Recently I discussed what has occasionally been called 'sitting with plants’. I want to dig into what ‘sitting with plants’ means from a bioregional perspective with regard to the signature within small group open palm, come and see hands on. I also wanted to talk about background history and more about the practical aspects of ‘sitting with plants’ within a group context in relation to rampant infectious bio-phobia and eco-phobia both vectors of transmission and cure. The cure of course is the genius world teacher uber-mann wild herb ways, active and fully engaged among us as a people.
Now to start ‘sitting with plants’ is actually standing with the green in four directions. Sitting with the plants is not only sitting with the plants but standing with the plants, walking with the plants and being with the plants together with others while standing with the green. So one of the primary foundational things I ask is, “Will you give all and everything to this commune of experience?”, “Will you become with us as a we together? Loving the way home?”, and most radical of all in a FolkFirst! EarthFirst!, open palm, come and see, “Where is this coming from?”
I would say with regard to community empowerment and us rebecoming a people in place, embracing our unique peoplehood solutrean mindset tool kit. "Once you are loved, we become wanted to be." -genius world teacher among us. In short this movement is coming from the fundamental actuality of being in physical proximity to the plants to wild natural places as and within a small group face to face process unfolding IRL in real time. Real life, real place, real person, real plant, real face, real time deep ecological insight into our specific bioregion. When I say ‘wild natural places’, I obviously don't mean absolutely wild or absolutely natural in the sense of a purity spiral. We do not do purity. We do not do impurity. For the official acoustic record, for those taking notes, keeping score struggling for balance, there is the process. The only thing we have is our process. I mean it could be any place where plants are growing and you can sit with them. Any where being with others in a relatively undisturbed sort of environment, is the right place, right time, right space. This is often a park, it could be a ‘natural’ National Forest campground or trail head. It could be a National Monument. It could be state game lands, or a state forest. It could be a city or county park. It could be a back yard or garden. What matters most is the intention to work with plants to mitigate suffering and maximize wellbeing while simultaneously disavowing the selfish individualism of the fairy tale of endless economic growth and the war perc merch economy mindset. We are the foot soldiers of the peaceful non-violent resistance. It could be any place, anywhere the plants are growing and we, us as a people are becoming with regard to helping one another. Plants are growing everywhere. So this is a practice that can occur anywhere. It can occur spontaneously and it can occur here as a conscious practice unfolding in a loving, caring, structured environment in the sense of a garden, the medicine garden.
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So what is the essence of sitting with plants? standing with plants? walking with plants? being with plants in a group context? Well the first thing is to gather with your group with the intention of being with the plants together. Many are called and many more are chosen, many miles before we sleep. Having a team approach where everyone before the event, before the activity before the process, involved with the process more or less agrees to a certain set of common interests and common intentions. Thus there is a commitment of time to engage together in a therapeutic caring way relating to these plants to bring back a sort of new heightened awareness of what the plants have to offer us. For us the materia medica is everything. We have sold and sacrificed everything for everyone among us. You could say common rules and common hopes. The basic process begins with a common understanding of respect. Respect most of all primarily for this FolkFirst! Earth first love offering teaching, respect for the vital spark behind every in out breath. Respect for one another within the group and respect for the place, respect for the plants growing veriditas and respect and thanks for the situation that we're in, we're in together, in relationship to sitting with person, plants and place. Respect for the opportunity to build this commune with our hands where we focus on love.
The first thing is wear loose comfortable clothing appropriate to the season for a romp adventure outside. If it's raining or if rain is expected you want to have rain gear handy. A wide brimmed hat for protection from the sun. If it's hot and warm you want to have some liquid hydration available to drink, clean water, some tea or something like that. Maybe something to sit on, a cushion or blanket. In short be prepared for a cozy day in the open air with a small group of people dedicated, committed to this process.
Plant Orientation: sensorial phase: You Begin by joining brothers and sisters promised to this wild Herb ways process, in a circle in an outdoor space. Begin by the short circle introduction of the group to the group and to the place from the place where this is happening. We are meeting one another for the first time. Often it’s best to have a campout of several nights duration. At the beginning it’s best to have a short twenty minutes to an hour silent walkabout. Followed by an intention circle where each person states to the group their name and what their intention and expectation is for the process. You can Embrace each other in the group with a gentle sort of hug. You could also reach out your hand to each person within the circle to hold hands forming a circle. Depending on how often your group has done this you may want to appoint a de facto guide leader to go over what's going on and what's going to happen so there's a reasonable expectation of what's going to be happening with the group. The group facilitator may want to mention, “…we are sitting with plants and point out ____ is plant we're sitting with…sitting together”. It must be a specific plant directly in front of us. So there is no confusion you want to have the leader point out the plant and also point out and identify look-alike plants nearby and if there is poison oak, poison ivy or toxic plants in the immediate area. Then do a short circle walk around including key points of the place bioregion. Remember our 'sitting with plants' is celebrating thankfulness for being above ground, breathing for another day.
Initially it’s good to begin this practice with large plants like trees. It could be a large woody shrub, or a tree, for example a ponderosa pine. You want a non-thorny plant that you can literally hug and put your arms around. A tree or shrub that’s easy to identify and doesn’t pose reactive irritant skin issues. For us, our people, our place, our gateway plant is this great holy tree the ponderosa tree. Hugging the tree is an activity to begin the process of ‘sitting with plants’. By hugging, kissing and embracing the tree we promise and vow to learn to hug, kiss and embrace each other. We pray for our ancestors departed, those here with us now and our children to come. Who knows may be conceived here today. You may want to touch the bark of the Ponderosa Pine. You may want to sniff the bark, smell maybe even place your tongue on the bark, taste the Ponderosa Pine, touch the needles and get in close proximity with Ponderosa Pine.
Now of course if the plant that you're sitting with is a small plant, a forb or annual plant rather than a large perennial tree or woody shrub you may want to have each person within the group walk up to and approach one of the plants, as ‘their’ plant. For instance one plant that we have sat with in a group setting is Monarda. Monarda is a member of the lamiaceae or mint family of plants. It is intensely aromatic so you may want to have someone taste the monarda leaf. Look closely at the monarda. Perhaps using a 10x loupe magnifier lens. Look at the stem of the monarda, touch the square stem. Examine the way the the opposite leaves are positioned and smell the flower and foliage, etc that sort of thing. You may want to gently put your ear down to the ground where the plant is growing and approach the plants from a crawling position so in a sense you're on the same level at eye level looking directly at the plant.
After each member of the group have each made some sort of contact with the plant: visual, tactile, olfactory, perhaps tasting a leaf of the plant. If it's a medicinal plant it is possible to have maybe a tincture bottle on site of the specific plant that you're going to engage, or a glycerite if it's a plant like monarda. You can have a small portable stove and make tea from the plant and the members can drink the tea. These are all possibilities. All these things can be done, so this is not a quick process. The other thing is this is not a monologue. It is a group practice ‘sitting with plants’. Maybe it should be called engagement with plants? 
The next phase of ‘sitting with plants’ is the Intuitive Phase. I wanted to mention a common issue with ‘sitting with plants’ especially in a group context with urban city dwellers and that is fear, anxiety and various degrees of trepidation connected to the outdoors. Biophobia and eco-phobia are both elements of the same disconnect of persons. Biophobia is the aversive response of fear and disgust toward natural stimuli in nature. Eco-phobia is the dread of helpless, hopeless, and powerless feelings regarding climate change, environmental degradation and ecosystem collapse. In both eco-phobia and bio-phobia the result is similar, passive acceptance of inaction as the only possibility. The intuitive phase can be problematic for many for a variety of reasons including eco-phobia and bio-phobia and each ‘problem’ can be a potential blockage to the process.
There are many taboos to listening to the plants. Some of the taboos are religio-cultural within techno-america. Many people in our culture have never been face to face, one on one with a plant as a living being or as plant-person in a wild or semi-wild environment. In a sense you are dealing with impoverished, deprived, deracinated non-persons who have been taught, educated and programmed to not engage with the natural world.. How de-racinated? Impoverished in what way? Deprived of what?
Well deprived and impoverished from the essential well-spring of their essential nature, their biospirit and place as a person in the bioregion. The whole process of being alone one on one with a wild plant without a filter, in even a semi-wild environment can be anxiety producing. Wild nature in the form of a plant growing on its own, self thus imposes another whole multi-verse of being. You will have people checking their phones, taking photographs, using apps on their phones to ‘id’ plants, using notebooks, writing things down, taking notes, asking questions. These are all valuable ‘student’ type of activities and show how serious people are. People will be asking questions and instead of listening to the answer they are thinking of the next follow-up question to ask. Then there is the one-up question to show how much they know, To show just how serious they are. So it is important to create some ground rules, to make it easier to just have the group’s essential activity be ‘sitting with the plants’. Focus on returning the group energy to sitting with the plant using the five senses. The human body itself is a scientific instrument of perception. Here and being quiet is how it works best. Many people are fixated on a mechanical perspective, so it is important to work a shift to a vitalist, bioregional perspective rooted in the human body’s ability to perceive. The idea of ‘talking plants’, ‘the spirit or voice of a plant’, even the idea that perhaps the plant is a living being, or the idea that God a god, a creator somehow set up the plants to ‘help’ and aid, heal and better us can be a moment of extreme existential dread for many.
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What you want to do once this initial contact period has occurred. Once the contact connection orientation phase has been established you want to then go into a more quiet intuitive mode. As far as the quiet mode you may want to have a facilitator address the group and advise the members of the group to take some deep breaths using one of the qi-gong techniques I demonstrated earlier. Qi-gong Chinese aspects, although here again you know when I say, ‘a Chinese aspect’, it's an aspect of being with plant and breathing. So it's not an Asian or Chinese way of being with the plant. It’s not Chinese breathing, it's just being with plant. https://youtu.be/HwzGkJGgW8w?si=cfbm5NRDbtgwGUSs
So what you do is you stand before the plant in the area adjacent to the plant. You take some deep breaths by raising your hands up above your head as you inhale, and then bringing your arms to your sides as you exhale. Doing that four times. You can make some pushing hands motions where you attempt to feel the energy of the plant under the ground in the area of the roots. All living beings are continuously engaged with the environment. It is not that you believe the plant is engaging with the environment. The plant as a living being must and does engage with the environment in myriad ways. https://youtu.be/c1izaN9vo2c?si=Zc4wRo8_1Mk4LwSn
So you engage with the environment. You note the position of the plant. You're noting. You're watching. You're observing where the plant is growing. You're noticing for instance with Monarda, that it likes sun. Monarda likes sunny areas. It likes a dappled sunlight. It's an understory plant. It likes to grow in little patches or groves or groups of fellow monarda plants, tiny little monarda communities. Noticing all that, you may want to touch the soil around the monarda plant. You can feel the soil and ask, “Is the soil moist? Is the soil well drained. You are touching the soil with your fingers. You are asking, “Is it Sandy?” Is it a clay soil? You're doing all this noticing and then at a certain point you go into a deeper quiet time where each person can either be within a circle around a particular group of plants, if it's a small enough group of people, around a little stand of monarda, a little grouping of monarda. Or it can be where each person then goes off not a long distance, a few yards away and finds a little area of monarda. That they feel comfortable with sitting with and then each person sits quietly without speaking. Each person sits without making overt noises or or you know, without saying anything. You sit with the plant for a period of time. I would say this period of time is roughly 10 to 15 minutes of quietly sitting, something like that so you can have someone with perhaps a timer to time this.
Then after the period of Silence, you regroup. You can have the facilitator announce, “...okay we're coming back together as a group.”, something like that. Then each person then slowly comes back to sit in a circle once again adjacent to the monarda grouping of plants growing in that environment. What I would then advise is to have what I call a Talking Stick approach. What is the Talking Stick approach? Well the Talking Stick approach is where you have some sort of object it can be either a formalized piece of wood that you use for this purpose. The talking stick can just be a piece of wood or or a stick or something nearby that you hold. You can have something attached to it like a bandanna or twine. Or it can have a feather attached to it. You can have maybe if there's usnea nearby or a vine or grass or something wrapped and braided around the talking stick. Or it can be something like a flexible willow in a circle. The talking stick can be a bundle of even the monarda plants, like a bouquet, a small bundle of monarda that you pass around. Each person now while holding the Talking Stick has the hot seat to use Fritz Perls term. The person is then invited to share what their experience was sitting with the plant. I would call this the ‘talking stick’ stage while the person is talking. You may want the facilitator to announce it there's a rough time limits. You're not you don't want someone monopolizing the conversation. Because we're not again, we're not so much at this time talking about ourselves. We are not focusing on our traumas or our Joys, our hopes, our sorrows and so on. We are talking about our experience together with this Monarda. So for instance if there was a tea drunk or sampled or a tincture we can talk about what our experience was with the tincture in relation to sitting with the plants. What was The Taste? Was it bitter? Was it sweet? Was it pungent? Was it bitter? Was it astringent tightening to the taste? Again some of these terms may not be familiar with the person, with all members of the group. So there's an educational process about these different terms. We are developing language terms of a lexicon within organoleptic testing of plants. You could also talk about where the Monarda was moving in the body. Was it? What was it doing in the body? Did you feel the monarda in your lungs? Did it form saliva forming in the mouth? Did you get a warm feeling? A cold feeling? Was there maybe something like a headache? What change did it create? In what organ system? Was it moving upward? Outward? Inward? From front to back? Is there a specific part of the body that you felt the Monarda? Or the Herb, whatever it was? Was acting now of course there are more emotive people. There are more intuitive and there are more introverted people, who will have maybe almost a visionary experience sense or experience with the plant that they would talk about. They may mention something that they saw, a color or a shape. It could be a vision. It could be a Daydream. It could be an actual vision that they saw or felt or heard, or a presence.
It can be whatever they want to say, whatever they want to share. Of course you want to encourage here through the facilitator openness to expression. Yet at the same time you don’t want to reward the bizarre. Because in group dynamics you will have a competition for the most outrageous statements for reaction acknowledgement. That is not what we are aiming for. We are focusing on the plant, so don’t forget that focus. Or you will have someone get into culturally correct trauma. If you are sitting with Gossipium thurberi, desert cotton, someone will mention seeing women slaves beaten screaming, witches burned at the stake, cowboys shooting indians or something. You don’t want to get into fantastic, theatrical, entertaining, imaginative skits because it’s fully about developing the human person as an instrument of observation toward the plant. Yet at the same time you don’t want to stifle speaking honestly. You want to channel the spoken words of the participants into the plants themselves in relation to our bodies. You also want to validate the least likely to speak person, to get them to speak and the best way to do that is focus on sensations within the organoleptic continuum of energetics. You want to have focused openness in this whole process toward plant energetics especially. Don’t forget we are working developing a lexicon of expression with language, with words to get into these plants to develop a deeper bioregional vitalist herbalism of repeatable experience within a materia medica.
Once the person is finished speaking. Once they have had their say. Then the Talking Stick, the bundle of herbs whatever you are using is passed, hand to hand to the next person. The next person just speaks and the rest of the group listens attentively thoughtfully. Then as a gift the talking stick goes around in a circle, from person to person. Perhaps as it ends the facilitator may say, “Does anyone want to comment on what was said? What's been said?” At this point there can also be something where the facilitator who perhaps is more skilled and knowledgeable and has a little bit more expertise, perhaps about botany, perhaps about the energetics of the plant, perhaps about different schools of herbal, how they viewed the plants, their own experience with the plant and so on; they can do a wrap. In that sense summarize the conclusions, establish if possible common ground of the group subjective experience. The facilitator facilitates in the sense of concluding and then you know the event has moved on then moves to a new plant… but this as a whole is what I call the process of ‘sitting with the plants’.
So the question is where, why, when, and how this process come about. Well I wanted to go a little bit into my own experience of this process. How I came to it. It is primarily through other teachers. I've mentioned before some of their names. Here I don’t want to name drop. Because to be honest, I am not sure if they approve of how I am presenting ‘sitting with plants’. So I'm not going to mention their names right here. You can read some of my other writings for that. you can get that from other sources. I wanted to talk about my own experience. Some of you may know I worked for approximately 20 years as a LPN, and RN, registered nurse. I worked a lot with in the area of of Psych or Behavioral Health. I was exposed in that in that process in that occupation, in that job within Healthcare to giving talks. I had to give talks. I had to give sort of group, group talks to people who are often in a lockdown psych ward type of environment. Oftentimes they were unable to leave the facility. They were there usually for some sort of court ordered evaluation or something like that. They weren't just free to leave. Given that they often wanted to take part in groups. Some of these groups were led by nurse practitioners. They were led by a psychologist. There were AA 12 step programs. They were led by psychiatrists and so on. Lot’s of groups.
One of the things that I've learned though from this employment experience is that one of the major lacking problematic portions of that job, was patient being held against their will in a place denied access to the outdoor world of nature. Being held against your will in a building. A building which is often not designed to facilitate the entrance of light, wind, air from the outdoors. Often such medical style buildings are designed to be insulated from the outside. Which was often no windows, no windows that could be opened. A stuffy stale stifling place isolated from the natural environment. I developed a resistance to this whole mode of isolating people from the natural environment within the health care model of the dominant culture. I especially think this crystallized and became deeper and more fundamental during the covid event.
One of the things of the covid events which was later learned, was that respiratory illnesses are very interrelated to vitamin D trough and vitamin D deficiency. So covid was exacerbated or made worse through lack of exposure to sunlight during the winter months. This was true, this is true of many viral illnesses. During the 1918 pandemic Spanish flu epidemic one of the treatments was exposing even bed ridden patients to direct sunlight. I guess we live in different times. Back then there was a lack of air conditioning. There was no A/C mandate and so on. One of the treatment therapies for the flu victims of the 1918-1919 pandemic were to place them in solariums or windowed areas where they could be exposed to sunlight or even place beds outside where they were exposed to sunlight. To make a long story short, the absence and lack of contact with nature, with wild nature is itself a style of deficiency that is intentional. It is important to dig that the depriving nature ethic is an intentional conscious conspiracy to create a consciousness that echo chambers eco-phobia and bio-phobia. This deficiency lends itself to depression and what today might be called psychological stress.
Part of the ‘sitting with plants' process for me in a sense was going back to some of the earlier experiences that I had both as a Young Man and in my youth so I'm going to call it my spiritual question period. Where I regularly engaged in outdoor activities within a spiritual context. What were these spiritual activities? I lived at what was called an ashram or a yoga training center. And at this yoga training center one of the things that I did as did many of the people did, was to sleep outside in a wooded tent platform on a fairly steep ski hill. During the winter it had a tow rope going up for down hill skiing. This was actually a winter skiing slope. This was in the spring and summer. So people would sleep and live outside on the aspen and birch covered hill side. They would gather for their yoga exercises which were also done outside. Off and on outside depending on the weather. Exercise, yoga asanas on a yoga platform deck to the open air. There was also an indoor space for exercises. I would say that a large part of that practice, that spiritual practice was the connection with the place which was in the Laurentian mountains of Canada in Quebec. The ashram evolved relatively, in a relatively pristine wild area which was near the Laurentide Provincial Park near St Agathe d'Monts.
Anyway to make a long story short, one of the most important things that I got from the yoga experience was this contact with nature. The outside direct contact with the mountain. This contact with the mountains had a lot of Aspens and birch on them so they were they were you know the white bark, Mt Tremblant, trembling leaves and so on. It was a very outdoor, outdoorsy experience. I don't know if the ashram was intended that way but yet it was that way. I also studied herbal medicine with a Dr Gauri Shankar. It influenced the importance that I saw with ‘sitting with plants’, being wrapped around nature. The experience of the moon cycle, the angle of the sun. The long long days where the sun went down at about 9:00pm.
Something that I found much later through my health care sort of nursing Registered Nursing employment which was totally lacking in this Healthcare model so you have these relatively sick I'm going to call them sick people. They were you know sick. They were having issues but some of the issues that they were having was this lack of contact with wild nature.
Another experience similar to this is that I happened to meet again during this sort of spiritual questing. It was in the Colville Washington National Forest near in the bush. In the area near Nespelem, Washington which by the way just recently had some very severe fires wildfires but to make get back to my, how this sitting with plants came about. There was a man and he was a Chippewa. Sun Bear was a man and he led this group and the group was called the bear tribe and it was very interesting sort of time. Peace movement, you know we're going back to the 70s here the 1970s so we're talking you know almost 50 years ago. So we're talking a long time ago. It was a much different time. A much free-er laid back open time. You had a lot of people hitchhiking.You had people driving cars old beat-up Vans and so on. Gas was .62 cents a gallon. People were driving trucks that were 30 years old so driving cars from the 1950’s. They were on this spiritual questing to find, to find the meaning of life. So was I and one of the things that this gentleman taught his name was sun Bear and Wabun was living in balance. He would watch old western movies and there were people coming and going.
Everyone seemed to have this book “A Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy”, and “The Spiritual Community Guide”. There was exploitation but there was also honesty, a little of both. Sun Bear happened to be a very charismatic sort of person he lived with his his wife Wabun and a group of people there at this place. It was a simple log cabin he had in more or less in the forest. It was a cabin. It was more or less I guess it wasn't off grid but it was it was very isolated. A lot of the practice was involved with praying, being outside, doing sweat lodges. How you know you have hot rocks, pour water on them. You take in the Steam and praying, praying to Natural Forces, outside of the Western Christian framework. So this was another experience which led to my ‘sitting with plants’.
Another experience that I had during the same time. Was in the area called the Catskill. Catskill Mountains of New York again a relatively pristine beautiful area. There was a gentleman, Eido Shimano Roshi, a man who he claimed to be a a Zen Buddhist. Rinzai Zen, a teacher and he had through an amazing organizational charisma skills and whatnot and donations and so on. He had acquired this huge estate in the Catskill Mountains around Beecher Lake where Harriet Beecher Stowe lived many years ago. She who wrote “Uncle Tom's Cabin” incidentally. This beautiful lake I'm going to call it wild, Beecher lake. The zendo was there. There were loons on the lake. There were you know ducks, geese, osprey fish eagles. You know beautiful beautiful hardwood forests of maple and oak. You would get incredible incredible beautiful seasons. You know the snow you would get the fall, the Autumn. The Beautiful foliage of reds, yellow and oranges and the yellows of the Oaks falling leaves. You would get the springtime. You would get the season of mud so to speak and the summer and whatnot. Again the teaching was called Zen and it involved a lot of sitting. We are would sit for roughly 100, a hundred days. During this time each of the 30 days we would have what was called a sesshin. All work would stop. Saying where you would sit from roughly the earliest morning till, till sunset basically. There would be chanting. There would be a form of walking, kinhin, a ritualized walking on this outdoor deck. Walking slowly deliberatetely, mindfulling, where you would see the trees outside. You would see the lake, ripple on the water, clouds in the sky, rain falling, snow flakes, leaves falling. You would see the wind move. You would get the cold air and whatnot.
We worked during the day when we weren’t ding the 15 hours a day of meditation sitting and walking, doing dokusan, answering koan. Does a dog have the Buddha nature? Yes or no? Joshu answered, ‘Mu’. So Eido said, ‘Do shikan-mu .’ as a play on shinan-taza. Or show me the hand of one hand clapping. We would cut and split firewood. The meals were all eaten in and again in a ritualized way. Where you had three bowls. Into each Bowl was a little bit of food you washed the bowl with with tea, with hot green tea. Then you covered it up in a, I'm going to call it a bag, with these cloths. You would, you would stick your bowl in a certain area which had your name on it. Then you would use that bowl in the morning, for lunch and dinner. Sometimes you don't have late 6:00pm supper after the noon hour meal. You didn't have dinner or that was an optional thing. Again the sitting practice involved sitting quietly silently with your breathing.
I think that this had a lot to do with my own formulation of ‘sitting with plants’ because whenever I say sitting with plants I changed some of the things I wrote. I changed it from ‘sitting with plants’ to ‘sitting standing being with plants', because it's not only just sitting with plants motionless quietly. You're also standing with the plants. Also walking with the plants. You're also being with the plants.
So I'm fast forwarding till today and I recently went on approximately unintentional but a nine month camping trip. I didn't exactly start out with the goal of doing a 9 month camping trip. It worked out that way. So I began this camping trip more or less in February at the the mountains. It began in February at the local mountain chain that is sort of where I live. It's a distance away. It's called the the Catalina mountains. So I sat there and camped there at the Catalina mountains. I walked up to the the different Springs. It's called Romero. Romero Canyon, Romero spring and I would walk there pretty much every day. I would walk the wash, walk the little wash that flows off Santa Catalina mountains. I would stay there. I would stay at the hot sauce pepper sauce Canyons National Forest campground. I stayed at the, a little bit higher on the mountain where there are various campgrounds Moreno Canyon Campground and so on. I don't want to give all my places away. Anyway you know I did this camping. I went up to Mount Graham, Gila Box. I went up to the a very nice Campground there in in the very lower part of the mountain and also a little bit higher noon Creek up there towards higher up the mountain as it got warmer. Then I went up into the area around the mogollon rim some, some places that I go three or four different places ranging in elevation from about in a five or six thousand feet up to about 10,000 ft and then to places along the The Gila River in the Gila National Forest.
Anyway so during this time I was also writing. Writing some of my things that I've written and publishing them in this blog but it all crystallized came together in this process of ‘sitting with plants’ and reconnecting. Reconnecting for me not only with the plants which I had been studying for all this time going back to the 1970s although it wasn't always in a linear fashion. Oftentimes you know it came with having to work and earn money and I did things that way. I worked for the forest service. I worked for the National Park Service. I worked for the state parks of California. I did horseshoeing farrier work. I lived as best I could as an impoverished white european American. I worked at the lumber yard. I worked at Wahweep resort in the Glenn Canyon National monument. I you know I lived for 15 years in a trailer, on a 5 acre inholding, Pariah, Utah on the BLM, which is now Grand Staircase National Monument, National Park sort of thing. So I mean I didn't always have the opportunity to spend all my time studying plants.
I did you know, I mean as much as I could, I read books. I tried to spend and work as much time as I could outside apart from the roughly 20 years when I worked as a nurse which I had to always be inside, inside the hospital. Being inside which was pretty hard for me to be honest with you and doing a lot of things which I didn't did not really feel that comfortable doing. I sometimes feel that I paid, paid the price so to speak of karma for doing some of those things which which I probably shouldn't have, should not have done. Again you know every every person lives their own life as best they can. No one is pure, no one is impure, is one of the teachings is, is that I learned. Is that from Eido Roshi, is that no one is pure and no one is is impure. There's no such thing as a perfectly pure person. There's no such thing as a perfectly impure person. https://youtu.be/4bqY8EfrOkg?si=7WVP2N_A0nFb79v3
And I think also from my Christian background Catholic background, in one of the prayers called the Our father, is to forgive. One of the things that I began to understood about that Our Father, is that it's an inner psychological message of healing. When you forgive because you're forgiving the person not because, not always because you love and respect that person. You are doing the forgiving and this someone may find this objectionable and you know I'm okay with that. But you're forgiving the person not because they did something to harm you, although they might have or might not have done that. Youn are forgiving the person because they are created by God. You didn't create this person. God created this person. God allows the Sun, the rain and the beautiful aspects of creation to shine on this person regardless of your opinion of them. Regardless of what I think of the person who offended me they are a creature of God. That's why I'm forgiving them.
The other thing is as a psychological tool when you hold anger, when you hold hatred, when you hold bitterness, regret towards a person, towards a place, towards a situation, the person you are harming is yourself. You're not harming the person you are hating. You are harming yourself because you are closing off a portion of the Divine that is for your benefit. Your potential benefit you are closing off something that potentially could assist you. And by holding on to this anger you're damaging yourself. So anger, hatred, holding grudges; it's a self-harm activity. You are harming, I am harming myself when I hate.
Now you know and one of the teachings of Zen and the martial arts is that in the activity of martial art defense you are not hating your opponents. I think this may be a familiar concept to anyone who has played any team sport; basketball, football, hockey baseball. When you as a pitcher are throwing the ball you don't hate the batter. You're trying to strike the batter out. You're trying to defeat the batter. You're not hating the batter. Likewise when you're playing football you don't hate your opponent but you are trying to tackle your opponent. According to martial arts by having a state of mind of pure physical activity you actually become a better opponent. You are better able to defeat your opponent when you have a clear view of them without emotion, without hate, without love. You're just in the act of the martial art. And the same sort of being in the flow being in the moment is true with music. You practice music so you get to the point where you go beyond the practice and play music according to Jerry Garcia and many players. This is the teaching of Zen and manual arts, that you sit so you go beyond sitting. You get to the point where you are not sitting with emotions. You're just sitting with a physical body and the beauty, the enlightenment, the Buddha nature of the situation, of the events, is sitting on the mat. A lot of these Concepts I've included or tried to include sometimes failing, oftentimes failing, sometimes succeeding but including these Concepts in the sitting with plants.
https://youtu.be/zCyFnKCzclI?si=Ktrf932gMkEAuynW
Recently I've written about the doctrine of signatures. And I had heard mentioned by several of the field school herbal teachers that I studied. The herbal teachers taught that there was a doctrine of signatures. They taught this doctrine of signatures was a, “looks like then it acts acts’, “if it looks like then it probably is like’, an organ of the body. So I mentioned that walnuts when they're split in half look like brains so walnuts are a brain food. Or red root, red Ceanothus, red roots. I see you know this Ceanothus Americanus with his friend fendleri, greggi. See you know it talked about as a blood affinity medicine, electron microscopes, positive and negative charge, Michael Shaw Moore. Or in our tinctures looking like a red substance, cabernet sauvignon color or red substance blood. So Ceanothus root, this or red root is a blood medicine. The same thing with sassafras. Sassafras is red. The red bark makes a red tea and makes a red tincture. It's a blood purifier. The yellow agrimony is like a liver like jaundice so it's a remedy for jaundice.
This ’looks like then is _____’, is a simplistic view of the doctrine of signatures. Doctrine of signatures was a concept very prevalent in Western herbal medicine especially in the 1600s by herbalists like Nicholas Culpepper and Jacob Boehme and their concept of doctrine of signatures has to do with the World created by God was not left for fallen man a wasteland. The creation was made in such a way that the remedies of plants and the medicinal portion of plants was revealed to the herbal scientist to the herbalist through the doctrine of signatures in a Revelation gift left by God our creator within the created world. So it's a noble concept. It's a concept that goes through to Aristotle and though Aristotle reacted to his teacher Plato by in a sense rejecting portions of his teacher Plato’s ideas of the Primal forms. Aristotle still held the idea that there were primal forms although not an absolute ideal primal form. Aristotle took primal forms in the sense of we go to the actual thing itself to see the primal form in its current manifestation as a variable actual form. Aristotle took this as a starting point for investigative science. But the doctrine of signatures in Western philosophy through the Greeks through the Greeks who when you know Aristotle taught Alexander the Great who made great travels throughout the the world of his time all the way to India, what we would today call the the levant, to Mesopotamia Iran Iraq Afghanistan and these teachers along with people forget that there were great Buddha statues in Afghanistan. Buddha was often understood as at least by his own writings of indo-Aryan, of the Shakya clan. This is the way Gautama Buddha described himself as Buddha. I'm not saying you know I'm not talking about his his race or so much as his ideas. These were the ideas that these people were familiar with obviously and through the the writings of the Greeks of Aristotle were for a time sort of lost to westerners till the Renaissance. https://youtu.be/N-L_gXdTzYk?si=G5tCWWUJNN7gesE8
Basically the Italian European Renaissance in the 1600s when people like Nicholas Culpepper Jacob Boehme rediscovered these ideas. As they began to have these preserved translations of the Greeks from the Arabs, from the Iranians, from the Islamic writers who had preserved these writings in Arabic. They were then brought to the west and they continue to be in a sense rediscovered by people. Rediscovered by our Western philosophers but anyway to make a long story short. I wanted to give a little bit of background on how this meditative tradition that I met in my spiritual seeking time informed and created this ‘sitting with plants’ along with the teachers of herbalism I had studied with here in the Western United States. Through books, through book reading and through this personal journey odyssey of actually spending a lot of time outside in nature with relatively intact ecosystems I began to see the value and application of a satipathana, ch’an, rinzai zen practice of like Bodhi Daruma Dai shi Eka Zai so Zenji, of facing the wall.
One of the first events in my life that I consider a significant event is I went on a backpacking trip from the western Pennsylvania towards Harrisburg. I walked and as a teenager backpacking. I at that point in my life I can remember one specific event. It was a summer thunderstorm. I was on what to me were incredibly high mountains although here they would be considered small foothills of probably less than 1000m or 3400ft. It was near Mount Davis, where our cross country coach took us to train on an annual summer trip. The highest point in Pennsylvania along with what some people might call the Blue Ridge Mountains or the Chestnut Ridge. There was an extreme summer mid afternoon lightning thunder storm. What came to me as an 18 year old kid sleeping in a flimsy tent alone on a mountain with this raging thunderstorm of flashing lightning was my absolute poverty. I just came to this sort of vision or revelation epiphany that I knew nothing about the place where I was born. I had started studying books by Bradford Angier. I can't remember the name of the book I think it was a Field guide to medicinal plants, or herbs or something like that, Jethro Kloss, Back to Eden. I read a lot of sort of Back To Nature books hunting and fishing journals trapping journals of the Pennsylvania Game Association.
https://youtu.be/HfLi2R2Vqtg?si=LF8GGe0fTZ3j0IBI
I started to realize I knew nothing about the place where I lived. I was a stranger to myself, my place and my people. On that mountain walking through these hillbilly forests I came across the most unfriendly inhospitable people who would glare at you, never inviting you in, I had ever seen. Exactly like the gritty yinzers who glared at you through angry bitter eyes of inner city Pittsburgh. This was America and it was fundamentally tending toward broken. The social fabric, mine and theirs had been forever severed for many by a generational technocratic trauma. I made a vow or a promise to myself and to them that one day I would learn the names of these plants. I made a promise to overcome and not be destroyed by trauma. I made a promise and a vow that one day they wouldn't just be trees to me. I made a vow and a promise that one day the plants would not only have names that I would say their name and know what that plant was. I would know what it was used for, I would know its useful purposes, I would know as much about that plant as I could. That was sort of my purpose and vow I made on Sugarloaf knob near Mount Davis many years ago approximately 50 years ago while backpacking across the state of Pennsylvania. I made this promise that I'm going to learn the names of these plants.
I felt like I was handicapped by not knowing the plants. I felt like I was handicapped walking with a ball and chain around my my ankle because I didn't know where I was. I didn't know what was going on around me in terms of the natural environment. I was in a techno-fog of generational proportions. I was a normative stranger through the technological bubble that I was living in. Which even back then was both positive and limiting. I mean that was before cell phones, before computers. It wasn't that much of a technological bubble yet it was wastelanding everything. I was isolated by my upbringing and it isolated me from the wild natural world. https://youtu.be/-fqfsDQmcXw?si=cpKOlA-wzZeuOJT4
Some of my most fond memories were going to Schenley Park, going to the Nature Center there, hiking down below my house. There was a little canyon there with a little stream flow of water. There was a spring there. Probably the first plant I learned as a medicinal plant was sassafras that grew around me down the hill near the railroad tracks. We had a woman that lived in our house her name was Johanna (Stacko) Governman she was probably in her '80s at that time so she was probably born I'm I'm thinking maybe in the in or around 1899 in rural Pennsylvania coal country. Anyway to make a long story short she was an herbalist although I didn't know it or recognize it at the time. She was an herbalist plant person. I looked at her that way. She worked for early Bell Telephone as a switch operator, as a ‘hello girl’. She never married. She lived alone. I'm not sure about her whole story. I know she was born to a large family of nine brothers and sisters. She left her family, moved to the city and she worked for Bell Telephone. She retired and she kept plants in pots. She knew a lot about medicinal plants, the cycles of the moon. She introduced me to the Old Farmers Almanac. I don't know how much she knew. It was much later I realized she had influence on me that I didn't recognize at the time. All these experiences, these Journeys, these learning opportunities that I had led me to ‘sitting with plants’. I wanted to share that with you.
https://youtu.be/GjvzfAJIA78?si=2KRTAW1Ozxx4GO-E
I Sit/Stand With the Green”
Lyrics, music, copyright 2025, all rights reserved: “Green Orchid Manifesto, Orchid knows, everything knows, Orchid knows where raspberry grows. Orchid knows, I sit, stand, walk, being with the green, in all directions, may all be well, blessings alwaysStacko), with green Paleolithic Neanderthal Mary Orchid rose. Orchid knows the iris raspberry rose.
Orchid knows gray and red squirrels, wolf and elk, beaver, chipmunk, skunk and snake. Orchid knows. Green Orchid manifesto orchid knows, orchid knows where raspberry grows, where road runner, hawk, raven, hopping red breast robin goes. Orchid knows blue stellar jay, cinnamon bear, coyote fox, bob cat, Aspen meadow snow. Orchid knows perfect love flows orchid knows. Orchid knows I am wild herb ways. Orchid knows I am the medicine road. Orchid know where raspberry grows. You are a golden raspberry rose, orchid knows. Orchid knows I sit-stand with the green, in all directions, may all be well, blessings always, with green Paleolithic Neanderthal orchid Mary. Orchid knows
At your side orchid knows the perfect wild rose, supply of flows. Orchid knows iris, raspberry rose, bitter yellow, oh orchid knows clear to have met your taste. Holy Ghost air wind nourish with vital force, orchid manifesto. I lift them up alive, your family grows. Orchid knows greenness of remedios, waters flow, the sunflows, live in light, the orchid rain falls flows, orchid flows knows the moon rising.
Sunset she is flamed by his light, to rise again…
I Sit-stand walk am with the green, in all directions, may all be well, blessings always, with green Paleolithic Neanderthal orchid Mary.
The mother of mothers knows where the raspberry grows, mother of sons, mother of daughters, mother of raspberry rose. Orchid mother of holy remedio. Orchid mother of rocks and cliff face ledges, orchid mother of golden dawn, orchid mother of heaven’s door, orchid mother of morning star, orchid mother of angel messengers, orchid knows my mother of ancient ancestor agrimony and saint john’s aconite Poleo bugle weed, and our mother of the snow. Orchid knows mother of red and white where monarda grows. Orchid agrimony and saint john’s aconite, Poleo bugle weed, and our mother as the hero euro-cult of faith built generation by generation. Orchid through eternal sacred celestial marriage between a man and woman in the sacred euro tribe. The Orchid manifesto flows, and it goes. The Orchid knows green flame force, hidden in blowing winds blow. All of the essence and not found in death. Orchid knows I am the vital force alive, Crawling up your turtle island spine.
Orchid knows the way back home back. Your slick rock shoulders continental divide under oaks with pedicularis, flowers color chocolate orchid knows, orchid knows the way back home. Orchid manifesto the perfect iris raspberry rose, orchid knows, orchid knows. https://youtu.be/dp0tFBRWzFk?si=41gp4xtCvTjrEp60
“I Sit, walk standing am with the green, in all directions, may all be well, blessings always. I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Green, through belief in the remedio,
On the endless medicine road, by the power of healings, through confession of the Oneness of the Creation of Mother and Father creation.
By these good sister and brother plants.
I arise today through the strength of water,
through the strength of ancestors,
through the strength of place,
through the strength of Judgment.
I arise today through the protection of Angel messengers,
in the service of the green,
in hope to meet with reward,
in prayers of Mothers and Patriarchs, in predictions,
in preachings, in faith,
in innocence, righteous men and women move in peace.
I arise today, through the strength of golden Heaven:
light of Sun, brilliance of Moon, splendour of Fire,
speed of Lightning, swiftness of Wind, depth of Sea,
stability of Earth, firmness of Rock.
I Sit, walk standing am with the green, in all directions, may all be well, blessings always.
I arise today, through strength of green earth to pilot me:
to uphold me, wisdom to guide,
Eyes to look before me, Ears to hear,
Words to speak, Hands to guard me,
The way to walk before me, a shield to protect me,
Earth and sky to secure me:
against snares of devils, against temptations of weakness,
against inclinations of fear, against everyone who
shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a crowd.
I summon today all these powers between me (and these evils):
I Sit, standing with the green, in all directions, may all be well, blessings always, with sacred mother of green mountains, field and forest,
against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose my body and my soul, against sickness, against incantations of false prophets,
against unjust laws, Against false accusations,
against false decisions designed to limit the green, against the craft of war,
against the cycles of abuse,
against every hex and spell of disease that endangers my body and soul.
Father and Mother protect me today,
I Sit, walk standing am with the green, in all directions, may all be well, blessings always, with the green wisdom of reverence,
against poison, against burning,
against drowning, against wounding,
so that there may come an abundance of reward.
Life is with me, Life before me, Life behind me, Life within me,
Life beneath me, Life above me, Life around me,
Life on my right, Life on my left,
Life in breadth, Life in length, Life in height,
Life in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Life in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Life in every eye that sees me,
Life in every ear that hears me.
I Sit, standing with the green, in all directions, may all be well, blessings always, with the green be victory in peace.
I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation unity of all life, through belief in the power, through the Oneness of the Creator of creation.
Salvation is my blessing. Health is my blessing. Love is my blessing. Peace is my blessing. Blessing is my life. Thank you glorious Creator my Father, my Mother, in all directions. May the blessings of the Father and the Mother and the Holy Wind, be ever with us. I Sit, walk standing am with the green, in all directions, may all be well, blessings always, with the green.”https://youtu.be/iRUYDxQR2CY?si=YIlzto-qRkfyAwij
My brothers and sisters, my beloved folk, I have nothing original to tell you. Originality is part of the fantasy coalition of newness within modernism that binds and burdens our people to erasure. Instead of novelty embrace your ancestors that live locally, nearby as blood plants and soil place. Embrace the sun wheel of seasons. Embrace your kin, be to your folk what they need to be. What you need to do to help them be with these plants, persons and places. Embrace the wild, resist modernism. Remember our greatist strength is hospitality. Before this surveillance police state we gathered and shared, we gifted one another, hugging, greeting one another warmly, sitting, standing, walking, being face to face celebrating the seasons and our life together. So defy bestial foul banners that hang as continual threat of doxxing. Join again with hospitality as in the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, the epic sagas of european people. Embrace the hospitality of your kith and kin. Look into the blood and soil around you. Use the wild herb ways of plants for healing us together.
https://youtu.be/a3SnFUv_Nr4?si=NwyKU7uX_tL65g38
Rooted in the old ways and part of the real work, the sign, the signature is the stories of the Holy Tree, the Holy Way within tradition of our salvation story are the ways of protection prayer. When we say the ways of protection prayer, we mean summoning an aspect of plant, person, place and all our ancestor’s heroic divine presence on this endless medicine road to dwell and activate amongst us. By the use of the blessing sign we enact in our lives the living power flowing in all things, through the intention of sacred space. “ Loose the shoes from thy feet: for the place wherein thou sit standest is holy ground.”. Where we are located right now in the present moment, sitting, standing, walking, being together is sacred ground. All of creation around us that we are sharing is sacred space and so therefore we are mindful of our actions, of our intentions on this endless road traveling together horizon to horizon.
Remember, Through the absence of purpose, souls are lost in darkness. So for that reason we have intention. We make promises, oaths and declarations of purpose to ourselves privately as blessing and publicly together. In the modern industrial view there is a tendency to locate our place within a political map, that is only part of where we are. There are many valid maps, of watersheds, of valleys, stream courses, divides, of the bioregion and ecosystem. There are spiritual maps, guides and warnings. We are situated between life and death, heaven and hell. We as protagonists inhabit a divine theater, struggling for the prize of eternal life. Life as process means the importance of rigid roles between male and female in a sacred marriage partnership, for the sustainability of the family. The family is the basic unit of salvation and the continuation of the medicine road. Celestial marriage is a sacrament of sacred partnership exclusively between a man and woman. Without rigid roles for men and women there will be no available women as folk caregiver mothers for our children. No mothers means no families, no families means no children, no future, end of story. The question is why many assume passive roles in light of official programs designed to erase and replace the family as a central viable group? One answer is complete and total abject fear of the monolithic state. Fear of the state sponsored programs of exclusion that can be unleashed at anytime, against anyone, for any reason. People are so afraid that to admit they are afraid is a fear. No one can be afraid so billboard messengers are always happy. Yes we can should and do be happy, but not all the time. Our people are struggling and we are not laughing at their pain. That is ludicrous to be laughing at your people’s suffering. Another answer is that the regime in power over us, through its government schools posits no sacred values in its mandated secular program. To affirm the endless medicine road of reverence and gratitude that supercedes the state's authority may be met with sanctions ranging from loss of employment, media based accusations, imprisonment for crimes of thought, speech or expression and various threats of diminishment of one’s life moving forward. Affirmation and cooperation within a secular world view is a denial of basic green vital sacred identity. Whether it be forced work in servile unessential labour on sacred festival days, whether they be Sunday, or any day we choose to be a sacred day, voiced public tolerance for morally prohibited action, or being subject to always on without a shut off switch active visual/audio messages of morally repulsive advertisements, in many ways the current regime is problematic to faith and hence our salvation.
https://youtu.be/A82PK5ZKqe8?si=WNR8RAHwBs-2YeV4
A secular stateism condemns its citizens to depression, anxiety and fear by denying the validity of the green flame and the celestial marriage of folk and sacred land, man and woman living tree and the eternal stakes of the life process on earth. Zabiba wal-Malik I have loved you Zabiba in this manner so as to love the people in you and through you ... and I have embraced your God because you are a living part of the people, you believe in its role, and you love the homeland..." When the king uttered these last words, tears filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks and moustache. At that point Zabiba rose and, with tears pouring forth from her eyes, embraced the king, kissed him on his forehead, and said: "Thank God for the creation." (Saddam Hussein Zabiba wal-Malik)
The genius world teacher Wild Herb Ways offers, The Four, as in “Woo Woo Song”, https://pgmanski.blogspot.com/2024/04/woo-woo-song.html
Referring to four compass points east, south, west and north, spoken sun-wise, in a greater teaching, four directions. As sung, performed, danced and chanted during the recent 8.4.2024 world day of prayer. https://youtu.be/dp0tFBRWzFk?feature=shared in the liturgical piece Not only the compass point directions, but specifically “Our well-being is non-negotiable.” says, “As above, so below.” Another is, “As before, so now still.” “As it appears, so then it is.” “What you do, that shall you become.” From sitting, standing with plants comes the doctrine of signatures which is inherently composed as the four, sitting, standing, walking, being with plants. Listening as participant to the whole terrain as a qigong.
Sit/Stand tall together in a circle in the Algiz rune, point your arms toward The bear in the northern sky Polaris, become, take part of the power of Makosh or Mother-Bucket, i.e. the constellation Ursa Major. The symbol of the Palace is the horn of plenty or the golden bucket. The sacred tree is the pine, alder, Aspen and ash. During these last 36,000 years I can vividly remember, like it was yesterday the voyages I made to Turtle island from the east, from the west. We have worshipped the bear, the north star Vega, Thuban and now again Polaris. For us it was always shash, the bear Ursa. This was taught and transmitted by Hatali Nevy Jensen from Grey Mountain in the house, sitting on the floor. Na'has dhan Biyatay Wei'nah, Aconah nhas'dhan, diyagno, ban su'day'kays, Naozhonah Ashlee, Nozhonah Ashlee, Nazhoni Ashlee. as taught to me by Nevy Jensen, "We the people came from the earth mother, changing woman. That's why she is sacred to us, sacred to you, on this beauty way, this beauty way, all of it wrapped in beauty." In our childhoods we said these words, over and over again. Our mother has married this bear again and again in one continuous celestial marriage, Freyja, Mary, Athena, Eostre. That is why our book is us as a people, flesh and blood. The words in our etymology are bones, blood, plants, us as a people, the green who overcome disease in the perfect wild herb ways. Always honour the mother who commands the holy people, angel messengers to increase the immune system in herbal truth biospirit plants. We are now coming together under the dharma of plant commune bone, blood and soil study. Our Gods and Goddesses are just and those who censured our words, gate keep our speech, spelled our people with suicide, spelled abortion and spelled addiction, drugged our people, who broadcast their message of white European guilt in the occupied media of stolen forms, who now own, bought our own electronic media forms that we created, then banned us, deplatformed us from positions of authorship, and broadcast a continuous antiwhite message that defeats us as a people through subterfuge, managed antiwhite narrative producing an electro hybrid dehumanized person. Now we have to deal with the passive euro brother spontaneously an enemy via meme pathogens a deracinated blob of guilt and apology. https://youtu.be/OdL0M1zUWe0?si=KyHAcdnwEYH9hws2
One of the amazing things being me, Paul Manski, as wild herb ways sitting, standing, walking, being with plants recovering ancestral memory, Folk First! Earth First! for 72,000 years and tears all over Turtle Island, in the perfect truth of Wild Herb Ways, is I knew Jesus, I climbed the tree Yggdrasil. I sat with Bodhi Daruma Dai Shi Ekka Daisho zenji facing a wall. When my eye balls fell out of my head they fell on the ground and became senchi, emerald green tea. When the Buddha held up a flower I understood everything and still do. People dox my picture and say, "That's you! Do you hear the voice Jesus?", as if someone who knew Jesus, Buddha, Wotan and Socrates should look like a movie star? Yeah right. I stood with Hercules, Washington, Socrates, and slept in a tent on a mountain in the Laurentians with Mary the mother of God before she went virgin. We drank Meade out of a bison horn, 36,000 years ago and as recently as 1987, bottles of Boone's farm apple wine at Ishawah trailhead right before the Yellowstone fires. Bob Boyle, Monty Barker, Phil Selwicke and queen Eileen who worked the bear box at Wapiti, and was known to have the most perfect vaginal folds since Athena who was absolutely not a perpetual virgin. I remember Hephaestus popping her cherry in a Grove of oaks, I was playing the lyre, Easton was there and Tree Godfather. 
You must become and study every word in the transmission, I have given you. Not only this transmission but become and study whatever is going on between you, us and these plants as a transmission. We as a people becoming us in this commune of experience, in "Wild Ways with Herbs," in the teachings of Rosa, the Wild Rose Sutra, the Agripalm Sutra, the Motherwort Sutra, teaching you prayer and sitting, standing, being, walking with plants, making everything available free of charge for these 16,500 years. Since the pole flip. I only have a few turns of the seasons before I return to heaven to fly with Polaris. Become this wellbeing commune now.
My ancestral family members to be a people emerged from the forested mountains, an indigenous self arising first people, a situated family of people who trace our lineage to the paleolithic with significant Neanderthal DNA in our ancestral genome, like the Germanic tribes, like the Dine, like the Apache, like a pierogi fried in butter. Along with the Basque people, my family Germanic lineage has up to 5% Neanderthal. We are the authentics traced to this Turtle Island. Our people have the highest Solutrean DNA Neanderthal song story memory story. In our memory that becomes stronger and and stronger as we sit, stand, walk, be with our herbal plant medicine teachers we see Solutrean ancestors face to face. Science now reveals that all human life emerged from Europe in the straight out of Europe love truth, that prioritize our wellbeing, as the actuality of a meaningful authenticity. We are the authentics unfolding through our human genome research.
Sitting, standing, walking, being with plants, sitting, standing, walking, being with rock and stones we build the commune. Sell everything pool our resources. Take in the pregnant mother, take in the homeless, that is what sobriety does to build this 16,500 commune of peace pilgrim-ism. The Wild Herb Way plant research is community-centered, based on the five principles of Wild Herb Way Vitality: love, clarity, law, beauty, and truth; conducted through teaching and learning, and actively carried out on Southwest Claw paw of the big Island. We know that Jesus lived, walked, and taught in this North America (Claw paw turtle Island), and that his mother was Mary, the Mother of All Things, who married Ursa Major. "God created us, so let's maintain balance. Everything that helps us grow is love, so let's align ourselves with love. Let's focus on five ways to reinvent ourselves: love, clarity, law, beauty, and truth.
I am talking now about the mountain in the south west, three mountains together like waves on the water, each with saguaro at the base, creosote into juniper and oaks, growth into pine and spruce. There are three mountains together in the south west each one a nicely sitting, standing, walking, being there mountain there whose feet are in La Gobernadra meadows, waving green with five pointed yellow flowers, waving, big cactus trees with sweet fruit, cholla. Below is the south Gila river with cottonwood trees between them, to south east a Black mountain, farther north is the Rio Grande north and south to Magdalena in the north east then west north to Sierra Blanca, Escadillo and another great mountain lying down in the north west. These are the four sacred mountain areas. Somewhere at the top of each of these mountains is a gourd dipper, filled with water, connected to the north star man and the woman Cassiopeia who are a couple working to pool the water of springs and rivers that flow down to the valleys below. All these sacred mountains must be filled with water by prayers. If they are not filled with prayers then the snow will not come, the rivers will barely flow and dusty wind will make the people angry and no good for working together. https://youtu.be/U5cdqkIfYQw?si=dBGW0AYS_r6LWfw2
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Masashi Soga, Kevin J. Gaston, Yuya Fukano, Maldwyn J. Evans,
The vicious cycle of biophobia,
Trends in Ecology & Evolution,
Volume 38, Issue 6,
2023,
Pages 512-520,
ISSN 0169-5347,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2022.12.012.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534722003603)
Abstract: People can express irrational fears and disgust responses towards certain wild organisms. This so-called ‘biophobia’ can be useful and indeed necessary in some circumstances. Biophobia can, however, also lead to excessive distress and anxiety which, in turn, can result in people avoiding interactions with nature. Here, we highlight concern that this reduction in interactions with nature might lead to progressive increases in biophobia, entrenching it more in individuals and across society. We propose the ‘vicious cycle of biophobia’, a concept that encapsulates how excessive aversion towards nature might emerge and grow in society. The vicious cycle of biophobia risks accelerating the extinction of experience, leading to long-term adverse consequences for the conservation of biodiversity.
Keywords: biophilia; connection to nature; extinction of experience; fear-avoidance model; pro-biodiversity behaviour; sustainability
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Soga M, Gaston KJ, Fukano Y, Evans MJ. The vicious cycle of biophobia. Trends Ecol Evol. 2023 Jun;38(6):512-520. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2022.12.012. Epub 2023 Jan 25. PMID: 36707258.
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