The concept of Gaia—the earth as a conscious entity—keeps strengthening in my mind.  This morning a most obvious thought hit me with renewed relevance, as if it were some novel insight.  That was that the land literally birthed us.  As earth, the young rock, began to awaken, she began birthing life, excreting lifeforms from her body.  Humanity was excreted like everything else.  In my mind I view the evolution of life at high speed and I can see the molecules of earth organizing themselves, forming cells and simple organisms, being excreted onto the surface of the earth to act (somewhat) autonomously, evolving into more and more complex and diverse forms—some rooting down, some moving freely.  We humans are walking, mobile globules of land.

All of those overused phrases come to mind again, those metaphors that aren’t metaphors—earth as our source, earth as Mother, being one with the land….

Interesting how the land wanted to make parts of herself mobile.  All of us creepy-crawly parts of the land increase the ways that the earth can dance with herself, experience manifestation.  We can interact with the rooted things, the stationary things, and the other creepy-crawlies.

But we are ultimately just cells of the land, not independent at all.  I can’t quite find the right metaphor, actually.  Are we cells of the land, neurons of the land, holograms of the land, blossoms of the land?

I intuit that to be fully human we can’t be cut off from the land.  I understand that knowledge and wisdom reside in the land, come from the land.  Where else could knowledge reside?  Without the land, if I were a disembodied spirit, floating in the ether, there would be literally nothing to know.

This gets back to Jung’s “Answer to Job”.  Before God created a physical world he could not know himself.  Only by physically manifesting could there be reference points and knowledge.  Everything physical is God referencing different parts and aspects of himself.

More and more I’m beginning to think we have to conceptualize the earth as our mind.  And beyond that we have to conceptualize her as our body too.  We can’t think or know or act without her.  And we’re not just travelers on spaceship earth—like astronauts.  The earth isn’t some hulking lifeless contraption we’re using.  Earth is a pulsing, living, conscious entity of which we are an organ (cell, neuron, blossom,…).

To be fully human we have to tap into our larger mind—the Earth.  It makes the Edith Cobb thesis all the more tantalizing—genius depends upon the Earth.