Hear within yourself the sound of the Earth crying

The most important thing you can do is hear within yourself
the sound of the Earth crying.

These words may be attributed to Thich Nhat Hanh, but the whole sense of this is conveyed in John Seed's Introduction to the Mourning.

'Life is a web, we are like a leaf on a tree...We have disconnected ourselves from this intelligence of the Earth, we only need to look at the kind of world we are creating to see that maybe we need to go back to an older way.'

We suffer from the illusion of separation from other living things – anthropocentrism (the tendency for human beings to regard themselves as the central and most significant entities in the universe, or the assessment of reality through an exclusively human perspective).

To wander off the track (but not really), here are 3 simple lines of poetry from Gary Snyder:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

To stick with 3s, here are 3 key processes from the Council of Beings

1. The great turning (gratitude)
2. Seeing with new eyes
3. Going forth

Once we stop repressing the pain we feel for the world, our empowerment remains and strengthens. Doing inner work removes our fear of being fully open to the feelings of what is happening to the earth.

'May all sorrows ripen in me' (Shantideva)

World leaders need to think like a planet
Without emotions, truly realizing the interconnectedness of all life stays stuck at the intellectual level. Mental concepts alone do not affect our attitudes and behaviors. According to Macy, humans' connections to other life forms are based on more than the emotional attachments to places and beings we have loved.

"They are also organic, woven by shared ancestries, embedded in our bodies. Each atom in each molecule of our being goes back to the beginning of life and has belonged to far more ancient and varied forms of life than our own. The human form we wear now is just the latest and briefest chapter of a long evolutionary journey."

In The Dream of the Earth, Fr. Thomas Berry refers to the "shamanic personality," which can understand and speak for other life forms, Macy said.

"It is essential to our survival," she said. "It helps us to … dispel the trance of industrial civilization."

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