AoSL Feature Article: Healing Ourselves, Healing Earth Christine Freeman

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Welcome to my first column of Seeds of Soul.  In these monthly articles dealing with emotional/psychological health, I will offer practical suggestions and thoughts for reflection.  I invite readers to participate in the content of this column by letting me know about your questions or concerns.  You can leave a message to my attention with The Green Hills Gazette, or on my office number 705-745-3138.
 
In the month of April, our attention is often drawn to the earth; we eagerly await the first new shoots of green poking through the brown earth, rejoice at the warmth of spring sunshine, and watch the grass get greener with every rain.  All over the world, people participated this week in Earth Day celebrations to further heighten our awareness of our relationship with the earth.
While psychological health and healing are the focus of this column, more and more we are understanding that just as the mind and the body are inextricably linked, so are the individual and the environment.  Our actions and attitudes affect not only our individual lives, but also the life of our planet.  Unconscious decisions of humans which don’t respect the needs of the environment result in an ailing planet.  Because we are so embedded in the environment, we share, in a very personal and individual way, the sufferings of the earth.  Polluted air may manifest as respiratory problems and heart disease.  Toxins in the water and the earth can become cancerous cells in our bodies.
 
Each of us is like one of the earth’s cells.  Disease in our own bodies begins with just one unhealthy cell, one place in the body where the energy doesn’t flow as it’s meant to.  Soon, the cells around that one unhealthy cell are affected as well.  The blockage gets bigger, and has a larger effect.
On an individual level, as we go about our daily lives, pain often serves to focus our attention - whether pain in the body or emotional pain.  It is a natural response to try to avoid pain, find ways not to feel it.  But pain serves a purpose.  It is through the pain of our loved ones that we learn compassion.  It is through feeling our own pain that we learn about healing.  Allowing ourselves to feel our pain, and do what we can to heal it, is a gift to the planet.  Just as our diseases are interconnected, so is our healing.  As we take care of ourselves, becoming healthier and more conscious individuals, we’ll know what we need to do to take care of the earth.  Our consciousness in healing our own wounds translates into consciousness in healing the wounds of the earth.
Our healing work is to open ourselves to the flow of energy that connects us to the entire universe, living fully and feeling deeply.  This work is not a burden to be picked up and carried around, but rather a tuning into our true natures, and through this, release our unique and individual gifts.  We can plant seeds of soul in the earth, and in our own hearts.