I’m hoping, praying for a synchronicity between our planet and us that goes as follows.
Our Great Work in the 21st century is to change our relationship with Earth, with all species. and with ourselves. This heroic effort requires inner and outer coordination. In making inner change, we must wend our way into greater topographies of consciousness. In making outer change, we increase those actions that were not possible until we worked our way into greater consciousness. The inner and outer world activities of this Great Work reinforce one another, each causing the other and each being a result of the other. By joining in solidarity with all who are engaging in this inner and outer work, we become able to do what we have heretofore not accomplished, namely, to reshape our lives and social systems to fit inside of Earth’s eco-systems. Difficult as this change is, happily, we are fully capable of doing it. Doing it is how we get ourselves ready for Eden.
Simultaneously with our Great Work, the Earth, our planetary home in this stunning universe, is engaging in her Great Work. The grand Cenozoic Era, 65 million years in duration, is coming to an end. A primary indicator of this enormous geological transition, one that remains too much out of our awareness to have stirred us to sufficient action, is the massive extinction of species underway. That extinction has already become the 6th largest in Earth’s 4.5 billion years, and continues to spread to more species. Earth’s evolutionary and creative imagination are revolving into a new era, as yet unnamed, though I like the name Ecozoic Era used by Thomas Berry, Brianne Swimme, and a few others. For a mythological name, Eden works well, emphasizing that Earth evolves ever new expressions of the interdependence richly exhibited as Eden.
Of these two Great Works, we can be sure that Earth’s is happening. Though less sure, evidence builds that our species is stepping up to our responsibilities and that, for at least many of us, our Great Work is also underway. If both move along in step in the 21st century, then the “Great Change” will proceed by which we humans leave behind our brave but immature MultiEarth civilization project, relocate ourselves inside Earth’s eco-systems, and venture fully into the responsible maturity of OneEarth living. The Great Change, as it proceeds, happens inside our souls or psyches, and simultaneously happens outside of us in Earth as well. Just as the negative and positive poles of a battery interact to produce energy powerful enough to generate electrical transformations, so the inner and outer poles of psyche and Earth interact to transcend the MultiEarth devastation and secure future inhabitability of our planet. These great energies of soul and Earth impact one another and transform the societies and cultures shaped by us. They move us out of ego-centered consciousness so we can live in the consciousness of our greater Self; they move us out of civilization-centered consciousness so we can live centered in the greater consciousness of Earth.