COP and Earth Wisdom – Climate Change Conference
Cop 27: national leaders meet in Egypt but can’t agree the needed changes. They are not going to change things beneath the surface anyway. A deeper transformation is called for.
I’m publishing ‘Earth Wisdom for Our Global Crisis’ at the start of 2023. My aim is to offer Earth Wisdom teachings to interested people, especially those who are concerned about the planet and are awakening their consciousness.
I’d hoped to bring it out in time for Christmas, but I’ve been supporting my mum on her final journey in this world and grieving now that she has died.
She and my dad moved to South Devon in the 1980s. I followed them. Even then I was very worried about our impact on nature. I helped form a Totnes Friends of the Earth group and started campaigning on rainforests and climate change. It was obvious that if we were going to survive we’d need a shift in our collective consciousness and a healing of our relationship with the Earth.
Before this I’d been on the road, a lonely wanderer. Looking back I realize I didn’t know how to be a friend to myself. I came to this area and found many beautiful ways for healing and spiritual enquiry. Then someone pointed me towards a workshop on ‘shamanism’ and Earth Wisdom.
I found a map to guide my exploration of body and spirit, mind and emotion. The Medicine Wheel gave me a framework for the healing practices and my journey towards wholeness.
It’s on this ancient symbol that I’ve based the book. There are eight directions on the Medicine Wheel – east, west, south, north – and eight chapters in ‘Earth Wisdom for Our Global Crisis.’ The Wheel is a kind of compass to orientate ourselves – not only on the Earth but also in the realm of our soul. So each of the eight represents an aspect of our innate potential, a facet of our unique beauty and power that we can awaken.
I’ve written each of the eight with stories to hep awaken these facets, together with teachings and practices. Some of the stories are personal, others historical or from mythology. My intention is to engage and entertain, to beguile the reader into realizing more of their innate wholeness.
Because something that’s critical to our meeting the challenges of our time is our state of consciousness. When we come from wholeness we bring wholeness into the world. And as each of us heals we come into deeper relationship with Self, Life and Others. Even if we don’t ‘do’ anything our state of being makes ripples on the great ocean of consciousness. Because humanity is a field of consciousness, and when one of us changes, the field changes.
Can it be done? Cn we really expand to a new level of consciousness and a new way of being on the planet? Well, I’m holding that we can. I’m ‘dreaming’ it.
As I think back to the alienated person I was when I arrived, I realize that lonely man is gone. Of course I have plenty of challenges both inner and outer. But each morning I step out on the land to awaken my relationship with sun and stars, Earth and planets, plants, animals and people. I remember the Deep Self. And I know the potential for our transformation. It’s from here that I’m moving to present this book.
Originally written for Reconnect magazine. 15 November 2022