Heart Ground: A Sense of Kinship
By Sue Hunt
With each year, each new wrinkle line, dirt beneath my nails, a newfound connection and appreciation to the land beneath my feet. A biochemical relationship, a co-regulation process that creates calm currents of creativity in my veins. A yearning to spend less time in the contemporary world of hustle and screens. Purpose arises as I let the land, the sound of water running and hawks circling hold me, hold my emotional body. Slow time fills my days allowing spirit to soar, mind to wander and body to rest.
A love affair with earth, from a young age in my cellular structure. Never wanting to be inside as a kid, plant play, building forts, and hours of make believe in the woods of Appalachia. As age chronologically parallels universal happenings a whisper pulls me back to my childhood roots. It’s simplicity that creates joy, with all our mental complication this truth has been forgotten.
When the body is connected to place there is a soft unfolding, the exhalation of life. The inhalation of rejuvenation is heard. It’s less about “seeing, traveling, conquering” and more about intimate relationships. Being present for the changes, aware of the infertile moments and rejoicing in the abundance when it’s gifting itself.
A sit spot, a place where the sun is collected by the cheeks. The sound of the breeze fills the ears. Coyote cries across the mesa as the morning arrives yet again. There is a sustainable pleasure here, satisfaction comes from effort in merging with the needs of the land. Your seemingly personal needs collapse into that rhythm.
Ego-centric, human-centering takes a back seat. Place identity, a teaching that allows for a sense of deep belonging. Differentiation is no longer the default setting. Merger in the way of support and reciprocity become core values. Core values that seep into you like rains are absorbed by arid soil, like the sun caresses every open and available leaf. The ground of your heart, fortified with acceptance.
There is a grieving, a deeply sensitive sorrow that arises as we watch humanity turn more towards separation, egoic behavior and narcissism. There is a piece of our humanness that dies a violent death when we continually witness this sense of greed and conquest. The heart ground that is the seat of our place identity becomes feeble and underdeveloped. Its sanctuary within and below is desecrated with each ignorance and action of greed.
I have no wisdom on how to cope with this death. Only a suggestion, swim upstream in the current of globalized cultural ethos. Develop a sense of slow time in your days, one in which you can succumb to the rhythms around you. Follow the lead of earth.
Expect some resistance within earth travels at a different speed than the manufactured human mind. This is a learning process, taking the seat of pupils learning from its fiercely beautiful majesty. Gently asking if you too can take a seat upon the soil, like the trees, grasses, herds of cattle and packs of wolves. Belonging inherently requires equality and contribution to all that creates sustenance and balance.
