Lyssanda Designs

      Like practitioners of Earth Spirituality everywhere, I continue to be outraged by the monumental transgressions that persist against the natural world in spite of the environmental protection movement and it’s frequency holders.   There must be SOMETHING that will motivate the human race to affect a true change in attitude and action, to retreat from our 11th Hour position, and to reclaim a worldview in balance with Gaia.  After reading "Dance of the Four Winds" by Alberto Villoldo, the following is what came to me! 

WHAT IF it was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that your soul is eternal?  That your soul is a unique and sacred spark, a blessed part of the Divine Mystery that animates your inner life from birth to death and beyond?  AND WHAT IF it was proven that your soul is on a continuous forward journey?   AND WHAT IF PROOF EXISTS that between lifetimes your soul resides IN the landscape and IN the various features, elements and creatures in the natural world?  THAT IN FACT, the natural environment serves as a vessel or holding place for your spirit?  The trees, plants, wetlands, grasslands, wildflower meadows, sand dunes, mounds, rocky escarpments, underground tunnels, caverns, ponds, lakes, rivers, special animals – any of these numinous and holy landscapes and creatures could serve as dwelling places for your soul.   

AND KNOWING THIS TO BE TRUE, believing beyond a doubt that the continuum of your soul depends on this eco-resting place, how can we allow the destruction of the natural world to continue?  The contamination created by conveniences and technologies,  the pollution dumped into the water systems, air and earth, the forests logged, the animals harvested, the earth’s body stripped by mining, the replacement of wild nature with highways, fences, factories and cities all pose a real and terrible danger to your personal destiny.   After your physical death, where the Great Mystery will place your spirit cannot be predicted. (Unless you have had exceptional training and have willed it so.  Making personal decisions affecting the process of being born into death used to be a given in indigenous societies.)  

Therefore the reckless and thoughtless damage to the environment on every level MUST BE STOPPED!  It goes far beyond the adage of We are All Connected.  We now know that without access to the undisturbed natural places on this beautiful planet that have been provided for our soul's rest and return, our spirits will surely and completely disappear. Contrary to the modern worldview, humans are not meant to exist in close proximity to concrete cities, technology and the built environment, but thrive in the truest sense ONLY in the embrace of the green and natural world.  The farther away we push nature the smaller our souls become – this is not a metaphor but a fact, as experienced by the millions today who feel a void, something missing in their lives.  Endless void-fillers, distractions and therapies exist to address this emptiness, but most of the theories bypass the simple truth that would address the foundational requirements of our eco-soul.  The contemporary endemic shrinking of the spirit is a reality, and healing is made possible only by fully embracing the wild. 

As we co-existed peacefully with the earth for millennia, WE MUST expand once again into our true nature and potential as fully-realized human beings.  To survive as beings of both body AND spirit, WE MUST acknowledge our vital reciprocal relationship with nature and embrace our true human role as keepers and protectors of Lady Gaia. 

http://www.tencanoes.com.au/tencanoes/
The Australian movie “Ten Canoes” is a dazzling and accurate portrayal of an indigenous society deeply bonded to the natural world.  During the course of the movie, the storytelling of their oral tradition reveals that the souls of their people continue to live in a particular wetland, or  billabong, between lives, and that the pregnant women of the tribe will go there to coax a soul into their belly.