Your inner truth.
Spring is always a weird time for me. I feel like the world (and me) is changing so much that I have nothing to hold on to, nothing to say.
I'm so used to it at this point that it doesn't worry or scare me anymore, its just this wave that I surf, and know that usually around the solstice, things shift, and the ground settles a little more, and then I can hold onto the world for a few minutes at a time to have something to say about it. Like one of those sand mandalas, before the wind picks up.
Basically, it feels good to be writing again. It took me 15 years of living here in the US to figure out what 'doozy' meant, but now that it's 2020 I'm glad to have it in my vocabulary. Because it's a doozy (I will never say this word out loud btw because it sounds ridiculous with my accent.).
The words ringing in my head that want to come out now are all about truth.
I have felt batted about by everything I read: trying to find balance between staying informed, being a good human, and losing my own sense of self.
A few weeks ago I just hit a wall. I was so stressed out, and compulsively scrolling through social media. I started having anxiety attacks, and not sleeping well, unable to even focus on what was actually happening in front of me (currently: the blue jays, ravens and doves are acting out some avian version of Westside Story in my yard).
I know that there is a really diverse range of ages of people who read this newsletter, so I’m not going to assume that everyone remembers a time pre-internet. But there was a time when our news sources were a couple of different papers that were delivered in the morning. There was ultra-local news, usually delivered over tea, by friends, and then country-wide news, and global news. But aside from a newspaper, or the radio, or TV news (which in the UK growing up with 4 channels, came on at 6pm), we just didn’t have information available constantly.
Imagine pre-TV. Pre-TV, there was the radio and the newspaper. World wars were announced via radio waves. People had nowhere to GO to get more information. It was simply… take what information you’re given and deal with the uncertainty and not-knowing.
Now we have the opposite: at our fingertips, we have so much information that we don’t know what to do with it. Now we think that we’re dealing with the uncertainty by scrolling. Except it is never enough information to deal with what is actually happening: things in the world are changing, and we want to understand and control it, in order to feel safe.
Because there’s SO much information out there, we become convinced that we are able to see the truth. That we’ve done the research and sorted through the information pile, and have found the true things.
What is Truth?
Is there any way, in this world that is so full of contrast, for there to be an ultimate truth that is based on human perspective?
Could it be that truth is subjective?
That’s a dangerous path to walk down, isn’t it? That you could be right AND I could be right? In the schroedinger’s box of reality, the truth is only that which you choose to observe and identify with, but because there are so many of us with the ability to observe and identify (billions, actually), there could be billions of truths. Billions.
Does this make you nervous? Make you angry? Is life easier when there is one truth and only one truth? Is knowing what is right and what is wrong the thing that keeps the ground under your feet?
This ground underfoot is a silk handkerchief. Reality is going to yank on it at some point or another.
But there is a more stable ground, one that is relatively unshakeable. That’s our inner truth. The truth of our own inner being.
This week’s newsletter is about how to find it.
Big hugs, and I hope you’re all holding up ok in this DOOZYFEST.
<3 Rebecca
Ps. The wild roses are blooming and I can’t help myself— I’ve been gathering and making rose elixir. I’ll probably have WAY too much for myself for this year, so I’m going to bottle up a little and make it available for sale. This is not going to be a professional operation— gone are the days of assistance and studio space— but I don’t want it to go to waste, and I know it was a favourite of many. If you want to be first notified, I *highly* recommend joining Wonderkin because I’ll probably post it in there first.
Pps. If you find this information helpful, I’d love to hear from you.
I’d also love for you to share it!
Contents:
1. Why your truth is important in the big picture of things ESPECIALLY when the world is so chaotic and everybody is hurting.
2. How to find your truth in the labyrinth
3. An audio meditation to guide you to your own truth.
4. How to LIVE this
5. Herbs to help (and a formula)
1. Why your truth is important in the big picture of things ESPECIALLY when the world is so chaotic and everybody is hurting.
Sometimes I think we're making progress as a society, and then sometimes it becomes apparent that this progress is not as clear as I'd thought. The ways that we treat each other, and the ways that we treat ourselves, sometimes make me feel like things are hopeless: this giant machine of thought that is capitalism/ oppression/ trauma/ not enough. All of the horrific things that are driven by the fear that we are not enough, and that we don't have enough.
The wound of 'not enough' fills pockets and keeps society going and makes us compare ourselves to each other, seeing some lives as more worthy than others. 'Not enough' is a wound that actually makes us close our hearts to each other (we are afraid of being seen as not-enough, so we cover the tenderness of our heart with all this other stuff, to make ourselves look like more). When we close our hearts to each other, then violence and othering becomes much easier: we no longer feel the innate connection that is a natural part of our species, so we don't see it as hurting ourselves, our sons, our brothers, our fathers. But someone other. Someone who's heart we never let touch ours.
I spend a lot of time mulling over the concept of guilt, and what guilt actually is. Guilt, as far as I've come with my thought lately, is a way to keep ourselves closed to the reality of a situation. Guilt keeps the lens focused on the self. Guilt, in other words, is a nice protective layer that keeps our selves as the center of the story, and protects us from the ripples of grief that affect all of us.
Which is to say, if there is guilt, you're entitled to feel how you want, but if you have it in you to soften the guilt and feel what's underneath it, then you might feel a welling up of something much more tender, and much more scary. Grief. Collective grief, personal grief, the grief of mourning, the grief of loss, the grief in the face of senseless violence. Allow that grief, and let it be personal but also let it be everyone's. Grief unites, is the great equalizer, is something that none of us are exempt from, and all know how to help each other with (a hand on the back, a hug, an 'I'm sorry', a 'you will get through this but it will be hard', a 'you are not alone').
Allow the grief to make you bigger.
If you feel into that grief even more, after allowing it to make you bigger, then what you might find is a little seed of something shiny. That seed of something shiny, if you allow it to grow, is your truth. The spark of you that is you. The spark that most of us believe isn't enough, because we were taught that it isn't enough. We are so afraid to even LOOK at it, because of how devastating it is to think that the core of our being isn't enough.
(Spoiler: this very thought is a false thought, a false idol. We build our lives based on this whisperings of this false idol.)
When you are able to see your own spark as enough, you are able to see the same completeness in others. It becomes easy. Of COURSE this person is enough. Of course we are all enough. How could we not be?
If we could all change this, the very fabric of our society would start to change: we would not compete for resources, or see another peoples' elevation as threatening to our own. We would not see another person (or group)’s suffering as a suggestion that our own pain isn't also worthy of attention. We would not see each other as threats, because there would be nothing to threaten. The economy might shift if we don't need as much crap, but I think that an economy built on a baseline assumption of insufficiency (and slavery, and stolen resources) isn't a healthy economy to begin with. A lush, ripe fruit with a rotten core.
Teaching people to heal this initial wound is my work right now (who knows if it will change). And despite any feelings of discouragement that arise on occasion, I cannot give up hope.
I have hope that a small stone of 'enough', that starts within all of us, can ripple out across humanity and make change in the long-term. Change, by the way, that cannot be un-done: enough, truly is enough.
Times of pain/ change/ upheaval/ grief in an individual are times when we are actually more neuroplastic: our brains are ripe for learning new patterns.
I wonder if the same is for the collective. In which case, now, more than ever, would be a good time to choose something new.
What is the world that you want to live in?
Who do you want to be in this world?
What do you want to teach your children (or nieces and nephews ).
What do you stand for?
None of this can be done by a single individual: it is a tapestry comprised of a multitude of threads, financial, ecological, political, psychological. It is comprised of our individual traumas, our collective traumas, our generational traumas.
But each one of us has a purpose: a bright shiny spark of us-ness. We hide this spark, and ignore its call, because we believe it to not be enough as it is. And yet this spark of truth is a part of the answer: whatever it is that your spark calls you to is a thread in this tapestry.
Believing that your work isn't enough as it is is the voice of the very machine we struggle against, because it causes you to tense your heart, close to each other, and to stop recognising that we are all. in. this. together.
Believing that your truth isn’t as important as other peoples’ is the same as believing yours to be MORE important than others. Both thoughts arise from a place outside ourselves, where we still place relative value on who we are. If you feel this way, then you’re still afraid of what’s under there: you haven’t landed in your truth yet. Because when you’re there, you realise that there’s nothing in the world more important than every single one of us being our own thread.
Your tapestry thread is as important as mine, is as important as anyone's. Every thread is a part of a larger whole. Whether you're called to be a person standing on the front lines somewhere in activism or war or the emergency room; or being the best parent to your children; or making herbal formulas to heal peoples' traumas; or touching peoples' hearts by making art; or simply being held by the rest of the threads in the tapestry while you rest and grieve (this is SO IMPORTANT); your spark of truth is the only thing that matters for you to commit to.
None of us can do this alone, especially not if we give in to guilt, despair, comparison, or believing that we're not doing enough.
We each need to trust each other to each weave our own thread, and do our own work. I cannot emphasize this enough: when you can trust that your own truth unfolds as it will, and that you are doing enough, because you ARE enough, then you can also trust the same in others. This is essential for the tapestry as a whole, because then we stop trying to prove to each other that we’re working hard. We don’t need to, for example, know about all the inner work each other is doing, because we are all doing what we can, which for some of us might be… not-doing.
It is precisely because there is so much happening in the world right now that your own truth is important: none of us can know what the whole tapestry looks like. We aren’t *supposed* to have an idea of universal truth, we are here, on earth, where we are surrounded by conflict and contrasting thoughts and opinions. We don’t have control over the big picture, or anything in it. We don’t even have control over each other (despite often trying). All we have is this thread of truth that connects from our hearts out into the world.
Your truth is important.
Who you are is enough. Don't let the fear of drowning in all that is happening harden your shell. Instead, let it expand your humanity. Let it be impetus to let yourself be touched by the world, and let your shiny heart be seen.
2. How to find your truth in the labyrinth
Do you remember the myth of the minotaur? Theseus, headed off into the labyrinth to kill the minotaur. He could not have found his way back out of the labyrinth without the gift of Ariadne’s thread.
This gossamer thread can be lots of different things depending on how you want to interpret the story, but for my purposes right now, it’s our inner truth.
Sometimes we feel so lit up from within by our inner truth that we cast the light that we need to see. We don’t even need to have a silver thread because we ARE the silver thread.
Sometimes, our own truth feels elusive or even invisible. There are two main reasons for this invisibility:
1. We are searching for the unshakeable, giant, hit-over-the-head-with-cast-iron-pan feeling of TRUTH, like the clouds have opened and the light is shining down on us. Or, in other words, we are looking for truth that feels like external validation feels :).
The unshakeable feeling of living your truth comes down the road a bit, but at first it isn’t going to feel like that. At first it’s going to feel tentative, and you’re going to wonder if you have it. Once you’ve found your thread, and followed it, and the thread becomes a string, and that string becomes a rope, and the rope becomes something bigger than a rope, and the next thing you know you are living within it, THEN it’ll feel like this giant unshakeable thing. But at first, you’re going to wonder if it’s right.
When you’re feeling lost, don’t look for the biggest shiniest light of truth. Look for the tiny thread. Take a leap of faith the first time, that will, in future lead to trust, the more you are able to discern the feeling for yourself. This thread will guide you out of the labyrinth of noise created from other peoples opinions and requests and judgements. Once you’ve found it once, it becomes easier and easier with time, to know the feeling of finding it again.
2. We are paying so much attention to the noise of other peoples’ truth, that we simply aren’t looking in the right place to find out own. Sorta like looking for the keys all over the house when you left them in the car.
I’m going to stick with the labyrinth analogy because it’s working so far.
Look around at the walls of the labyrinth. Picture them. Dark and old. In some places the path is so narrow that it feels like the walls are closing in on you. Look closer: those walls are all made of other peoples’ noise. It’s a social media newsfeed and your mum’s subtle (not subtle!) nudging. It’s a million people telling you what you should be doing to be a better person, to show that you care, to improve yourself, to be more spiritual, to enjoy life more. Some of these messages feel so important, like, we SHOULD be listening to them. Sometimes we think we should be listening to the messages so much that we force ourselves to, or even berate ourselves for not enjoying it.
Every time we focus on the walls of the labyrinth, we lose sight of our own thread.
Every. Time.
“But I need to know what’s happening. I need to be informed.”
I’m not advocating for a complete bypassing of what’s happening in the world (what pandemic?! What racial injustice?! What tsunami?!).
What I am advocating for is disengaging from the sea of other peoples’ opinions that make us lose sight of our own thread. That’s totally different to not paying attention to what’s actually happening, it just means that you’re quieting the noise that surrounds the fact of what’s happened. A thing happens, and then a thousand people want to tell us what to think about it and what to do. That’s where it gets messy. If the thing happens, and we all get very quiet and decide what feels right for each of us to do, we’d all be mobilised to act in completely different ways, that would all come together to create something beautiful. That would include the people who are tired and also the people who are uninterested. I hate to say it, because it’s controversial, but we are also allowed to be uninterested, or so overwhelmed by things to care about that we simply run out of caring bandwidth. Sorta like running the gauntlet outside your grocery store and by the 4th person trying to get your money for some cause you end up thinking ‘I DONT CARE ABOUT THE WHALES LEAVE ME ALONE’.
You don’t have to care about everything. You only have to care about what you care about.
You don’t have to have energy for everything, or donate to every single cause, you only have to do what you have space/ time/ energy/ desire to do.
Because other people are doing their bit too.
So you don’t need to do it all.
And you don’t need to BE it all.
We’ve all got each other covered in this.
Your truth guides you to where you need to be. You’d be surprised (and pleased) at some of the places that you’re pulled to.
The other thing to know is that you have to be ok with what you find inside yourself.
I know your brain might be telling you to do one thing and then you find this thread of truth and it is pulling you in a direction that you start beating yourself up about. This is not helpful. The thread of truth comes from a place so deep within you and it sees a bigger picture than your brain does. I’ve found that when I listen to the thread of truth, even if it sounds stupid or outrageous, it is always right. It meanders through life in a way that is easy, and effortless. When I force things, or push myself to do things that aren’t what my inner being wants, it is always harder. I usually realise afterwards that I would have ended up in the same place, but without struggle.
Its not just me— I have a loooot of Wonder Sessions students who are learning this ‘letting go and trusting’ method of moving through life, and it’s honestly life-changing. You end up with so much more energy because you’re flowing, instead of pushing. You feel so connected to the larger picture because you’re trusting and not resisting.
3. A meditation to guide you to your own truth.
I’ve put all of this into a 22-minute meditation/ guided journey that I’ve listed in my shop space. It's part hypnosis, part guided visualisation, and part meditation. It gets deep into the energetic heart of what’s happening inside you, and helps you to connect to and feel a single thread of truth, that is your own.
I'm not going to lie... it's deep and intense and takes you on a long journey pretty quickly. But the effects of it are sublime and powerful, and you'll feel so grounded inside yourself and your purpose afterwards!
You can do this meditation as many times as you like— it’s really useful to do every day, or even twice a day, when you’re feeling battered about by other peoples’ opinions and don’t know which way is the right way for you. (or just to do whenever you're feeling batted about and need to find some grounding and figure out what's the best course of action for yourself).
(Wonder Sessions students-- this is going in a Toolkit for you this week, so don't buy it)
4. How to LIVE this.
Living it is a case of visiting the place where you feel the connection to your truth as often as you need to, until the connection feels like a solid thing.
-Don’t just do this exercise once. Do it every day, or even twice a day, until you feel like you can find your way to this ‘truth’ space without guidance.
-Learn how it feels in your body when you are connected, and when you’re disconnected, so that when you start to feel pulled off-course, you can guide yourself back.
-Pay attention to things that distract you, and things that are fun to be around that don’t pull you off. I, for example, find that scrolling social media often pulls me out of myself, but spending time with friends in nature pulls me more solidly into who I am. It doesn’t matter what your brain says about these things (but I *should* be able to X), it only matters that it pulls you away from yourself. You can always test these things in the future to see if you are able to stay connected to yourself and pay attention to them.
-It’s also not the end of the world when you get pulled away. As long as you know how to guide yourself back into your truth when you need it, then that’s all you really need. Beating yourself up for not staying connected to your truth 100% is another way to let the ‘not enough’ pattern distract you. If you do something that isn’t aligned with the core of your being, no big deal: decide what you’d do differently next time, and move on. If you find yourself way off-course, just go back. The path never closes to you, and the only thing preventing you from finding your way back over and over again if your own sense of not-being-worthy of it (spoiler: you are always worthy of it).
5. Herbs to help (and a formula)
When it comes to herbs and truth, there are a few different routes we can go. There are plants that help to really deeply light up that feeling of truth within us, so that its easy to find (oplopanax!), and herbs that help to build a supportive structure that allows the inner self to feel safe enough to let down its barriers (crataegus!), and then there are herbs that help us to soften all the layers that we keep in protection of our inner truth (rose!). I’ve written a little about each of them.
Oplopanax horridus // devil's club
I feel a bit strange writing about devil's club as it's not a plant I live near or gather myself. I've never even seen it in the wild. And yet, I use it (sent to me fresh by herbalist friends in the Pacific Northwest), and have had some amazing experiences with it, and feel it would be a shame to leave it out here simply because it's not one that I personally interact with in the wild.
Oplopanax is one of those plants that draws reverence from herbalists-- a 'power' plant, if you will.
One of the reasons I think oplopanax is so incredibly powerful is that it's connection in our energy is to our deepest sense of who we are-- the part of ourself that has no words to describe it, but just *is*. It's the us when we were born, the us that is free of constraint and 'shoulds' and trauma and fear. It's our past and our potential, all wrapped into one. That part of ourselves is always there, but for most people it's buried quite deeply. It's an energy that exists deep at our core, and emerges from our ancestry and our blood, and it blossoms in our chests, driving us forward even if we can no longer feel or hear it speaking to us. Devil's club connects us to that part of ourselves.
On a more physical level, oplopanax is used to balance blood sugar levels, to treat infections, to help raise energy levels over time in exhaustion. Among many other things. It's an amazing, powerful plant, and one I feel very grateful to receive boxes of in the mail.
How to take it: Tincture, tea, elixir, body oil, or my personal favourite: boil some dried root bark in a big pot, and pour that into a bath, and soak it up. It’ll relieve any body aches and utterly transport you to another world.
Crataegus spp. // Hawthorn
Protector of the heart, protector of the faerie realm, which in our own psyches is the tender young part of ourselves that still sees the world with innocence and possibility. Hawthorn wraps itself around this like a protective shield allowing it to blossom again. Hawthorn's thorns are hard and sharp, sticking out at (at least what feels like) random angles to catch you unawares. It's interesting to me that these plants that are so so easy to love are the ones that protect themselves so well-- my first instinct with all of them is to fling myself on them and hug them, and yet you can't do that at all. I have tried it with a big pile of hawthorn twigs and leaves and flowers, and, well it hurts. One of the things you learn is that you can experience something just by hanging with it, being near it-- you don't need to fling yourself on it and try to hug the daylights out of it. For those of us who sometimes lack boundaries, this is an important lesson, and it's a lesson that hawthorn especially can teach us well: to experience something deeply you don't need to lose yourself, but actually to inhabit yourself more fully.
How does hawthorn help us soften? It does so by strengthening the parts that burn brightly through the darkness. That is, hawthorn affects the core of who we are, our hearts, not just physical but that little spark of awareness that was you before you knew what an 'I' was. Hawthorn wraps itself around it like a protective shield, whispering things like 'you've got this' and 'you can fall apart now I'll hold you up' and 'a little restructuring is ok but we'll hold it together here' and for those of us who are afraid to soften, afraid that to let go a little bit means the entire world will cave in or fall down, or rush in like a deluge, hawthorn is the beacon in the storm.
How to take it: Tincture, elixir, tea, infusion, bath. I love putting a handful of dried hawthorn berries in the instant pot with some water, and pressure cooking on high for 15 mins. It makes a really nice strong decoction that I’ll then sip on over the course of a day. You can throw in a handful of rose petals once it’s cooked for a few minutes before straining, too…
Calamus
My first conference class ever was terrible. I don’t say that for sympathy, but as a statement of fact: I was so scared that I was shaking. It’s only years later, after teaching a lot more, that I know why: I was trying to teach a class that was not really coming from a place of truth for me. Some of it was. The parts that felt good and easy to talk about were. But the rest of it? I was trying to sound a lot more academic than I am, and it felt terrible. Before I taught the class, I was having a panic attack and jim mcdonald was with me. He reached into his fanny pack and pulled out a dusty piece of root. After brushing it off a few times, he handed it to me. Calamus.
Jim has a special relationship with calamus. I’d call it one of his ‘airport plants’ (which is what I call plants that we have a special relationship with, which means they often go above and beyond and do things for us that they wouldn’t for just anyone. Sorta like a close enough friend who you’d ask to pick you up from the airport (Not LAX. Nobody is close enough to ask to pick anyone up from the nightmare that is LAX)). So when he handed it to me, I knew that something special was going to happen.
I’m not going to lie and say that there was a total miracle and I went from panic attack to Oprah in seconds.
But I did go from ‘if I start running now then I will probably make it home in 3 days and I’ll just change career and never go online again and I’ll be forgotten in weeks’ to ‘I can do this’.
It’s not that calamus is a plant that gives courage (though, in some ways, it does), it’s that calamus connects your heart to your voice. It helps you to find your truth and express it.
I’m not going to get into calamus’ other actions because it is not one of my airport plants, and also, because I don’t think anyone has written on it better than jim. So instead, I’ll link to his article HERE.
How to take it: I’ve enjoyed a calamus tincture before, but jim says to just tuck a piece of the root in your mouth and go about your day. I’ll defer to him on this one, single matter.
Rose // Rosa spp.
Rose, however *is* one of my airport plants. There are times when I feel so stressed that I forget how it feels to be soft and tender and playful. I get caught up in thinking about to-do lists and all the stressors of the 'real' world. This happened a few years ago when I was off on a rose-gathering expedition, and I was stuck in traffic and the sun was hot and I was in such a HURRY to get it all done. And then I got to one of the places that I gather roses, and the smell of rose was hanging in the warm summer air, and I just unraveled. Just from the scent alone!
Rose somehow relaxes the stuck-ness. It unravels the tension in the diaphragm and chest, unwinds the screws that keep the shoulders up by the ears, and all of a sudden you find yourself breathing deeper and no longer feeling frustrated. It's a powerful thing to happen, especially from just a few drops of tincture or elixir. When doing big shows, I get to watch people react en-masse as they try it and their entire countenances change, over and over again. It's a beautiful thing, from such an easily overlooked plant.
More than that.
Rose unwinds the stuck-ness, but that stuckness is often rooted in old grief, old trauma. These are things that get locked in our body when they happen, because we don't know how to process them, or are unable to process them. Every time they're triggered we live them out, again and again. I've seen rose help with this so many times: to slowly and gently start to ease the tension holding these traumas in place. I love to combine it with ocotillo blossom (here) for these old traumas, as the combination supports while gently allowing you to access these old griefs, and most importantly, to work through and release them.
Rose calms a fluttery chest-- the anxiety flutters. Depending on the cause, I like to combine it with something incredibly grounding like devil's club and hawthorn. or something soothing like oat. Once again, it's because of that ability to relax and relieve tension. While some things calm the fear of anxiety by grounding, and some do by supporting the system allowing it to feel safe, rose does it by allowing the stuck energy to flow to where it needs to be. Look for people who have a hard time expressing themselves, or who hold themselves in check and in tight control, as if, if they were to let go the whole world would fall down and a few drops of wild rose elixir will work wonders for them.
How to take it: Rose tincture or elixir is my favourite way to ingest rose medicine. But you can also add rose water to baths, cover your body in rose-scented oils, sip on rose tea, stir powdered rose petals into water.
A formula for inner truth:
Combine tinctures of:
Oplopanax: 1 part
Rose: 1 part
Hawthorn: 1 part
Calamus: 1/4 part
Cover and shake well. Close your eyes and connect to your own heart, and allow that to fill the container in your hands, before pouring.