Listening to the Land’s Dreaming Intelligence

“We need to listen to the land’s dreaming intelligence, hear its stories and hear its vast and more than human voice. All our dreams are connected with our bodies, all our dreams are connected with each other…” ~Jason Hine

We need something much deeper than just eco-psychology; it is not enough to do psychology, psychotherapy or healing in the context of nature or to do ecstatic dance in a concrete building, rather there may be a need to get on the land and listen to the land’s sentient intelligence.

When we sense some kind of intelligence in the land it may not just be us ‘projecting’ something onto the earth but rather the earth dreaming us, a larger force of nature communicating with us. We may need to consider what the land has to say. What does the land want from the human beings on it? What is the land’s greater dreaming? What new story for life on earth is the land trying to bring forth at this time?

We need to listen to the land’s dreaming intelligence, hear its stories and hear its vast and more than human voice. We need to hear the animals and plants, the otters, foxes, nightjars, sea trout, sunfish, curlews, herons, plantain, dog rose, pear blossoms, walnut trees, old growth copses, muddy estuaries, ancient dreaming forests and the mountain and the rivers speak.

A psychological perspective leads us to believe that myths, complexes and so on are inside us, but they are also to be found in our relationship with the land, in our interpenetration with the non-human intelligence of the earth.

It is not exactly that the earth and its spirits and non-human intelligences are ‘outside’ us either, rather there are innumerable ‘outsides’ and ‘insides’ which are interpenetrating or entangled with each other, or another way to look at it, there is one vast ‘inside’ which includes not just our psyche and body but also our community, world events, the hills and rivers, rooks and egrets nesting in willow trees and basking sharks ploughing through dark waters.

All our dreams are connected with our bodies, all our dreams are connected with each other, all our bodies are connected and our somatosensory awareness in relationship to others has the effect of dreaming each other and our culture into existence.

Political ideologies, illnesses, world problems, and ancestors, ghosts, demons, faeries, Gods and Goddesses, yidams and benevolent spirits are all embodied non-locally in us, in the land, and in our relationship, our disconnection or connection, with each other and with the earth’s dreaming intelligence.

If we want to bring more consciousness to our communities and repair our relationship to each other and to the earth then we need to bring more consciousness to these powers, especially to their more difficult, repressed, disavowed, oppressed, taboo, terrifying, problematic, aggression or grief-filled embodiments, as well as those that are full of joy, magnificence and pleasure.

We may need to go deeper into them, to enter their somatic embodiments, phenomenological states, movements, stories, myths and visions and allow them to be seen in council, in play, in ceremony, in conflict resolution and in ceremony.

By Jason Hine

Jason is an earth based facilitator, deep ecologist, ceremonialist and coach who helps people to connect with their mythic self and the sentient dreaming intelligence of the earth to find vision, overcome obstacles, build community and resolve inner and outer conflicts.

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