Yes, listen. Observe yourself and observe others around you.

Do you ever really listen? Close your eyes right now, and listen. Ignore any outside background noises. Listen, and what you will mostly hear is your own internal prattle. It is constant. You talk to yourself constantly and that prevents any other voices from reaching you.

Now, observe yourself in conversation. If you are honest, it is mostly the same thing: perhaps you listen to the other person twenty percent of the time and the remaining eighty percent is filled with your internal dialogue and commentary.

Can you still that internal noise and listen to the silence? When you can do that, you can listen for the voices that are all around you.

It may take awhile, but when you are really listening, inner voices may be heard—from your spirit guide, from spiritual beings, from the natural world, even from the mechanical world of home and car telling you what's going on. And, importantly, from the Earth itself right where you live.

Once you learn to listen, you can communicate. When you can communicate you can learn.

Communication works with words and with feelings. Communication involves your conscious mind and your sub-conscious mind. "Whole-spectrum Communication" involves your psychic and spiritual selves as well as your familiar middle self. When you really learn to listen, your whole being opens up and your abilities to feel and sense other transfers of information become as"real" as anything conveyed by spoken words.

We need this ability to listen to the voices that are felt and sensed in order to learn what we need in this newly challenging world. There are intelligent and knowledgeable resources in natural world we share for which we bare special responsibility with our ability to learn and to act.

Voices of the Earth
In her new book, Voices of the Earth: The Path of Green Spirituality, Clea Danaan teaches us how to communicate with Trees, Plants, our Home, Herbs, Animals, the Elements, Spirits, and the Earth itself. She teaches us how to live in our whole local community, and how to garden responsibly in any sized plot from a pot on up.

Why do we need to listen to the Voices of the Earth? We are born of the Earth, and our bodies were conditioned by earth energies where and when we were born. Today, no one of us lives in the hospital where we were most likely born, and only a few of us even live in the locality of our birth. We are strangers to the place we live and yet our body searches for its earthy connection.

Meditation and ritual to connect with the trees, plants, animals and the Earth itself re-establishes a needed connection. Our communication from the Earth will not be received in words for our conscious mind but in sensations and feelings in our subconsciousness.

Gardening, in particular, even with just potted plants, becomes a ritual that we can consciously augment by "grounding"—feeling our own roots connect to the Earth and Environment where we live. When we listen, especially when we ask questions, the answers will come through the subconscious. We will learn what the Environment asks of us—even of what our home asks to be a better home. And we will learn what we need to do for our own bodies in terms of nutrition and even psychic and spiritual needs.

Connecting with the Whole Earth
Connecting to the Earth, wherever we are, brings us into relationship with our locality, and even with the Whole Earth. When we connect, and when we listen, we learn.

With our earthen connections to our locality, we can become true citizens of our extended community involving not just our human neighbors but the entire life of the locality.

Listen! Listen to the Voices. Learn and Communicate. Listen to the Voices of the Earth and become a Citizen of your Locality. Put down your roots and join your Community. Give and Receive and find the Love that heals the Earth and all Her Children. Know that we are One and Bless and be Blessed through Union with the Source.