Is your spirituality environmentally friendly?
I like to burn some Palo Santo before my morning meditation. I also own a couple of crystals and have participated in a few cacao ceremonies. But only recently did I start to think about how these spiritual practices tie in with a sustainable lifestyle.
My neighbor, over for tea, musingly picks up a stick of Palo Santo to smell it. “You are quite invested in environmentalism, right?” she says and puts it down again. “Are these sustainable?”
She’s right, I am invested in sustainability and I believe it’s paramount to practice what I preach, especially in spiritual endeavors. The mind-body-soul movement to me involves environmental activism and social justice. I believe in ‘yoga off the mat’, which starts with my daily practice on a mat made of natural rubber, not plastic.
I haven’t thought about the ‘holy sticks’ I use on a daily basis. Until now. The smell of Palo Santo has become a somatic anchor of sorts. I like to burn some before my morning meditation or in a yoga class. It helps me center and focus and renders me more aware. Awareness is key, isn’t it? I also own a couple of crystals. I use them to focus on certain emotions or intentions in meditation and other spiritual practices. And I like placing them in the space I live in, whether for good vibes or simply to look at. I’ve also participated in a cacao ceremony once or twice, all the rage in the conscious community, and loved the warmth and sense of collective care the whole ritual conveyed.
But only recently did I start to think about how these spiritual practices tie in with a sustainable lifestyle.
Rituals and ceremonies are as old as humanity. In fact, rituals may have shaped our species into what we are today, for the better and the worse.
They help us connect – to ourselves, our community, our environment. Or, as Robin Wall Kimmerer puts it, “they help us to remember to remember.” They take us beyond the mundane time-space continuum and create little pockets of transformation with the capacity to shift our world view at large. So-called sacred time, as opposed to normal time, was both reserved for and created by rituals in many ancient and indigenous cultures.
Oftentimes these spiritual practices use natural ingredients like herbs, resin, plants, animal parts, stones or crystals, to cleanse the space and body, to invite or keep out certain spirits, or to shift the state of awareness of the practitioner.
Our sensory system reacts to these ingredients: natural incense, for example, can reduce our body activities like heart rate and breathing and trigger some chemical processes in our brain.
And yet – the massive commercial rush causes concern in the communities that have been carefully using, growing and harvesting the ingredients of their ceremonies for generations.
Often not only the use but also the harvesting or distributing of certain ritualistic components is done in a specific way. Sweetgrass or White Sage, for example, traditionally used by Northern American indigenous peoples for smudging, mustn’t be sold but gifted in order to unfold its spiritual strength.
It’s a similar case for Palo Santo, which grows as a tree known amongst botanists as Bursera Graveolens or Bulnesia sarmientoi in South America and shouldn’t be cut down but die from old age, after which another 5-10 years must pass before its wood can be collected. A truly sustainable process which doesn’t suffice to answer to the growing demand amongst spiritually inclined westerners. Palo Santo has recently been added to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Appendix II as well as the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) as a species threatened by over-harvesting.
It’s particularly ironic that seemingly ‘woke’ peeps are adding to the exploitation by shopping bargain bundles of Palo Santo off Amazon without knowing or caring about its origins.
And what’s the deal with crystals then?
Good vibes and a harmonious connection to the earth are more important than ever these days but rarely do we know where on earth the crystals we use for that purpose come from. Formerly considered as New Age props, healing stones have become a multi-billion dollars mainstream business in the wellness industry.
Rarely do we consider that healing crystals are mostly mined in formerly colonized and now so-called third world countries, such as Madagascar, under more than questionable labor conditions and with worrying environmental impact.
While they are occasionally mere byproducts of gold, copper or cobalt mines, their supply chain usually remains murky and their extraction steeped in the exploitation of land and people.
Green jade, for example, for which the demand skyrocketed after yoni-eggs became a trend, often stems from Myanmar where its excavation fueled ethnic conflict and epidemics.
And what about that warm, nice cup of cacao you are handed in a ceremony?
You guessed it, there’s more to that story, too. But: breathe. It’s not as bad.
On the downside, most of the world’s slow growing and scarcely yielding cocoa trees are past their peak production and farmers have difficulties to keep up with the rising demand. Massive and often illegal deforestation is the result, adding to changing climates which the trees are particularly sensitive to. Many of the children who are employed for hazardous labor have never tasted chocolate because they can’t afford it.
On the plus side, this one can more or less easily be fixed by consumer awareness when buying cacao, ideally from companies that practice direct trade relationships with farmers and indigenous groups who grow and prepare cacao using organic, sustainable and regenerative agriculture while providing safe working conditions.
Am I suggesting we shouldn’t explore the sacred experiences of others? Absolutely not.
It’s a beautiful thing to nurse personal and collective ceremonies, to steep our mind and body in ancestral wisdom. It’s something that may unite us with a greater presence. And it’s equally beautiful to experience rituals and ceremonies outside of our own cultural heritage – both an investigation into other facets of this ‘us’ as humans, and somehow the learning of a new language. With every new language, our brain generates different connections, following thought patterns and views formerly unknown. Ritual, if you like, is the embodiment of communication with our collective spirit, beyond our socio-cultural upbringing.
However, rituals and ceremonies belong to the realm of the sacred for those communities who developed them. We, on the other hand, have arrived at a point where we go around shopping for ceremonial experiences from different cultures as if it’s bubble tea or the latest denim trend. We are hunting for awareness while ignoring that a sloppy, follow-the-hype kind of version not only borders on cultural appropriation but may even desecrate its original purpose, and have disastrous environmental and social impacts.
So what should we do to make our spiritual practice sustainable, apart from researching and consciously sourcing the ingredients for our spiritual practices?
One of the answers is one we have heard before: think regionally.
Smudging sticks are easily made from dried herbs that grow in our backyards. Lichen and mushrooms can be used, and if stones are your thing – try calling out to some on your next walk and see which ones respond. Ordinary river rocks may well radiate a cleaner energy than crystals sourced with a trail of destruction.
It’s beautiful to discover exotic rituals but most likely we don’t even know half of those that originate in our home region…
