People tend to take for granted how much the Earth gives to us. It really is amazing how we happen to live upon such a fruitful and beautiful world, but we take it for granted. In fact, we take and we take; we take everything we can. There really isn't anything bad about receiving from the Earth what we truly need, but there needs to be a balance in this, and to balance this we need to give as well. We need to give our respect and care to Mother Earth. Ultimately, we need to care. And much of nature is in need of our care.
We might consider how blessed we are to be alive and have this opportunity of a lifetime. Our lives have truly been given to us. We are born and are taken care of through childhood without much responsibility to take care of others or our environment. The growth into adulthood should be an understanding and agreement of our responsibility of being human, yet this is rarely the case. People tend to presume this life, to forget how much the planet gives to us daily for our survival and even enjoyment. We forget or never consider how special and significant this life is, and we seldom question in our hearts about the purpose of it all or what we can do to help this purpose along.
Upon simple consideration, we can easily see that we are given much more than we give back. Certainly we each owe a great deal of gratitude to our parents or persons who helped us grow up, mentally, emotionally, and physically.
Mothers especially deserve thanks for their pain sacrificed for us at birth. The culture we live within deserves thanks and all the people before us who helped keep this world together and help make this our life how it is. Of course some of how they all left it is not too nice, but we cannot deny that much of what we cherish and rely upon in our daily lives is due to some great efforts and inventiveness by our predecessors. So one of the first steps of a conscious life is to remember and recognize how much we are given by other people and the planet.
In a sense, this planet is a gift to us. Each of us can feel personally rewarded with all the gifts of life, though we probably cannot honestly feel we deserved anything. But creation, the planet and the gift of life gives to us without any promises that we will give anything back, let alone gratitude. This is because the planet and the creative intelligence of life loves us! Love gives first, with a hope that we'll ask questions later, if not before. And the question we might ask is - how does this all happen, why, and what can I do within this grand scheme of things? And why not feel this planet is for our fulfillment? Let's not get too arrogant in believing it is only for us.
One who gives a gift would hope that the gift is enjoyed, used, and appreciated. We would not want to neglect using and enjoying the gift, anymore than we would not want to abuse it. This gift is ours, it is for us , yet it is also for us to take care of it, allow it to grow to maturity, and by all means love and appreciate it with all one's heart.
We do have the ability inherent within us to properly maintain and even to improve the quality of life on this planet. We have a moral responsibility to at least maintain the environment in some suitable fashion for the future generations and for other kingdoms of nature. To ruin or desecrate the ecology which we live within is foolish for ourselves and disastrous for future generations. We do owe a kind of debt for our lives. Though it is given freely, our conscience needs to awaken to our responsibility of give back something, not out of sentimentality or guilt, but out of love and sincere gratitude. We would be quite foolish if we didn't feed our body what it needs, and since this Earth is the greater body interconnected with all bodies, then it needs to be cared for.
There is definite law of reciprocity in the cosmos, just as there is a definite law of action and reaction in kinetic physics, and there needs to be an equal exchange of give and take. If we do not consciously give, then it is taken in some way at some time, in order to re-balance the reciprocal energy flow.
What we need to give back is not necessarily physical or of the same type as what we are given. There are many kinds of giving, as there are many kinds of energies and forms of matter in physics. We must first ask or study what exactly is called for. This involves a study of natural ecology, human psychology, subtle planetary energies, and many other related subjects. The debt we owe has many dimensions, but we need not worry about doing everything, if only we can continually learn more what we are capable of giving back to life and becoming evermore responsible to do it.
We can work on a physical level, on the level of emotional vibration, in the world of creative thought, and upon the spiritual aspiring spiral of sacrifice and service for the Highest. We can give to the physical ecology and form, to the maturation of human psychology, to the acculturation of creative ideas, and to the purpose of inner self-realization. Conscious effort and loving care upon the land or with others releases a great energy for good. Our love and our work, our appreciation and our giving radiates to all, now and into the future. The sacrifice we make within ourselves for self-transformation and planetary service builds a higher quality of being, within ourself and in worlds unknown. And we give back to life a great gift as we come into deeper self-realization of purpose and being.
What an awakening it would be to finally realize that this is our home and there isn’t any other place to be. Sure, it is a struggle at times, and some of us here are really being put through the grind with hunger and war; but still, this is it, and we have to do the best we can, for ourselves and for others. Who has been mostly causing the pains in this world? Nature? God? No, it is we, the human species, humanity in general.
Humanity, as a general whole, has become a significant danger to the future of the whole planet. Our overall power is now quite out of hand, or one could say that our power lacks a necessary balance with wisdom and love. Our overall power is fueled by our evolving intelligence, but this intelligence has neglected to realize true Values and Purposes, which are the realizations of wisdom.
Certainly not everyone is a problem, so maybe one could argue that these problems in the world are not caused by one's own individual self. Yet in this interconnected world, we are each part of the whole deal, so no individual is really outside of the problems.
Most people don’t really want to mess up the ecology and the beauty of the planet or the land, but greed and ignorance have gained a lot of power in this world. No matter, we have to see that we’re all in this together.
So let us proceed with some positive idealism and look at what can be done to help. we can work together in conscious evolution and co-creation of the future. The world we choose and work towards, right now, will subsequently be the world we get and the world we hand off to the next generations.