What is a spiritual land?

Our mind is cluttered on this subject by a load of other ideas so lets just clear those.

We are taught that the Earth is just a planet orbiting a star called the Sun in just one of 100s of billions of galaxies. There is nothing special about this planet. Science fiction films which are invariably based around "space travel" give up the significance of lands in order to pack in large universes. Perhaps Arrakis in Dune or Tatooine in Star Wars are planets that have some special meaning. We are also taught that planets are rock, and rock is made of minerals and elements which are inanimate and of no use except for mining and raw materials for industry or building. These are some thoughts we are given by our society and culture.

But these ideas sit rather uneasily with other ideas we have. How about this type of land?

 

Probably in the West we don't make much of a big deal about this. Yet never-the-less we will find ourselves at some stage visiting a place where someone was buried to remember them. How does that work? After a few years there is nothing left of them physically, and the planet has moved millions of miles in space away from the actual point where they were buried (relative to galactic centre) and the grave stone marks essentially nothing. Why not take the stone home so we can remember them all the time? No: somehow this plot of land takes their place somehow. The land itself has become spiritualised. This is probably the only thing left in most people's sterile lives in the West that indicates some semblance of "spiritual land."

Here's another example: the tree at the end of the film Shawshank Redemption.

Now this tree marks a special moment in Andy's life as it is where he proposed to his wife. But this becomes a special place to everyone watching the film. Its a real place, you can visit it and the meaning of this is now a scene in a film. The tree has now been cut down so there is little marking to spot, but we can still visit that point where the fictional Andy proposed to his wife. There is meaning in the spot even if very tenuous.

Another type of sacred land we will be familiar with is the church. This is a formally consecrated land which is set aside for God and the worship of God. We privately set such land aside all the time like Andy, but the religion does this formally for the whole community too. 

Here is another more subtle example. In the UK--at least, don't know the rest of the world--a marriage traditionally is held where the bride comes from. Traditionally--and very unfashionably now--a bride was guarded by her father who ensured that she remain childless until she was handed over to her husband. This way the husband was sure that any future children were definitely his and this encouraged him to take the bride seriously and commit to her. I imagine a bride travelling long distances in the Past would have been a recipe for her to run into trouble--and there again is the issue of travel and land being inversely connected. But whatever the reasons for the way things came about, it was the land from which a bride was born and raised, that provides the literal bedrock to a traditional marriage.

These are just some basic examples of how land is more than rocks on a planet's surface in space. But it becomes very much deeper.

When they find ancient skulls they can analyse the teeth to find ratios of elements that they can use to determine quite accurately the probably land on which the person lived. Our bodies are actually made from the food we eat which is in turn made from the plants that are grown from the nutrients in the soil where we live. The land actually becomes our bodies. Now if land is just inanimate rock, this cannot be said for our bodies and brains. Suddenly the bold distinction been land and person is completely blurred. If we ever doubt this consider how much of us would be left if we stopped being able to grow plants and were unable to source the minerals that we get from soil and rocks. We are fundamentally linked at the most basic level.

Now this fundamental link between humans and the land was identified all the way back at the start of humanity. Humans know they are intricately intertwined with the land. Where people were born, where they died, where they lived their lives and did things all come from and go back into the land. We call it history now but its marked on the land. Our militarised and aggressive culture of conquest means that our maps are covered in the sites of battles. The land bears witness to our troubled and unhappy culture and minds. The bodies get buried where they are fallen and forever stain the land.

 SO to try and get into the mindset of people before the age of materialism, capitalism and mechanised transport where people lived in one place and really called that home we need to understand that history and even souls are connected to the land. It is a living and breathing thing that takes part as intimately in our community, culture and lives as any other human or living thing. The spirits of the dead and ancestors live in this land, the spirits of other non-human creatures also inhabit this land and along side all this are the living who feel they grow from the land and belong to it. This is all summarised by a relationship with the Earth Mother which is a common sense for all people, that we are birthed and owe our lives to a miraculous event which is the creation of mankind both as a species but as each one of us. No one knows how this happened and it will remain a marvel for ever that it did. But somehow the inanimate world of rocks gave birth to humans. It never asks for any payment for this greatest gift of life and humankind exist in a state of grace and bewilderment at their existence. Modern humans would rather bury this miracle in text books and science and pretend it did not happen, but it did and they are here to ignore it and not be grateful and amazed by it. This is the greatest spiritual force in the land one that sadly more and more people are closed to.

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Now there is a darker side to this. Connection to land work both ways. If I am connected then you are not. What the inhabitants of a land gain, the foreigner loses. Normally because we all realise that life was given to us by the land for free, we do not covet the land. But as the modern world has progressed and especially trade and transport people have been uprooted from the lands. It means that linos to the land have become fractured and damaged. On one hand this had led to the destruction of the planet, and on the other it has led to Nationalism as people fight to preserve their connections to land. It is important for immigrants to realise that they have made a grave choice to leave their land. In some cases immigrants try to bring the land with them in some identity but this is a mistake. When you move to new land you belong to new lands. To suggest any thing else is to break the very idea of a connection to the land. Once the connections are broken then you start to end up with people who belong no where. They are lost people. Thus unfortunately more and more is what Capitalism is creating. Lost people without connection land are cutting the very life blood and source of their existence. Physically they may be sustained by a supply of food but it is just a life support system: there is no spirituality or meaning.

This is only true to a level. There is a more advanced level of spirituality that places all phenomena together. At this level then everything above becomes just sensations and thoughts. So the above is not absolute. It is however an important part of human life.