Before Caroline Myss wrote the pivotal book Sacred Contracts,
which drew Ted and me to her great body of work, she wrote about
the body’s energy systems, called chakras, in her book Anatomy of the
Spirit. These seven energy centers were first identified and explained
by the mystics of India; Myss describes them metaphorically as little
revolving hard drives, loaded with memories and purpose. The chakras
run along the spine to the top of the skull. The lower three are in the
area from the tailbone to the solar plexus. They deal with our survival
needs: acquiring food, drink, shelter, protection—material things—
solidifying our connection with family and earthly roots. The upper
three, from the throat to the crown of the head, regulate the needs
of our minds and spirits: choice, speech, logic, reason, intuition, connection,
meaning, destiny. The fourth, between the solar plexus and
the throat, mediates the upper and lower chakras and is the seat of
emotion. It is called the heart chakra.

Symbolically speaking, we could say that today, while our lower
three chakras are devouring (obesity is at epidemic levels), our upper
three are starving (ditto depression and a sense of hopelessness).
Our heart’s task is to find the happy medium so that our upper and
lower energy systems can be congruent. It’s a monumental task for
our stressed-out, overworked hearts. Notice how many television
commercials feature medications aimed at treating heart disease,
high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. The pharmaceutical companies
know what ails us, even if we don’t.

The template of the body’s seven chakras illustrates the wisdom
of our own unraveling, how we have much to learn from what our
own bodies are telling us—if we will only listen. There is healing in
that listening and in that effort to reconnect ourselves to the global
life force we are all a part of. Reestablishing a connection to the
earth reunites us to our hearts. Working with the earth is intrinsically
healing and heart based.

Earth is at the center of our existence;
we are born from her and return to her
at the end of our lives.

She connects us as human beings—like one body with over seven billion
movable but integrated parts. What happens to the earth happens to us—we
are not separate from her, and we are not separate from one another. Once
we begin to see that, the way we look at our own lives can shift,
opening a whole new world of possibility to each of us.

Our first chakra is the one closest to the earth when we sit on
the ground. Our seventh resides at the top of the skull. A break
in the first chakra means that there can be no congruence for the
whole, no feedback loop for the system. Because of the broken connection
in our first chakra and the wounding and disconnection of
our fourth, the heart chakra, people are starving for connection and
for meaning.

Anyone who turns on the television for five minutes or scans
the titles of books, magazine covers, or internet blogs knows the
truth. Something has to change, and it has to happen quickly. It’s
time for us to awaken from our stupor and acknowledge that waiting
for someone else to step up and make the first move isn’t the
answer. The people we’ve been waiting for are already here. It’s us—
concerned citizens, neighbors, fathers, mothers, siblings, professionals,
the young, and the wisdom holders.

You know—earthlings.

Ted once reminded me of a trip he had made to visit a Yaqui
shaman friend of ours named Lench Archuleta, with whom he had
studied nature and earth spirituality in the Arizona desert. “One
afternoon we sat on a bluff overlooking what appeared to be a distant
dust storm. It wasn’t. The bulldozers cutting deep swaths were
making space for yet another new subdivision. As we watched,
Lench told me his tribe has a name for us. They call us termite people,
because we are eating the earth’s flesh. And by doing that, we are
literally eating our future, our world. It is, he said, a form of madness,
of suicide.”

Enter the giveaway…

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