Ecological Implications
Once we enter into a personal loving relationship with the living, vital presence of Gaia, we can never again relate to our home planet in the fragmented fashion we now do, by separating the totality of Gaia's surface into our human patchwork of national boundaries... by perceiving our Earth's respiratory system, the rainforests; as so much tonnage of raw lumber... or Gaia's circulatory system as rivers and oceans we can pollute with impunity. The current paradigm makes possible all these acts of ecological violence because it doesn't take into account the totality of our Earth's physical being. It doesn't perceive our Earth as an organic, dynamic, intelligently self-regulating and richly diverse living orb existing within the larger context of Cosmic space.
Once we enter into the more mature Earth/human bond of Planetization, we can never go back to this type of fragmented and objectified attitude towards our Earth any more than we can now relate to a friend solely through his left foot, or the right side of his abdomen. Only those suffering from the same profound neurological disorder that befell the title character in Dr. Oliver Sach's best-seller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat, can perceive others in such a distorted and fragmented fashion.
Earth Evolution
The Noosphere doesn't merely surround our Earth. Through our creation of the Noosphere (the 'thinking envelope' around our Earth), we participate in evolving the very being of our Earth. The Noosphere is a part of Gaia. It's creation is a process of self-organization at the planetary level as our human Collective Consciousness Field phase shifts from a state of randomness, into a higher state of coherence. The details of this process are dealt with more fully in the section, Consciousness. Through our participation in creating the Noosphere, we become not just loving, but essentially parasitic creatures feeding off our Earth Mother - but co-participants in a mutually beneficial bio/psycho/spiritual symbiosis that is self-organizing and transforming not only our human Collective Consciousness Field - but our home planet as well; into a more evolved state of coherence and complexification.
"(M)an's fundamental aim, to attain Heaven by bringing Earth to its fulfillment.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Opening Our Hearts
Establishing an emotional connection to our Earth can unleash a torrent of emotions. We're all aware of the horrendous environmental devastation our species has perpetrated, and the tremendous suffering we've inflicted, and continue to inflict, on Earth's other children. Opening ourselves up to a personal relationship with our Earth often brings to the forefront of awareness feelings of guilt and sorrow over all the destruction and pain our species has caused, and continues to inflict. But we must confront and eventually move beyond these painful feelings if they emerge. Only by acknowledging the enormity of our crimes against our Earth and other species, can we restore our right relationship to them.
Anyone who has ever ran a counseling group (or attended a good number of them as a participant), has no doubt heard many heartfelt personal disclosures from people who've carried around a lifelong burden of guilt and anguish over having witnessed the physical battering of their mother, or a scapegoated sibling. In such an abusive family dynamic the true extent of the horror of such brutality is often minimalized and 'normalized'. The abuse is rarely acknowledged within the family.
For people who've grown up in such a dysfunctional home it's often as if they carry deep within their Soul a mute scream of horror like the one portrayed in the artist Edvard Munch's famous painting The Cry. It's an anguished crying out that remains forever frozen at the very depths of their being as a result of all the violence they witnessed repeatedly as children, but had no means of processing and working though. Growing up in such a household, no adult ever modeled for them the only healthy and appropriate human response to witnessing repeated acts of violence inflicted upon another - which is to recoil in horror and outrage at such brutality.
The Cry Writ Large
In a larger sense, our societal 'family' has trapped each one of us in the same type of abusive family dynamic. We're all aware of the torments of factory farming and slaughterhouses, old growth forests clear-cut for lumber, industries that poison rivers or giant earth movers that sheer off whole tops of mountains to reach the coal underneath. No matter how much society attempts to normalize, rationalize, minimize or peripheralize these crimes against our Earth and other living beings - we all bear witness to them either directly, or through our media. And in response, deep in our Soul we bear a frozen cry of anguished horror.
Whenever and wherever abuse is institutionalized, one must first objectify the victim, be they the 'gooks', 'rag heads' and 'evildoers' we're at war with, the 'beef on the hoof' gentle creatures whose flesh we've acquired a taste for, or the 'tonnage of raw lumber' others view as a sacred wilderness area. If and when such objectification ends, one usually cannot help but empathize with the suffering of the victim. That's why they're systematically objectified in the first place. Entering into a personal relationship to our Earth, for many of us; often brings to the forefront of our awareness the suffering and devastation we've inflicting on our Earth, and other species, as we begin to free our minds and hearts from a lifetime of enculturated objectification toward them. Though this process might be painful at first, the guilt and anguish gradually come to be replaced by a deepening love. Not to confront these painful feelings is to remain in the disempowerment and immobility of denial. If these painful feelings emerge, one must allow them to surface until the tears subside... not only so that we can then enter into right relationship with Earth and the rest of creation... but in order to heal and recover our own humanity as well.