Once more, with feeling

In this world where information has become currency, words seem to have come to matter more than the meaning behind them.

It's because we miss that meaning that we just keep looking for more words.

We're obsessed with collecting information, horde it in files

                      like pirates with chests of gold doubloons 

only to bring it out and look at it now and then, memorizing terms and phrases we think are important - we call that learning? - never realizing that information, without meaning, is like food without nourishment.



There are times when the communications from my readers make it clear to me that all they are doing is reading the words I'm writing and missing out on the meaning behind them. This is why, now and then through the years, I've disappeared from view. Stopped writing.

Because when I keep getting requests for information on the uses of this or that plant

                                      or worse, where to buy them

I know that whatever my answer may be, it will merely be filed away in a collection of facts, empty of meaning and devoid of nourishment.

And that's just not cool with me, man.

I'm not writing to convey facts or contribute to anyone's store of information. I don't communicate on the level of what Stephen Harrod Buhner so brilliantly terms the

                                                  statistical mentality

I'm writing about meaning. About relationship with the plants as beings in themselves. And about the changes that understanding

                                                 that being-ness

will bring about in the health and well being of any human (being) who is willing to allow it to happen.

So.

Let's begin again, gentle reader.

The plants themselves have not evolved (or been "created", take yer pick) just to serve our needs. They each have their own niche within their eco-systems. Yes? You understand that, yes?

The Doctrine of Signatures (see top bar) shows us how we can read a plant's characteristics, which are indivisible from their environments, for they and it are one. By reading those characteristics we can derive meaning that we can then translate, and apply, to our own situations ..

                                         keeping in mind, please

that we, too, are indivisible from our environments, of which we are as much a part as plants are a part of theirs.

And so it is useless to try to treat whatever ailments we may have until we not only assess our selves, but our environments. See the connections and interactions between the two. See the meaning there.

My experience with the plants as healers and allies has changed me profoundly, and it has changed my environment just as profoundly. I've come to understand that unless and until someone is willing to allow those changes, both inward and outward, using "herbal medicine" is no different than pharmaceutical medicine when it comes to treating our aches, pains and other miseries. It might

                                                    might

be "safer" (although not always, because heaven knows people use herbs in some really stupid ways these days) ..

Einstein said (I paraphrase) - we can't fix a problem by using the same kind of thinking that got us into trouble in the first place.

Whether we buy a bottle of herbal cough syrup from some folksy website or Benylin from the drug store, we are still just trying to relieve symptoms. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong in that in the short term.

But if we go outside and seek a mullein plant, noticing how its leaves resemble lungs, right down to their velvety texture reminding us of our own cilia .. there is meaning there, did you catch it? And we might take note of how mullein is so often found growing near roadsides or railway lines, where the air is polluted and the soil depleted; the mullein is contributing to the health of the environment that it grows in. There's meaning there, too. Lots of it.

Plants do not only grow in environments and ecosystems that suit them, they contribute to those environments. And once their contribution to that ecosystem is no longer required, the next type of plant that is necessary to its well-being will appear. It's actually all about change. Shifts in the environment call for changes, and changes create more shifts which call for more changes ..

                                        change, by the way, is Wolf Medicine.


And these changes happen underground, too, in the soil, not just on the surface, and that's what this blog, and what I call Underground Medicine is really all about too. Deep changes, not just surface changes. Changes in the nature of our be-ing.

A shift in my environment has called me back, so I'm opening up comments again, and yes, I'm available for contact by email again as well .. to a point. Keep in mind, always, that if you can find the "information" you seek elsewhere, you should seek it elsewhere.

Here we talk about meaning.


Speaking of Wolf Medicine (and its meaning ..)