Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Walk normally for a while. Experience yourself moving through a static landscape
in which only you are in motion.
Now shift perspective. You are like an acrobat rolling an enormous ball—the
great round earth. Each powerful backward push of your footsteps sets the earth
in motion. With each footstep you are rolling the great round earth towards you
beneath your feet.
Allow yourself to feel the huge spherical bulk of the great sentient creature that
rolls beneath you with every footstep. When you walk, she moves. When you stop,
she stops too. Be aware of the strange, subtle perceptions that are coming to you
in this new mode of walking.
We have delved into the science of Gaia, and have seen that it gives us the best
possible cognitive basis for knowing that the Earth is alive—not 'life-like'—but really
alive. Can we let the science be like a juicy bone tossed to the rational mind to keep
it happily chewing whilst the real work of developing our belonging to Gaia happens
through our senses, our feelings and perhaps most importantly, our intuition? Let these
be the gateways into our new sense of belonging in a living world, and let our reason
take its rightful place as the servant of this deeper, more intoxicating knowledge. As the
American poet Robinson Jeffers once said, let us “fall in love outwards”, and may this
falling in love spread like a contagion as far and wide from mind to mind and from sens-
ing body to sensing body as fast as possible, for time is running out for us and for the
great wild planet into which we were born, and without which our lives would hardly be
worth living.
Gaia is a being so large that we can never physically see the whole of her as we can
the whole of an orange, or a tree, a flower, or another human being. These are beings
that we can walk round or turn in our hands, but we can't do this with our planet, at least
not without the help of a lot of highly technical instruments. So how are we to develop a
sense of Gaia as an entirety, as a whole being? One of philosopher Henri Bortoft's great
insights is that every part of a phenomenon contains the whole, that reality is holograph-
ic rather than fragmented. This gives us a tremendously important clue about how we
can cultivate our sense of belonging to Gaia: we can do this by developing a deep
love
of place
. The soul of a place, when entered into with the deep interest and concern that
love entails, contains the quality of Gaia as a whole being. But will any place do? What
about a noisy road in the middle of a busy city? Ultimately, yes, it is possible to find
Gaia even in such places. I have two remarkable friends who lived for many years near
Heathrow airport, right under the flight path. From their living room window they could
