HEALING OUR WORLD

I once had a spiritual realization. The insight was: "The earth is not your enemy." Until that point, I hadn't realized how, subconsciously, I had been carrying a deep-seated sense of resentment about simply being on the earth. I resented, in Hamlet's words, "all the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." I resented all the things we each have to do to live on this earth. I felt, again subconsciously, a deep sense of resistance toward all the forces of time, place and circumstance which seemed to be pitted against me. From the moment of my realization that the earth was not my enemy, I began to consciously make my peace with the earth and things of the earth until I reached a point of knowing that the earth is not my enemy, because the earth is my friend. When the first climbers reached the top of Mt. Everest, Western newspapers proclaimed, "Man conquers Everest." When asked for his perception of this event, a great Eastern sage said, "Why not just say, Man befriends Everest." We can heal our world by befriending it.