A Handbook for Survivalists: Caring for the Earth, A Series of Meditations

By Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Written while under a wildfire evacuation warning, with bags packed, A Handbook for Survivalists explores the true nature of our survival at this pivotal moment in our shared journey together with the Earth. The present pandemic and its accompanying economic crisis, together with the widespread wildfires and flooding, have shown the fragility of our global systems and a dangerous imbalance with the natural world. Lengthening food lines and burned buildings, smoke-filled skies, have given us a foretaste of a future of climate crisis and radical uncertainty. What are the real values we need at this time when confronted by the divisiveness of our present culture in which the poor suffer most, and how can we transition into a future which respects the more-than-human world to which we belong?

Looking deeper than merely physical survival, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee explores the roots of this present imbalance in our separation from the Earth, and a vital need to reconnect, to regain the knowing of our ancestors who walked on sacred land. Returning to a deep awareness of our interconnected oneness with the living Earth, this book gives us the foundation for a new story for humanity, one not based upon exploitation and greed. A Handbook for Survivalists offers us tools to help in this transition, both in the resilience needed to survive the coming environmental and social breakdown, and in the ways to give birth to a living future. It explores subjects such as destiny, living with chaos, and the central theme of death and rebirth—how to seed a sustainable future for both humanity and the Earth.

A Handbook for Survivalists is full of encouragement of how we can transition into this future without glossing over the catastrophes and hardships that we are already encountering. Combining an understanding of the potential for a real shift in consciousness with an awareness of the global forces resisting any such change, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee takes us on a journey back to when our spiritual nature was bonded with the Earth and its magical nature. This is spiritual empowerment in its deepest sense because it transforms not just the individual but our relationship with the Earth and its diverse community to which we belong.

A core element of this empowerment comes from understanding our spiritual nature in relationship to the Earth. Indigenous Peoples live this awareness through prayers, ceremonies, and other practices. We have mostly forgotten this dimension of our spiritual nature, but in our soul and within the world around us is a divine light that is needed to help us heal and nurture the web of life we are destroying. Learning to work with this light—which belongs to mystical and shamanic traditions—we can continue the practice of our ancestors and help to keep the world in balance.

Finally this book offers a love story for the Earth. We can help the world remember what our culture has forgotten—how the soil, the seeds, the rivers and the stars all carry a central message of love. In all its diverse forms, its different ways of being and breathing, the living Earth is a celebration of love. And now it is calling out to us, crying to us to remember its sacred nature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Dec 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781941394519

Book preview

Herself.

1

LIGHT

When I was in my early twenties I had a series of intense mystical experiences. One day I was standing in a driveway when I saw a group of young children passing by on their way to the park, walking in pairs, hand in hand. Suddenly I was aware of these children as they really were, full of light. From each one’s heart, a huge radiance, like the sun, was shining. Each little child had this dynamic, brilliant light, this radiant sun, in the center of their being. The experience of the light, its brilliance and energy, was beautiful and overwhelming. This is our true human nature, simple and pure. Our essence is made of brilliant light.

Thirty years later I had another series of experiences in which I was taken in full consciousness into this world of light. I describe it as a landscape of love full of rivers of light. I knew that this reality of light upon light is our true home. And for a time I was this light, and saw how it sparkled in every cell of creation, full of laughter and joy and knowing. I saw how it told the stories of the Divine in our ordinary human experiences, at the same time that it was without limit.

We come from this world of light into the physical world, and then at the end of our lives return to the light. And while we are in this world of the senses we are always surrounded by the light. It is within us and around us, even if it is hidden, veiled from sight.

This divine light and love (they are synonymous) is our true nature and real home, and the Source of all that exists. In the physical world, like sunlight refracted through a prism, it becomes the many varied colors of creation, and yet at the same time stays true to its essential nature. This light is the fundamental nature of every particle, every stone and stream, the call of every bird. In essence we never leave the world of light. The fact that it is obscured from us, that we forget the light, is one of life’s greatest mysteries.

Spiritual practice is about connecting and working with this light, reconnecting—through our practices and aspiration and through the grace that is given—with the light hidden within our heart, the light of our soul. This is the journey home of the mystic, the awakening of the wayfarer that gives birth to spiritual awareness—In Thy light shall we see light (Psalms 36:9). Through the light of our innermost being, the divine light of the Self, we come to see the Truth that is hidden within our heart and present within the world around us. We see things as they really are, rather than through a glass darkly, and we have deeper and deeper access to the world of divine light, and to the love that underlies