We live today in a world where it’s difficult to acknowledge connectivity—to step back and look at the “big picture.” It’s all too easy to fall into our isolated routines and lose a sense of what the implications of our beliefs, our actions, and our collective existence itself really are. This habitual inattention is most evident and most urgently detrimental in the case of environmental consciousness, or the lack thereof. Though most have a very real understanding of which human practices are harmful to the environment, we all end up either neglecting to remain mindful of our impact or ignoring it altogether because accepting responsibility for our impact requires the inconvenience of change and the burden of sustained cognizance. When all is said and done, many of us consciously or subconsciously consider ourselves too busy, our work too important, or our resources too scarce to practice or maintain environmental consciousness.
However, my intention here is not to weave an impassioned guilt trip to add to the pile of impassioned environmentalist guilt trips. Instead, I want to argue that bolstering environmental consciousness is both personally beneficial and existentially valuable. Taking the time and making the effort to enjoy and understand the natural world is endlessly advantageous to us practically and spiritually, and it allows us to better ourselves while bettering our environment.
Recently, several of my Earth Lodge classmates volunteered their time to doing exactly this at the William Byrd Community Farmlet. They spent the day weeding, building compost bins, and helping the small local farm better serve its purpose of producing and promoting fresh, organic food in inner-city Richmond. After reading their reflections on the experience, it’s clear that while devoting their time and energy to support and help build our local community and environment they also each attained a certain personal enlightenment. Lucy talked about connecting her experience to memories of welcoming spring with her mother and feeling a sense of freedom as a result. Mike referenced experiencing the sensation that it was “refreshing to be alive.” Nearly everyone cited the deep satisfaction that resulted from connecting physically with the earth on an intimate, visceral level. Getting up, getting outside, and communing with the natural world became a way for them to return to a holistic, centered harmony that they expressed missing on a day-to-day basis.
An important part of finding that harmony is tied to the personal introspection that occurs both during and after communion with nature. The forum that the natural world provides for deep, meaningful, unencumbered thought is unmatched. Personally, nature becomes a place where I can block out the web of trivialities that clogs my life and return to what’s most basic and important to me. This opinion is echoed in my post entitled “The Secret Garden.” In the post, I explained how being outside and paying attention to my natural surroundings becomes a way for me to reconnect with my spirituality. When I have the opportunity to stop and look, listen, touch, and smell the sensations emanating from the environment, I encounter the manifest energy swirling around and through me. Identifying this energy helps me remember my connectivity and locate my place in the world, and in this way my moments of purified introspection lead by interactions nature become paramount to my internal order and tranquility.
In most cases, this introspection goes beyond this personal enlightenment and results also in an increased overall environmental consciousness because one element of locating my place in the world involves gaining a greater understanding of the world I fit into. In “The Call,” I explored the way in which the human race demonstrates a practical and spiritual dependence on the earth. The example I used was a coastal community that continues to rebuild time and time again in an area ravaged by storm because the people that live there cannot break their ties to the sea. In my opinion, they shouldn’t have to because although their way of life is less than economical, it reveals an acceptance of the undeniable supremacy of the forces of nature. In the end, we are the custodians of a marvelous and powerful planet and it’s an absolute privilege to live amongst the majesty of Earth’s undulating natural forces. We have the sacred opportunity to commune with these forces and it’s my belief that doing so enriches our human experience.
Taking care of the earth therefore becomes not only a responsibility, but a blessing. As conventionally touted, environmentalism is important because we’re severely damaging the natural world. Becoming aware of and stopping the destruction is important to the physical health and proliferation of the planet and our health in turn. However, the importance of environmentalism goes further than that because as individuals, the first step in environmentalism—environmental consciousness—both requires and bolsters the achievement of a significant and satisfying personal awareness and peace.
We’re all quite aware of the immediate and long-term risks of continuing to degrade our environment. Environmental consciousness is something that needs to happen sooner rather than later if we plan to continue to live and thrive here as we have before. We must change in order for things to stay the same, but that process of change doesn’t have to be painful. If we achieve environmental consciousness, we can derive peace and awareness from the earth. In turn, this can lead to an increased interest in the preservation of this gift, an increasingly healthy environment, and the serendipity of an increasingly positive circular flow from the earth to its disciples. Here, the phenomenon of connectivity reveals itself at last.
Here’s a kooky song but it’s close to my heart. Listen close, it’s about the “Green Man” or arguably a sort of “father Earth.”
Forever to him you’re tied
and you know for a million years
he has been your father,
he’ll be a million more.