Dreaming the Earth Awake 🌎

Earthdreaming as an Imaginal Pathway to Reawaken Animistic Consciousness

In a time of uncertainty and global catastrophe, our capacity for the imaginal may be humanity’s greatest superpower. What if the regeneration of the Earth; the restoration of biodiverse ecosystems; and the creation of a harmonic balance between humans and their environment begins not with external action, but with the radical act of imagination? What if planetary renewal must be dreamed into existence before we can experience it? If political reform, activism, and environmental policy were going to change the course of the Earth’s collision with climate disaster– wouldn’t those pathways have already had an effect? Perhaps, it is time for us to collectively look within to find the answers that we seek, rather than expect corporations and governments to offer a top-down approach to planetary transformation.

Transpersonal psychology has long traversed the depth of connection between the human psyche and the natural world–but it is yet to offer effective solutions that heal the fragment between humans and nature and offer the promise of a restored relationship. And, maybe, that is because the solutions must emerge through each person’s own journey of initiation, individuation and reclamation of their purpose as a steward of Gaia (Lovelock, 1972). Through engaging our own unique mythology, healing our direct connection to the Earth and cosmos, and awakening our consciousness through our dreams we are able to participate in the active creation of the world we wish to live in. As Jung theorized, “healing occurs when the personal consciousness regains connection with the cosmic totality of the environment” (Frashure., pg. 102).

This academic essay reviews relevant philosophies and theories within transpersonal ecopsychology and expands on mythopoesis as a form of participatory, waking dream-crafting for constructing spiritually and ecologically sound blueprints that restore balance to our planet. In a world that desperately needs new visions, new myths, new prophecies, and awakened, imaginative solutions to the pressing ecological issues of our time– mythopoetic, earthdreaming welcomes an embodied expression of the anima mundi (Hillman, 1975) as an interdimensional way of being that reawakens animistic consciousness. This paper posits that the restoration of ecological harmony is not possible without a parallel restoration of the human imagination—specifically through mythopoesis and earthdreaming as practices of animistic, polyphasic consciousness. In this way, dreams are not private psychological events, but intelligent dialogues with Gaia, offering guidance for spiritual and planetary renewal.

Ecopsychological perspectives on the relationship between psyche and nature

Healing the split between the human psyche and nature has been woven into the tapestry of transpersonal psychology since the early works of Carl Jung (Yunt, 2001). It has long been understood that there is an inextricable link between man and the earth and the disharmonic relationship that has been consequential of modern culture has created a seemingly irresolvable fragmenting in the anima mundi (Hillman, 1975)– or world soul. However, the term “ecopsychology” didn’t make its way onto the scene until the early-90’s with Theodore Roszak’s book Voice of the Earth (1992). Ecopsychology deepened this conversation and began to make an explicit connection between modern diseases of the human mind and the ecological crisis that was gaining attention in the collective consciousness. The emergence of ecopsychology came alongside a rise in awareness, education, and policy around climate-related issues as attuning to the human impact on the environment became more well-understood. Ecopsychology theorists began to see the intrinsic link between our internal worlds and the world we were creating around us. As Jung stated so perfectly, “it is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man” (1976). As this perspective took hold in the collective it heralded a major shift in belief and interpretation of the impact of humans on the Earth–and made ecopsychology uniquely poised to approach the ecological issues of our time from a spiritual and holistic perspective. Yunt explains,

Clearly, we cannot fail to recognize the many ecological problems our modern technological society is creating. However, from the perspective of ecopsychology, these problems are rooted most fundamentally in the distorted understandings, repressed contents, conscious denials, and unconscious projections that exist in both the personal and societal dimensions of the human psyche. For this reason, our ecological problems must be addressed in the context of two of life’s most prominent polarities: the personal and collective and the conscious and unconscious. One difficulty in achieving both of these is that as helpful as psychology can be, its theoretical purview and practical applications have, until recently, been severely limited by its inherited biases and strict adherence to mechanistic understandings of humanity and its world. Ecopsychology hopes to change these limitations. (2001)

While ecopsychology makes a bold attempt to conceptualize the dynamic relationship between humans and the earth into a more indigenous cosmology for the western mind, the question still remains: how do we regenerate the earth and evolve in harmony with the beings of our home planet? How do we continue to develop and progress technologically without losing our tether to a way of life that is balanced with the very ecosystems that sustain us? How can we cultivate – or better yet, remember– an earth-based, psycho-spiritual foundation from which humanity’s soul can fly?

Earth body, human soul

In order to explore the reconnection of the earth body and human soul–we must first explore the process of disconnection that was imposed upon the population through colonization. Arguably, the loss of the anima mundi occurred when indigenous Tribes were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands and traditional lifeways that were rooted in a spiritually and ecologically balanced, reciprocal relationship with the Earth. Entire populations were forced into missions and coerced into an Abrahamic, religious, “civilized” way of life based in agriculture, monotheism, and homogenized beliefs. Through the process of colonialism, all of our ancestors were disconnected from their natural-born environments where they had practiced an emergent, participatory, earth-based spirituality that was unique to their bioregional ecosystem and cosmology. The bloody and traumatic massacres of colonization divorced people from the planet in a collective wounding that has rippled through hundreds of generations. Colonization did not merely steal land—it dismantled the cosmologies that kept human life in reverent communion with the Earth. This was not just a material dislocation but a psychic and mythopoetic severance. This trauma created a fragment in the collective psyche– a wound from which we are all in a process of healing and the source of the ecological devastation we are facing on the planet. As Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis reminds us, if the Earth is a living system of which we are a part, can we truly connect to our own soul without also reconnecting with the soul of Gaia?

I want to impress the importance here of not romanticizing ancestral or indigenous lifeways as being demonstrative of a perfect balance between humans and their environment. Traditional lifestyles were slower than the fast-paced, progress and capitalist driven culture we exist within today–but that doesn’t mean that there was perfect harmony between people and the Earth. Ecosystem’s have always been impacted by the effects of human activity in both positive and negative ways. The primary difference I want to highlight is the way in which indigenous cultures viewed the Earth as sacred, alive, and intelligent and there was creative, co-evolutionary quality in the unfolding of consciousness through humans and nature. Humans were attuned to polyphasic ways of knowing (Lumpkin) and they listened to nature through their dreams, intuitive messages, and through direct communication with the unseen realms. To reconnect our human psyche to the anima mundi – and to welcome the soul of the world back into our hearts – we must remember how to listen to Gaia again.

Drawing from an ecopsychological and participatory spiritual lens, I propose that humans are not separate from nature, but are its stewards by evolutionary design. As such, we are the arms and legs of the Earth—responsible for tending to the forests, oceans, and rivers of our living planet, and for allowing the intelligence of Gaia to guide our evolutionary unfolding. I propose that the anima mundi is not a separate “world soul” outside of ourselves, but that the human soul and Earth soul are inextricably linked–in fact, they are One. The same consciousness of Nature that moves through the birds and trees makes a home within our human bodies. Our soul is the soul of Gaia. It is a profound gift to live in this water-rich world that nourishes our breath, our spirits, and our very existence within the cosmos. If we truly make contact with the beautiful complexity of this truth—how could we do anything but protect it?

Earthdreaming: activate animistic consciousness through perceptual diversity

When we co-existed within indigenous tribal structures in communion with the Earth and natural world– there was a deep sense of sacred relationship with all beings. Our world was alive, animated, and constantly speaking to us. There was a sense of belonging and knowing of our place and role within the animated cosmos and existence within a natural order. Animistic consciousness implies that the Earth itself is an intelligent force of nature that we could communicate with both directly and symbolically. Our sense of “knowing” was earned through an attunement to subtle communication with the world around us–we could listen and receive information from Gaia through polyphasic modes of consciousness. Tara Lumpkin explains that, “polyphasic cultures value perceptual processes that use altered states of consciousness, such as dreaming, lucid dreaming, contemplation, ecstatic and trance states, as well as ordinary waking consciousness” (Lumpkin, 2001). Earthdreaming is another way of understanding polyphasic consciousness and a pathway towards reawakening communication and connection to Gaia. In her 2015 article, Dreams of Earth: Earth Dreaming as Eco-Resilience Practice for the Long Emergency, Hauk beautifully expresses,

For millennia and across cultures, earth dreaming and eco-dreaming have been conceived as methods for direct healing with the numinous and the vehicle for communication of healing regimens. This research suggests that the collaborative coevolution of human-nature cultural matrix and life-on-earth- enhancing matrix mother cultures can be regenerated in shared healing and earth-dreaming practices. Earth dreaming can catalyze earth healing, including at greater scales than the individual life. It is possible these shared circles of intentional social dreaming serve as omphali (navels) of the living earth, generating polyvocal spaces for Earthvox, the earth’s voices, to communicate across to, through, and with human collectivities and collective consciousness. It is possible that this initiates emergent properties of Gaian knowing and intelligence.

Hauk’s sentiment is that the Earth is intelligently communicating to us through the experience of earthdreaming–which can guide our actions towards a healing path that fosters equilibrium on our planet.

Earthdreaming expands our definition of the word dream to include a variety of ways of knowing and embraces perceptual diversity. Perceptual diversity is the understanding that cultures create their “cognitive maps” through various processes of perception, some of which can include meditation, dreaming, trance, etc.. Western culture primarily relies on monophasic consciousness which leans heavily on one mode of knowing, western scientific rationalism, to perceive reality and create its cognitive maps. Monophasic cultures do not encourage alternate states of consciousness as modes of knowing in the same way that polyphasic cultures do (Lumpkin, 2001). Western, monophasic culture is deeply rooted in the effects of colonization and Abrahamic religion, specifically Christianity, as polyphasic ways of knowing were illegal at many points throughout history. Historically, dreaming, divination, oracular visions, soothsaying, and other forms of perceptual diversity could result in criminal charges or even death under the rule of the Christian church. Lumpkin (2001) argues that the lack of perceptual diversity in western culture is the root of our ecologically unsustainable lifestyle,

…When a culture restrains perceptual diversity, that same culture reduces human adaptability, which, in turn, leads to human beings living unsustainably. Unsustainable lifestyles result in ecological destruction, including destruction of biodiversity (or biocomplexity). In a feedback loop, degraded environments offer fewer choices to human beings for adaptability, and a downward spiral commences. If, indeed, perceptual diversity promotes human adaptability and indirectly promotes healthy environments, then perceptual diversity has a practical application in everyday life.

If we are able to restore the anima mundi, listen to the intelligent communication of Gaia, and then consciously act in ways that promote equilibrium we just may stand a change of restoring balance on Earth. However, our ability to do so is limited by our capacity to imagine it is possible– are we able to first dream a renewed Earth? What would it look like? This is where creativity and mythopoeesis within earthdreaming come into play.

The role of mythopoeesis in earthdreaming

We can only see what we believe, and we can only believe what we can imagine to be true. Therefore, our capacity for perception is limited by our capacity for imagination. We can only dream a renewed Earth into being insofar as we have capacity to imagine it. Mythopoesis—literally, “myth-making” or “world-building”—refers not just to the creation of stories, but to the imaginative participation of employing fundamental human truths to shape cultural meaning. As Hillman (1975) and Jung emphasized, myths are not just old stories; they are the deep patterns that organize the psyche and the world. To engage in mythopoesis is to co-create new archetypal narratives that can reorient humanity toward sacred relationship with the Earth. Craig Chalquist, one of the creators of the earth dreaming concept, says, “Earthdreaming emphasizes the consciousness-deepening dimensions of our relations with the world…as when C.G. Jung writes of “dreaming the myth onward.” We cherish what we come to love; and we cannot move toward what we cannot imagine. To actualize new possibilities we must first dream them up”. Christianity and Abrahamic religion have spoon fed the collective a narrative based in eschatology or apocalyptic prophecy for thousands of years. This belief is deeply ingrained in the collective psyche and expresses itself through our imaginal realm in many forms. We see this end-of-the-world story repeated in movies, books, news headlines and across all forms of contemporary media. We live in a frozen state of apocalyptic fear, unable to vision anything other than the mythology we have been programmed to believe. Disempowered by generations of disconnection from our own power as prophets, visionaries, and dreamers, we rely on others to write the mythology of the world for us–rather than co-create the world we desire to live in. Trapped in the spell of apocalyptic inevitability, we have forgotten that we are not just characters in someone else’s script—we are the storytellers. To reclaim the capacity to dream mythically is to reclaim authorship of our collective future. In this way, mythopoesis becomes an act of resistance against apocalyptic determinism and extractive worldviews. The earthdreamer steps into a co-creative role with Gaia, offering visions not just of survival, but of a sacred evolutionary unfolding. Lee Irwin (2024) explains the importance of reclaiming our spiritual role as visionaries and dreaming hope into the collective consciousness,

We live in a time of change and great challenge, a time between dreams and paradigms, a time of contestation and emergence. The ground where we stand is not the same, it holds the quality of the abyss; each dreamer perceives only a portion of what is emerging. But this shifting ground is also a time of opportunity, a phase of creative intersection with what is possible for the sacred human. We each hold within us a visionary depth, a prophetic capacity, within which our unrealized spiritual potential can spontaneously foster a new wholeness. What inhibits us is our fears, alienation, skepticism, and denials that we can, as conscious and dedicated agents, actualize our deep spiritual capacities. In a time of great change and contestation, it is inevitable that the harsh or destructive aspects stand forth as illustrating our lack of care or concern, our indifference toward the well-being of the earth and all its inhabitants. And yet, if we have any hope of attaining to the sacred human, it is visions that heal that are most needed, visions of hope whose actualization is possible and necessary for the health of all.

Just as polyphasic cultures relied on dreams, trance, and visions to receive guidance from the more-than-human world, mythopoesis serves as the cultural vessel through which such guidance is preserved, interpreted, and shared. Earthdreaming, then, is not merely a form of personal revelation—it is a participatory process through which new cosmologies are brought to life. In a contemporary landscape shaped by digital media and global storytelling, we now have access to a vast array of platforms—art, music, literature, film, podcasts, and social media—through which to re-enchant the world. These modern mythic channels invite us to re-author the collective imagination, to become enchantivists (Chalquist), and to transform the inherited narrative of apocalypse into a vision of renewal. This is not the moment to dream of the end of the world– but to consciously imagine the beginning of a new one.

Conclusion

Restoring the anima mundi and reawakening animistic consciousness begins within as we engage our imaginations in the process first. As we reconnect to Gaia, learn to listen to her intelligence, and engage in a mythic conversation with Nature we welcome the soul of the Earth back into our hearts and bodies–and thus, piece by piece, we become the shift we wish to see in the world. We can start small by weaving bits and pieces of our visionary dream realm into daily life; re-imagining the mythopoetic future we desire to live in; and spending time in nature listening to the sounds of the Earth. It can be simple, really. As we resolve our trauma and begin to embody our birthright as sacred humans (Irwin, 2025), healing can become less about big cathartic processes and more about the enactment of sympathetic choices that create pathways towards a harmonic future. After all, the world soul, human soul, and earth soul are not separate entities, but expressions of the same living essence—driven to reconciliation by the eros of union. To dream, then, is not merely to imagine but to remember—to remember that we are Gaia dreaming herself awake through us.

To succeed as dreamers and as participants in a creative Earth Dreaming and Earth Awakening, will require enduring commitment to enactment, reflection, and participatory knowing. Not only through dreams and visions, but also through a lucid clarity of mind and purpose in carrying out the shaping of the world. Our success then, depends on our cooperation in the dreaming and waking context. Our challenge is to wake up and not deny the role of dreams and visions in the process. (Irwin, 2025)

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

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