Cultivating an 'Organic' Relationship with our Environment

The term ‘environment’ includes but is not limited to the natural world upon which we ultimately depend for our survival.  Our environment includes our family, friends, colleagues, customers and competitors.  It includes where we live and the country we live in.  In short, environment is the totality surrounding the unique body-mind we call ‘ourselves’.  Since we identify environment as something ‘other’ than ourselves, it is easy to fall into an adversarial relationship with our surroundings.  Our environment becomes something to exploit, control, dominate, guard against, be afraid of, resist, manipulate, exhaust and, if necessary, destroy. Such a reactive and adversarial way of relating to environment is rooted in ignorance: an ignorance not of our surroundings per se, but of ourselves. We erroneously believe that we are limited to the body-mind, and this is the metaphysical error at the root of conflict.

The true identity of the ‘I am’ is the Absolute:  the same Absolute that is the true identity of the ‘I am’ of every person, animal, plant and insect with which we share the planet.  Consciousness only appears to be localised and individualised as John, Mary, the cat, the dog, etc.  In reality It is simply One, reflected through many prisms called organisms.  Consciousness itself is a manifestation of that pure Intelligence which is the ultimate Source of this universe.  Understanding and accepting this principle intellectually is a first step, but this by itself will not take us beyond our illusion of separateness.  It must be directly realised through meditation and self-inquiry in order for it to become our own discovery:  something experiential and not merely theoretical.

To fully awaken to the truth of the ‘I am’ as Consciousness, is to awaken from the dream of separateness and put an end to conflict.  How can theSelf be in conflict with the Self ?  Without division, there is no possibility of a fight.  To realise that this vast and extraordinary universe is a unified field of Being and that ‘I am’ is also that Being is the great liberation.  As we meditate on Being, gradually we come to feel or sense our oneness with the other.  Knowing the other as ourselves, it becomes impossible to hate him, her or it.  This is empathy, and this is the basis of an ‘organic’ relationship with our environment.  From this insight, it follows naturally that in all of our affairs we are sensitive to and supportive of our surroundings.  Being aware, we consider the impact of our actions on the world around us.  ‘Win-lose’ scenarios are not conceivable to one in whom this intuition of wholeness lives.  We know we will make mistakes and we understand that there is a downside to any action we take.  However, we make compensation and redress when we have unintentionally damaged or hurt anyone or anything in our environment. And we seek the evolution of those technologies, institutions and values, which will nourish and heal, rather than deplete and destroy that whereof we are an integral component…in other words, everything.