Meditation to Weave Into the Dream of the Earth
This meditation practice from Seasonal Herbalism helps you to connect deeply with the Dream of the Earth, to awaken your ability to dreamweave with the Earth, and pulls you into a deeper sense of belonging within the web of life.
—
“The following meditation with the Earth helps to ground an embodied sense of the wheel of the year and of our interconnection with the seasonal forces. This practice, when done regularly, helps to deepen relationships with the spirit medicine of the seasons and deepens our alignment with the rhythms of the Earth as she spirals through her cycles. Said another way, this practice reweaves us into the Dream of the Earth.
Find a spot in nature that calls to you where there is plenty of plant life to commune with and to reflect the seasonal energies. For example, if it’s spring, choose a spot where baby sprouts are popping up from the ground or recently burst leaf buds are adorning the shrubs and trees. If it’s fall, you might tuck into a nest of fallen leaves on the Earth.
Once you and your spot have found each other, take the time to connect into this place. Invite your root, the area beneath and around your sitz bones, to soften. Open and invite the energy of Mother Earth to rise and meet you. Invite your heart space to open and as you do, invite the energy of Mother Earth to join you in your heart space. Take the amount of time necessary to establish this connection. Once it is made and you and the Earth can really feel each other, heartfully ask her to help show you, remind you, re-member, and reweave you into a felt sense of your interconnection with all of life, all her children, all your kin.
Notice what arises after having made this inquiry and follow its threads, lingering in this space for as many minutes as it takes to experience a felt sense of interconnection beginning to occur. Open up your field of awareness to include the web of life that exists beneath the entire soil layer, or skin, of Mother Earth. Underneath this soil is a vast interconnected system of mycelium, animals and their burrows, creepy crawlies, roots and rootlets, and all other manner of life. Connect as deeply and as widely with this web of life as you can and feel that you too are a part of it.
Next, open your eyes and look around, seeing with the eyes of your heart the plant life that surrounds you. These relatives, these green elders, are reflections of the wild Dream of the Earth as it is also pulsing through you right here and right now. What the plants’ bodies are doing—whether they are budding, blossoming, withering, or otherwise—is a true reflection of what is occurring within your spirit.
Allow yourself to come into resonance with the plants, allowing them to awaken in you a deeper experience of your belonging to the Earth and all of life. Allow their reflection to open channels within you where the seasonal spirit medicine can flow, showing you how to walk in alignment with the Dream of the Earth through her seasonal march.
Allow the knowings, understandings, and cellular re-memberings to work their way into your psyche, heart, and soul. Continue until you really fully feel the season’s spirit within you and all around you—the season that the Earth is and the season that you are by being a member of her web of life. Breathe into that membership within the web of life as you allow the season to vibrate throughout your cells.
From this place of connection, reflect upon the following.
What does it mean to be a member of the web of life?
What are the duties and responsibilities that arise from my membership?
What is the Dream of the Earth for herself? What is my role in this Great Dream?
It’s wise to repeat this meditation as often as we’re able, so much so that eventually every step we take upon the Earth becomes an available opportunity to be reminded of our kinship, our belonging, and our interconnection to the plants and all of life.
When out in nature, make a practice of cultivating a heart connection between self and all other members of nature. Plants and nature communicate more subtly. They are not overt and loud like we humans. Instead, communications happen on a quieter level, through the heart. Notice how the heart and entire being shift when in the presence of other beings in nature. A change in emotions or sensations or even spontaneous memories arising can all indicate a connection has been made. The communication becomes easier to discern with practice and awareness. When practiced regularly, moving through the world in this manner will over time begin to become an is-ness again.
For those who find this meditation or others like it difficult to access, do not fear or deem yourself a failure. Most of us have an amount of atrophy in our ability to access states of consciousness where our interconnection with all of life occurs. Beginners especially are often stumped by the suggestion that the Earth and plants can talk, wondering how we could communicate with beings who don’t speak the same way we do. Others know that interspecies communication is a thing, yet doubt their ability to engage in the interaction. “
