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.