very much rooted in distorted interpretations of religious, cultural, and spiritual values. This sense of superiority reflects our limited ability to communicate with our own natural elements. This view of humans as superior and other living beings as inferior is the mirror image of our own ignorance and inability to tap on an infinite source of high levels of consciousness and coherence. If we were truly superior to Nature we would have found ways to live independently of Nature. In that case our intelligence could then “by-pass” Nature. But, this is not possible, and we know such a reality on a daily basis as we deplete the forest and existing biodiversity, and as we destroy our natural environment. Human life is completely interdependent –in all ways—with other living beings and nature.
The idea of differentiated intelligence –more or superior intelligence versus less and inferior intelligence—is a creation of the human intellect and ego. In many ways our intellect and ego have separated us, and fragmented us, from what is an integral part of our selves. As stated above, there are no boundaries between external water and the water in our human bodies. The same applies to space, air, earth and fire; the elements of life. If we would be superior to nature, we should not feed and nurture ourselves from nature. We would be feeding ourselves with lower levels of intelligence and vibrations and in the end we would be converted and brought back to those levels. We would be feeding our cells with lower levels of intelligence, coherence and consciousness.
Of course, this is not the case. Nature has become our source of life, as we cannot live without the sun. It has become a source of energy, as we cannot live without those intakes. It has become the source of growth as we need each and every natural element to become one with ourselves and one with Nature. Today, the use of plants, aromas, rocks, mud, rain water, roots, resins, animal created liquids (some frogs create a liquid that are being used as pain killers, which are more effective than morphine), and so many other natural elements of life, have proven essential in the treatment of diseases and in expanding the most subtle inner intelligence of human cells. In addition, experience shows that our presence on the planet influences greatly the patterns of natural growth and development, as these are traced back to our own ways of being and behaving.
Ancient techniques and approaches to household life, such as Feng Shui, have also contributed significantly to a better understanding of how nature and human interaction and transformation may help to attain their corresponding best. At a more crucial level, it is essential to embrace the view that the genetic code of nature is a substantive component of human life as it is the genetic code of humans a fundamental component of natural life. Our inner gardens are totally connected to the outer gardens. And, we know that when we enter inside the boundaries of pristine areas our body, mind and soul feel in sink with every aspect of that environment. To postulate that our DNA is something that it is to be understood in isolation from the DNA of other living beings is a construction that has no foundations. Our identity is as much individual as it is collective. Our identity must be understood here as something multidimensional: physical, environmental, emotional, cultural, social, and spiritual.
Modern forms of education have mutilated our connection with the genetic codes of nature. Today, it seems to be foreign to the nature of people to connect with trees, animals, water or wind, except in some corners of the world (e.g., where indigenous peoples live). As global warming takes place, it is essential to raise awareness of the abovementioned dimensions of nature itself. Global warming should not be conceived as separate from us, and our inner souls, or be defined simplistically as just the result of CO2 emissions. While we may eventually bring down those emissions through a variety of existing programs, whether these programs will result in the effective curving down of global warming is something to ponder.
All is life. All is alive. We are part of all and all is part of us. Global warming mutates this wholeness and we must address it both inside and outside ourselves.
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