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    LISTEN: THE EARTH MIGHT BE TELLING YOU SOMETHING




 

LAF: Hello Earth! How are you today?

 

EARTH: I'm ok...actually, I'm feeling a little under the weather...let's just say, I've felt better.

 

LAF: Well, I was wondering what your thoughts were concerning things like deforestation, nuclear power and other toxic-waste producing activities that we humans are struggling with including "wild-life management" and "land management"...you know, stuff like that?

 

EARTH: It's funny...I've been wondering if anyone was ever going to ask me...and if they did, would they have the courage to really listen?

 

LAF: Go ahead, give it a shot. I think it's time you set the record straight.

 

EARTH: OK. In reality, humans are a part of me, they grew out of me. I am the source of their creative process. We are inseparable. It’s ultimately a mystery, an unknowable thing. My intention is to keep revolving, keep evolving until such time that I don't. To even begin this conversation is to admit that even a unit is able to communicate with different parts of itself. Like a finger talking to a brain. There's not necessarily a conflict of motives but simply a sharing of information. After that, the immediately contacted unit can move with intention because it's been informed. Fire burns me, do what you want.

 

LAF: Allright. I'm with you so far.

 

EARTH: You see, those are very personal issues for me. It's been frustrating, I've been patient...you know how it feels to be misunderstood? Beside yourself? Walked on? Not trusted? Ignored? Pushed around? Controlled and manipulated? Violated and abused?

 

LAF: Who doesn't?

 

EARTH: Exactly. I've been in the creative/evolutionary mode for these billions of years and only relatively recently has anyone or anything tried to doubt  my evolution so viciously...and out of fear, at that!  If I'm not mistaken, there's been an emotional rift growing between me and a large portion of what you might call "modern man". The group that lives on top of me, not within or consciously involved and beholden to my designs. As if they know something I don't. I could be hurt, wounded, and insulted...but I do believe that people as perhaps, let’s say, the location where I am growing the fastest, are beginning to realize, with some resistance, where their priorities lie.

You see, I serve all life forms, not just humans. I've cherished life-and-death cycles as a unit, a give and take, a web, a balance of opposites whether it happens daily, yearly or over thousands or millions of years. I'm forever encouraging innovative variations including human experimentation leading to wisdom through experience. Because of human "progress", so much is not a mystery to you. Or that's what you believe. I'm losing my homeostasis for current life-forms. I'm losing my balance, as it shifts into a newer stranger relatedness. I have my limitations. I'm like you in that I, too, have forgotten what it's like to die and won’t know till I do, but I surely will, someday. I'm a concrete little planet, not some ideal of immortal bedrock.

 

LAF: Can you elaborate on that?

 

EARTH: Sure, I mean, if planets were the shape of human bodies, and you were a planet, where would you put nuclear waste and other toxins? Where the sun doesn't shine? I don't think so. Would you, in all your intuitive senses, be willing to make something so deadly in the first place? Do what you must with the poisons you've made, but don't make any more of it if you want to remain in a spiraling course away from designs that have given you life.

 

LAF: Interesting perspective.

 

EARTH: Try this: if a bunch of other beings decided that you were to have your head shaved, burned, or to under-go plastic surgery and went ahead and did those things to you without even asking, how would you feel?

 

LAF: I'd be outraged! I wouldn't allow it!

 

EARTH: Me, too! And to think, you've done these horrors to yourselves, not just me. Humans know how the sun makes power now, so why not harness that power cleanly and safely as other life forms have learned to do? Why continue, in a linear fashion, to jeopardize my body and everything it contains for the sake of your abstract notion of economy? Is it a matter of ultimate human nature? If economics is the issue, then why not produce solar-powered parts that wear out and need replacing? Without a planet, you would have nowhere to exist in the human form you all cherish so much, never mind be financially successful. This is what puzzles me. Always has. Oh...I didn't mean to rant on so long...I get emotional sometimes. Sometimes I wish I were just a pile of rocks.

 

LAF: Me too...I mean, it's quite all right. I can see your point. Actually, I can feel your point. I guess I've been sensing something way back in the recesses of my psyche but have never been able to articulate it...I think you've struck a chord in me. Maybe we do have a connection, after all! Wow...thanks!

 

EARTH: Ah, music! The stuff of the universe! Glad you mentioned it! The chord, that is.

        

dahlia

LAF: You are so cool to talk with! Thanks for your time and thoughts. I feel honored to be in your company. Just a few more things. What about earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, and droughts? Knowing that you have the power to destroy me in a second is scary.

 

EARTH: Well...I'm not without my faults.

 

LAF: (chuckles....)

 

EARTH: Come on...You're a human, I'm a planet. We're much a like in more ways than you may be willing to comprehend. We are mirrors of one another. I feel the same way towards humans. I could be destroyed in any given moment without warning, too! You already know about my structural make-up and where it's more accommodating to live. The other things due to weather and evolution are just part of being a planet...not unlike human emotions, actually.

 

LAF: You've got me there, too. So, do you think that humans have a distorted sense of the meaning of "intelligence" and it's boundaries and applications? Much of what you have said today seems so logical and common-sensical.

 

EARTH: Yes...yet I have faith that humans will come to perceive and appreciate the incredible intelligence of the universe and everything in it. No one is alone...everything is all one...get it? If humans have an intelligence, then so does everything else! Nothing and no one is separate from anything or anyone else.

 

LAF: How was it being a ball of ice during what we call the Ice Age?

 

EARTH: It was a totally different experience than the current age.  I can’t say I prefer either. All ages respond to the next one. They’re all quite exciting, actually! I don’t require anything, really…though circling the sun has felt rather consistent, compared to where and what I was before that.

 

I have a question for you.  When humans speak of “leaving the planet”, where do they suppose they’re going?”

 

LAF: I’m not sure. Something happens when we no longer have human form. We call it “dying”. There are many humans that believe you are dying and we want to save you, sustain you, keep you the way we want  you to be. Do we leave the planet….do you know?

 

EARTH: I don’t know if I can say. Unless you shoot a rocket out beyond my atmosphere and gravitational pull…or unless the essence of life, energy, chi or whichever term you use, just ceases to exist and disappears completely…I can’t commit to an answer, yetmy experience tells me that whatever is part of me remains part of me in an endless cycle of transformation.

 

Home is home. I am yours.

 

LAF: Oh Mighty Planet We Call Home! Give me five!

 

EARTH: Sure...I've already given you forever...no problem! And a simple response to your initial concerns, if someone would have asked me first before they went ahead with any of it, I would have said "Well, if you feel you must do these things, go ahead, but I really wish you wouldn't." I guess it's a matter of radical trust...it's a tough concept but, actually, very simple. On a molecular level, anyway. Has your body ever said "Hey, I can't eat another bite" but you order desert anyway?

 

LAF: Yes, but I recovered from it.

 

EARTH: So you did. So might the current life-from balance. But are we talking about apple pie or noxious fumes and radiation? Are we talking about a stomach-ache or nuclear holocaust? Actually, I ‘m not concerned for myself; I’ll be just fine as the eons pass. Yet if humans want to continue as an extension of me, they’ll need to own me as their source and someday they will return to me in some form or another. What’s so bad about that, anyway?

 

I don't know. Curiously enough, I'm still an optimist. The entire universe and even humans may be more intelligent than even I could imagine. Thank you for letting me speak my heart. Who knows? Maybe the future will teach us all something new!

 

LAF: Thank you, my Beautiful, Inhabitable Planet! The least I can do is ask...the most, to listen!