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.