What is the Fucking Point?
What is the point of doing all this healing work?
Why can’t we just be happy and enjoy our fries cooked in canola oil and drink “socially” pretending like it’s not damaging our liver and stay indoors pretending like we aren’t photosynthetic beings and watch TV pretending it’s not affecting our nervous system and make everything in our house “smart” pretending that our electric bodies aren’t being affected by EMFs and then fall asleep on our chemically laden mattress atop a bed frame made in China and pretend we don’t know why we keep having the same nightmare over and over?
Well, you can.
You can do whatever you want. The apocalypse is nigh anyways, who gives a shit.
But how long can ignorance grant you bliss? How long can you pretend that living a “normal” life is actually making you happy?
Avoidance is a hell of a drug and the way I see it you can either keep finding ways to numb out with more “oh well, that’s life” and more “oh my god you HAVE to watch the new season” and more “that’s just what happens to your body when you get old”… OR you can get clean and decide you’ll endure the withdrawal — feelings of despair, losing relationships, forgiving yourself, feeling the depths of your grief, missing Wendy’s chocolate frosties (the worst pain of it all) - because you want to LIVE.
How many TV shows and glasses of wine (“but it’s biodynamic and sulfite free!”) and glade plug ins and one night stands will it take to avoid the comedown?
The nightmares, that nagging voice in your head, those situations you keep finding yourself in, the patterns you keep repeating, those moments of terror where you think, “what the hell am I doing?” but keep doing it anyway.
So, what pray tell, is the point of doing all this healing work?
I think it really comes down to the question of why do you even want to live at all?
A Louis C. K. bit that always stuck with me: “We’re all just a bunch of ppl who decided not to kill ourselves today”.
But why? What is your actual reason for living?And does being vital and open in your physical and energetic body support this raison d’être?
The answer to both of these questions for me is:
I think life is sacred and we all have a purpose to fulfill/a dharma/a set of lessons our soul wants to learn in this lifetime.
I think it’s possible to live a life of flow and ease, where magic is an everyday reality, where we are tapped in to source energy and we’re able to access our intuition in ways that allow us to be fully expressed (like actually expressed not just “I dyed my hair and pierced my nipples” kind of expressed)
And so the point of doing all this healing work is that on the other side of all the unlearning and unwinding and dark nights of the soul is peace, purpose, and real joy. The reward for coming back to your practice after all those times you fell back into patterns you thought you outgrew is being fully in your power, an agent of your life instead of a slave to it.
And. I think that the way we get there, the way we do the work of healing is first through our bodies. Connecting with our entire body, not just the mind, is how we connect with ourselves and our purpose. Cultivating a vibrant, resilient body is the first step in the process of connecting with ourselves, each other, and the earth - the necessary trio for a good life imo.
And what does this all have to do with plant medicine?
Working with plants (for medicine or otherwise) is an invitation to remember the wisdom and nourishment abundant in nature. We can allow nature to feed us in such a tender way that we begin to crack open enough to really nurture ourselves.
The paradigm of energetic herbalism asks us to discover the root cause of our symptoms, a process that requires an excavation of our bodies, our emotions, our hearts.
Working with a practitioner gives us an opportunity to practice resonance and mirroring with another person. We learn a lot about ourselves through how we relate to others
So, if you’re doing this hard, confronting, two steps forward one step back kind of work, I see you. I’m going through it too. And I’m here for you if you want support on this path.
I am certainly not an expert, nor am I fully “awake” or enlightened (and never will be, as long as I’m human). And I certainly don’t judge what anyone choses to do or not do or even whether they even think healing work is important.
I don’t live in a yurt in the woods growing all my own food and I definitely still numb out to Seinfeld while eating fast food sometimes…but I’m workin on it. And it’s hard work, but at this point I personally feel there is no other option. I have seen too much now. I’ve had a taste of what life could be like when I’m in blissful union with myself and with spirit.
And if you’ve read this far, I bet there’s no going back for you either.