Earth Wounds
by Gareth Patterson
For years in Africa I fought poaching, trophy hunting, the trade in lions and
loss of habitat -- all fueled by human greed. The problems affecting the lion
and wildlife are a portion of the ill health humans inflict upon the earth (and
ultimately, ourselves). Recently I began to understand that unless we address
the health of the earth, collectively and holistically, the symptoms of our own
inner health will persist and will worsen. The health of the planet and our own
inner health are one.
The earth is our mother and, as I write, I can feel so deeply the pain we
inflict on her. With every single tree felled, with every particle of poison we
release into the air and pour into the soil, with every death of an animal by
the hand of man and in the name of "sport," and with the callous
leveling of land and places once natural to make way for so-called development
in the name of "progress," the earth is wounded again and again. We
are killing our mother.
The following two passages sum up the crisis we have created -- a crisis of
only our own making but whose effects threaten all life:
Rainforests are felled at the rate of 15 million hectares [37 million
acres] every year -- an area three times the size of Denmark. The oceans are
polluted and overfished, coral reefs are dying in every region of the globe.
The earth's protective ozone layer is weakened, and global warming could
bring rising seas and climatic change. All these human-induced changes
threaten us and every other species on earth. Today we are living through
the greatest mass extinction of species since the end of the dinosaurs. [Paul
Harrison, The Elements of Pantheism: Understanding the Divinity in Nature
and the Universe]
There has never been a bigger crisis than the one we now face. And we are
the last generation that can pull us out of it. We must act because this is
the only home we have. It's a matter of survival. [Anita
Gordon and David Suzuki, It's a Matter of Survival]
Our harm of ourselves, our outer destruction and self-destruction, can be
viewed as a modern disease. Humankind is a product of nature and throughout
almost our entire evolutionary history on earth we lived in nature, a part of
nature. But in these strange, often frightening modern times it is as if humans
have become unnatural, have become like some alien parasites that feed so
relentlessly upon their host that ultimately they will die, having consumed
totally what their own survival was dependent upon.
In these modern times we have acted as though all things natural were only
there to serve us and were infinite, inexhaustible. Separate from God and nature
we destroyed, consumed and feasted. The more we took from the earth the more
spiritually impoverished we became. And as individuals we became alone and
isolated, surrounded and choked in the crowds of our kind. Disconnected from the
whole, we acted as though we were above all other life. The reality is that in
the modern age, we tragically became nakedly alone and separate from divine
nature.
The following passages hauntingly describe what has happened in these modern
times.
Sacred beauty has been destroyed and defiled ... Once again the cult of
separation has claimed its victims and the loss of course is ours. Wisdom
has been reduced to orthodoxy, holistic spirituality has become narrow
religious observance. The priestesses have become invisible. [Naomi
Ozaniec, The Elements of Egyptian Wisdom]
It is a sad truth that since the Age of Enlightenment -- the intellectual
movement of the eighteenth century which generated so much supposed wisdom
and understanding -- the western path has led most of its followers to
anything but enlightenment. Sooner or later most people come to realize that
materialism does not bring happiness. But by that time, their spiritual
lives represent such a void that it is difficult to know which way to turn
for inner fulfillment. [Sue
Carpenter, Past Lives: True Stories of Reincarnation]
Nothing is meant to be separate from the whole. Separation equals loneliness
of spirit and with loneliness of spirit comes disconnection. And when people are
disconnected they become like the caged lion in a zoo. Though his food and
shelter are provided, because he is separated from his kind and his natural
habitat the zoo lion is lost to the whole, a facsimile of his kind. Because he
cannot connect, something dies within.
The caged zoo lion is groundless, alone. Daily he walks the unnatural path to
nowhere, endlessly pacing up and down, up and down, going nowhere. He is lost to
the whole.
Are we now, in this modern age, becoming like the caged zoo lion? Are we now,
individuals in the modern age, feeling that we too are walking the path to
nowhere? Are we becoming (or have we already become) mentally and physically
isolated from the natural whole?
In my life I have walked many paths, some of which led to beautiful light
while others led me into great darkness.
One morning, about ten years ago, my path led me into great golden light.
That day I was walking with a lion. This is what happened.
My golden moment happened as I stood next to a young male lion called Batian
in the midst of the African bush. Batian was then of an age when he would soon
enter adulthood. The young prince was to become a king. He was maturing and I
suspected that he had begun calling for the first time the dramatic song of a
territorial lion, the leonine song that has been interpreted by some as meaning:
Whose land is this ...?
Whose land is this ...?
It is mine. It is mine.
It is mine ...
Suddenly, as I stood beside Batian, at the start of a new day, he began to
call, roaring to the dawn. My right hand was resting lightly on his flank.
Batian's calls reverberated through the valley we were in, to the highest hills
and within the ground we stood upon. The trees seemed to vibrate with his mighty
song. Time stopped and through his calls I felt I was a part of everything
around me.
A portion of my soul was enriched by a beautiful energy that I can
only describe as the "connection energy of the earth." I was the lion,
and the lion was me. I was the sky, I was the birds, I was every leaf on every
tree, I was every grain of sand in every dry streambed, I was the earth and the
earth was me. I belonged, and I was free.
Those were moments of wonder. And it was then that the true meaning of the
lion's song crystallized within me. Lions call to the world --
I am the land, the land is me, I belong, I belong, I belong....
Like us, lions are social beings. Every lion in the pride has a purpose, and
to me a lion's pride is the ultimate expression of the traditional African
philosophy called "Ubuntu." Ubuntu is an expression of "I am,
because we are, and since we are, therefore I am." It is an expression of
connection, belonging, being a part of....
Standing beside Batian that day as he called began to instill within me an
understanding of my true "belonging" to all around me, a belonging we
can all share and historically, I believe, we all did share. It was my
connection moment -- or rather my reconnection moment, when I felt reconnected
with our ultimate mother, the earth. That moment sowed within me the early seeds
of my later realization of the need of a "theology" of the earth to
heal the external nature we have damaged and to heal our own damaged nature
within.
Years after my golden moment I have realized that the "connection
energy" I felt is an essential energy to access if we are to free ourselves
from the modern illness of loneliness of spirit and the brooding sense of no
purpose.
Depression, loneliness of spirit and purposelessness deeply afflict people in
the modern world. Loneliness is such an unpleasant state of mind that it is no
wonder that the knowledge of its painfulness has been used by humans for
punishments such as solitary confinement and exile.
We are now at the point, I sense, where we know (whether consciously or
subconsciously) that we have to reconnect. In fact, our survival as a species
could depend upon this. At this late point, we are finally learning that our
harming of nature and the earth affects all life, not least ourselves. I sense
that we wish to return to values of the earth, values of which we are a part,
not apart from. It is time for us to reconnect spiritually with all things
natural.
How did we become disconnected? At a point in Western human history, in
recent times relative to man's actual existence on earth, we began believing and
living a myth. The myth is called "Human Supremacy." As James Serpell
pointed out in his excellent book In
the Company of Animals, our Western perceptions about man and
animals, and the distinct dividing line we have drawn between the two, lie in
the Judeo-Christian philosophical tradition. God, in the first chapter of the
book of Genesis, made the distinction between the humans and the animals by
creating us "in His image" and awarding man with "dominion over
... every living thing that moveth upon the earth." God told Adam and Eve:
"replenish the earth and subdue it."" God also informed Noah:
"the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the
earth, and upon every fowl of the air ... upon all the fishes of the sea; into
your hand are they delivered."
On the myth of "Human Supremacy" James Serpell wrote: "The
doctrine of human supremacy was a myth contrived from a mixture of biblical and
classical sources which achieved formal expression during the 13th Century ...
it dominated Western belief for the following 700 years."
The settlers of North America were imbued with "dominion over"
views and beliefs. According to Serpell, "The self-righteous Presbyterian
divine, Cotton Mather, and other New England Puritans, preached against
wilderness as an insult to God, and recommended its wholesale destruction as
proof of religious conviction." The following is how historian Roderick
Nash described the average North American colonist's view of nature:
Wilderness ... acquired significance as a dark and sinister symbol. [The
colonists] shared the long western tradition of imagining wild country as a
moral vacuum, a cursed chaotic wasteland. As a consequence frontiersmen
actually sensed that they battled wild country not only for personal
survival but in the name of nation, race and God. Civilizing the New World
meant enlightening darkness, ordering chaos and changing evil into good. [Roderick
Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind]
In turn nature, the animals and the indigenous Native Americans were
persecuted and impoverished. The loss to nature is almost unimaginable. The
Native Americans who lived with kinship of all life principles were horrified by
the destruction caused by the European settlers. Chief Luther Standing Bear of
the Lakota said, "Forests were mowed down, the buffalo exterminated, the
beaver driven to extinction ... The white man has come to be the symbol of
extinction for all things natural in this continent."
"What," Chief Seattle asked in 1854, "what is man without the
beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of
spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts soon happens to man. All things are
connected."
And Chief Seattle could have been speaking for all indigenous peoples
colonized worldwide in the past (and for the wild lands and their wildlife) when
he said:
"We know that the White man does not understand our ways. One
portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who
comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is
not his brother, but his enemy, and when he conquers it, he moves on. He
leaves his father's grave behind and does not care. His fathers' graves and
his children's birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother the earth, and
his brother the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep and
bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only
desert."
In Africa, the land, its people and wildlife were also cursed by the European
settlers armed with their "dominion over" attitude. On both sides of
the Atlantic, the settlers brought to the land an obsessive need to try to
subdue nature, coupled with disconnectedness and insensitivity. The white man's
religious beliefs (unlike the indigenous peoples' beliefs) did not allow him to
feel a part of the environment, but rather apart from it, seeing it as something
from which to extract what he perceived as "wealth" to be used for
selfish reasons. There was none of the reciprocity characteristic of tribal
societies toward nature. The knowledge of the interconnectedness of man and
nature had become lost to the white man.
The West African shaman and scholar Malidoma Patrice Some once wrote:
"As part of the healing that we all deserve and all need, the natural world
calls us ... shedding our own tears of grief for the violence done to nature and
for the alienation and losses we have experienced in our lives will open the
doors to healing..." [Malidoma
Patrice Somé, The Healing Wisdom of Africa]
Sorrow can then be replaced
by joy, joy that we can, if we wish to, feel again as a part of all around us.
And what a joy this truly is. It is a loving joy, a joy that consists of feeling
free and identifying yourself, your very soul in all things of beauty in nature.
Who can really persecute you today for loving the earth, for loving yourself,
for understanding that individuals are strands of the web of life, with us all
having a purpose?
Instead of allowing feelings of groundlessness to pervade us, we can reach
out again and reconnect. By embracing a theology of the earth we are creating a
positive antithesis to the environmental values, or rather lack of values, which
have existed for so long. It is the turning point. The path of reconnection lies
in front of us.
How does one begin to reconnect? How does one reconnect if one lives in a
city? I would like to offer the following reconnection exercise as a first step
in the overall process.
Firstly, you do not have to be standing next to a lion roaring at the dawn to
experience and access the earth's connection energy! In all likelihood you have
already felt the connection energy in varying degrees, perhaps by seeing a
beautiful sunset, or the sun on autumn leaves, or the beauty of snowflakes
falling from the sky. We can feel the connection with the earth almost anywhere,
for we exist on the divine -- we are touching it every day. Every step we take
connects us to mother earth. We are a part of it and it surrounds us. We breathe
it.
Each day, we all need to remind ourselves:
You are never lost or alone so long as you can claim kinship with
everything that is. You are no more alone than the river is alone or the
mountains are alone or anything in the Universe, for you are a part of the
whole ... Every day you can come out and meet yourself in the sky's
reflection, or the dew lying on flowers' petals or any other natural thing.
Renew yourself in these things, identify yourself with them.... [Vivienne
de Watteville, Speak to the Earth]
The following basic meditation exercise is particularly for those who live in
busy towns or cities. Try to do this exercise once each day. It takes a little
time, but you deserve to give yourself a little time each day. It will become
easier with practice.
1. If you cannot surround yourself with natural sounds and sights (for
example a field or a park) retreat to your sanctuary at home -- which is
probably your bedroom.
2. If possible, play a relaxation tape or CD and sit (either on your bed or
on the floor) in the position you feel most comfortable in.
3. Drop your shoulders and begin to relax. Breathe in slowly and steadily,
hold your breath for two seconds, then breathe out (a little more deeply than
normal). Try to breathe like this throughout this exercise.
4. Let tension drain away from you, first from your head, then from your
shoulders and downward. Feel tension leaving you every time you breathe out. Let
it leave you. Experience this for several minutes, and it leaves you feeling
relaxed.
5. Feel calmness in your body. Still your mind. Breathe in slowly and
steadily. Hold your breath for two seconds then breathe out. Feel the stillness,
begin to feel grounded, anchored to the earth. Feel, through the heaviness of
your relaxed state, your connection to the earth, to divine nature.
6. Relaxed, with tension drained away, tell yourself: I am with the divine. I
am a part of divine nature. I am not alone, but a part of, upon and surrounded
by the divine.
7. Repeat these words several times. This exercise, like everything else in
life, will become progressively clearer with practice.
This
article is excerpted from:
 To Walk with Lions
by Gareth
Patterson.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Seastone, an imprint of
Ulysses Press. ©2001. http://www.ulyssespress.com
Info/Order
this book.
More books by this author.
About the Author
Born
in Britain but raised in Africa, Gareth Patterson has worked with lions in
wildlife reserves in Botswana, Kenya and South Africa. Over the years, Gareth has been
involved in many different wildlife projects and campaigns. He has studied lions
in the wild, promoted the need for indigenous environmentalism, investigated and
exposed the sordid practice of "canned" lion hunting in South Africa,
and co-founded of the "Lion Haven," Africa's first natural habitat
sanctuary for orphaned lions. Visit his website at www.garethpatterson.com
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