The lessons of extraordinary times.

To begin with, we are living in extraordinary times. We have been told of the effects of global warming from our Elders whose words have been reinforced by the warnings of scientists all over the world. We now must integrate also the effects of chemical poisoning, eradication of species, and the general pollution of the earth and its waters. Our collective shadow is growing, fed by denial and lies, entitlement issues, and lack of true information. In this time, our right to know has been therefore suppressed, our "news" altered to fit political expediency. The information we receive forms our opinions and perceptions, eventually our laws and collective body politic. We are coming to realize we cannot live on the "outside" of these times, we must interiorize nature back into the heart of being human, into the sacred love and connectedness of all life. We must listen to true information regarding our planet by looking at causes and listening to solutions, many of which are inherent to nature herself.

In 1996, The Journal of the American Medical Association published a paper, "Global Warming and Emerging Infectious Diseases," in which the process of global warming and the incidence of several types of diseases are shown to correlate, determinants being biological, cultural, technological, and socio-economic. Vector-borne illnesses such as malaria and toxin-borne illnesses like Hunta viruses, Dengue Fever, Arboviral Encephalitis, and cholera are shown to be effected by habitat change, the result of altered weather and warming. Research shows that ozone depletion also may exacerbate the effect of climate change on infectious disease as well as cause immunosuppression by altering T-cells and lymphokine production. As far as we know, despite great interest at the time of the findings of this paper, government officials did little to create preparedness should such epidemics occur.

Pandemics almost always follow war, not only because of poor nourishment of populations (i.e. inability to sustain proper nutrition because of compromised social and economic pathways, less food available, spoilage of agricultural land and water, etc.) and healthcare systems that fail. Fear and grief are the central emotional life of war, where displacement and destruction of Homeland and belief systems and family ties are rife. The anomie during and following wars creates a spiritual sickness and longing that we all must find a path through. Our generations have gone a lean fifty years forward since the last of two great wars; as yet we are just beginning to build relationship and connection. Vietnam, The Gulf War, and now The Iraq War are but abstractions to young people who have never really been told the reality of how war's dust trickles down to future generations. The remnant smoke of war lingers as we grapple for ways to connect with the destruction it causes on all levels of life. War's emotional heart and spirit must therefore go into our collective shadow. Our relatedness to all of life must be strong enough to see that no single part is separate, and that all is interrelated.

On forest walks, I often think of how all life that has ever been is here on the earthen floor, in the medicine plants and in the pure air of Madison County, NC. I think the feelings of harmony that come even in times of upheaval, come because we are everything that surrounds us. Our cells participate in every thought and intuition; we could call it an unconscious reckoning. Dr. Candice Pert's work, published in the early 1990's, was dedicated to the understanding that all cells produce hormones and operate in a highly sophisticated and individual way. It was shown that hormones are produced not by just a few organs but by all the cells of the body. The connectors between the immune system and the emotions, neuro-peptides, form an exquisite web and relay system. The work of Dr. William Gough has demonstrated how cellular communication processes, "move from a state of entrainment of signals from the heart, brain, and breath to achieve an internal coherence state in the body." Coherence is brought about also through the conscious "easing-up" of inner constraints. This inner state, available at any time, could be seen as unconditional love, "because the physical and the soul of all things become as one." As individuals now in process, we can declare a relationship with our deepening times and with events themselves. This relationship is reflective, memorable, and is embracing of real events.

Our inner earth carries such diversity and history. Each person carries a vital story and a part of the history of all mankind in our bodies, just as the general unconscious holds the archives of ancient myth. In Carl Jung's book, Two Kinds of Thinking, this thought is elaborated. "Just as our bodies still retain vestiges of obsolete functions and conditions in many of their organs, so our minds which have apparently outgrown those archaic impulses still bare the mark of the evolutionary stages we have traversed, and re-echo the dim bygone in dreams and fantasies."

To experience the body as something that has evolved out of nature brings a sense of wonder and mystery. Merloau-Ponty has said, "My personal experience must be the resumption of a pre-personal tradition ... therefore, another subject beneath me for whom a world exists before I am here and marks out my place in it. This captive or natural spirit is my body."

Bacteria are one of the most primary forms of life. The combination of bacteria into groups formed the first nucleated cells that later merged into complex life forms. The idea that varied groups of plants, animals, and fungi emerged from the same simple bacteria seems almost dangerous to many whose beliefs say we evolve in isolated existence units. Stranger still, the mitochondria in cells have their own derived genes. The mitochondria process most of the energy that the cells live off and sustain life by. Mitochondria were once free bacteria that had been absorbed into cells to provide energy for their metabolism. What innate intelligence! Many of the wild free bacteria that did form symbiosis ate our ancestors and can accordingly be found within us now.

"Other species are our kin: all eukaryotic organisms from plants to insects and humanity itself, are thought to have descended from a single ancestral population that lived about 1.8 billion years ago." We share a common genetic code and have arisen "from other organisms already here."

The times we live in, our gestalt of the last hall of 2005, is also the misguided body of our thoughts and dreams. We know our creaturehood does not draw a line between then and now, outer and inner. In the Yoga Buddhist tradition, the subtle channels within the body, the nadis, are driven by the wind channels: literally our emotions, thoughts, and intentions. Our "inner winds" relate intimately with the cells and mitochondria as they do to our fears and hopes. Sacred deities protect and enliven organs and ate themselves recognized through mantra and prayer. These correspond and communicate instantaneously to our "outer" winds: hurricanes and other climate-related happenings. If you find this strange, think of how we poeticize nature into our greatest literature. In an early poem I remembered, a dying man's last words were all the names of the rivers of his country. In Welsh there are over seventeen words for "sunset." What is even stranger is that we think we have no effect on nature other than physically. I have seen my friend Sadie talk to trees and after listening, the trees begin to more and ripple on a windless day.

It is a beautiful morning now. The trees are giving freely of their oxygen, the secretions of the river speak with their brethren waters everywhere. In our gratitude for all that we are and are not, let us remember the earth whose selfless compassion supports us, then let us teach our children well.

Diana Osbourne is a traditionally-trained homeopath who lives and practices in Hot Springs, NC.