Saving & Preserving Our Oceans

The UN Ocean Conference is currently underway in France, synchronistically, from 9 to 13 June 2025, throughout the five days of the Gemini Solar Fire Festival and Full Moon in Sagittarius.

The conference is intended to build on previous UN Ocean Conferences and support one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals: to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development with a focus on accelerating and mobilising actors and actions to achieve the goal”. 1

“The ocean is fundamental to life on our planet and to our future. The ocean is an important source of the planet’s biodiversity and plays a vital role in the climate system and water cycle. The ocean provides a range of ecosystem services, supplies us with oxygen to breathe, contributes to food security, nutrition and decent jobs and livelihoods, acts as a sink and reservoir of greenhouse gases and protects biodiversity, provides a means for maritime transportation, including for global trade, forms an important part of our natural and cultural heritage and plays an essential role in sustainable development, a sustainable ocean-based economy and poverty eradication.” 2

We can make use of our creative group meditation, the power of thought and the energies of will, love and light pouring into planetary life throughout this five-day full moon period, to enlighten, qualify thought with compassion to all beings, inspire and empower all to align with the principles and values that underly harmless and peaceful co-existence with all aspects of our planetary life. We can imagine and visualise the group soul of all conference participants and decision-makers illumined by compassion and wisdom and vitalised by the will-to-good as they collectively reflect, make decisions and determine actions that affect planetary health and well-being.

The UN pledge amongst those nations working towards the 2030 sustainable development goal is to conserve and manage at least 30% of marine, coastal areas and waterways. However, we need more than promises and good intentions, we need the will to act, a sense of collective responsibility, the resources to make it possible, and the skilful means to overcome the obstacles along the way.

Neptune, Ruler of the Ocean, has just entered Aries, the sign of thoughtful planning, initiative and new beginnings. “Neptune is known esoterically as the Initiator. In certain ancient formulas, the Christ, the great Teacher of the West and the present world Initiator, is spoken of as Neptune.”  3 Saturn the planet of practical action and manifestation, and the disciplinary teacher of the law of cause and effect, has also just entered the sign Aries and is conjunct Neptune. This suggests opportune timing for a change of desire, consciousness and behaviour, a more mature and intuitive response, to align with the intention to save, preserve and act harmlessly in relation to our ocean environment. Christ commends us to ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’. Our neighbour is also the ocean, its marine life, environment and vegetation.

There is a correspondence between the state of humanity’s watery astral/emotional body and the state of our oceans and waterways through the shared watery element, and the impact of our desires on the physical environment of our planet.  Sixty to 75% of the human body is water and the ocean encompasses about 70% of our planet. Following our passions can produce karmic consequences and this is articulated in the four noble truths expounded by the Buddha, which form the basis of the Buddhist sutra teachings. The Buddha taught that suffering is universal; our attachments, desires and passions are the causes of suffering and bind us to the wheel of rebirth; it is possible to prevent suffering by identifying and eliminating the causes; and the path of cessation of suffering involves cultivating harmlessness and refraining from actions that produce negative consequences. The ties that bind us are the suffering created through wrong thought, wrong speech, and wrong actions.

Through mindful self-study we can observe our own psychological patterns and how we create them, then subsequently give ourselves different choices and possibilities both individually and collectively. By being compassionate, treating others with kindness, goodwill and respect, we are less likely to harm others – people, animals, fish, plants, oceans, earth – and give rise to suffering or negative effects. There is a difference between desire that results from craving based in ignorance and delusion, and desire that comes from wisdom and intelligence. Desire motivated by wisdom and intelligence enables progress on the Buddha’s Noble 8-fold path:  Right Understanding/View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Skilful Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Thinking/Mindfulness, Right Concentration. The Noble 8-fold path promotes a way of life that is harmonious, balanced and harmless to other people and life forms.

David Attenborough’s documentary Ocean, highlights the importance of the health of the world’s oceans which are today facing a crisis on multiple fronts including climate change, loss of marine biodiversity and pollution. We need to move faster and take bolder and wiser actions if we are to enable the development of healthier, resilient, more sustainable ocean ecology and economy and support the livingness of our planet. Ocean explores the current challenges and suggests ideas for protecting the marine environment and its biodiversity. Attenborough proposed creating marine protected areas (MPA), where industrial fishing and any activity harmful to the marine environment is banned, allowing renewal of marine environments and promoting sustainability to allow coral reefs, sea-grass and kelp forests to regenerate, fish to repopulate and thrive. Sea-grass is 30% faster than rainforests in absorbing C02. The practice of bottom-trawling, using big nets that are dragged across the seabed, often ends up discarding over 75% of the catch in the search for a single marine species, thereby causing loss of ocean biodiversity. Bottom-trawling also damages marine habitats and triggers the release of large quantities of CO₂ into the atmosphere, consequently speeding up climate change.

Experiments in creating marine protected areas (MPA’s) have revealed that our marine environment can revive if we engage in sustainable practices that respect the wholeness and interconnectedness of ocean systems.  Taking right action based on wisdom and moderating our desires in order to achieve bigger more important planetary goals that respect the value of other living creatures in the planetary ecosystem can improve the health of our oceans and the whole planet. While three million whales were killed in the 20th century almost causing their extinction, since the 1986 global ban on commercial whaling, the whale population is beginning to recover. It was public opinion and advocacy that mobilised governments to take action and implement the ban. International agreements such as the Paris Accord also have an important role by supporting the use of renewable resources, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the effects of climate change.

“The Science of Impression—if studied by the disciples in the world and by the New Group of World Servers—will greatly facilitate the presentation of those ideals which must and will condition the thinking of the New Age and will eventually produce the new culture and the new civilised expression which lies ahead of humanity, superseding the present civilisation and providing the next field of expression for mankind. This science is, in fact, the basis of the theory of relationships and will lead to the expansion of the idea of right human relations which has hitherto—as a phrase—been confined to an ideal desire for correct interplay between man and man, group and group, and nation and nation; it has also hitherto been restricted to the human society and interplay, and remains as yet a hope and a wish. When, however, the Science of Impression has been correctly apprehended and has been brought down to the level of an educational objective, it will be found to be closely linked to the emerging teaching anent invocation and evocation and will be expanded to include not only right human relations to the superhuman kingdoms, but right human relations with the subhuman kingdoms also. It will, therefore, be concerned with the sensitive response of the entire natural and supernatural world to the “One in Whom we live and move and have our being”; it will put mankind into a right relationship with all aspects and expressions of the divine nature, deepening subjective contact and bringing about a diviner objective manifestation and one more in line with divine purpose. It will lead to a great shift of the human consciousness off the levels of emotional and physical life (where the bulk of humanity is focussed) on to the levels of mental perception.” 4

 

1. UN website: https://sdgs.un.org/goals
2. Political Declaration of the UN Ocean Conference 2022, UN website: sdgs.un.org
3. Esoteric Astrology, 219-220, Alice A Bailey, 1951, Lucis Publishing Company
4. Telepathy and the Etheric Vehicle, 23, Alice A Bailey, 1950, Lucis Publishing Company