The Living Earth

The Earth is not a Thing, but a Living, Conscious Web — and Shamanic Journeying is how we Learn to Listen to the Spirit of the Land.

At the very foundation of shamanism is a simple, radical understanding: the entire Earth is alive and interconnected. Not only alive in the sense of individual living things — humans, animals, plants — but alive as a collective consciousness moving through the whole Web of Life.

That consciousness exists on many levels at once. There is the awareness of each individual being — this bear, this aspen, this person — and there is the larger awareness of an entire species: Bear consciousness, Eagle consciousness, Aspen consciousness. Through shamanic journeying, we can merge our own awareness with these other forms of consciousness, and come to understand the perspective of the beings with whom we share this planet.

Merging With the Consciousness of Place

We can tune in to a single plant or animal. We can also widen our awareness to the consciousness of a whole species, or of an entire place where many beings live together. We might connect with a river mouth where birds, fish, and plants gather — and with the river itself. We can narrow to a single pool, a waterfall, or a nesting bird to hear its particular wisdom, or expand to listen to a whole watershed, a lake, an ocean, a continent, the planet entire. Every place, plant, and animal has its own voice, its own consciousness, its own wisdom to share.

The Spirit That Moves Through All Things

Some call this larger consciousness Gaia — the Mother Being who is the living Earth, functioning as one cohesive system. Others call it the Spirit That Moves Through All Things, the shared life force of creation that flows through everyone and everything. Every living being carries its own personal awareness and also participates in this collective awareness; we all share a common language, and the ability to listen to the broader consciousness of the planet.

Modern science might call part of this instinct — the force that brings a migrating bird, whale, or seal back to the same place year after year to birth its young. From a shamanic perspective, it is the Spirit That Moves Through All Things that guides those migrations, sets the cycles of nature, and tells the trees when to blossom, to fruit, and to drop their leaves. Instinct is more than an animal curiosity; it is a tuning-in to the larger consciousness of the Web of Life.

Right Relationship: How People Once Lived

Traditionally, people who depended on the land tuned in to the consciousness of the place where they lived, and acted as its custodians and guardians so that it would keep providing for generations to come. They never took their survival for granted. They kept things in balance by listening to the Spirit of the Land and understanding Right Relationship — how much could be harvested sustainably, and how much had to be left to renew itself.

When they took an animal, they thanked its spirit for the sacrifice. Hunting and harvesting were done in ways meant to make the herd and the forest stronger — taking the weaker animal, taking only the timber that was needed, and taking it in a way that tended the forest's continued health. In an unfamiliar place, people learned which plants were food, which were medicine, and which were dangerous by sitting with the plants and listening to their spirits. This practice of communing with the spiritual awareness of places, plants, and animals is the underlying basis of most herbal medicine, traditional healing, and ceremony.

When Good Intentions Cause Harm

We can apply this same practice today to help bring the Web of Life back into balance — by asking for guidance about what is right action. Too often in modern history, well-meaning people have tried to fix one problem and created a larger imbalance instead. A predator is introduced to control a "pest" and wipes out native birds. Fires are suppressed for so long that the underbrush builds up, and when fire finally comes it becomes a catastrophe. These are just two of countless examples of the damage caused by good people who are disconnected from the cycles of nature — who look at the living world only with the mind, and forget to also ask the blessing and guidance of the world of Spirit.

It would be easy for those of us who feel the pain of the land to lose sight of the fact that this damage usually comes from ignorance, not malice. The answer is to educate, not to repudiate. Balanced decisions come from working with the Spirit of the Land and Water, and from bringing these healing practices into the mainstream — so that we solve our environmental problems hand in hand with science, using both the spiritual and the rational together.

Journeying to the Spirit of Place

If we want to ease an environmental problem, or understand how to care for a particular place, one of the first steps we can take is a shamanic journey to the Spirit of the Place. In that journey we ask to be introduced to the Spiritual Custodians of the Land — the protecting ancestor spirits who guard and care for it. Often there are both Ancestors of the Land and Cultural Ancestors residing in the same place, so we seek the permission of the cultural ancestors as well, mindful that environmental and cultural preservation are usually only possible together.

Unity, Not Separation

At its root, every one of our environmental problems is a problem of consciousness — a consciousness of separation rather than unity, the belief that we humans are somehow apart from the land and the Web of Life rather than part of it. Unity is fundamental to shamanism, and it is unity with the world of Spirit that lets us communicate with non-human forms of consciousness.

When we feel this kinship in our blood and bones — this oneness with the land, this knowing that we belong to a larger whole — caring rightly for the Web of Life becomes natural. When we recognize that the whole world is one Web, that to vibrate a single strand is to move the entire Web, that whatever happens to one of us happens to all of us, it becomes easy to tune in, to listen, and to know what is right action. And from that place of awareness, we can finally bring the tools of science and technology to bear in the most healing way possible — for ourselves, for the Earth, and for the generations to come.

This is the heart of the Web of Life work — learning to listen to the living Earth and act as her caretakers. If you'd like to learn to journey this way yourself, it begins in Level 1.

— Scott Silverston

Common Questions

Is the Earth alive in shamanism?Yes. At the foundation of shamanism is the understanding that the entire Earth is alive and interconnected — not only as individual living things, but as a collective consciousness moving through the whole Web of Life, on the level of individuals, of whole species, and of entire places.

What is the Spirit of Place, or Spirit of the Land?It is the consciousness of a particular place — a river, a forest, a watershed — that can be communicated with through shamanic journeying. Traditional peoples listened to the Spirit of the Land to understand Right Relationship: how to live and harvest in a way that kept the land in balance for future generations.

How does shamanism approach environmental healing?Shamanism approaches it as a problem of consciousness — of separation rather than unity. Rather than opposing science, it works alongside it: we journey to the Spirit of a place to ask for guidance on right action, then apply the tools of science in the most healing way. The spiritual and the rational together.