When we are disconnected from the earth our bodies and spirits grow sick. Without our moment-by-moment exchange with the earth intact we become irritable, dysregulated, discontent, inconsolable, and unhappy. But I believe we don’t consciously choose to disconnect from the earth. Instead, we fall asleep at the wheel, lulled by the sirens of social belonging.
One of the main causes of the rupture in our connection with Earth is the sheer speed with which we move about our lives. Driven by social ideals we cherish that define our belonging in a culture that values bigger-better-faster-more, we stop paying attention to sunrises and sunsets and instead watch the clock. We stop living by the seasons and the cornerstone moments in the year when seasons shift and instead live our life by our online calendar. We stop noticing the many moons passing and instead focus on which presents to buy for Christmas. We stop noticing all the gifts the earth freely gives and instead obsess about our company’s bottom line. We stop being able to recognize the source of our lives and well-being and instead numb the pain caused by the disconnection from earth. We create aliases of ourselves who are doing better than we are – through consumerism, social media, and other addictions.
In their book Coming Back To Life, Joanna Macy and Molly Brown explain:
”The Industrial Growth Society and the technologies it requires depend on decisions made at lightning speed for short-term goals, cutting us off from nature’s rhythms. Time, both as a commodity and an experience, has become a scarcity. It is a painful irony that we who have more timesaving devices than any culture in history are the most time-harried and driven.”
The speed of our lives is required to keep all those fake plates spinning. The minute we slow down, we might hit a pocket of depression as we realize how empty all those activities are. The speed helps us keep going so we don’t collapse in utter panic at how disconnected we’ve become, when actually, it really only takes paying attention to earth, our earthly bodies, and cosmic cycles, to re-establish our connection with the true source of of lives and well-being.
How do we stop the charade and just pay attention?
Physics already shows us that clock time is not real time – that it is a tightly engineered simulation of actual time – a construct which does not vary, curve, bend, stretch or introduce surprises, the way actual Time as understood by physics does. (This NPR piece is a fun primer on these concepts.) Clock time, or atomic time’s tight, boxy, un-natural, un-human, and un-earthly form of time is useful for synchronizing human activities, like knowing when the train will arrive, when to pick your child up from school, or when the last trade can happen before the close of the stock market.
But if clock time were a fabric, it would be a steel suit. Wouldn’t you rather wear silk?
Who benefits most from clock time? Individuals amassing and hoarding earth’s resources. Without clock time, the machine of endless growth requiring hectic production and consumption would fail. If we realized we had enough, we would stop being fooled by the manufactured urgency of clock time – a kind of game of musical chairs in which we fight to survive while leaving others in the dust behind us to receive less.
By being disconnected from earth, we become disconnected from the present moment. While we are in bodies, the present moment is not some theoretical construct; rather, it is an embodied, visceral experience of “Now.” This moment. On this planet. Our bodies have the needed density to help us experience Time, to look into the eyes of a child, to watch the sun rise over the sea, to feel stillness as the earth rests in winter. Our bodies need Earth to experience these things, Now, in any moment of time. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the one for whom Now is real, needs a body to be aware of it.
Time slows down enough here on the earth plane for us to drop into the Eternal Now. While it may be possible in the dream state, it is certainly not as easy to become aware of Now while the body sleeps. The laws of Time don’t operate the same way on that plane of awareness. While we are in bodies that travel through space, the Eternal Now can be accessed/ noticed much more easily.
For these reasons, being in a body, and slowing down enough to connect with Earth Time is so important.
Perhaps in the next few years astrophysicists will discover something about time that will upend clock time, and bring into being a more natural way of relating with time. Until then, perhaps we can settle for the wonder and awe of a sunrise, a full moon, the birth of a child, the budding of a flower, the way the earth receives all that passes from time and creates from that dead matter, sustenance for those alive.
All in her own time.
The Moon empties out to her blackest black at 1:47am Eastern Time on Thursday, Nov. 20. (Wednesday night will be the time to connect with the potency of the beginning of this lunar cycle.) Set against a backdrop of stars the ancient Seers of India called Anuradha, this New Moon of November tugs on our devotion.
Each community has its own story. The United States community has its own story. A wetlands ecosystem has its own story. The class of 2026 has its own story. The Earth Community has our own story. At this lunation we are seeded with devotion to the ideals behind the community’s story of where we’ve been, who we are now, and where we’re going.
Part of what’s happening as Saturn and Neptune align, is that our cultural awareness of the nature of time is dissolving. Time collapses in on itself. The Now that holds the past, present, and future, becomes more accessible as the “arrow of time” reaches the edge of the cosmic sea of consciousness and instead of moving forward, seems to reach the edge of all history, all at once, within the human psyche.
Collectively, with Jupiter briefly entering a spot in the sky where he will trine both the New Moon and the Saturn Neptune conjunction, a shining moment of illumination is possible when we empty ourselves of concepts of where this is all heading and surrender to the unknown, in faith that it will be good.
Your words remind of a quote from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:
"Be patient and without bitterness, and realize that the least we can do is to make coming into existence no more difficult for Him than the earth does for spring when it wants to come."
Just Wow!