Earth, Heart, and Spirit: A Declaration of Connectedness


By David Richo, PhD
Psychotherapist, author, pastoral counselor
www.davericho.com


   
How do I contribute to a planetary shift from the three poisons of our human environment: greed, hate, and ignorance, to the three drivers of our evolution: justice, peace, and love?
 
A zeal for the transformation of society and the world is how we personally evolve in love. This means that when we fight against the domination systems of aggression and inequality, we are showing and growing in love for the world.
 
Once earth is no longer the ground we walk on but our living mother, we are called to protect and nurture her as she does us. Only when we love earth and its people do we fully love. Then we pray with mother earth not just for our personal satisfaction or gain. When we love we co-create and co-heal the world so it can evolve. Connection is implicit in co-creation since we all join to help the world evolve by conscious intention and specific actions.
 
To love the world is to become planetary citizens. Our individual consciousness and our earth consciousness become one and the same, no division, no dualism, no ranking. Once love and connection are accepted as our authentic identity, war and hate have no place in our hearts or our world. Care for the ecology and cooperation with others become our intensely held commitments.
 
We work in whatever way we can to stop any further denuding of the earth of her natural resources and we do what it takes to renew the powers of the earth. That is love for the world shown in action. Love is then our new primary principle and value.
 
We can expand our earth-and-its-people love by consciously checking into our attitudes toward and contributions to the following social sins:
  • The unjust distribution of goods that is based on the vast differential between rich and poor
  • Destruction of the environment and its ecology
  • Violence, war, and nuclear arms
  • Oppression and prejudice based on race, sexual orientation, and religion
  • The political and religious oppression of women in patriarchal societies
 
A common element in all five of these forms of social injustice is domination, what happens when egalitarian relations towards others are denied. Love can’t survive with domination, patriarchy, control, rapacity, violence, and repression.
 
I close my reflections with two quotes that help me expand my horizons of possibility:
 
Politics and the life of the spirit are inseparable. –Mahatma Gandhi
 

Politics is the supreme expression of charity. –Pope Pius XI