||By Leticia Huanca Guevara and Caroline Putnam ||Translated from Spanish by Caroline Putnam ||Edited by Miku Lenentine
Nature maintains all of the elements in balance.
Nature has all of the medicine we need to heal our bodies and heal our minds.
Nature gives us fresh air.
It gives us all the elements that we need.
It is important for us to connect with the medicine of nature.
In Peru we have clean air, we have wind. Around the world we have all of these elements that keep us in balance. We need to become stewards of the land once more. It is time to start cultivating the plants and return to cultivating our food. It is really important for the young people to know how to steward the planet and continue growing more for abundance, and it start right where they live in their local area with the relationship with plants.
Some of the elders are starting to recognize the impacts that the chemicals are having and they are recognizing the importance of organics and why we need to support them. Grow your own food, make your own medicine, come into relationship with the plant spirits, and if you can’t support those who do this work.
Working with organic foods and knowing the medicine of this area is connected to our own health. When we eat organically, when we can know the medicines of our region, we can then have the right balance to stay in alignment with our organism and stay in balance with nature.
It is also important to begin activating in your community. For example, in our community we have formed a committee of ecological preservation. We have activated in our own community trash pickups, recycling areas, and identified the areas of priority. It is important not just to clean our inner environment but also our external environment. Activate your communities by organizing together and really addressing the issues, not waiting for someone else to do it, do it yourself. Be that pioneer that is activating that inspiration in your community.
If you are living in the city, it is important that you leave and reconnect with nature for at least some of the time. Life and health come from the environment. If you live in a place where you live wall to wall, where there isn’t a lot of green, it is important to come out of that place sometime. It is good to go take visits often and reconnect with nature. In reconnecting with nature, you are reconnecting with your own vitality and health.
The mind also is very powerful. When we work with plant healers and plant medicines just taking the medicine could have some effect, but it is about linking the mind to the medicine as well. To the plant being. If we come into our breath, slowly inhaling and exhaling three times deeply … and pause … and really find our deep center point, we can know that we will be healed before we take the medicine into our bodies; that is the most important part. That knowingness, that connection.
It is the same with the planet, if the planet is in a state of needing healing, it is with our consciousness that it can be healed, not going into the fear and the doubt and the destruction. We are all fractals of each other, and so in cultivating a knowingness around healing, it is a very important to focus on our minds.
We need to stay positive with our hearts and minds. Positivity is one of the best medicines that we can give in our time. It is the best way we can heal ourselves. The metabolism of the planet is released and works through positivity. The function of plant medicine is slower. It is not a magic step. But it is short. Steady and short, and it won’t affect other organs.
Chemical medicine has its benefits, but there is a but, even though it is quick and it effects the outcome quickly it is affecting a different part of the organism. The quick fix isn’t always the way, because even though we are taking it for one thing, it may be impacting or hurting another part of the system. With the plant though, the plants are wholistic. They are not meanwhile draining another part of the system. So, plant medicine is slow and steady.
We can also extend this philosophy to projects and other areas we want to create and do in life… the medicine is slow and steady, and stable and sure, rather than the quick fix that gets it done. Slow and steady and short is the traditional way, this is the way we can approach all things.
[Question:] Is it possible to step out of the urgent state of need for Pachamama right now?
Si! One of the important things we can do in this time is to stop buying things that come with trash. If it doesn’t decompose and go back to the earth than say no. Choose a different option. Our mother is alive. She is a living mother and we need to give thanks to her, not only in the way that we pray and give thanks to her but also in the physical connection. What is our action actually saying if every time we buy organic food we are using plastic? It is creating a disturbance in the energy field. She continues to give us food, and continues to give us water, and plants and ways to heal. We really need awaken a new consciousness, both adults and children. What is it we are giving back? Can we decide to go without the trash and things that are not going to be digested by the earth?
This wisdom is really simple. It is really about deciding how we want to live. How we want to be global citizens, stepping out of the industrial age into the ecological era. How to become one world people, tenders of the mother, living with each breath and each act with the integrated wisdom that all life is sacred.
Each of us has a role to play in this. The plants and the foods give us very specific information, transmissions, and communication of the earth specifically for where we are. Learn these ways. Find someone in your area who knows the plants. Connect with nature. Come into relationship with it. This is our birthright and our sovereignty to do this. Know the herbs in your area. It is your birth right, your heritage and your inheritance to pass that on to the next generation. Weather you have children or just in your neighborhood it is important to pass this on.
Us healing ourselves is also the healing of the planet. The fires in the amazon, the different disasters, natural and unnatural disasters happening around the world are showing us that it is time to check out our long shadows, do the inner work, know the nature around you and support your organic farmers.
Make the choice. The more that we choose it the more it becomes convenient. We have seen it here in a small village, go from two organic farmers to eight organic farmers. We keep seeing the demand rising. Know that your choice really does matter. We can pray and we can make offerings, and we can make ceremonies and those feed the spirit of Pachamama. We need to be tangibly feeding Pachamama, if you are not growing your own food please support your organic farmers and if you are growing your own food please make sure you are doing it organically, and find information about herbs.
When we are in connection with ourselves, with our planet and not getting into the fear, this is the way. Not inundating our brains with news, media, negative messages. Inundate yourself with the positive, the inspiring, amazing information and stories to share. Choose what you are saying on Facebook, choose what you are saying on Instagram and social media outlets, being really conscious of what you are bringing into the world. Stay in positivity. We are putting ourselves in a pressure cooker right now. The shadows are being brought to the surface to be seen, and not to be overlooked. Make the choice. This wisdom is really simple. It is about deciding how we want to live.