WALKING IN AN EARTH WAY
When I was a child, my mother would teach my sisters and I to ‘walk in a sacred way’.
What did this mean?
The answer is not simple.
In fact, it’s one that each one of us must feel into as we move through life on Earth.
We must create our own way of life that is ‘sacred’ to us.
No one else.
For me this has always meant seeing ALL life as equal.
ALL life as sentient.
ALL life as deserving of respect and honour from me.
Whether that life is human, plant, animal, or elemental.
Since I was a child, I would talk to all beings as if they could answer me back.
I would ask permission before reaching out to pick a flower, touch a tree or stroke an animal.
Why – because that seemed respectful when coming into connection with another member of the Earth family.
To be honest, the human principle of superiority over all over life forms is to me both arrogant and entitled.
This story of separation and superiority has led to the drastic lack of balance and harmony that we are now experiencing in the world on multiple levels – social, environmental, and economic to name but a few.
As within, so without.
How we view the world is how we experience it.
If we feel like we are separate, then we will have experiences of separation.
It really is that simple.
To wake up in the morning and hear the birds singing and know that they are in some way speaking to you, takes a certain sense of interconnection to life around you.
To see a beloved house plant that you care for, and water, grow and flourish creates a relationship between you and the plant. A sense of relatedness between its health and your own. You are connected.
To walk in a sacred way for me, means that I recognise my interconnection and interrelatedness to all of life that shares this Earth ecosystem with me.
That I recognise the intelligence of ALL beings, not just those who can speak in words.
To walk in the Earth way means that everyone and everything that lives on Earth has an equal right to be here and live in harmony, balance, and respect.
Walking in this way means that I am never alone.
I never feel separate.
I have friends wherever I go.
That everywhere is sacred when I acknowledge it as such.
Am I using an anthropomorphic view of the world to do this?
Probably.
Does walking through life in this way create harmony, balance, and respect in my life?
Definitely.
Am I happy?
Absolutely.
So, for me walking in a sacred way creates a sense of living connection and communion with the world around me.
It balances my decisions and creates a deep sense of resilience.
For I am one inhabitant of Earth.
One among trillions of my family.
And I walk in an Earth way.
Enjoying ready your powerful words of connection to all
Thank you ! Appreciate you connecting.
I wish I’d had a mother like yours growing up. However, I somehow knew as a young girl that I belonged with nature, in nature. I loved going on adventures with a friend I had made when my family moved to Oregon just before my 10th birthday. We would go out in the woods walking along deer paths and often having no idea where we were and be gone for hours and hours and often all day u til the sun was going down in spring or fall. In summer time when we were out of school we’d go off as soon as I finished my chores and taking a bottle of water from the well or two each on really warm to hot days and we’d each bring a sack lunch with a sandwich and potato chips and other stuff to snack on like some carrot sticks or a big dill pickle and a couple of cookies and we’d go without any kind of a plan or map or safety gear or even a compass or flashlight, and only a few times did we have to worry about we might not find our way out of the woods before sunset but we still never took flashlights or anything. We knew that there was a bear that was infrequently spotted as well as a mountain lion although I think it was probably more like a bobcat and although we saw paw prints on rare occasions we never ran into any animals that might threaten us with harm. Plenty of deer and rabbits, raccoons, pheasant, hawks and even an occasional owl or eagle and other smaller woodland creatures that wood eye us curiously but were also cautious of us. That’s when there were hundreds if not 1000s of acres that were undeveloped behind the house my family lived in. At least not until later in my teens. It saddened us when we came across a big housing development the first time.
As my friend and I started high school and joined different sports teams and had also grown apart some, we stopped going on those walks through woods. I didn’t get much opportunity to resume doing so until over 20 years later when I moved back to Oregon as I’d left the day after I graduated high school. It’s been since just the fall before the Covid pandemic started in the USA that I and my dog have gone for any walks in/with natural landscapes and we both miss it. I look forward to doing so again very very soon. I look forward to grounding myself and becoming one with it. I have felt so disconnected these past almost five years. I feel as if I have been barely existing and haven’t felt connected to anything or anyone except my dog and thankfully I’ve had her, faithful loving friend. It will be like coming home to walk together through woods. It has been like I’ve been living in an alien world, an unfamiliar planet among a strange and unfriendly city since I moved here from living in the countryside almost 5 years ago. Now I’m looking to find a place away from cityscapes amid the countryside where I can live in peace and quiet with my dog. The concrete and blacktop, the construction and cars racing and all the other stuff has my nerves feeling so raw and irritated and inflamed with unsettling emotions and anxiety. I didn’t want to move here but was left without a choice. Now I finally can and choose to return to the kind of life I’ve missed so dearly. I am so excited and joyful at the thoughts of this and can hardly wait the few more days until I’m free of these unkind walls and crowded streets and stores! I’ve longed for this opportunity and am so excited it’s finally arriving. And reading your words were so inspiring and fill my heart and my thoughts. 3 & a half more days and we are free of the invisible shackles we’ve felt so painfully bound by. To be one with all that is around me has been what’s kept me going forward, dreaming of this time, praying for it, and wishing every day for it. Thank you. I know now exactly what I’ve been missing so desperately. And not just me, my dog has been missing it so much too.