Human beings in cities, and many of us who live in the countryside, have lost our sacred bond with nature. The respect and sensitivity that our ancestral and Indigenous communities maintained for millennia in their relationship with Pachamama—the great Mother-Space-Time—and with her micro and macrocosmic rhythms have been largely forgotten.
As we moved to urban centers and became increasingly sedentary, an anthropocentric consciousness gradually took hold, disconnecting us from our essential nature and our embodied sense of interconnection with the whole. Along with this, we forgot the offerings and celebrations of gratitude to honor the cycles and continuity of life. As a consequence, we lost our spiritual identity as a species embedded in the web of life.
Instead of being the lovers and guardians of the rhythms, ceremonies, songs, and praises for Mother Earth-Father Cosmos—a fundamental role of human beings that Indigenous peoples still maintain—we became the strategists, producers, and consumers of her gifts. We forgot our fundamental role in the concert of life, and instead of taking only what was necessary and doing what was ours, we positioned ourselves at the center, as creators, and took up all the space. We established philosophies and sciences to validate our separation—the profound source of human suffering—and we exiled ourselves from our earthly family.
Little by little, their voices faded until we could no longer hear them. We could no longer feel the loving whisper of our Mother, cradling us, nor the instructions of our Father, opening the way, clarifying it. Our hearts began to close, no longer receiving the abundant energy with its healing blessings. From this separation comes a beautiful invitation from the Pachamama Alliance to help each other to remember what it was like to listen to the Earth and how it feels to be intimately connected, nurtured, and loved by her.
The first thing we can do to regain our connection with her is to withdraw the attention and power that we give away to various technologies and electronic devices. We need to see them again for what they are—machines and instruments—and return to the body. It is through our veins that the rivers of the Earth literally flow. It is in our hearts that we can feel the spirit of all beings.
The second thing is to look at the Earth again and caress her. To contemplate her beauty, to recognize her kisses in the dew, in the breeze, in the sunset that she never forgets. To enter into physical and sensorial contact with her. Her messages and affection are everywhere—in the flowers, in the clouds, in the songs of birds, of crickets, in the buzzing bees and hummingbirds. She always speaks to us, everything is synchronized, and there are instructions everywhere, as taught by the Andean ceremonial leader, Arkan Lushwala, our guide in the art of deep listening to the Earth.
And the third is to grow quiet—to treasure stillness, to commune with the spacious emptiness within us that allows us to rest in her being. Listening is impossible in an overly active and anthropocentric mind, which prioritizes the human intellect. Everything will flow better if we relocate ourselves to the position and consciousness that corresponds to us: that of a member of the great tree of life.
Then, perhaps, if we humbly quiet ourselves—stilling the endless flow of thoughts and ideas—and open our hearts, our bodies, and our spirits to a more subtle listening, we may begin to perceive the greatest of all gifts: the loving, gentle, and wise tenderness of our Mother.