When the Earth begins to speak

Last week, I had a dream.

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen a brief mention of it there.

I am sharing it here today, and elaborating on some thoughts I’ve had since.

Before I get into it, let me say that I acknowledge that there is a lot of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty in the world right now.

I am going to be speaking truthfully here. I know you don’t come to me for the “good vibes only, love and light” stuff.

But I also know that many of us are tender right now. Tired, worried, and burned out from checking the news all the time.

So if you need a break, bow out now. You can always come back to this later.

Here’s what I have to share today:

I have had a long relationship with the dream world and believe that when you are called to something in a dream, you need to pay attention and act upon it as best you can.

Last week I had such a dream and was asked to deliver a message.

The Earth spoke to me in my dream.

And She was pissed.

Her anger was palpable, a white hot burn.

She was speaking to me through the symbols of tarot.

She showed me the Tower card and said, “I want my property back.”

It’s easy, and common, to think of the Earth as a mother archetype: gentle, nurturing, and endlessly generous.

We forget that Earth, like all archetypes, energies, and deities has other aspects to her. She is not a vending machine. She is not disposable. She is not here to take from without anything in return.

I want my property back.

There is a spiritual law that requires us to make an offering before we can ask for something new.

You must give before you receive yet how often do we practice that in our society?

We build highways over top of forests. We build homes over ancient burial grounds. Condos grow like weeds.

We pillage the earth for its treasures and resources but what do we replace it all with?

In my dream, the Earth reminded me that in tarot, we see images of people who have their hands full, and others whose hands are empty.

The spiritual law of making a sacrifice for what you want is reflected in the tarot.

You want abundance? You must first make space for it.

You cannot be walking around with your hands full and expect to grab hold of even more.

If I am reading for someone who is asking questions about how to gain more, get more, invite more into their lives, and all I see are busy hands, I know they don’t have capacity for all that they want.

“What will you let go of first?” I ask.

We are taught that we can “have it all” in this world, but is that true?

The pace of collective life is unsustainable. We know this already through climate change and environmental destruction.

The apartment my husband and I live in overlooks a valley. The valley has a big highway running right through it – no joke. We have the most beautiful view. Hawks fly by our window.

And there are also always traffic jams. Every couple of weeks there’s an accident at the off-ramp below us.

Since we moved here four years ago, I’ve often looked out the window at all the traffic and said, “This is just one highway of many. It’s busy all day and all night. Multiply this over and over around the world. This our everyday, everywhere.”

I sleep with earplugs most nights to tune out car mufflers and banging trucks. I try not to think too much about a study I once heard that said living by a highway increases your chances of lung cancer.

I must admit something: I like how much quieter things have become in the last couple of weeks.

I haven’t been sleeping with ear plugs.

I have quietly filed away the reports of better air quality in certain cities now that there is nowhere to rush to.

I think about that news as I look out my own window at the highway below and I ask myself:

Do we really have to go “back to normal” after all this?

Can’t we stop to think about what could be different moving forward?

Is this a time to envision new alternatives? Different schedules?

A new pace and approach to life that restores rhythms we have forgotten?

Because it is just our connection to the Earth that we are out of alignment with.

It is ourselves.

Look at what is between our hands: Pocket-sized computers, steering wheels. Many of us are isolating now, but what were we before?

I am inside working, as I always am during the week.

I have a lot of people who get into their cars every morning, or press onto buses and trains. They don’t speak to anyone else. They get to work, where they have to stay until it’s time to leave. On their home, they don’t speak to anyone else.

Once home, they are in for the night. They watch Netflix, or go online. They go to bed. They get up the next day and do it all over again.

What are we holding onto that is preventing us from really living – in ways we have forgotten? In ways we are thirsting for without even knowing it?

Things take time to replenish, and grow. Seasons only last months, not decades. Even the Earth knows not to sustain a single temperature, wind, rain or snow for longer than is necessary.

“Look,” the Earth said in my dream, pointing the Tower card and the empty hands of the people falling through the sky.

“I am emptying people’s hands now because they no longer know how to empty them on their own,” the Earth said.

She told me that the Tower card is about a need to look at what it’s time to let go of. There are towers we will not be returning to.

Those towers may be metaphorical, or physical. That is something we’ll have to wait and see about.

The people in this card can’t fall upwards, only down. Once they are there, there is no re-entry, only rebuilding.

The Tower card shows us a free fall from structures that the Earth is reclaiming through her lightning and hail.

What are you ready to let go of?  

What are you ready to give back to the Earth?

What is the silence of this time telling you?

What might you hear if you put your ear to the ground and listened to the Earth right now?

Through the silence that has fallen over so many cities right now, She is waiting to speak. Ready to be heard.

Listen.

Stay safe, and be well.

Until next time,

Liz xo