How to change the hardest thing to change – the human heart

The aim of environmental work is to figure out collectively how we can return to a mentality of taking care of the natural systems that sustain us. In order to do this we need to rapidly move into a phase of giving back to the world around us more than we take from it.

People who feel disconnected from nature find it easy to abuse it.

More than ever before people feel the pain of disconnection

• from nature
• from each other
• and from their higher selves

Finding ways to live in harmony with nature, each other and our higher selves will restore the health of our planet – and will also restore our own health and well-being.

The woodland community model

We now understand that trees thrive through underground, invisible connections via a symbiotic relationship with microbes in the soil, which are like fungal threads, known as mycelium. Trees don’t compete with each other, they care for each other through these rich, unseen networks. When a tree is young or sick, the stronger trees share water and nutrients with it. The closer and healthier these invisible connections are, the more resilient to drought, storms and infestation each tree in the community is.

We human beings also thrive on invisible connections. We all exist in networks of thoughts and feelings. We are surrounded by them. Most of the feelings we have are about other people, and those charged emotions reach people. We all know this. We all feel it. When our friends and colleagues turn against us, it can be unbearably painful. When they love and appreciate us, we feel bathed in well-being.

Energising the invisible network

Now, more than ever before, we need to know how we can supercharge the unseen connections between us with good wishes. We need to make our hearts both soft and strong, to build up the strength to send others good wishes – especially when we encounter resistance and animosity.

This is where a universal spirituality of the higher self, the soul, comes in and with it practices that can make our hearts both soft and strong. Then we will be able to hear the call of the natural world. We will understand how to heal natural systems and, at the same time, pump out powerful good wishes into all our human connections- even to those who oppose us.

Change is hard. We all know that in the environmental arena. People resist change. They belittle the pioneers. They distort the truth. They cling to outdated viewpoints as though their lives depend on it. We all know this from years of working with change. We have all endured ridicule and rejection – sometimes from those closest to us. Change is happening now but it always been tough. There are easy moments when the old seems to rapidly fall away but everyone who is part of this movement knows the path is hard.

It’s easy to get worn down and walk away. But learning how to strengthen our hearts to pump out good wishes is transformative for us as change-makers and transformative for the invisible human networks we live in. Learning the art of good wishes reveals to us that our adversaries are no longer adversaries but people who are disconnected from nature and from their higher selves. When we know how to connect with our higher self, we can make our hearts to strong and powerful once again and are able to pump prime our networks with love.

The Power of Good Wishes

This is hard to begin with. But there is a method that makes it easier and very enjoyable and that is to practise sending good wishes to things we love already. Animals, for instance. Trees. Oceans. Then to our friends. Then, as our spiritual heart muscle builds up strength, we can start learning how to send good wishes to people who disagree with us and who we disagree with. That’s where the real strength starts to build up and our hearts really begin to feel very soft and immensely strong.

Practising having good wishes for those who disagree with us can take us to a place where we can listen deeply with love and kindness to people who seem to oppose us, who may even lie and act dishonourably. Sending genuine good wishes to them is transformative for ourselves, and it reaches others in remarkable ways. Sometimes our breakthroughs in love and good wishes are obvious and immediate; sometimes they are slow and unknowable. But they always have a profound effect. And we learn to trust that and know that our intelligence goes onto a different level when our hearts are both soft and strong. Our intelligence and knowledge can then become wisdom.

It is this high-level wisdom that will transform the world. We need more wise ones, who listen deeply and care for the well-being of even those who oppose them. The effort to strengthen our hearts and widen our good wishes is an effort we can all make. Research confirms how powerful it can be for our own well-being. The years ahead will show how powerful it can be for the well-being of our planet.

Wendy Marshall 21.03.2021