Bali, November 5th, 2018
Human gods and saints seemed too busy to speak to me when as a little girl. I prayed and begged to hear their voice or witness an apparition of Jesus or Mary like people did in stories told by the nuns and priests that “educated” me. But the Earth, without being asked or begged to, has spoken to me with the voice of the water flowing through the Amazon river, a resounding testimony of the power of Life emanating from the living being that is the rainforest.
Images of deities in their epic manifestations or the poignant purity of Virgin Mary hardly ever moved as much energy in me as the whisper of the wind blowing over Andean desert mountains in a full moon night.
The rapture ignited in my heart by a wild beach in South West Australia, never emerged for me with such potency in the presence of stunning architectures of cathedrals.
I went to a Catholic school all my childhood and adolescence, and like many others, god never really said a word to me, not directly at least. I was scared by the neo-inquisition style of control the nuns used against us girls, but i was not disappointed in Jehova’s silence, however. I just looked elsewhere for a deeper connection.
Naive as i was as a child, i could not realize that the way i used to drift away with the sound of trickling water in an irrigation canal at my grandpa’s country house was a conversation with Earth. Or that the way i felt being pulled towards the sky when i stared to the stars long enough, was an actual shift of my consciousness effected by the vastness of the universe.
The list of examples of my natural spiritual connection with Earth is long and more valuable than describing them for you to read, would be for you to recall yours and weave them with all our stories of interbeing with nature.
The transcendental relationship between homo sapien and Earth is not limited to saints, prophets, or shamans. It is a natural ability that lies within each one of us. When at age 16 i broke up with religion and followed my heart to seek a deeper connection elsewhere, i unleashed the power of my friendship with Earth and began to understand my profound empathy for all her creatures and elements, my natural birthright to be in direct conversation with her.
At age 19 i found myself, a city girl from Bogota, navigating the Amazon river as part of a service crew, and it was then when i experienced “eco-rapture” for the first time: “a resounding testimony of the power of Life emanating from the living being that is the rainforest“.
The rapture yielded a certainty in my heart while i was taken upstream: I was being called to respond with all my being to the need of the Earth to be preserved in all her majesty for generations to come. Like my childhood naivete did not allow me to understand that i was being spoken to by nature, in my young adult years, i did not understand that the call of the Amazon river entailed more than just becoming an activist. It involved a profound personal transformation journey of learning the old paradigm and deconstructing it over and over. I am still doing that 26 years later.
I am an artist and a facilitator of learning experiences. Ecosapien Evolution is one creative name for one manifestation of a XXI century vision for humanity shared by billions. Its purpose is to offer opportunities for people to unlearn the old paradigm of separation from nature, re-create our role in the interconnectedness of the Web Of Life, and consciously contribute to the eco-sapiens, eco-logical evolution of our species.