Week 33: Spring
Lesson 27: Healing Self and Planet

I bring healing to myself and Earth

Getting to the Heart of the Lesson

IMPORTANT: This lesson is intended for teachers and students who are in white bodies and identify as white. If this is not you, you may wish to skip this lesson and find something fun and healthy for your bodies — a picnic, a dance party, painting a mural or visiting a favorite park, etc. Alternatively, please choose any lesson you wish to visit again and share the activity/exploration activity you did not select the first time.

In Lesson 7, we talked about honoring and listening to Ancestors. We explored ways of welcoming and receiving a more conscious connection with our ancestors (especially if this was a new practice for us). In this lesson, Healing Self and Planet, we are focusing on times when our actions – as a human species – have caused harm. We know when one lashes out to do harm, it is most often rooted in a memory of being harmed. A strange cycle unfolds when, because we experienced pain, we inflict the pain on someone or something else.

You may be intimately familiar with this cycle in your own family of origin. At its most personal, this pain cycle is treated through practices such as twelve-step programs, stress reduction, anger management and other programs to raise awareness and end domestic violence. In this lesson we will be looking farther back, exploring the historical complexity of our ancestors and ways we can bring healing to ourselves in the present and for future generations, thereby healing Earth. A Joyful Path, Year 3 repeatedly invites us to embrace our relationship with Life and with Earth. This divine kinship, despite centuries of schooling suggesting otherwise, cannot be held as separate.

Many of us are looking for ways to acknowledge our ancestors’ wrong-doings and make reparations. Across cultures and countries, the colonizers are pursuing healing and reparations with Indigenous

people. Citizens of the United States are asking for reparations for the African-American people who were enslaved, lynched and who, years after the civil rights movement, continue to experience oppression on many levels.

This is painful and complicated work. This work would not be happening right now if humans were not ready for this monumental task of reflection and action. In all of it, we can trust that our ancestors are present. Earth is present. Spirit is present. It is through their nudges and insistence that we are being called to listen, reconcile and strengthen our bond with one another on Earth, as well as with our ancestors in the realms Beyond. Let us come home to the deep love Earth has for us and we have Earth, our home!

Teacher Reflection/Activity

Some reading and a 10-20 min exercise (more if you have time and wish to take it) so you are able to experience the teachings offered through this lesson.

Below are two ways to carry yourselves, through a process to arrive more informed and prepared to talk with your class about a social reality that carries a great deal of emotion. If you only have time for one, please consider the reflections in Option 2. If you have time and interest, please do both exercises. For this week’s Classroom Exploration/Activity One, you will need to familiarize yourselves with Option 1.

For Both Exercises —In a way that feels right and comfortable for you, request the support of benevolent ancestors. They do not need to be your biological relatives, or even fellow humans. Call on the ones who inspire you, the beings you feel can offer the most guidance and support right now. You might create an altar or other space that honors and welcomes them.