What if a lifestyle brand didn’t need to sell anything and that life’s gift waits for us to be here now? I often give away personal power, focus, balance, or internal peace by thinking something external needs to be met or awaken before the internal mirrors what it is that I’m seeking—contentment, abundance, ease, compassion.
“The art of knowing involves finding ways to let ideas (concepts) continually grow through new experiences. If I subsume new experiences under already existing notions, then I am boxing those experiences in. If, by contrast, new experiences allow my ideas of ferns or scarlet oaks to expand and deepen, I am entering a living dialogue with nature. My perception is then imbued with an attitude of mind that is open to the surprises and to the unexpected, and also rooted in a rich field of past experience.”
– Craig Holdrege in Living Perenniality
In the most recent years, I learned to be patient with transition, with being, with a simpler living. I cultivate ease in allowing things to unfold in the subconscious until it can be present in the conscious mind.
Perhaps observation doesn’t often feel like a natural mode of expression, a métier, especially when the muscles in the face have tension, but with practice it could help dissolve the notion of the separate observer and “its” observee.
What experiences have we knitted together to contemplate on? Am I able to decipher the arching pattern (major archetypes) or am I confused by it? Can I see through a linear and 2-dimensional view? Is there an overabundance of external stimuli that distract from seeing the architecture of design that was set about for me before my time, at the time of birth, and still today?
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
– Rumi
In learning to be patient with transition and developing a practice of mindful observation, I begin to unfold a story, my own myth.
Ignorance has a lot to do with separating nature, its forms, its cycles, its dependency on collaboration. I began surfing this year. In these first lessons in the water, I learned the term “sets” for a grouping of waves. A wave can never be a singular occurrence. In one morning conversation after getting out of the water, J and I discuss how a wave is not a wave without the ocean and the ocean is not an ocean without the wave. Perhaps neither of these concepts can be without the observer as well. Drying off in the sand, I test the senses to feel the movement of wave-energy as I place my fingers in my ears and close the eyes. Without sight, the ocean, wave, waves, wind, and sun still make known their presence. We have a habit of naming things, which often separates in order to identify. If we can see the two or three or four, we should also remember to see and sense the one.
We awaken to recall that we depend on the natural world and the natural world, too, depends on us. Many share what they uncover on the mysteries of the body’s microbiome, the extracellular matrix, the meridians, and the fascial network, for example. We begin to agree that we cannot live in ignorance with our biological self. Without the health of the physical self, it is hard to connect to the subtle layers of energies and experiences meant for the physical self. This connection to the internal dialogue helps heal a relationship with the external world—the internal and external unite.
We have direct experiences with this physical body. We can synthesize, take apart ourselves to see sunlight, to feel the effects of the moon, to understand biological unity.
We metabolize sunlight by eating plants (or animals that eat plants) and when we let our skin be kissed by the sun. In a way, we too reflect the process of photosynthesis. DNA is an ancient evolutionary intelligence, carrying genetic instructions in all living things. By eating plants, we ingest life force that our bodies have evolved with. (The life force, shakti1, has also been gifted to us through birth by our mothers.) The molecules have the ancient cosmological intelligence that does what it knows to do. We have evolved to live collaboratively.
“Sunlight energy captured by green plants cycles through the trophic (feeding) levels of an ecosystem, supporting other organisms ranging from insects and mollusks to vertebrates such as birds, reptiles, and mammals. Carnivores eat herbivores, so the food energy for meat-eaters comes indirectly from plants. When a tree dies and decomposes, it is attacked by fungi and other organisms that recycle its molecules and stored energy back into the ecosystem. Even soil bacteria and fungi and the various invertebrates involved in natural recycling depend ultimately on organic compounds made by green plants as their food source.”
- The Natural History of Medicinal Plants, by Judith Summer, p. 107
Plants, fungi, and animals observe and respond to the movement and cycles of the celestial beings (sun, moon, planets, stars). When we partake in their offered nutrition, we ingest sunlight, moonlight, starlight, and planetary influences (or simply, cosmology). In observation of these cycles, we begin to see the patterns everywhere and within us. When we tune into the calendar of the universe, we unravel the other forces, live with more mindfulness, and live with more ease. We see there is only a thin veil between the physical and spiritual world.
“In a virgin forest, no two trees are identical, and everything is in constant, interdependent relationship to everything else. Thus we feel a kind of homecoming when we are able to be fully present in such a forest. The eyes rest easy.”
- Charles Eisenstein, Essays: Source Temple and the Great Reset, March 2021
A balanced cosmology doesn’t capitalize resources. We are not meant to dominate other species. We inter-depend. When we learned about the observations of Darwin, we became familiar with the idea that evolution rewards those most likely to survive. Humans have created an idea of themselves separate from and above other living things. But are we better than other living species at survival? We are neither the most numerous species nor the largest by biomass. Mushrooms have a biomass six times that of all animals and plants constitute 80 percent of the biomass on Earth. Among animals, survival spans from 10 million years in invertebrates to 1 million years in mammals.2 This length of time—short in comparison to the plants that have been and still today, photosynthesizing for more than 290 million years. Ferns, horsetail, and gingko existed before humans and live as a few of the longest surviving plants. What lessons can we learn from co-evolving and co-domestificating with them?
With a fossil record dating back to 360-390 million years ago, ferns dominated the earth before the rise of flowering plants. Ferns do not produce seeds or flowers. Instead, they reproduce sexually by producing spores. Because ferns evolved during a time when the only plants growing on land were moss and fungi, many ferns developed relationships with fungi. Some ferns can’t live without the mutual aid of fungus that protects them and gets them food. Ferns are often found under the canopy, flourish in moist climates, and find abundance near water sources. Life as we know it could not be possible without water. Water is a formless, life-gifting element closely related to anger in the Tibetan Buddhist teachings. What we can learn is that just like water, anger is formless and we cannot hold onto to formless things. We can transmute or change the velocity of anger with patience, compassion, and fluidity. We can recall ferns as playful beings of the understory where often the magic of fairies and little creatures live. Perhaps the longevity of ferns reminds us of the necessity to be compassionate to withstand the changes of the external world.
Horsetail (Equisetum) descended from larger plants that grew 270-350 million years ago during the carboniferous period. We find this perennial plant near watery areas such as marshes, streams, or rivers, prairies, or moist understories. Horsetail (also known as bottlebrush, snake grass, puzzlegrass, or cola de caballo) is the only living genus in Equisetaceae, a family of vascular plants that reproduce by spores instead of seeds.
The Yurok in California to the Nuu-chah-nulth on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and more in between enjoy peeled fertile shoots of giant horsetail. The Okanagan-Colville made an infusion of stems as a diuretic to stimulate the kidneys, for sluggishness due to a cold, and washed parts of the body affected by poison ivy; The Iroquois gave stems to teething babies and for treating rheumatism; The Potawatomi used the infusion of the plant for lower back pain and bladder and kidney issues. Other fun uses: pipe, scouring pad, whistle, feed for ponies to make coats glossy, polishing canoes, shine bouncing arrows, light pink dye for porcupine quills, powdered stems put in mocassins to avoid foot cramps. (Native American Ethnobotany database). Here’s a guide for Pacific Northwest horsetail foragers: How to enjoy horsetail.
I enjoy horsetail in a daily tonic along with moringa, red clover, and peppermint.
Gingko biloba is the last living species in the order Ginkgoales, which first appeared over 290 million years ago and is native to China. Fossils similar to gingko biloba extend back to 170 million years ago. Within a 0.5 to 1.25-mile radius of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, gingko and hibakujumoku were the only plants and animals to survive the blast. Gingko trees can live more than 1,000 years without changes in tree health (indicators such as leaf size, seed quality, ability to photosynthesize) and without change in gene expression related to biological ageing, or senescence. What can we learn from the longevity and tenancy of this plant?
My grandmother and mother very much believed in the healing constituents of this tree. Extracts of ginkgo leaves contain phenolic acids, proanthocyanidins, flavonoid glycosides, such as myricetin, kaempferol, isorhamnetin and quercetin, and the terpene trilactones, ginkgolides and bilobalides.3 My grandmother may not have known the names of these active constituents, but she believed the unbroken insight into gingko’s benefit for physical and mental longevity. Today, gingko biloba is popular for treating dementia (Alzheimer’s disease) as its leaf extract improves blood flow to the brain and other organs. I don’t take the daily dropperful as I did when I was young, but I enjoy the seeds in congee and the leaf in herbal infusions.
Ferns, horsetail, and gingko have relied on the ultimate practice of interdependency to extend their time here. The wisdom embedded in their DNA, expressed in their physical patterns and environments offer glimpses into the law of impermanence with the millennia of species coming and going. Will we learn to slow down our extraction from the planet and allow our life supporting planet to depend on us? Internal and external regeneration requires a deeper participation. Most of us have shifted the majority of our resources into an external experience. We weigh ourselves down with material objects and formless pain. Rebalancing requires the eye to turn inward.
When we propagate plants, we do this because we know we cannot live without them. We carry them to new spaces because they provide us shade, building materials, colors, seasons, rituals, nutrients, medicines, calories, music in the wind and rain, and the art or practice of cohabitation. We can slow down, be more mindful of consumption and waste, propagate and cultivate plants (and fungi), and walk the circular path of cooperation.
The internal bodies have a direct relationship to the environment. We evolved with plants through millions of years to breathe together with the planet. The tubular bronchi branching pattern of our lungs resembles the root system of many trees. Our digestive tubes mirror a worm’s, assisting in the breakdown of nutrients into usable nutrition. We both have digestive enzymes, valves, muscular contractions, and microbiomes.
I don’t take many supplements and prefer the whole form of food and herbs. I can’t always tell at the surface level if the molecular reactions happen optimally. A blood test offers me insight into the dietary changes and environmental adjustments I make and glimpses into the health of the soil of the foods I consumed, the health of the water, the warmth of the sun, and the coolness of the moon and her cycles.
The Apollo space team and moon landings shared with us their view: a sheet of stars. We can view modern science as a link to the profoundly spiritual. With its lens, we can reveal parts of the universal mystery and infuse ourselves and each other with the wonders of the world. Perhaps our lesson and practice is one of interdependence, interbeing, and interstellering. Both new and ancient practices have been developed through observation and repetition. Let us see each other and to allow ourselves to see what we could not see yesterday. Let us be fully unique and fully connected.
a Hindu term, the female principle of divine energy, primordial cosmic energy, Great Divine Mother, coming from the Sanskrit word shak, meaning "power."
John H. Lawton and Robert M May, eds., Extinction Rates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Temitope A. Oyedepo, Santwana Palai, in Preparation of Phytopharmaceuticals for the Management of Disorders, 2021
http://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/ginkgo-biloba-extract
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