Healing Our Relationship with the Earth

When I read about the current administration’s lack of any strategies to protect against global warming, I am reminded of the movie The Matrix. In the movie, people are kept alive in pods by some global corporate conspirators. The people in the pods are dreaming their lives - i.e., jobs, families, towns, cities, are all a dream. Before I saw the movie, I had been told it had deep metaphysical significance, but failed to see beyond the revolutionary visual effects that the movie was most noted for.
But then a vision came to me that human beings, or at least human beings living in the U.S. are very much like the people in the pods. We’re asleep to the fact that our lives are being run by corporate interests.
There was an episode of Friends where one of the characters, Joey, reads the wedding ceremony he had written for his friends’ Monica and Chandler’s wedding as part of his ministerial duties. He talks about how Monica and Chandler “share and care and give and receive,” repeating the words over and over. Spiritual values are about sharing and caring and giving and receiving repeated over and over.
Our society does not foster spiritual values, although it pays lip service to them. If we really concerned ourselves with sharing, caring, giving and receiving, then George Bush and his administration could never get away with passing off an energy policy that actually allows for the increase of greenhouse gas emissions, but is cloaked in language that sounds as if greenhouse gases would be reduced.
I see Americans driving around in SUV’s with American flags sticking up from the windows, asleep to the fact that their SUV’s are part of the greenhouse gas problem. SUV’s are part of the bigger problem that Americans are asleep to. The bigger problem is the fact that their consumption patterns are the cause of global warming and other environmental problems that they face.
We fill the earth with toxic chemicals that pollute our ground water, but then buy bottled water. We spew toxic emissions into the air widening the hole in the ozone, but then slather ourselves with SPF 50. A miraculous life is a conscious life and a conscious life is about seeing the cause and effect relationship between our actions and their consequences. In the dream sleep we’re living, we are blind to consequences. If we’re honest with ourselves, we can see the consequence of our current energy and consumption policies. Our beaches are disappearing. If you’ve ever seen the coast from the air, there’s just this thin little strip of sand separating the ocean from the towering high rises that continue to be built.
I believe we’re at a choice point. Can we wake up? Can we demand that our legislatures support alternatives to our oil based economy? They exist. A search on the web for “alternative energy” sites brings up pages and pages of links. Can we actually apply the spiritual values of “sharing and caring and having and giving,” articulated by Joey in his impassioned description of his friends’ relationship? It’s those values, coupled with waking up to the consequences of our actions that will provide a sustainable future for everyone on this planet. The good news is that some people are waking up. Some states, like California, and some countries, like England, are joining forces to institute earth-saving measures.
The real healing comes when we realize that we’re not separate from any living thing. What we think, say and do impact the whole. Love begets love. Indifference begets indifference. Ignorance begets ignorance. The kind of world we want to see really is the kind of world we get.