Advice from the Plant Spirits

For about eleven years, Ive been doing plant "dietas" (diets) in the AMazon Jungle. Its a challenging experience of fasting, ingesting a single plant each time and making prayers and mediations to the plant spirit to merge with my energies. Sometimes the plants give messages like this one:

 

You humans have been taught to confuse belief and faith. Belief is a set of ideas that hardens into a shell. You call that shell "my faith," and defend it with your very life. The most devout people believe real faith must be impenetrable and unmovable, and they believe their own immovability is what defines them as faithful. Belief is made of stubbornness. The professional shell polishers in the pulpits see enemies everywhere bent on cracking the shell. They enlist soldiers with the promise of medals.

But faith is made of wonder, which is expansive, extravagant, exuberant, vulnerable, grandiose possibility. Wonder is the very substance of creation, and the the first element well before hydrogen. Wonder spreads between all things and connects all things. Wonder wears down and breaks open all shells. When the shell of your body finally opens, it is wonder that will come to you, singing with arms open, saying “let’s go, friend!”

Belief shrinks and excludes, as a cup can only hold a certain amount of liquid. Wonder flows in and out of all cups. All arguments – between people, groups, and even between the voices inside you - are made of this: someone's shell is having pressure exerted on it by wonder. Belief has one motto: never surrender the shell.

Wonder comes like water wearing down stones, like wind wearing down mountains, like love wearing away fear. The devout run frantically from shell-crack to shell-crack slapping fresh mortar in, cursing the waters. Belief is glued together by fear. The more devoted you are to belief, the more life will need to crack you open to be fed by wonder.

We tell you: You’ve been taught to believe that life is random chance; that there’s little chance of life arising anywhere, including here. They tell you you are spinning on a lonely rock afloat in a lonely sea. Whether you take that story as a recipe for meaninglessness, or as a great blessing, or as polish for your arrogance, you’re living inside their shell of "the great mistake."

But their story doesn’t see the space between stars as alive, nor the space between people as song; nor silence as music. Their story doesn’t see the motion of the weaver's hands as a part of the weaving. 

Once, a great teacher said, “Watch out for all those earth rocks, because each one is groaning to produce new life.”

A flash of wonder comes to you, and you see yourself as the glint inside the dewdrop at dawn. But their old motto of random chance whispers: “You're just making that up.” Every morning you awake with a feeling that you’ve been somewhere else for a while. But their old motto says, "that's just a regurgitation of psychological flotsam.”

And yet, every spring, the crocus blossoms appear, as they were always going to do. Every summer the lilies dance, as they were always going to do. Every fall, the apples emerge from the tree, as they were always going to do. And when the winter comes, when there are no more apples, and no more lilies, the rocks themselves begin dreaming into being the next life that you cannot yet imagine, fed by the song of the sun that is inside the mother's molten earth womb.

We tell you: The earth wanted you here or you would not be here. The great weaver wanted you in the design or you would not be here. You wanted to be here or you wouldn't be here. You were always going to arrive here, at this time, to be sweetened by wonder. This earth was always going to be alive, and you were always going to join in the dance of life, as a glint inside the dew drop, a sound of water pouring over rocks, a heart beating with its warm drum song of praise, the sigh of the blossom opening.