Awakening to the earth

I had the most magical experience – I went walking through the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, looking closely at all the trees.

It’s strange to admit that when I had been there in previous years – strolling through the gardens or picnicking with friends – the trees didn’t interest me much. Sure I’d felt their vibe, taken in the generally pleasant and calm ambience, but I never stopped to read their names and descriptions nor examine them in any detail. 

Now I was pausing at each one, reading their plaques, looking at their bark and leaves, the girth of their trunk, their canopy. I was acknowledging each one and even talking to some. There was the magnificent Queensland kauri and the bottle tree, the flame tree, the hoop pine and the cabbage tree palm. There was the coast banksia, reaching its distinctive cones high into the sky, and the bird catcher tree, which fertilises the soil for its seeds by trapping and killing birds with sticky fruit. 

I was in a kind of appreciative rapture, mesmerised by the beauty and incredible variety of what nature produces. I wanted to bow down before the kauri, with its massively broad, grey trunk – if there was anything that deserved veneration, this ancient giant certainly did. I spent several hours at the gardens, but only walked through one part.

I think of myself as going through a process of reintegration into nature, a gradual awakening to place and earth. I imagine it is what people who garden for pleasure experience, were they to drill down into it. It is a feeling of being solid and connected that brings joy and inspiration. I am learning about the plants in my neighbourhood, learning the names of the species that grow along the creek where I walk regularly. It’s a beginning. 

If you approach anything with patience, openness and grace, you can start to pick up its sound, the message that it is sending. The American author-activist Starhawk, in her book The Earth Path, says it is not enough for people who care about the environment to care in the abstract; you must know a place, be familiar with the plants and animals in your backyard, know their habits and uses and how each plays its part in the whole. To be truly connected is to enter “a world that is alive and dynamic, where everything is part of an interconnected whole, where everything is always speaking to us, if only we have ears to listen.”

Indigenous cultures understand and practise the kind of listening to which Starhawk is referring, basing their vision upon a fine awareness of the many voices emanating from the land, its plants and animals. From a Western perspective, there is nothing ultimately alien or crazy in this. Scientists are becoming increasingly aware that life exists as a totality of many symbiotic relationships – trees need fungi to break down dead matter into nutrients; the dispersal of fungal spores is dependent on small animals; insects need dead matter on the forest floor to lay their eggs; insects and birds disperse pollen from trees; humans and a myriad other species need healthy trees to produce oxygen to stay alive. The welfare of the whole depends on the condition of each part. And the way to understand and interact with each part and with the whole is simply to live close to nature. To appreciate the energy of a kauri tree does not require New Age beliefs – it means observing, feeling, being a little quiet around it. To listen to what a river is saying is more about spending time by that river with a receptive attitude than it is being an expert in hydrology.  

Western culture conditions us against paying attention to the intuitive connections we have with nature; intuition is left to artists, poets and other dreamers on the fringes of society. And it leaves the observation and understanding of nature to certain specialist professions, usually in the sciences, while the mass of people remain ignorant. Urbanisation further cuts people off from direct relationship with nature while effectively it is being used, abused and discarded. Starhawk mentions being stunned at one university talk she gave when a student asked her, “Why is the earth important?”

Fortunately, there are Western traditions that can be drawn from to support a move towards reconnection. There is the rich earth-based spirituality of pre-Christian Paganism, as well as contemporary neo-Paganism and Wicca. There are also the undercurrents of mysticism that have existed for centuries in Christianity and Judaism that can feed a “reanimation” of nature. Firstly and fundamentally, though, it is about getting to know your own patch; getting your hands into the soil; walking through the environment and learning its species; learning what makes it tick, the well springs from which it draws life.  

Gluttony

I became interested in gluttony a while back, when I encountered the Sydney Airport Food Court.

On my way to the departure gate to fly home to Melbourne, there it was: a giant amphitheatre filled with the sound of chomping teeth and food sliding to the bottom of stomachs. Burgers, sushi, souvlaki, stir fry with rice, salads, chips, fried chicken, tacos, baked potatoes were landing on plastic plates around the perimeter while in the centre hundreds of people were in the process of eating, getting up or sitting down to eat. The constant movement, noise and sight of jaws hard at work made me think of a plague of locusts; a voracious swarm in a brightly lit field of plastic and metal chairs.

Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, a collection of vices proscribed to the faithful Christian. The others are envy, pride, greed, lust, wrath and sloth. The prohibition against them is to encourage moderate behaviour – which is socially and morally beneficial – and to turn the mind away from purely physical and emotional drives to a spiritual orientation. 

I turned on the TV recently and noticed one channel was running three consecutive cooking shows that evening. Popular culture is obsessed with food at a time when obesity is rapidly on the rise in countries like Australia and the US, and when it is acknowledged that human beings are depleting the world’s resources. What’s behind this obsession? 

Gluttony is symptomatic of our age, a time of gross materiality when “more” means “better”, and which may well be the peak of human global excess. There is an ever more tantalising envelopment in matter, an ever closer entrapment, as if the material world is all there is. Perhaps perversely it represents a great yearning for the spiritual life, a displaced drive for meaning and fulfilment.   

Author David Tacey, building from the work of Carl Jung, says in his book Gods and Diseases that physical and psychological ailments are not simply signs that something is wrong, but opportunities for healing and messages for wholeness. Seen in that light, the problem of gluttony offers humanity a great challenge – to move beyond animal, instinctual nature as the primary and overall motivation for action. Animal nature is an organism acting according to innate needs and desires: procreating, consuming, satisfying whatever urges it holds for its increase and benefit.

One of the defining features of our species is the development of consciousness in concert with animal instinct. This gives us the ability to choose how we act. Indeed, over the ages civilisation has evolved a complex web of controls and channels for human animal nature: systems are in place for food, water and shelter; laws govern right behaviour and punish wrongdoing; cultural mores mediate urges for power and sex. We could not live collectively if there was no management of instinctual drives. And individuals continually make decisions to override animal nature in many mundane ways: for example choosing healthy food instead of eating whatever is immediately gratifying, or giving up the comfort of a seat on a train to an elderly person.

Yet even in this developed state humanity as a whole is governed by short-sighted instinctual motivations that are solely about us and our increase. If we and other species on Earth are to survive, there needs to be a quantum leap in human consciousness. This would mean a broadening of the collective human psyche, a whole-hearted turning outwards to all creation and the needs of the planet. It would involve a reappraisal of our position in the universe, from the source of all value to recognition of humble interdependence in the grand scheme of life. In sum, it would mean moving beyond our animal concern with “us” to a concern about the welfare of life generally.

How would this translate practically? I believe it would result in conscious choice to limit and reduce the human population, while redistributing global wealth so that as many people as possible are able to share in the basics and goodness of life. Of course, the economic system would have to be overhauled so that growth and wealth are not ends in themselves but serve society and nature. The political system could no longer be about the perpetuation of elite power but would rather serve community and nature. This all seems very pie-in-the-sky if not for the fact that many individuals and communities are already acting in ways that transcend sole concern about their own material wellbeing and are making choices that involve a broader recognition of the sanctity of life. Perhaps such a great shift is nearer than we think.

It needs to be said that moving beyond animal nature does not mean abandoning it. It is not a retreat into asceticism, the renunciation of the material world or old Judeo-Christian notions of the worthlessness of the body in relation to spiritual reality. Rather, we value our material existence and instincts while taking the next step of the human journey.   

Matter does, however, for the present particularly in the still affluent parts of the West, need to be kept in perspective. It is not the answer to everything, and awaits the bountiful redeeming breath of spirit. Gluttony need not be an eternal condition of humanity.