“Only if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one release one’s sadness,” don Juan said. “A warrior is always joyful because his love is unalterable and his beloved, the earth, embraces him and bestows upon him inconceivable gifts. The sadness belongs only to those who hate the very thing that gives shelter to their beings.”
                                                                                                    Carlos Castaneda~Tales of Power

What is Earth Dreaming? Our perceptions change if we imagine the Earth as a sentient being. The Earth is our home; it shelters, embraces and bestows upon us the energy to navigate the field of unbroken wholeness, the unconscious or nagual that is “dreaming” this world of matter and psyche. We, as beings upon the planet, may be expressions of unconscious wholeness, manifestations of the underlying essence field expressing itself through the Earth. And yet, with the holographic nature of being, we are that wholeness within ourselves, in our personal landscape of the body. At any moment we can explore unbroken wholeness through our own body and psyche.

Our presence allows us a spiritual experience, an opportunity and commitment to evolve with the Earth through the personal landscape of our bodies. A living system evoking the sacred within us, the Earth is our partner in consciousness. Conscious evolution calls us to embrace a larger perspective; realizing the relatedness of the seen and unseen realms we can experience the reciprocity that exists between them. When we consider that the Earth is a sentient being like us, with connections to infinity allowing a fundamental attunement with everything continuously at a cellular level, we rewrite our definition of ourselves as human beings and of reality.

"The old seers saw that the earth has a cocoon," he went on. "They saw that there is a ball encasing the earth, a luminous cocoon that entraps the Eagle's emanations. The earth is a gigantic sentient being subjected to the same forces we are."                                           
                                                                                                   Carlos Castaneda~Fire from Within

Imagine all sentient beings, including the Earth, as glittering jewels “like stars of the first magnitude” hanging in Indra’s net. This visual image of unbroken wholeness, the matrix from which the manifest world arises, allows a glimpse into the realms of the cosmos, of which we are a part as well as reflective of the whole. At each node of energy, at each energetic junction, there is an experience of sentient consciousness that is reflective of all other sentient consciousness. When change happens in one jewel, change ripples throughout the realms of sentient experience. Perhaps every being on this planet is a jewel, and with deep sentient awareness reveals facets reflecting the other jewels in an infinite web of connectedness. Expressions of an underlying sentient reality, the energies of unconscious wholeness are present, as matter and psyche are exquisitely reflective of and responsive to the underlying matrix.

“The artificer has hung a single glittering jewel at the net’s every node, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of those jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that the process of reflection is infinite.”
                                                       Francis H. Cook~ Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra

Artwork © 2008 Nöle Giulini  www.ngiulini.com

 

Such Singing in the Wild Branches

It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves-
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness-
and that's when it happened,

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree-
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing-
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky- all, all of them

were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn't last

for more than a few moments.
It's one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you've been there,
you're there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then- open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

 Mary Oliver~ 2003

Sentient Body © 2009

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