The Amazon Burning Inside Us
By: Bella B
Tags: Spirituality, Social Change, Amazon

Last night I woke up suffocating and gasping for air. Congested from a cold, I work up to a world of burning rainforests, cries for help, witnessing destruction at its worst. I made an effort to awaken from the nightmare, but remembered that I was fully awake, living the world’s biggest nightmare. I tried to calm myself down, but the breath, my only tool for reassuring my body, was failing. In that moment, the Amazon was inside of me, and we were burning together, breathless.

Overtaken by the oppressive forces of far right extremism and greedy capitalism, our planet is burning down, drowning, dying right in front of our eyes. Dominated by the egocentric aggressive powers, devoid of empathy and compassion, our current world order has a tight grip on us, guiding us into straight into an abyss. We all ask ourselves: What has happened? How have we come to this? We blame those in power, and juxtapose ourselves with those ´monstrous´ forces, idealizing the pure intentions in our fight for a better world. Yet deep inside we know that what we see in the outer world, in politics, in the economy, in our social fabric has deep root in each and every one of us. The dark forces we so vehemently condemn in the outer world are choking us from within. And unless we transform the inner world, the outer destruction will continue.

Every time we chose routine over passion, work over purpose, each time we ignore an extended hand or fail to look up from our cell phone screen, every time we find something more ´important´ than being with our children and loved ones, we fail. Each time we buy something we don’t need, each time we pollute our body with poisonous food and our mind with senseless information, each time we chose not to listen, we slowly strangle hopes for a loving compassionate world.

Let’s wake up. Lets stop this senseless fight between the right and left, because at the core we have to first address the struggle between the right and left inside. The chaos in the outer world is fueled by our imbalance between our female and male energies inside. Yin and Yang in Taoism represent the energies of the Tao, the way of the nature, the order of the universe. Water and fire, introversion and extroversion, feeling and speaking, action and rest, they work together to create wholeness. When one overpowers the other, even by a small margin, an imbalance and disease rein in the body, nature, and the universe.

After centuries of patriarchal oppression, authoritarian models of education, rein of knowledge over emotional wellbeing, suppression of desire, female yin energies have dwindled to its lowest levels in all aspects of our existence, individual and societal alike. Our world order, economic and leadership models, organization of society, individual growth and educational/parenting paradigms are all fueled by exaggerated masculine energies raging inside of us: competition, oppression, power struggles, endless action, consumerism, aggression, and dominance.

We now find ourselves come to an impasse, where male energy has completely overtaken all things living, creating gross imbalances, threatening existence itself. The fires in the Amazon, the powerful female force of our planet earth, are warning us of the detriments of allowing unchecked competitive growth to continue.

The values we have come to exaggerate for centuries, the male energy qualities, powerful and extremely valuable when in balance with the yin, are now raging like the fire itself, unstoppable and destructive. It’s no wonder that the subjugation of women’s liberty and the obsession with her body is paralleled with an assault on nature and the greed for extracting from our mother earth without allowing and respecting her need for repose, restorative healing. A woman’s body is an extension of nature, of mother earth, cyclical, nurturing, creative, perfectly in balance, and inviting; resilient when allowed time for repose. Female Yin energy is our way back to balance.

If we are to win this battle, both women and men need to reconnect to their nurturing powerful internal force that lies inside, dormant. Once we rekindle the yin energy of nurturance, love, compassion, rest, flow, letting go, play, and sensuality on an individual level, our organization will inevitably start transforming, one structure at a time. Cut-throat competition will give way to creative and cooperative economy, need for legal action will give way to non-violent communication, leadership models will focus on empathy rather than dominance, corporations will be replaced by conscientious companies, focusing on social entrepreneurship and sustainability in lieu of maximizing profit at all cost, and governments will at last be there to maximize social welfare, providing high quality education, healthcare, and social services for all. But most importantly, empathy and loving will melt away aggression and emptiness, restoring our individual balance, allowing us to be whole again.

The Amazon is burning away because of our collective greed for more. If we are to stop the fires and restore our ecosystems, we as individuals need to look inside, quieten our minds. When we reconnect to our internal flow, when we start following the way that nature intended, when we listen to our bodies, we will welcome back the loving and nurturing forces and know exactly what to do to save our mother-earth. All it will take is stepping out of her way and allowing her to bloom again. Awakening to the present moment, giving love and accepting care, listening rather than proving your point, is the way to reconnect to the Self, to nature, and to become part of the bigger whole once again. Let’s put an end to the fires of our internal Amazon one person at time to allow for our higher consciousness to blossom again and to allow nature to take its course.