Talking to plants

Working with plants is on the whole socially acceptable to people, borderline, but just about acceptable. Being open about plants speaking to me and having a voice can be very divisive.  People either get it, because they’ve also experienced it. Or they think I’m absolutely insane.

How do we listen to plants? 

Being able to listen to plants is an essential part of working with them. And I’m talking about anyone from those leading ceremonies to drinking a cup of cacao or smoking a joint.

Recognising plants as sentient beings is a crucial ingredient that underpins our relationship with them. Understanding their nature, characteristics and capabilities is also essential to creating safety when working with them.

Anything else and we’re entering the realms of an abusive relationship. Use being the telling part in the word abuse. When we use plants to our own advantage or for our own benefit without ever listening to a word they say we are in a relationship of abuse.

For a start, if you can’t listen to what they say, how can you ever ask for permission? If you don’t ask for permission how can you be sure that you are not taking what is not yours to take?

It’s almost too subtle for most people to grasp. In part because Mother Nature is so freely giving of her gifts of food, water and medicine. All the things we need to survive can be found on the earth and thanks to its relationship with the sun. I once heard someone say that ‘all life on earth is the result of love making between the earth and the sun.’

 The cosmic mother and father dancing through the void of space.

It stuck with me and helps me to remember the aliveness and sentience in everything. When we forget this we become nihilistic, ungrateful and eventually abusive. It also leads to an intense amount of spiritual bypassing as we avoid the hard lessons the plants have to teach us by simply, switching off.

How plants speak to us

Most people who’ve experienced the more entheogenic plants have felt the voice that represents the spirit of these plants. Some are more attuned to it than others. There are those that never hear the voice of ayahuasca and those that hear the dandelions say hi as they walk through the most urbanised of areas. This isn’t to judge those who can’t hear but at least to say be open to the possibility.

How plants speak is not always like other communication. It can be symbolic or subtle like a whisper on the wind. It requires a quiet mind to hear sometimes. Other times it can be fierce and strong with zero doubt, at least once you’ve tuned in to the channel, once you know the frequency. That can take time and work. A creation of space to hear.

The telepathic nature of how they communicate can sometimes leave you wondering if it’s the plant or your own mind talking. If it’s an uncomfortable truth or something you’re not necessarily happy to hear about you can be sure it’s the plant.

How to build relationships with plants? 

Working in diet with plants is a way to create the conditions to hear them. By focusing your energy and intention on one plant alone, it allows the building of connection and relationship. Often on so deep a level people will shed tears of joy and sadness at the end of diet. Once you’ve connected with one and heard it speak, you have the keys to their whole kingdom.

Diet involves sacrifice, it involves mediation, it involves an opening to change from teachings given, but most of all it involves relationship. The give and receive in a reciprocal loop.

And part of that reciprocity is not only listening to the plants but embodying and integrating their teachings.

If you do like to smoke a joint to help you relax or take away your pain, be it emotional or physical, if you like the way a cup of cacao makes you feel, if the smoke of tobacco or hape grounds and centres you, then please, don’t forget to listen.

Listen to the teachings, listen to the requests. Have discernment, know that most plants carry their own shadows and will reflect your own shadows with theirs. Ask questions, have discussions, talk it out, learn together. This is the magic the world is missing. Don’t blunder around unconsciously taking whatever you want. For they will surely take back.

image credit: JoLu Amaringo ‘Canto De La selva’