Wisdom of the Trees

I am here at Viridis Genii, Plant Mysticism Conference in Oregon and am following though with my commitment to write to inspire me to write my book. So…I am going to publish excerpts from "Verdant Gnosis", Cultivaying the Green Path. This is a book that has essays written by presenters at this conference and the first time my writing has been published.

The Title of my essay is "The Wisdom of the Trees".

"As a child who spent time in forests and parks, I played under the cedars a
and felt at home. The old growth of the Olympic National Forest brought me nourishment. But it would not be until midlife that I found a place with the trees as wisdom keepers and healers of the spirit. I had gone to Lake Quinault to have a nice family outing. What I witnessed when we drove near the lake was massive clear cutting. I was devastated. I told the trees in silent prayer that I would return to connect with them soon, to witness what had happened to them. "

More coming tomorrow…

The Plants are Not Really Medicinal

Writing a Book about Shamanic Herbalism-Entry #2

What I want to communicate in a book is the practices of shamanic listening that can

support people to find a more expansive way of living beyond the chattery voice in their heads. What has happened to me from following this path for twenty years is simply that.  I didn’t set on this path to develop such a work that would do that.  I was a school teacher who wanted to live a spiritual daily life.  This intention led me to wise woman herbal teaching.  And as I began to teach wise woman ways, I was led to a spirit teacher who is a very, very old shamanic herbalist from the British Isles.  It is she who has taught me the shamanic listening way.  She was introduced to me because she and my other spirit teacher knew that I had the guts to teach this.  She is very happy that I have continued to do this over and over for the past twenty years.  

I remember the first time she shared an exercise with me to give to my apprentices.  I was new at having apprentices.  I felt very awkward.  I also knew how to teach from my 20 years experience as a school teacher.  I gave my apprentices an exercise to do and it had amazing results.  I was very happy and decided to keep contacting her to ask for more exercises.  

It is a beautiful place to go to visit my teacher.  She had a wooden house with steps.  We sit and drink black tea.  She takes me in her wild, magical garden and tells me about plants and asks me to eat plants.  Many of these plants I have never heard of.  

There is a very large, old pine tree near her house, through the garden gate that I visit often.  I have traveled up its trunk and come to another level of the upper world.  

I can venture down the path, past the garden gate and visit a fairy teacher.  

My shamanic herbal teacher in the upper world keeps goats.  She has taught me a lot about the goats. I have asked her many things.  

These adventures to connect with my teacher are done with shamanic journeying.  

I want this book I write to teach these ways of listening with the plants and utilizing the local plants for nourishment and healing.  I want to strongly communicate with people through this book that they can become who they are meant to be through following this path.  I have been learning that the plants are not really medicinal.  This is a new way of being with the plants and actually a very old way.  The plants are wisdom teachers and through our relationship with them, they can enhance our paths.  Sometimes we require healing, and the plants can support this.  

This is controversial because most of the talk from herbalists about plants is about what they do for healing and for curing.  What is overlooked is the wisdom that a blade of grass can give us about our path to who we are.  

May it be in Beauty.  

The Natural Path

It has been my desire for a long time to write a book about shamanic herbalism.  I am setting aside time now to do that, at least three hours a week.  It doesn’t seem like very much time, but it is more than no time.  I write all the time, for my newsletter and for my students and apprentices.  I write eBooks and encouragements and challenges and inspirations about calling in the plants to be our teachers.  Now I am writing a book.  

I have always been with the plants.  When I was a child in Aberdeen, WA I loved to go into the vacant lot next to our house and spend time in the grasses.  I felt at home here.  Now, my garden is full of grasses, I am not weeding them out anymore.  I am not weeding my garden at all.  The dictionary defines weeding as “removing undesirable elements”.  In my practice of the wise woman tradition, I do not try to get rid of “undesirable” things in a forceful way.  I add on more and more the things that nourish me.  As I do this, those things that are not needed begin to fall away easily.  

In creating a garden without weeding, an important element is listening and receiving wisdom from the plants and the garden.  This may seem like an unusual thing to do, but it is really going on all the time.  When we are going about our lives, choosing what to do and not to do, we are receiving information about what is the best path.  If we are caught up in listening to the voice that says we are wrong or shouldn’t or can’t etc. and we follow that, then things get really complicated.  I see the workings of my garden in the same way.  

There is a strong voice that says I have a mess in the garden because I have let the grasses grow and flourish, that I have let the buttercup grow, that I have allowed the Canadian thistle to grow.   But each of these plants has wisdom for me and is enhancing the garden in some way. 

What has developed from listening to the voices of the plants and my intuition instead of that other “make wrong” voice is that a natural path has been created. I have been led to books that support this path.  I have been led to people-helpers who are interested in this path and willing to support the development of such a garden.  

It has been very hot during this early summer time this year.  I have been watching which plants are thriving and which are struggling a bit with less rain.  I have been spending a great deal of time watching and listening.  

This is a good thing to do to create a garden and to create a life.  To watch and listen for the quiet message that show us where our natural path is.  

Each of our natural paths are guided for us specifically.  You may be called to do something similar to what I am doing….and you may be called to be a cultivator of a garden with very few weeds.  To which voice are you listening?  Take some time to see what each voice within you is saying.  Which is the one that leads you on your natural path?  

May it be in Beauty.