Gaia Blog

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

The Sacred Land's Wisdom

Ancestral peoples believed that the land itself contained deep wisdom that could be accessed and passed on by respectful, attentive human beings. My own experience is that today the land, creatures, and plants, as well as the spiritual beings of Nature, are more interested than ever in communicating with us if we slow down and listen. I’m working on perfecting my listening skills, and I hope you are too!

Approaching the Reality of the Underworld

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Many people see our current ecological crisis as also a spiritual crisis for humanity. While I wholeheartedly agree, I’m coming to understand that our eco-spiritual conversations often overlook something important. We need to meet, up front, our beliefs about the Underworld—the mysterious physical and spiritual domain under our feet, extending into the body of the planet, all the way to the center of the Earth.

Our indigenous ancestors considered the Underworld to be an important spiritual realm, along with the Middle World or Day World, and the Upperworld. The Underworld was known to be the home of powerful forces, beings, and deities, both material and spiritual. Ancestral people honored and co-created with these Underworld energies, thus supporting balance and wholeness in the land and all its inhabitants. [Read more…] about Approaching the Reality of the Underworld

Regeneration: Gaia’s Wild Card

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When I was 9 or 10, my dad and I often played spirited games of poker in the evening. We enlivened most games by letting the dealer declare certain cards to be “wild cards.” If you got a wild card, you could assign it to be any card that would improve your hand. My dad’s favorite wild cards were “deuces, one-eyed jacks and one-eyed kings.” I still remember the thrill of drawing one or more of those magically-endowed cards.

The term “wild card” typically implies something unanticipated and unpredictable, with the potential for surprising results, either positive or negative. Since the onset of agriculture 10,000 years ago, humanity has increasingly become the wild card of our planet’s living systems, in the most negative ways possible. [Read more…] about Regeneration: Gaia’s Wild Card

Life in Gaia’s Calm Lane

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On a recent winter’s day, I watched a ruby-crowned kinglet take a bath in an icy stream.

The stream was almost totally frozen over, but beneath the overhanging branches of a spruce tree, the water formed a small, ice-fringed pool. I caught sight of the kinglet—a diminutive olive-green bird with barred black wings and a bold white eye-ring—flitting around in the tree. As I watched, it flew down and entered the water, bouncing and flicking its wings up and down, and shaking and splashing its petite feathered body until it was wet all over. [Read more…] about Life in Gaia’s Calm Lane

Sacred Heart, Sacred Earth

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The heart is sacred. Gaia’s lands and waters and plants and creatures are sacred. We are sacred. All existence on all dimensions shares a connection with the sacred, vital life of Mother Earth, of Gaia. This truth is deeply embedded in our hearts.

The heart has many levels. It is, of course, a crucial physical organ that pumps blood around our body. On the spiritual level, the heart chakra, typically considered to be green, is our energetic center; it harmonizes and anchors our non-material essence as a dynamic, vibrating network of light. And at the very deepest level, the heart is the essential Source and expression of who we are. It is our flame of being, housing our originating spirit. [Read more…] about Sacred Heart, Sacred Earth

Our Thirst for Gaia

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A week ago Sunday, I drove a ways up into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near my house. I stopped by a normally rushing mountain stream, now down to a tiny trickle, and hiked up from the dusty jeep road into the parched forest. I could feel how the land up here is so thirsty, so dry, prostrate from relentless heat and no rain. I sat on a rock for a while, and here is what the land communicated to me:

Yes, the land here and now is thirsty. But every human is thirsty, always. Even the humans in places where they are getting flooded, getting drowned, their houses and cars swept away, even they’re thirsty. Everyone is thirsty for they don’t know what. It’s the connection with Gaia that they thirst for. It’s to know themselves as part of, as lush and full and connected, not arid, removed and separate. This is the worst thirst, and it can’t be quenched any other way than to leave your allegiance to the human-centered world and come back to Gaia. [Read more…] about Our Thirst for Gaia