I felt this was best posted here.
Lately I find myself more and more often alone. I find myself wondering why I'm still here. Why am I still in this "small" desert basin? Why do I put up with all the noise? The babies crying, the kids in silent despair, the loud cars, the empty faces, the lack of dedication, the fear, the buildings....
More and more I succumb to apathy and wither in my tiny room. Why do I even pay for it? I have all these various herbs like valerian, passionflower, and calamus, and so on. I use them to manage the discomfort of being in the city. I've begun coming to terms with that.
I use the herbs for comfort while I am among modern society. A soft shield against all of "this." Ironically, they are far more pleasant and potent when used in nature. More ironically, in nature I don't use them habitually...I use them intuitively, if at all.
Yesterday I was scouting herbs and foraging food on a delta with an herbalist friend. Despite having barely eaten over the last week other than all the various herbs for eliminating Candida--I was really comfortable everywhere we went. It was very humid, and full of bugs and plants that poke and sting.
But it didn't bother me. It didn't bother me at all. And as I knelt down in what felt like a super haven of like-minds (plants), I realized "I'm sweating. I'm sticky and dirty and hot. There's bugs on my head. But I feel absolutely, completely fulfilled and at peace. What physical sensations would usually be accompanied by an urge to escape via herbs, food, drugs, and entertainment was not there. Because I already had the escape..."
It wasn't about comfort at all. Not physical comfort at least. It was about HARMONY. As we walked through that heaven, I stopped to admire and examine all the plants. I wanted to know them. What they did for everything else. They inspired me.
I found myself collecting certain herbs intuitively, which I later found made my stay there far more pleasant than my friend's who really wanted to go practically moments after we showed up. He mentioned he was getting eaten up by the insects. Well, I wasn't. He said "You have some kind of dragonfly following you."
Indeed, there was some kind of dragonfly following me through the twists and turns of this plant labyrinth. I later discovered it was attracted to the catnip I picked earlier and lay in my pocket. Not only was the catnip repelling the insects which were "eating up" my friend, but it attracted a lacewing that literally watched over me (they prey on the bothersome insects in that area.)
I'm not even shocked. I've accepted it. Finally. As magical as it may seem
to have nature befriend you in such a way, it's happened too consistently to be coincidence...
I get choked up and tears come as I remember the breezes that weren't actually there. The warm hugs only I felt. The love and appreciation that place showed me. It was magical in every way. I couldn't help but be fully saturated, mindful and scintillating with energy.
Yet here I am, back in "the real world." I have some purposeless paperwork to do so I can be sure to have food in a few days. But the prospect of throwing on a full cover of light cotton and heading out into nature's embrace is all that beckons to me. There is food OUT THERE! I ate wonderful berries of which I only needed a handful to sustain me the entire day..
But food is not just ingested orally. There are more senses than taste which feed us as beings part of a planet. It is nature which feeds all the senses, and beckons them inward where the greatest fulfillment lays waiting.
The subtle senses inside the body, behind the seeming silence, emptiness and stillness. What more perfect refuge could there be?
I consider posting this on my blog site where my anonymity is none and most readers local.
