Gaia's Blog

Celebrating Earth's Wholeness and Our Own.

Gaia-Centered Spiritual Practices–Part II–Smudging

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“Smudging” is using the smoke from burning herbs and resins to cleanse and purify oneself and one’s space, often as a prelude to spiritual practices or ceremonies. The burning of incense, flower petals, bark, resins and leaves for spiritual purposes is a universal ancestral practice, and indeed has an enduring tradition of being used even in mainstream religions around the world.

I recently read a disturbing article about people illegally harvesting white sage (Salvia apiana) to make smudge sticks. These are widely sold online and used all around the world, predominantly by people who have no idea where the plant comes from. As a result, wild white sage, which grows only in certain areas of California and Mexico, is dwindling, mainly due to depredation by poachers who then sell it to distributors. Local Native Americans quoted in the article say they themselves are the original users of white sage in smudging rituals. They bemoan the abuse and commodification of the plant; and also claim that the entire practice of smudging should only be done by Native people, and anyone else doing it is guilty of cultural appropriation. [Read more…] about Gaia-Centered Spiritual Practices–Part II–Smudging

Gaia-Centered Spiritual Practices—Part I

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What attitudes and practices can we cultivate in ourselves that will help us attune to our Gaia-nature? (Remembering that we already know deep within us that we belong to Gaia’s Green World.)

My sense is that the people reading this already lead a spiritual life of some kind. But let’s do a quick check to make sure our existing beliefs and practices are attuned with Gaia as well as they could be. (Read my previous posts to flesh out these ideas.)

Does your path/liturgy/doctrine focus solely on the direction Up, and disregard or even denigrate the direction Down? Hmmm…some adjustment may be called for here. [Read more…] about Gaia-Centered Spiritual Practices—Part I

Going With Gaia’s Grain–Part II

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A few posts ago I presented the idea that we can choose to go with Gaia’s grain, and therefore, against the grain of the currently dominant human-created world. We can attune ourselves with Gaia’s fundamental principles, which, right from the start, are in a totally different dimension from human-centeredness. The latter assumes that human beings are separate from and superior to the rest of creation. Gaia-centered thought begins by assuming that human beings, like all beings, exist within Gaia’s vast web and are interconnected with all physical and spiritual life on Earth. Therefore, if we study Gaia’s rhythms and patterns, we can get clues about ways to start going with Her grain.

One important clue is the circle, and its wilder sister, the spiral. We know that Nature works in circles and ever-returning cycles: the cycle of a day, of the seasons, the moon in a month, the sun in a year, and the ceaselessly-repeating cycle of Life, from birth to growth, to maturity, decline and death, followed by regeneration and rebirth. [Read more…] about Going With Gaia’s Grain–Part II

Gaia’s True Abundance–Part II

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About 15 years ago, some people I then knew were enthralled with a movie called “The Secret,” about how to achieve prosperity through the Law of Attraction. Drawing on supposedly ages-old esoteric spiritual principles, the movie claimed to reveal how to use your mind and ambition to visualize what you want, no matter what it is, and then draw that to yourself. The example that I recall most clearly was a boy who really, really wanted a new bicycle, and, it was implied, manifested it simply through the power of positive thinking.

When the movie was over, instead of being inspired, I felt a sense of unease. There is certainly something to be said for believing oneself to be worthy and deserving—indeed, many of us have had to overcome a deep inner sense of unworthiness, sometimes through years of counseling or therapy. But something seems to be missing in this picture. No matter how genuinely worthy I know myself to be, do I really, by definition, deserve to have anything I want?? [Read more…] about Gaia’s True Abundance–Part II

Gaia’s True Abundance

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Visualize a beautiful earth, untouched by human greed. Imagine crystal clear skies everywhere, wild waters pure enough to drink, and vast, clean, undisturbed wild forests, deserts and seacoasts. It’s almost impossible for us to imagine, even those of us fortunate enough to live in fairly intact, semi-wild areas. In other, less fortunate places—in the cities, in the fossil fuel extraction zones, and the industrial agriculture zones—clean air, land and waters have been not only unattainable but almost unimaginable for generations. And humanity is in a constant state of deep grief because of this, whether we know it consciously or not. [Read more…] about Gaia’s True Abundance