This earth, this world, this lovely being

THE NATURE OF US

Only if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one release one’s sadness, don Juan said. A warrior is always joyful because his love is unalterable and his beloved, the earth, embraces him and bestows upon him inconceivable gifts. The sadness belongs to those who hate the very thing that gives shelter to their beings. Don Juan again caressed the ground with tenderness. This lovely being, which is alive to its last recesses and understands every feeling, soothed me, it cured me of my pains, and finally when I had fully understood my love for it, it taught me freedom.
Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power

I read these words in my early 20. I didn’t really understand them, but the passion don Juan expressed gripped me. Over the years, there has been much controversy over whether don Juan really existed. I don’t think it matters. To me these words are true: they express the direction my life has taken. My love and connection with the earth has been a steady constant in my life, the basis of my decision on how and where I have lived, and who I have become.

This lovely being, which is alive to its last recesses and understands every feeling, soothed me, it cured me of my pains, and finally when I had fully understood my love for it, it taught me freedom.

This earth has touched me and guided me, cradled me and absorbed my tears. I am passionate about her, and we grow together. My body is entwined with hers, inseparable with every footstep and breath. I have been shaped by the lands I have lived on, opened by their beauty, and enticed into play through their textures.

I wake up very confused on a Sunday morning, facing an internal dilemma. Something is not quite right in my life and I need inspiration. I feel into my strengths. I love the earth passionately, my heart is full of love, but something is missing. I go back to bed and turn inward, feeling my own heart. I ask water for help, knowing she carries information. I think of the blood and lymph in my body all passing through my heart, how this amazing circulation and purifying is always occurring. I spend some time tracking the blood moving from my heart out to the periphery and back.

An image of a hollow tree stump arises. I find myself going into it and diving deep into the earth, to the inner sea inside the earth - to the heart of the earth. My own heart connects with her heart, and I feel how the waters that circulate through me are the same as hers, and how the entire planetary system of waters is like my own body. For awhile I stay with this merging of my body with the rivers and oceans of the planet. I feel my wholeness.

From Thich Nhat Hanh in Love Letters to the Earth:

You may be used to thinking of the earth as only the ground beneath your feet. But the water, the sea, the sky, and everything around us comes from the earth. Everything outside us and everything inside us comes from the earth.

We often forget that the planet we are living on has given us all the elements that make up our bodies. The water in our flesh, our bones, and all the microscopic cells inside our bodies all come from the earth and are part of the earth. The earth is not just the environment we live in. We are the earth and we are always carrying her within us.

I know this is true. When I connect my own heart with the heart of the earth, I feel myself as the heart of the cosmos. This is the freedom don Juan spoke about: we are moved outside the limits of our body to an infinite realm of possibility. Try this at home. Seriously, some things can only be know to us through suspending our disbelief and exploring ourselves. We engage with the right side of our brain, not just the linear left side reality, and begin to experience the fullness of who we are.

This post from awhile back also explores our connection with the heart:

The sweetness at the heart of us

In the following poem Sleeping in the Forest, Mary Oliver explores the feeling of being held by the earth, vanishing into her embrace:

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

When we move and play on the earth, we reconnect with our bodies and remember the tender love of the earth. We intersect, shaping and re-shaping to the contours of the land. We merge with the clouds moving by, fluid and changing like the weather. We play, we improvise, we dance together.

I remember being six or seven, living in a Philadelphia suburb with rolling hills. In warm weather, we would roll down the nearby hills of a seemingly empty mansion, and during the winter snows sled all day. I first learned of play from these hills, and from the creek down slope from my house. I would swing across the creek on willow branches with friends, and rearrange the rocks in the creek to create stepping stones and dams. Once we moved to south Jersey, I played in water, lakes and oceans, loving to body surf, turn over canoes, and be submerged underwater as often as possible. I roamed in sandy bottomed pine forests, climbed trees, and picked blueberries by the pail.

In Ithaca at college, I played in waterfalls, jumped into the deep pools, and learned to sit behind the falls and watch the rushing waters. Sometimes, I climbed up streams reminiscent of my childhood creek. In Colorado it was the aliveness of rock that drew me in, boulders of all sizes, some big enough to lie on in the midst of streams. And there were summers on snowy glaciers, breathing the pristine air.

Later in California, deep fog and oceans, bays, and the great birds surrounded me. There were dunes to hide in, long walks where the waves meet the sand, and coastal cypress, oak, pine or redwoods sheltering me. Here I learned how much my feet crave touching the earth. Much of my childhood was spent running around barefoot on beaches and pine needle paths. Living in California was a remembering of those times.

My feet crave touching the earth. Walking barefoot on the earth, the tiny muscles come alive as they meet the curves and uneven surfaces, the mounds of dirt, grass and sand. My whole body responds to these textures, this new information. As my legs extend to reach the earth, I become taller and more upright, nourished like a tree. This communion, this being to being conversation, wakes me into the present moment, hungry for aliveness, improvisation, and wildness. Barefoot, I feel the tangible support of the earth. There is a reunion with my animal self, my tiger paws hugging the ground with every footstep, my toes curving to hug her contours, feeling solid and secure.

And just as in Mary Oliver’s poem, laying on the earth I sink into gravity, falling deeply into wordless spaces. We shape to each other, our two bodies together. I feel tangibly nourished deep in my cells - home. I try to find time to do this every day when it is warm enough. I wrote about this interrelatedness in an earlier post, with some thoughts on how to explore further.

A subtle sense of interrelatedness`

With all the confusion and fear in our world right now, I want to underline being connected with the earth, our own hearts, and filtering everything through the wisdom of the heart. Bringing your attention back to your body, to the breath, and taking time to just relax and be. Then feel your own heart and what feels right to you. Much of media is designed to take us from crisis to crisis and stir up fear. Decisions made from fear never solve a situation. Freedom lies in being present in the here and now, feeling the earth under your feet, and then listening to the beat of your heart. If you have time, stay with that feeling in your chest and let it take you deeper.

Real change will happen only when we fall in love with our planet.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Just a note about Carlos Casteneda: I attended a lecture at MIT when he was a graduate student reporting on his field work, from his first book on don Juan. He certainly seemed credible.

Thank you for joining me here today!

Sabrina Page, MA in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness I work with individuals and groups, with a focus on somatic inquiry and embodiment, to support you in living life fully, freely, and fluidly, intertwined with nature. As well, I have studied movement, dance, and astrology with some of the leading individuals in their fields. My private sessions are offered on zoom, phone, or in person in Bolinas, Ca.

More information is available on my website, sabrinapage.com

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