Gaia Blog

Gaia’s Blog: Seeds for a Resilient, Earth-Centered Future

Gaia’s Blog

As Above, So Below

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“As above, so below,” we often hear in spiritual and esoteric circles. That is, the events and evolution of heaven and earth are believed to reflect one another. This expression implies that there are two worlds: The “above,”—or heaven, “up there,” the vast, radiant realms of the angels and the moon, planets, sun and stars. And the “below”—here on earth, the place of matter and time, of birth, death and rebirth.

But we can broaden and deepen our understanding if we think more about the “below.” Is it here, now, the surface world of the everyday? Or is it “down there,” under our feet, within the body of the land? These are two distinct realms, called by some the middle world, or day world; and the lower world or underworld. In ancestral times the underworld was known to be a fertile, light-filled place full of wisdom and beauty, and populated with many orders of spiritual beings who could and sometimes did ally themselves with humanity. [Read more…] about As Above, So Below

The Green Force

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The great, vast being of Gaia is continuously generating a force that creates and evolves life on all levels. I call this force the Green Force. It’s the force that brings plants up from under asphalt streets, that sets seeds growing on bare sand. It is, in Dylan Thomas’s memorable words, “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.”

The Green Force energizes and expresses the entire organic continuum of birth, growth, flowering, ripening, maturing, declining, dying, decomposing and giving birth again—the dynamic, ever-renewing process that we call Life. As we know, plants get their energy directly from the sun, from photosynthesis that takes place in the plants’ chlorophyll, their green pigments. Then animals (including us humans) eat the plants, and/or eat animals that eat the plants. Even the strange and mysterious fungi and bacteria beings “eat” the remains of dead plants and animals. So each one of us, each living being on Mother Earth, literally partakes of Gaia’s Green Force as an intimate and basic part of our day-to-day survival. [Read more…] about The Green Force

The Art of Blessing

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At my altar recently, I heard: The power of Blessing belongs to everyone. Use it well and often. Let it arise in a heart rooted in the Sacred Land.

Soon after that, I went up into the Jemez Mountains, to a beautiful place by the river where my family used to camp when I was a little girl. (I’d sleep right on the ground in my sleeping bag, without even a pad between me and the earth.) I received this from the beings of the land there: [Read more…] about The Art of Blessing

All of Us are People

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The majority of us modern-day humans have been indoctrinated with the cultural conviction that we are superior to everything else that exists. Most of us unquestioningly believe that not just our survival, but our day-to-day comfort and narrowly defined, short-term well-being, comprise the most important agenda being played out on earth. We don’t have to look far to see what a mess this has created, with the land, waters and air being polluted all over the planet, wild habitats shrinking, plant and animal species going extinct, and indigenous human communities dying out. We are literally killing our ground out from under us. Through deigning ourselves superior, we have made ourselves hostile and aggressive in groups, and lonely, disconnected and sad as individuals. We are trampling our souls, and depriving ourselves of vast levels of spiritual understanding and deepening that are our birthright.
[Read more…] about All of Us are People

Going with Gaia’s Grain

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Gaia—the vast, living, intelligent being that created and is still creating our planet and everything on it—constantly tends toward balance and inclusion, and toward every being within every ecosystem thriving according to its nature. Our indigenous ancestors lived lives that were centered around attuning to the patterns of Gaia in their local ecosystem, and honoring and harmonizing with the totality of life there. These ways are still courageously modeled for us by the remaining indigenous peoples around the globe.

Gaia in Her fullness can best be understood as a system, a web of infinite relationships and interactions among all of its members. Such a system cannot sustain itself without reciprocity, that is, all within it constantly finding and re-finding a balanced interchange, without anyone taking or accumulating more than they need. This reality is not a fluffy, sentimental one, of course: most interchanges within a living natural system involve finding food to eat, and its members literally eating one another. When a system is balanced, however, there is enough for all the various plant and animal beings within it to feed and shelter themselves, to reproduce, and to flourish as a totality. And when all beings (including human beings) who live in a forest or watershed, or in and around a sea or estuary, are flourishing, the entire system is vibrant, sustainable and regenerative. [Read more…] about Going with Gaia’s Grain