IT IS NOT ONLY THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT THAT MUST BE CLEANSED. IT IS ALSO THE ENVIRONMENT OF MIND, WHICH IS LINKED, AND WHICH IS US. THIS IS THE PROFOUND SPIRITUAL TRUTH THAT HUMANITY MUST GRASP. IT IS NOT ONLY WHAT WE DO THAT AFFECTS OUR LIVES AND AFFECTS OUR MOTHER EARTH, OUR HOLY GAIA, IT IS ALSO WHAT WE THINK AND FEEL, WHAT WE FEAR AND HOPE FOR. THE SPIRITUAL AND SACRED TRUTH OF ALL EXISTENCE IS THAT ALL IS ONE, ALL IS CONNECTED AND INTERCONNECTED. WE MUST LIVE THAT SPIRITUAL TRUTH THAT IS WE ARE TO LIVE WELL FOR OURSELVES AND OUR WORLD.
A deeply spiritual woman, calm and perhaps at peace, except for her eyes, that express sadness and horror as she contemplates what we have done to our beautiful Planet Earth, to our Gaia. She stares out from the sands of a beach that is littered with all the detritus of our so-called civilised lives. The beach is filthy with all our discarded stuff. This is a deeply spiritual woman who knows what must be done, but whose eyes betray her doubts as to whether humanity will actually do what must be done.
Our awareness at last of what we have done to our planet, to our precious Mother Earth, to our Holy Gaia, and our awareness at last that we are responsible for this, and must make ourselves responsible for healing our environment, for creating the possibilities for our natural environment to flourish and be healed, is a vital moment in humanity’s spiritual journey, in humanity’s sacred pilgrimage to ONENESS with ALL. We cannot always peer into our souls. We cannot always sense the state of anyone’s soul; by peering at his or her face: though often we do carry the spiritual state of ourselves on our face and do carry the truth of our souls deep in our eyes. But our environment, the state of our sacred Mother Earth displays the state of our collective souls in full view. And too often what we see in terms of our environment, and thereby in terms of our inner spiritual selves, is not good.
Sir Christopher Wren was laid to rest on 5 March 1723 in the south-east corner of the crypt of St Paul's cathedral in London which he designed and built. The Latin inscription on a plain stone plaque in the crypt ends with a profound statement which translates as follows: ‘Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you’.
Reader, if you seek a monument to the spiritual state of humanity, we would say, ‘look around you’. Our Mother Earth, our Holy Gaia, OUR HOME has been despoiled. She is the living, or we might say ‘dying’ proof of what we spiritual pilgrims have become. We are nothing except scavengers on the face of our planet, unless we accept our spiritual and sacred duty towards each other and towards our Mother Earth. Sadly, we imagine that we are better off if we pursue material gain at almost any cost. But if the inmost secrets of our souls revealed in what we are doing to our Mother Earth, then we must become self-aware at last, and must seek not only reconciliation with each other and with the flora and fauna of our once beautiful Mother Earth, but must also seek some sort of redemption. What we truly are is revealed in the state of our lands and seas. If we seek to heal ourselves, then we must seek to heal our Mother Earth’s environment. If we seek to give spiritual meaning to our lives, then we must accept that our Mother Earth, our Holy Gaia, is sacred, and must be ONE with our spiritual meaning, that indeed the stare of our planet is a profound and spiritually significant manifestation of the actual state of our souls. Our sacred and spiritual quest is forever a moral quest. Every test requires us to leave light and healing in our wake, not darkness and despoilation. ‘Man and woman, know thyself’, is what we have always been told. So this is the truth of us at this time in our sacred pilgrimage: ‘Man and woman, look upon your Mother Earth, upon your beaches and seas, upon your fields and your mountains: and know thyself, and hang your heads in shame.’
It is not just the physical environment that has to be redressed. It is the ethical as well. The physical environment is the world in which we live and upon which we depend. The ethical arena is actually us ourselves. At the same time, everything we do and feel and think, is a reflection of ourselves, and in a poignantly meaningful way, is ourselves. When we look upon the wasted areas of our world, be they our blighted urban landscapes, or our scarred and despoiled wildernesses, we are looking at ourselves. When the abuser stares into the frightened and wrecked eyes of the abused, he or she is looking at him or herself. So is it the case with the world that we live in and have created. When we gaze at polluted streams, at razed forests, at denatured pastures, at … We gaze upon the truth about ourselves.
Our religious, spiritual and sacred duty as human beings on our beautiful Mother Earth, our Holy Gaia is embrace our culpability with regards to ourselves and our planet, and to seek redemption through our long-overdue healing of our Mother Earth. This is our sacred duty here and now. This is the meaning of our being incarnate at this time, this has to be our great spiritual destiny.