Regeneration of the Divine Earth
The Loving Evolution of Christianity and the World – Part Three
“There is an ocean of energy that flows throughout everything on our planet, our solar system, our entire universe. This invisible energy field ties all of Creation together—people, plants, pets, peninsulas, and planets. All of it is manifested forms of energy (matter) that are intricately connected and entangled together … In essence, the entire universe functions as a sentient organism. The entire Creation in a very real sense is the “Incarnation” or the “Body” of Christ.”
– Mo Thomas
As we seek to live in service to the loving evolution of Christianity and the world, our spiritual and mystical life will naturally and necessarily lead us into a deeper consciousness of and with the earth.
For the earth is not just our greatest living system, our largest living and breathing “exterior” of which we are a part. It is a part of us and we a part of it. Our mystical interbeing reveals to us, makes more directly apparent, that we are not separate from the earth. In our deepening spiritual awareness, especially through our feet center, we feel the earth in our very own interiors. Or even, ourselves as within the interior life of the earth.
We can sense this through Christ energy, the interfusion of the divine and the material coursing through the body of the earth and the veins of our bodies. We are divinely entangled in our embodiment with all of incarnation.
And so if we have any hope of saving the world, we’ll also have to be a part of saving the earth.
From “Dominion” to Regeneration
As it was written, Adam and Eve were meant to “have dominion over all the earth itself.” As we reimagine the creation story in the light of our scientific and spiritual evolution, it’s well past time for us to move beyond “dominion” and into a more integral consciousness in our relationship with the earth.
Dominators seek to control and use everything under their charge in service to themselves. They care for their “subjects” and their resources to the extent that they have any personal use or value for the ruler, and little beyond that. Even in their better moments, the perspective is always still centered around themselves.
We may not think of ourselves in such a way, but some of those underlying values and attitudes are still with us. A good example of how this seeps even into our efforts for solutions is seen in the language and energy of “sustainability.” To make something sustainable is generally seen as a move in the right direction. While better than total disregard, it still keeps in place the extraction-system relationship of the earth in service to its human masters. It is ultimately still propping up a perpetuating system of the destruction of life.
We must reimagine and reconfigure our relationship with the earth and the orientation of our consciousness toward our Mother. We cannot and must not “sustain” the way things currently are, but rather we can come into our generative participation in loving service and care for our larger body.
This is not just a choice of individual actions and personal consciousness—though it very much entails that as well. There must as well be an integral shift in consciousness at the cultural and systemic level to see any real significant change and transformation.
Fortunately, such work is already happening in many ways. One of which I want to highlight here is the Regenerative Approach, a field of whole-systems design. If this interests you, read on. But if not, feel free to skip to the next section on how we might become mystical regenerators.
The Regenerative Approach
Regeneration describes processes that seek to restore, renew, and revitalize through resilient and equitable systems that integrate the needs of society with the integrity of nature. This is a field of work and study that is trying to bring forth healthy, evolutionary ways of living on and with the earth—drawing upon both indigenous wisdom and new evolutionary insights.
I’ll let further description come from one of the leaders of the movement, Daniel Christian Wahl:
The challenge is to fundamentally redesign the human presence and impact on Earth within the lifetime of the generations alive today — from being exploitative and degenerative to being regenerative and healing.
A regenerative human culture is healthy, resilient, and adaptable; it cares for the planet and it cares for life in the awareness that this is the most effective way to create a thriving future for all of humanity. Regenerative culture means improvements year on year, taking small steps to heal and improve, and on all levels, including individuals, communities, our soil, water, and air.
We can re-learn the art of appropriate participation and being a healing influence on the systems we depend on and emerge from.
Living regeneratively is living as a conscious expression of and participant in the wider nested complexity in which the local, regional and global are dynamically co-present. These nested scales are united through fast and slow cycles of collapse of structures and patterns that no longer serve, transformative innovation, and temporary consolidation of new patterns into a dynamically and constantly transforming whole. As such, regeneration as a process is intimately linked with the evolutionary and developmental impulse of life itself.
Realigning with Earth’s wisdom is about re-inhabiting this regenerative community more consciously again and humbly returning to our role as healers within that nested regenerative community of life. Our future will change depending on the degree to which each and every one of us manages to re-inhabit this community.
What if we focused on being differently now? What if we re-perceived who we are and identified more with life as a planetary process of interbeing? What if we aimed for being in right relationship to self, community and life? What if we focused on our individual and collective potential of being and becoming healing and nurturing expressions of place? What if we dropped the dysfunctional habit of trying to solve abstract global problems and scaling-up solutions? What if we focused instead on our potential to create conditions conducive to life in co-evolving mutuality with the places and communities that are the ground of our being?
(Quotes from here, here, and here.)
Mystical Regeneration – Living from the Divine Earth
We will not all be involved in systems design work—far from it. And yet we wouldn’t want to fall into a passive trap of feeling better that such a thing exists as we go on about our lives as usual.
We are actually already walking along this path though. The primary reorientation is very much in line with our spiritual movements of integral consciousness. Actually, it is the same participatory movement.
Regeneration is taking the step from seeing the earth as an object and into experiencing it through our interbeing. Into “humans doing things as nature.”
The incarnation of Christ in the cosmos is the divine interfused in all things, very much including the earth. And so our living into and as the Body of Christ will also be through the divine earth.
In Whole-Body Mystical Awakening, we do this primarily through our feet center. Early on in our practice, we often focus on the grounding and rooting of our bodies to the body of the earth. In deepening practice, we can learn to flow more into our mutual indwelling with the earth—becoming expressions of the divine, mystical earth expressing and even seeking to save herself (ourselves) in the world.
Awakened to our divine participation as the sacred earth, part of the body of God, we live in a new love. An earthy love, flourishing and teeming with beauty, sweat, and abundance.
Yes, we will be angry at the injustices assaulting our body. We will have moments of fear and despair. But our message will not be laced with vitriolic disdain—for we are not preaching on the street corner with bullhorns. Rather, we are compelled by deep care and compassion for the healing of the earth, of ourselves, and one another. In this way, we are loving our enemies.
To live in such a way is to embrace our own personal regeneration even as we live more into our cosmic body. Our presence becomes more and more generative as it is transparent and porous to Christ becoming in the continual creation of evolving life. Everywhere and right here. Anynow and right this moment. Our mystical cosmo-localism expressing through our very presence.
“Immanent spirit becomes manifest, through collaborative action, as relational and situational sacred presence. Participation in this presence engenders a liberating wholeness, a personal regeneration – which is given expression amidst the practicalities of everyday life and work, empowering whole relations with others.” -John Heron and Gregg Lahood
Embodying our Earth Becoming
“The outcomes of our we-space work often include new projects, partnerships, and creative forms of collaboration, as we learn to embody the future together.”
– Stephen Busby
A new world is possible. It will not come into being by the old methods.
We are being drawn by the world soul, the mystical body of the earth, Gaia, the Cosmic Christ, the body of God. The calling is to a transformed and regenerative presence not just as humans on earth, but as divine, conscious expressions of the earth, of the universe.
In this truly universalizing movement, we are not expanding outward in distancing “freedom.” But rather, we are intentionally absorbing and moving more deeply into our most complete and holistically present being. We are, in a sense, intensifying immanent presence into our spirit, into our bodies.
Crucially, not as a self-aggrandizement of projecting our own ego onto the whole, or inflating our “small-s” self into illusions of grandeur. But from our divine source within, flowing forth in our precious uniqueness as vital blooms of God.
This spiritual movement is what Cynthia Bourgeault recently described as “enstasy.” Rather than an ec-static dissolving—the drop becoming the ocean, we are instantiating the universe into our embodiment—the ocean into the drop.
As we bring the whole of the earth into our being, what do we feel?
Where is the earth—our body—moving and at work? Where is it flowing? Where are we growing? Adapting? Evolving?
And most essentially, where are we becoming?
Right here. In you. In me. In us. Bringing forth the creative generativity of Life. Blossoming as divine incarnations. Flowering and bearing fruit in the whole cosmos: in ourselves, in society, and in the earth.
A new world is possible. It will not come into being by the old methods.
We are the earth becoming. We are those who might embody the future into this regenerative now.
I’d like to close with this beautiful song that paints a picture of what this regenerative participation could look a little like:
Further Reading & Resources:
Design for Sustainability – Writings from Daniel Christian Wahl
Center for Applied Cultural Evoltuion – “To help change practitioners as they go about the work of improving the health and resilience of their communities.”
Earth Regenerators – “A Study Group for Restoring Planetary Health and Avoiding Human Extinction”
The Cure of the Earth by Charles Eisenstein
Bioneers – “Inspiring and realizing a shift to live on Earth in ways that honor the web of life, each other and future generations.”