Earth Day 2015 is as messy and confusing as any ordinary day in the modern world. Despite the efforts of many concerned, caring people, the violence against people, animals, forests, oceans and the fertile soils of our planet continues unabated, perhaps even picking up steam as population growth, climate destabilization and worsening resource scarcity bear down on pressure points all over the world.

I don’t have to tell you this. You know. So many of us are aware of what’s going on, yet our awareness alone does not seem enough to make any difference. Yes, we sign those petitions online; we give to environmental organizations like Greenpeace and 350.org, we try to “reduce, reuse, recycle,” etc. etc., but we know that individual efforts like this are not big enough to create the fast-moving transformational change our Earth needs now, if she is to remain a hospitable place for us and all the other flora and fauna of our geological period to live.

J. Browdy, listening.

During the past year, I have been paying less attention to the mainstream media, with all its constant doom-and-gloom messaging, and more attention to a strong, wise, loving voice that I can “hear” when I am alone out in the middle of an old forest, or on an empty stretch of beach.

Over time I have come to understand this voice as Gaia calling—not to me personally, but Gaia in communication and communion with all life on Earth, me included. It has taken me a while to recognize the depth of this communication, and to realize that it is a two-way avenue…kind of like a wordless exchange that happens not so much in the mind as in the heart, not so much in the realm of thought as in pulses of energy that I am slowly becoming able to receive with more awareness and clarity.

Over time I have become much more aware of, and curious about, the human potential to connect with Gaia on a spiritual, non-material level, following the philosophical lead of a whole host of explorers, including Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jose Arguellas, Mary Daly, Terrance McKenna, Thich Nhat Hanh, Arkan Lushwala, Joanna Macy, Starhawk and so many more.

Many of these wise people have used meditation, trance and/or various kinds of psychoactive agents to help them access what Teilhard de Chardin called “the Noosphere,” a kind of planetary energetic field that all life on Earth participates in, and that humans have the potential to access consciously.

Lately I have been reading books by two women who have tapped into the Noosphere enough to be able to “channel” Teachers from the spiritual realm. I know many of my readers, if I have not lost them already, will stop right there and shake their heads—channeling? Really?

Sharon McErlane

Well, yes, really. What impresses me about these two women, Sharon McErlane and Penny Gill, is their total ordinariness. Both were older women who had been successful in their lives—one a psychologist, the other a professor of political science and dean at Mount Holyoke College for forty years. Like me, they were caring, concerned individuals who were increasingly grief-stricken over the horrors being perpetrated on Gaia by humanity. Like me, they took solace in solitary communion with the natural world, and in writing. And then suddenly, out of the blue, they began to “hear voices,” and these voices turned out to be Teachers from the non-physical realm, from the Noospheric level of the Earthly community.

Penny Gill

As I read the books that McErlane, Gill and their Teachers produced together, I am struck by the similarity of the messages coming through. McErlane’s Council of Grandmothers and Gill’s Manjushri acknowledge that Earth is in crisis; that we are living in an accelerated time of change and transition; and that the outcome for human beings and all other current life forms on the planet is uncertain. We may be swept away as a new cycle of geological time begins.

But there is also the potential for human beings to learn, through the pressures of the environmental crisis, to steward the Earth rather than destroy her. Sharon McErlane’s Grandmothers urge human beings to try to tap into “net of light” that they say encircles and protects the planet. Gill’s Manjushri also talks in terms of light, describing human consciousness, when it is tapped into the positive, life-enhancing energies of the Noosphere, as points of light challenging the darkness that currently engulfs much of our planet.

In What in the World is Going On? Wisdom Teachings for Our Time, Manjushri and Gill have provided a detailed description of what ails our planet and ourselves, and how to work with our own psychology and our spiritual potential to do the best we can to avert the crisis that looms ever closer. Manjushri sees our time as one of unprecedented possibility, when human beings may be able to make a quantum leap in the evolution of our conscious relationship to the Earth.

Heart Wisdom for our time.

The key to this is our capacity for love and compassion, as so many sages from the Buddha to Jesus Christ have recognized; and Manjushri says that in order for us to access love, we must overcome our habitual posture of fear. I will quote at length here, but this is a book that cannot be summarized; I strongly urge you to buy a copy and read it slowly once…then start reading it even more slowly again.

Meanwhile, listen to a little of Manjushri now, as channeled by Penny Gill:

“Fear triggers a contraction of mind, heart and body. This is exactly the opposite of what is needed to respond appropriately to the new surges of energy entering the earthly realms. This is a moment when all beings, but especially humans, can open to higher frequencies of energy, which will allow for more complex forms of communication, a richer understanding of personal and species interdependence, and ultimately a great expansion of human consciousness and understanding. New levels of meaningfulness will be accessible.

“All the energetic bodies of a human being must be able to open more, and fear inhibits that. Responding more skillfully to fear is essential for opening the heart-center, and only the heart-center can guide humans to live in ways that will not result in humanity’s self-destruction. Identifying and dissolving fear is the essential work to save human life on the planet, to protect the precious life of the planet, and to continue the cosmos’s great quest for self-conscious Mind. That seems compelling to us. Our task is to guide, support and teach all who are able to take a responsible role in this essential work. It will inaugurate a new level of partnership between the largely invisible Teachers and the embodied students. We will also help you find each other, so you can create networks of people engaged in and committed to this work. It is revolutionary work, which you don’t recognize yet. It will change the fundamental structure of human relationships and alter the need for and functioning of many human institutions” (Gill, 2015, 87-88).

Remember that the Earth and the Cosmos are one and the same, and we humans are just another manifestation of that endlessly circulating energy. Photo J. Browdy 2014

On Earth Day 2015, I call on us Earthlings to recognize that there is more to our planet than meets the eye—a fact now confirmed by quantum science as well as by our spiritual adepts—and to commit to developing our innate human capacity to function as conscious embodied channels for the cosmic energy/spirit that animates us all. If we can live up to our potential, we may be able to truly, as Arguellas envisioned, make of our planet and ourselves an incredible work of art.

Here is some more encouragement from Manjushri/Gill:

“You see your world crashing in waves of biological, environmental, economic, political and cultural self-destruction. We see that what is emerging is a much more conscious, less dense, and less intense world community. There will be better balance between doing and being. Systems will be able to harmonize with each other. The profound interdependence of all beings and all systems will become the major realization of human consciousness, and this in turn will shape human activities, economic and social organization, and cultural and intellectual life. Whereas modernity is marked by a stunning and thorough exploration of the possibilities of the individual self, the next phase of this eons-long development will be a similarly stunning and thorough exploration of the interdependence of all beings and all systems” (Gill, 53).

This is also the vision that pervades the Fuji Declaration, which has just been released in a beautiful audio narration performed by my friends Amber Chand and Mark Kelso. It resonates with courage, compassion and clarity that we need now above all, on Earth Day and every day. Listen, enjoy and take heart.