Welcome, dear readers, to another month of taking metta off the meditation cushion and out into the world.
Last month’s article, “Metta Stands Out,” found me learning that it’s sometimes better for metta to stand aside, rather than in the thick of it, as others purify their sankharas. This month found me exploring how metta can support the very ground we’re standing upon.
An energy-healer friend recently immigrated to Spain, and experienced every conceivable hiccup with both her rental property and the property she was hoping to buy. As I listened to her latest round of problems that no Hollywood scriptwriter could ever dream up, I remembered some of my crazier house-sits once upon a time: properties that either felt sad or scared or scary or angry once the owners had departed, and which led me to explore various clearing techniques as well as fill them to the brim with metta.
When my friend had spoken her peace, I quietly asked whether she had yet tried speaking with the properties themselves, as, in my experience, treating them as sentient beings could make all the difference. I could actually hear her head slap over the phone as she laughed and laughed at forgetting the blooming obvious. She promised to do so, and remembered a dowser that someone had recommended to her who cleared both geopathic stress and Earth fatigue remotely.
My ears pricked up at the mention of these, as I’m already familiar with dowsing and use a pendulum myself to dowse for all manner of things. But something about hearing the terms geopathic stress and Earth fatigue connected dots in my own head and heart over all the stress and fatigue I’d witnessed volunteering on organic farms over the past two years.
Regular readers will remember article after article recounting how I generated metta in the face of all manner of mental and physical illness, domestic abuse, animal cruelty, addiction, exploitation—the list sadly goes on and on. While I had clearly drawn a line under doing more land-work myself, I was still composting all I’d experienced and witnessed. Was working the land somehow damaging people or were damaged people drawn to working the land?
Quite the chicken and egg conundrum!
My friend submitted a clearing request for both properties and reported back fascinating results. Due to her extraordinary sensitivities, she spent a night “seeing” spirits from various historic periods departing. Now, while I don’t normally see ghosts myself, what she described, coupled with all the present-day hiccups she’d experienced, made complete sense to me. With so many former residents still sticking around, was it any wonder the energies and outcomes were so discordant? I found myself wondering whether that was also a factor in all the experiences I was still composting: perhaps locations also had sankharas? And, if so, perhaps they were proportionally larger in scale than human ones and so could affect anyone living or working over them? It was all well and good to maintain organic practices, but what if there were bigger issues literally brewing under the Earth?
I sat with this new possibility and read up all I could on geopathic stress and Earth fatigue.
In a nutshell, geopathic stress is a term used for harmful underground magnetic fields that can affect the people and animals who spend time above them. Some 4,000 years ago, the Chinese were already describing “dragon lines” as stressful locations where one should not build houses. And in Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Inca settlements, these high-vibration stressors were also avoided. Present-day symptoms include sleeplessness, low energy levels, teeth grinding, severe headaches, temper outbursts, and even insect infestations.
Earth fatigue, on the other hand, is a newer term used to describe when the Earth’s own natural energy system—not unlike our human immune or lymphatic systems—has been weakened or compromised by pollution, neglect, and traumatic events.
Thinking back to the eight farms that I’d helped, and considering all the family tensions and health problems at the sound-healing retreat center where I’m now volunteering, I decided to submit a request myself.
It was a surprisingly straightforward process: I provided the address, and the following day received confirmation that the clearing was complete and permanent, with instructions on how to muscle-test—a form of dowsing using your own body—the result myself.
I spoke to the land the night it was happening, and respectfully asked it to collaborate in the process for the highest good of all while I generated metta for the land in all directions of time—human and geological.
I didn’t see any ghosts like my friend had, and awoke very early the next morning sensing what I can only describe as energetic tectonic plates shifting and collapsing like abandoned mine shafts—almost like a planetary chiropractic adjustment.
When I reported back to the dowser to thank him and ask about my own current chicken and egg conundrum, I received a much bigger answer than expected.
He described how atomic bomb tests decades ago coincided with increases in both geopathic stress and cancer cases, that the two world wars—as well as any major conflict—had increased all manner of trauma and negative effects in certain locations, and that he was currently identifying the eventual impact of the Ukraine and Israeli conflicts.
His conclusion in progress? That perhaps the Earth hasn’t had a chance to heal itself as effectively as it could over the thousands of years since humans appeared on its surface. He shared that since he started geopathic stress and Earth fatigue clearances, most properties used to be at six or seven out of 10 and these days were mostly nines!
That made complete and depressing sense to this metta meditator and, as I sat with the ramifications that, essentially, we were all to lesser and greater degrees at the mercy of planetary sankharas, I remembered reading about phytoremediation plants. These are “super plants” such as alfalfa, sunflowers, corn, date palms, mustards, and willow and poplar trees planted to reduce, degrade, or remove harmful heavy metals from the soil, such as cadmium, lead, aluminum, arsenic, and antimony.
I couldn’t help wondering whether what I had witnessed these past two years was a human version of this? Were some of us more prone than others to hyper-accumulating heavy metals or geopathic stress or planetary sankharas? Or were some of us drawn to those because of our own wounding? While I no longer want to do land-work because of all the human fallout I witnessed and experienced, I still feel deeply and healthily connected to the Earth. Had perhaps generating metta for all those sites somehow protected me? Alongside phytoremediation, could metta-meditation be its energy equivalent?
I have no quantifiable proof, but I like to think so.
And while I believe actual geopathic stress and Earth fatigue clearings can make a definite difference, I also believe that so can we humans with metta for the Earth.
Dear readers, whatever you consider a sentient being in your own metta meditation practice, please consider also generating some for the ground we all stand on: the stressed and fatigued Earth who makes sentience possible.
Or, to metta-morphose Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology):”
Whoa, metta metta me
Things ain’t what they used to be, no no
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east
Whoa, metta metta me
Things ain’t what they used to be, no no
Oil wasted on the oceans and upon our seas, fish full of mercury
Whoa, metta metta me
Things ain’t what they used to be, no no
Radiation under ground and in the sky
Animals and birds who live nearby are dying
Whoa, metta metta me
Things ain’t what they used to be
What about this overcrowded land
How much more abuse from man can she stand?
See more
Earth Fatigue – a planet in need (Intelligent Energies)
Geopathic Stress – Irish Television documentary (YouTube)
Jeff Jeffries of Intelligent Energies interview (One Radio Network)
Phytoremediation Plants Used to Clean Contaminated Soil (Countryside)
Related features from BDG
Winter Reflections on the Nature of Refuge
Buddhism and Nature
Death and Decay, Birth and Rebirth: Cycles of Life in Nature and Ourselves
Buddhistdoor View: A New Relationship with Nature
Seeing And Revering Nature With Love: Trees Of Dharamsala By Nicholas Vreeland
The Healing Power of Nature and the Elements
