Nat-You-re & Compass-I-on

Words, ideas, opinions, concepts… they fly in and out of the mind, some stay for a cup of tea, some let you have your cup of tea in peace. Some are insistent, boisterous, thorny, even violent; some are bashful, quiet, inconspicuous, almost imperceptible. No matter how we try, our being human is Mawlana Rumi’s famous guest house, in a constant state of flux, either following or resisting the tide. One day you’re at your best, the next you’re in a slump.

There was a time in my life when this was a bleak reality. But this story is for another time… what I want to share here is how I came out of it, or rather, how I stopped getting carried away by the inevitable tides of the mind, and the draining emotional roller coasters that come with it. It was thanks to Nature, in the form of plants. Yes, trees, flowers, herbs, ornamental plants, succulents, medicinal plants, garden plants, weeds, food crops, any form of resident of the plant kingdom.

How did they help me? I started seeing them, connecting with them, communicating with them, I started feeling them as my long-lost kin, almost as if all of a sudden, I remembered again that I had this very important relationship that I forgot to cultivate and that went at the bottom of my list of things to take care of.

In the middle of a spiritual crisis 7 years back, I needed to find myself, I was thirsty for meaning, so I decided to pack my bags and go on a journey to the Amazon rainforest, to pay homage to the lungs of Mother Earth, to me the most important place on Earth, the most divine temple I could make a pilgrimage to, without which life as we know it wouldn’t exist. The trees of the Amazon literally gift us with life, tirelessly transforming carbon dioxide into oxygen and breathing it out into the atmosphere for the animals (including us humans) to breathe it in, and live.

During that amazing journey over the summer of 2004, I did something that some may consider totally mad, others may see as brave, some may even see it as romantic, others may just never have thought of such a thing: I visited and asked to learn from indigenous communities and their ritual traditions to connect more deeply to Nature, both in the form of the plants, animals, mountains, rivers that in the indigenous worldview are sentient spirits (much like many of the world animistic cultures, which I’ve always felt an affinity for), as well as with my own inner Nature, my deepest being, my soul. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, or what I would find, all I knew was that the Amazon was calling.

That journey crushed me open, there was nothing romantic about it, I faced many of my deepest fears, and learnt a lot about myself, but truly the most important thing that happened was that I saw plants for the first time (although it felt more like “again”) for what they truly are: sentient beings, kin willing to give a hand-leaf, friends ready share a story, or a song.

When I travelled back to London after that journey, I jumped head first into a university course in Western Herbal Medicine to uncover the healing potential of plants and our society’s cultural history in connecting with plants for healing purposes. I wanted to deepen my understanding of our green great grandparents and turn that knowledge into a profession. For months, my favourite thing to do was to go meditate by a Horse Chestnut tree in Hendon park and write poetry. Although studying them with the brain sometimes made it difficult to connect with them through the heart.

After many ups and downs in keeping alive my relationship with plants, fast-forward to last year, I let my connection with plants dramatically slide. Last year was a turbulent year for everyone, which brought about many changes. But one of this changes for me has been the most beautiful one: becoming a mother. With my life partner, I moved to a different country, I was forced to stop the work I was previously doing, and during the prolonged maternity I studied a completely new topic and soon I’ll be starting work in a completely new field. In this whirlwind, my relationship with plant kin has been put aside, but at the start of this new year bringing in new and increasingly challenging chapters of my life, I feel it is the best time to turn once more to the plants’ infinite wisdom for guidance.

For this reason, yesterday I joined a course called “ReConnect with the Plant Kingdom” hosted by Tigrilla Gardenia, a nature-inspired mentor, coach and expert in plant intelligence and biomimicry, to pick up where I left off and take my connection with plants to the next level throughout the year.

Everybody has felt the benefits of connecting with nature, but there is much more than personal health benefits. I believe that the only way we can shift the current paradigm of an unsustainable society and accompany the world to transition into a more Nature-loving future, is by listening beyond the mind chatter and the stories of our emotional selves that constantly need to reconfirm an identity, without resisting them, but simply accepting them with kindness as a part of being human… listening beyond means listening to the silence that is beyond, that comes from beyond, from an ancient wisdom that’s ever present in the dimension of an open-heart, also known as the here and now (but due to an over-inflationed use of the term it sometimes seems to lose its meaning). I know that many may think that this is nonsense, but plants are here to support us on our journey to awakening, and if we open our heart, eyes, ears, absolutely all our senses to them they will communicate with us. The number one thing we can do to help the Earth is to remember our ancestors, the plants, who have been on the Earth for much longer than we have; they have so much to share us and we have so much to gain by offering them our reverence and attention.

If there is one thing that plants’ wisdom teaches us, is that to feel the connection with all that is we are invited to listen to the silence beyond the words, to read in between the words, see through the words, contemplate the silence that words, ideas, concepts originate from. In that space, real communication is possible, interspecies communication is possible, and it happens in the language of love. This is Nature’s compass, and we will find it only through compassion for how we are, who we are and whatever situation we are in at any given moment. A compassion that starts with ourselves and extends to all living beings. In that space we see Nature as us and that we are Nature, and anything we do to our Earth we do to ourselves.

If this story has inspired you to try out an informal meeting with a tree or to have a chat with your houseplant it’s useful, for instance, to have a pen and blank piece of paper with, or alternatively an instrument, a paint brush or space to dance, because the way plants communicate may not be in the form of words, often it can come through as art, such as an image, a song, a poem.

You & I

You-re I

Compass-I

You-re Compass

You-re Compassion

Nat-You-re Compass

Nat-You-re Compass-I-on

Nat-You-re & Compass-I-on

Nature & Compassion

For You & I

For 2021, I’m starting afresh and reconnecting with Nature! Will you join me?