The planet is seriously ill. This is no news for the readers of this blog – they all know this. But what many of us don’t realize – the planet that is we. We are part of the planet, Gaia, the total ecosystem. We are cells of one of its organs: humanity. So we are ill, but we, the majority in the Western World,  don’t feel sick. That reminds me of the days I had cancer. I didn’t feel sick at all, but was very ill, even in mortal danger. So it is with us: we are dangerously ill, but don’t feel it. Furthermore, if we think about the illness of the planet we take the symptoms – ecological collapse, extinction of species, pollution, global warming, violence, the market, gun-addiction, etc. –  for the illness itself. But that is not the illness. So we need a more holistic thinking, and then we can see what the illness is. It is, as many guides, including our inner guide, tell us, a lack of awareness in the human race. In think this awareness was greater in the seventies, when we talked about ‘healing the planet’. Nowadays one hardly hears that expression anymore.

When you are ill you are going looking for a cure, or a healer that can provide that cure. Some illnesses are so serious, that effective cures or healers are difficult to find. But, if we want to live, that doesn’t stop us from searching. Even if we are successful in finding the healer however, that doesn’t release us from our own responsibility for our healing process. We have to cooperate with the healer, and with our own mind and body.

And that is what we should do as humanity: looking for ways to heal the planet, including ourselves. That is partly an individual process: developing our own awareness: becoming conscious of what is going on in ourselves and the world around us. But is also a collective process: developing our collective consciousness. That is hardly possible without medicine men or women. In the collective field we call these guides or leaders.

In 1998 I published Spiritueel Leiderschap, my magnum opus, translated in English as Spiritual Leadership, Wisdom for Work, Wisdom for Life.*) That opens with the following sentences: ‘There is a harrowing lack of leadership in the world. Is this the way you see it too?’ That book already then dealt with the kind of leadership we need in this world. Next month (around the first of April) I’ll say something about that kind of leadership or guidance. In the meantime I invite you to think about that yourself: what is the kind of leadership we need, and how do we find this?

*https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Leadership-Wisdom-Work-Life/dp/1931044880

Disclaimer: I apologize for mistakes in my English. Blogs are cursory – not stuff for correction by a native speaker