Expressing our devotion to the earth requires paying attention to the primordial level of existence...the more-than-human world, the invisible world, the quiet beneath the human voice, the hidden processes and metamorphosis resting just beneath the soil.
How we listen impacts how we perceive. When we greet the living world around us with receptivity rather than agenda, our perception lens re-wilds. We awaken from anthropocentrism and its hidden impacts.
Each morning after meditation I sit outside on our porch...doing nothing but being. I walk the land where we live... doing nothing but listening. These rituals I protect fiercely.
There is no agenda other than being with the more-than-human world. The breath of trees, the expressive quiet, slow-moving rays of sunshine, dense mysterious fog, or puddles of rain, chirping birdsong, the rhythmic pulse of the creek.
I walk slowly and greet the world of plants...sometimes drawn to a particular tree, herb, or flower. Not categorizing. Not labeling. No thoughts required. Just remembering the communion that we can only remember through tactile listening to the real world around us.
My morning ritual is an offering of respect for Mother Earth...a recognition that nature loves being listened to and speaks infinite languages, which we only hear when we get out of the way.
While the human world is locked in a loud and depleting narrative of anthropocentrism, we have a choice in every moment to listen more deeply. While the dominant paradigm speaks the language of labels, binary thinking, and categorizing, and celebrates doing, producing, problem-solving, imposing, and extractive listening over deep listening, all that is required to honor Gaia is a humble shift in our attention.
While I have the privilege of living a small distance from the human-built world, this communion is available wherever we are. On the porch in the suburbs, an urban park bench, with the houseplants or herbs with which we share our everyday existence, and of course, within the dynamic wilderness of our own earth body.
This blog post is inspired by Eden's retreat, Return to Source: An Eco-Dharma Retreat in the Mountains of North Carolina, from July 2023. If you wish to join her in practices for re-wilding our perception lens. you can learn more here.
