“Have you ever listened to the earth? Yes, the earth speaks, but only to those who can hear with their hearts. It speaks in a thousand, thousand small ways, but like our lovers and families and friends, it often sends its messages without words. For you see, the earth speaks in the language of love.”
I once read this in a book in Colorado, “The Earth Speaks.” At this time of the year it is particularly the mountains that speak to me, whether I am in Colorado or at home in Voss, Norway. Here, where I grew up, there is also the history of childhood and youth connected to the land. Another quote from the same book which I especially identify with; Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”
It was my father who was particularly receptive to nature’s empowering spirit. He did not speak much about it but sometimes I find words by others, expressing what I experienced with him. Walking up a mountain-side was a learning experience; feeling the rhythm with each footstep touching the earth, slowly at first, aligned with my breath, and faster as we reached the more leveled ground above timberline—always sensing the balance between body and the body’s breath of life.
As a teenager, it was often good to come home and leave my schoolbooks, change shoes, and head for a mountain-trail. The language of the mountain I understood. Both my mind and my body could take it in. I felt embraced by a loving life-spirit, a renewing power, which brought me into oneness with all life. I think this is how my father felt in the mountains, that his own life-process was one with the Creator.
Do we have to go out in nature to experience this loving life spirit? People want to take time away from busyness and pressure, renew themselves in a different setting. What is it that creates this good experiences in our time?
I read in Harmony magazine, as an example of the Age of Aquarius, that one thing that marks the new time is that the collective consists of unique individuals who support each other while seeking to give their best. Is this so impossible to manage in practical life? No, it is simple. Look at the Norwegian women’s cross-country ski-team! It is difficult to find a better example of unique individualists who uplift each other and at the same time seek to reach their own unique goal and fulfill their own dreams.
Ours is considered an age of competition and self-centeredness. People today seek self-realization and seek to find their own faith and life-style. Ideally, self-realization should mean to let the best in oneself come forth, and thus draw forth the best in others. This means with a loving spirit, as the earth speaks, in the spirit of love.
A good friend in Colorado, David Karchere, says it this way: Every relationship has the possibility of a conversation of love… a conversation about care, or about affection, or about bringing out the best of another. If you’re envious of another person… it’s hard to be loving; particularly if you allow yourself to be controlled by your envy. If you’re afraid that there is something that you have that will be taken from you, it’s hard to carry on a conversation of love.
This past summer, discord, mistrust and hate have led to increasing terrorism, conflicts and disturbances—human behavior that splits us. These are the stories that get attention. But there are so many other stories about things happening in life, about people who in a pioneering spirit work for a better world.
Sir George Trevelyan was one of these pioneers for several decades in England, before the turn of the century. We recognise an evolutionary thrust towards a higher consciousness for humanity, unlocking spiritual potential hitherto dormant, he said.
Out of the confusion of a crumbling society will emerge individuals who are touched by higher guidance. These will inevitably flow together with others of like inspiration, and a new quality of society will begin to form. This is the true adventure of our time.
There are things on the move in humanity, a transition to new values, creative and sustaining, often invisible. But together these are creative currents which slowly rise like rivers, flowing into the landscape where old structures and dogmas, not serving us any more, are dissolving. There is new insight and new experiences which do not fit into an old mindset.
It is not just a matter of finding peace, but to express ourselves with a loving language, and perhaps discover that to listen with the heart leads to new insight. We can hear something from a higher dimension. That is how we may connect land and people. And it is the connection between individual human beings that will assist a collective awakening to a consciousness of oneness, and thus shape our future.
– Kari Bye
