The Power of Listening
Our planet sustains us. To begin with, everything we consume comes in some form of an earthly element. I studied Agriculture in college with the desire to work in alternative fuels, but I spent the first ten years in the workforce in the animal nutrition industry. The big question, then and now, is how do we feed 8 billion people sustainably?
Shortly after leaving that industry, I opened my first Wendell Berry book: A Continuous Harmony. This book started my admiration for this Kentucky literary legend who understands relationships among species. He knows ecology requires the listening and agreement of interspecies relationships because he’s lived in relationship with the land all of his life.
This is why I’m so passionate about quieting the mind. It is my way of being tuned in, not just with the less obvious parts of myself but also with the world around me. It’s a practice of listening in a way that we begin to understand a new language. Did you know there’s interspecies music available? Check out Masterplants.
What if the purpose wasn’t just to save the planet from the destruction that we, as a human species, have caused but even more so to learn reciprocity? What if all that was asked of us was to listen deeply? What would the natural world have to say? Would they create music with us?
We must make ourselves gracefully aware of the damage we’re doing as a human race while also understanding individual contributions to healing the environment have a more significant impact than we may think. We must cut consumption, but what other measures can we take? There is no better teacher than experience, and my devotion comes from listening specifically to the physical earth.
This comes through composting, gardening, tuning in to the plant and animal species around me, and researching efficiencies for places where I expend energy. Some find companion planting a beautiful way to work in harmony.
It’s also an essential part of my spiritual practice of symbolic ritual to the earth through flower offerings and prayer. We can create meaningful change by seeing the plant, animal, and microbial community as something to be in a relationship with versus having power over.
Could our issue of not seeing radical improvement come from our need to justify everything through statistics and data? Does removing the heart from the equation reduce the ability to create impact? What if we began looking at environmental justice in the way we’re looking at mind, body, and spirit whole healing for the human species? If listening to the world around us were valued in the same way as recycling, we open ourselves to the possibility of quantum leaps.
Animas belief is that all things have a soul and that we can form a relation to that energy. In a world where we are willing to throw a ton of money into technological advancement, could we have access to as great, if not better, information through a closer connection with our natural environment?
An herbalist taught me that to work with the plant meant not only consuming and studying the physiological components but meditating, bathing in its essence, sleeping with it under a pillow, and honoring the plant through intentional understanding. One of the most remarkable healing experiences I’ve had came from working with chickweed in clear intentionality behind a month-long relationship. It put me in direct contact with my vulnerability, the part of me that needed protecting, and a vow that I would show up unfettered to keep my sensitive heart safe from there forward.
The practice of appreciation for the smallest of supports provides us with awareness and depth of feeling we may not have realized existed within us. Becoming a better listener has brought more significant meaning to my life. We step into our wholeness when we live from a place of reciprocity and reverence.
