Stellar Experiences: Connecting with the Earth with Dena Merriam

A Personal Note from Orion

It is amazing how the Earth and its lifeforms provide all the natural resources humans need, enjoy, and indulge. However, humans are ungrateful and do not give any importance to how to take care of our planet. You should know that the Earth is a conscious being that you should have a give and take relationship with.

In today’s Stellar Experience, Dena Merriam takes you through the process of expressing love and gratitude to the Earth and all the life forms inhabiting it. Communicating with nature by shifting from the logical mind to the intuitive mind, where you can drink in the energy, beauty, and gifts that natural forces have to offer.

Dena Merriam is an author, storyteller, and founder, and convener of the Global Peace Initiative of Women. She is the author of three books, including When the Bright Moon Rises. In 2014, she received the Niwano Peace Prize for her interfaith peace efforts. Having founded a non-profit organization in 2002, she has worked to bring spiritual voices to address global challenges. Her mission is to gather young leaders and wise elders to listen, reflect, and explore ways to foster systemic changes. These changes can create unity among humanity and a loving, respectful relationship with Earth and all of life.

Tune in to this episode and cultivate your relationship with the great Mother Earth!

About Today’s Show

Welcome and namaste. Please join me in a meditation to express gratitude and love to our earth and to all the life forms with whom we share this beautiful planet of ours. With all the different challenges we face by climate change and the disruption of the balance and the ecosystems, it’s often been a struggle to know how we can contribute to the well-being of the earth. I found that the greatest way is just to take a few minutes in silent meditation, send love to the earth, and send love to all of the beings, all the forms of life that inhabit our planet.

Let’s begin with the forests. As we speak, some of the oldest trees in the US, the ancient sequoias, who’ve lived for a few thousand years, are being threatened by wildfires. I’ve seen those trees. They’re magnificent reaching up to the sky with huge trunks. One can only look at them as wise elders, and they are under threat. We can send love to those trees, and bow our heads with gratitude for the wisdom that they convey for their long lives. When we think of trees, how beautiful they are.

There are many planets that have no trees; most of the planets that we know of in our solar system. We have such a variety. Each tree is different from all the others. Each color different, a slightly different shade, some bearing fruit, some bearing other beautiful things like pine cones, how much they give us. It’s not just the oxygen but the beauty, the stateliness, the grandeur, the firmness, and the brightness.

Trees give us more than we know. We just take them for granted as we pass by them in our business of life. Trees provide us so much more than just the oxygen we breathe. It’s important to take time, to be with the trees, to express gratitude, to acknowledge them, and to acknowledge their presence. Let’s take a few moments and envision ourselves sitting with a tree that we know or one that we imagine. Just taking the beauty of the tree, taking with that tree has to offer and give thanks to that tree.

To commune with nature, we have to move from the logical mind to the intuitive mind, where we could drink in the energy, the beauty, the gifts of what the natural forces have to offer us and give back.

To commune with nature, we have to move from the logical mind to the intuitive mind, where we could drink in the energy, the beauty, the gifts of what the natural forces have to offer us, and give back. Everything in life is reciprocity. We take in and we give back. The trees give to us and we give to them. We need them and they need us. It’s the same with all life forms.

Whenever I’ve had a difficult situation, I’ve gone to sit by a river and just sink into silence. I allow the river to wash over me, to take away my troubles, to awaken within me the wisdom to know what action I should take and what I should do. The rivers are a great source of comfort, as all water bodies are—the lakes, and the oceans. We take for granted these water bodies, but they provide enormous benefits to us, not just physically but spiritually.

Many life forms in the waters are now suffering from all the various inputs, chemicals, plastics, and everything else. We treat the water bodies as our garbage dumps. And yet, they are full of life, energy, and beauty that we need to live.

Let us take a few moments and sit by a river, sit by a lake, sit by the ocean. Feel that water wash over you and feel the deep exchange with the water. You are expressing your love and care for the water. That water is washing over you, purifying you, taking away your troubles, taking away your fears, and filling you with hope and energy.

We sat with the tree and we sat by a body of water. Now, let us climb a mountain together. Mountains are a source of great strength. They’re difficult to climb, but once we get to the top, we have an amazing view. We could stand there firmly on the mountain, take in the energy and strength of the mountain. The minerals that live within the mountain provide many, many benefits. Instead of digging them out of the mountains, we should let them stay in the mountains and realize the benefit they bring to the earth and all of us who live on top of the earth and the surface.

Minerals offer much protection. Each mineral has its own quality and characteristics that bring benefits. As we climb the mountain, we know that everything that lies within is bringing benefits that lie on the surface of the mountain. Let us sit on top of a mountain and look at the vast scene before us, the forests in the distance, and the rivers. See how they’re all connected—the mountain, the forests, the rivers—one flowing into another, one feeding another.

They need each other to exist—the forest and the rivers, the rivers and the mountains—because the rivers come from the mountains. The mountains are the source of water for the rivers. The rivers flow into the oceans and they bring water under the ground to feed the trees. All connected. Let us feel the connection between the mountain, the trees, and the rivers.

Now let us think of the Earth itself, the soil which provides food for us, the soil that is rich in nutrients, microorganisms that help grow plants, that give life to all that grows. We’ve damaged so much of our soil, degraded so much of the soil to the chemicals that we’ve put in it. But the soil can rejuvenate, will rejuvenate, if we allow it to. The soil has healing properties. Just by standing on the earth, just by standing on the dirt, we receive the healing vibrations of the earth.

Let us stand and see ourselves standing firmly on the soil, looking at the dark rich soil around us as it should be, not necessarily as the soil is today but as it once was, and as it will be in the future, dark and rich and full of microbial life.

Let us move into space and look at our beautiful blue planet that has been much degraded. The balance that she has for millennia fought to preserve, that we have disrupted. That can again be reestablished if we gain the wisdom not to disturb the balances within nature but allow nature to live as she knows to live in harmony and in balance. Human intervention is not needed. All we have to do is step back, appreciate, express gratitude.

The earth is a conscious being, that we can be in a relationship with, that we are meant to be in a relationship with, that we once were in a relationship with.

See the wondrous workings of nature, which has intelligence and consciousness. The rivers, the mountains, the forest, they are not unconscious. They are conscious. The earth is a conscious being, that we can be in a relationship with, that we are meant to be in a relationship with, that we once were in a relationship with. All their troubles have come because we have forgotten and fallen out of a relationship with the life force of earth and all the beings that she supports.

While many are working to address the problems of ecological destruction and climate change, we can work to come into relationship again with the earth because that is really what matters. Without this relationship, we won’t know how to re-establish and how to support the earth as the earth reestablishes the balance within our ecosystems. All we have to do is support the earth. That we do through love, recognition, acknowledgement, and by coming into a relationship again, coming into a relationship with all that is.

It’s a matter of expanding our consciousness beyond our bodies, expanding our consciousness beyond our minds, beyond our emotions, so that we see ourselves as connected to all the aspects of both life, to the forest and mountains, to the soil, to the rivers and oceans, to the creatures, to the creatures who live in the oceans, to the creatures who live in the forest, to the creatures who live on the land, billions and billions and billions of creatures who inhabit this world along with us.

We have to come into a relationship with them again. That will be the new course, a new course for the human world that will lead us to a better place when we come in relationship again with our Earth.

May the great Earth Mother have patience with us and guide us on how to come into a relationship with her.

Check out Dena Merriam’s interview with Orion.