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The Soul of Nature:
The Meaning of Ecological Spirituality
Copyright 1996 by Lynna Landstreet. See contents
page for full permissions.
4: Spiritual experience as transformative
 nd
this is where the image of environmentalism-as-religion begins to have
real meaning and relevance. For as the rainforest activist John Seed
has written, facts alone do not change a life; it is the intuitive,
spontaneous awareness -- "not obtained by any act of will or logic"
-- of our connectedness with the subjects of those facts that make them
more than just words on paper, or images on a television screen. It
is that sudden, deep rush of wonder, of reverence for the beauty and
mystery of the natural world, that brings about the connectedness that
motivates action and change:
The figures and extrapolations of the scientists,
combined with the evidences we experience daily, are both mind-boggling
and numbing. They are so real as to test all our capacities of denial,
almost impossible to integrate into the reality of the humdrum of our
daily lives.
They first became real for me when I first participated in actions to
protect some of the remaining rainforests near my home in New South
Wales, Australia. Then I was able to embody, to bring to life, my intellectual
knowings in interaction with other beings -- protesters, loggers, police,
and the trees and other inhabitants of these forests. There
and then I was gripped with an intense, profound realization of the
depths of the bonds that connect us to the Earth, how deep are our feelings
for these connections. I knew than I was no longer acting on behalf
of myself or my human ideas, but on behalf of the Earth -- that I was
literally part of the rainforest defending herself.[7]
I have often used this criterion myself, when attempting to evaluate
spiritual experiences, both my own and those of others. Attempting to
evaluate the spiritual experiences of others may seem presumptuous,
but it is an unfortunate fact of modern life that for many people the
major use of spirituality is as a means of self-aggrandizement, where
the aim is showing off one's "enlightened" state to others.
The most useful way I have found of separating the wheat from the chaff
is to look at whether someone's professed spiritual path or experiences
appear to have caused a qualitative change in their behaviour or perceptions.
And I have often enough found that it did that I remain convinced that
spirituality can have an important role to play in transforming our
relationship with nature -- in practice as well as in theory. I have
seen previously apolitical people sufficiently moved by spiritual experiences
with nature to place their bodies on the line defending wild places
from destruction. And I know that, no matter how deeply I delve into
scientific and ecological understandings of nature, it is not the facts
and figures that are on my mind when I take action on behalf of the
nonhuman world, but the long history of spiritual interactions and encounters
I have had with nature and natural powers.
I think it is important here to draw a distinction between spirituality
and religion, for the two are, to my mind, related, but not synonymous.
Turning once again to the dictionary, we find spiritual defined
first as "of, relating to, or consisting of the spirit" (which
in turn is defined as "an animating or vital principle held to
give life to physical organisms"), and secondly as "of or
relating to sacred matters," which we have already discussed. Religion
we find as "the service and worship of God or the supernatural,"
or, more specifically, as "a personal or institutionalized system
of religious attitudes, beliefs and practices." One is a matter
of spontaneous experience or awareness, the other of a specific system
of beliefs or practices.
While spiritual awareness and experiences certainly can take place within
the context of a set of codified religious beliefs and practices, and
often do, they can also quite easily occur outside such settings. Spirituality
is not necessarily theistic, nor inextricably tied to any specific framework
of belief. Earth First! founder Dave Foreman writes in his essay "The
Arrogance of Enlightenment":
If you want heaven -- it is here. Walk through
an aspen grove on a bright autumn day. The gold in that light is more
real than in the streets beyond the Pearly Gates. If you seek total
union with the cosmos, then float a river, drift into river time, let
the rich red of the San Juan or the crystal of the Salmon make you part
of All. If it's Valhalla you desire, stand with your bold friends before
a bulldozer, then eat, drink and make merry with them in victory celebration
afterwards. And reincarnation -- yes, that too. Your
atoms are of the everlasting rocks, and will become buzzard, weasel,
dung beetle, worm, and so on for eternity after your simple brain sleeps.
Heaven, Nirvana, Valhalla, everlasting life are here and now -- in the
real world. We need nothing more than this paradise into which
we were born.[8]
  
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