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Listening to the Earth

Our planet has been sending strong messages lately. Earthquakes, tsunami, flooding, hurricanes, and snow storms are among the many items that Earth has been depositing to our collective inbox. I feel that the more we ignore these messages, the louder they become.llion Merculieff, an environmental activist from the Aleut community in the north-western U.S. state of Alaska, once said about wilderness being a Western concept. His community, the Aleuts, has been living in the islands in Bering Sea for more than 10,000 years and has adapted to the extreme climate.

"Adaptation is absolutely essential, but not adaptation as it is understood in the scientific community. This is adaptation that comes from retrieving information and communicating with the environment, so the environment would tell us what is happening."

One of the genuine indications of a highly self-aware person, the kind that I want my clients to become, is the capacity to listen to the realities around him or her, and use all interior resources to adapt to these realities which are constantly changing. Listening requires more than hearing. It is about paying attention, finding meaning, and responding to these messages. In fact, the real meaning of the word obedience, which comes from the Latin phrase meaning “to hear”, its Hebrew word Shama means to hear intelligently.

We don’t need another earthquake to shock is into hearing. We listen now. We respond. We adapt.