Learning how to garden and learning the art of Sacred Space (which we speak about in depth in our online Entheogenesis course and the wisdom of the plants is one in the same! The parallels are endless and it’s actually the perfect analogy. I am 100% convinced that the most important spiritual practice any of us can embark upon is growing a garden. As our mentor don Oscar Miro-Quesada says, if our spiritual practice does not “grow corn and potatoes” what good is it? We are in a time where we must become fully integral beings, where the nourishment on all levels of our families, the children, the elders, our community, and the seven generations is more important than how “high” we get or how long we can stay in samadhi. We are in this healing not so much for ourselves, but for the legacy of love we grow.
I grew up in the high desert of Northern Arizona, where there is almost no water, super intense sun, lots of wind, and very few gardens. The beauty of the land is epic and I love the desert, but gardening was just not a part of my life. When I went to Naropa University and had the chance to begin to learn about gardening, food systems, permaculture, watersheds, water rights, and our food systems, I realized that I needed to learn how to be in relationship with the food that I eat. When I met Darcy and moved to British Columbia to create a life with him, he had a garden and invited me to learn with him. I fell in love with the process, but soon realized that it’s not always easy. I am so grateful for anyone who chooses to grow food (especially in a regenerative, permaculture, or biodynamic way). This is the way to grow New Earth, one garden at a time. Every year we tend our garden, and after 17 years, I honestly still feel like a novice.
Can you rush the seed to grow faster? No.
Can you create more and more ideal conditions for the seed and plants to prosper and grow? Yes.
If we begin gardening without any guidance (no elders, no internet, no books), it will be an arduous journey of learning. Most of the seeds will die, by being over watered, under watered, being too cold, too hot, poor soil conditions, lack of light, too much light, and countless circumstances. There are so many things that have to go just right for one seed to sprout. We also would have to discover and invent every aspect of gardening ourselves: all the tools, the methods, the designs, learning through trial and error how to build soil, how the lunar and solar cycles affect the growth of seeds, when and how to plant, weed, harvest, and gather the seeds. We will get pretty hungry, likely suffer, possibly die an early death from malnutrition, but if need be, we will learn.
Learning with a master gardener, who studied with many other master gardeners, in a gardening lineage that reaches back thousands of years, has a whole different arc of success. Learning from a master gardener is not the same as hiring a master gardener. A master gardener will not do the work for you, but will share with you all they know so that you can succeed. They will show you how to compost, but not stir the compost for you. Because they know the ONLY WAY TO LEARN IS BY DOING. They know how to work with Nature to tend, care, and foster radical nourishment, abundance, beauty, and overflowing prosperity and for you to learn this too, you have to do the practical hands-on work yourself. If you hire that out, you will never truly be self-sustaining and resilient. Nor will you be able to pass this wisdom down to your children and grandchildren so they will be able to create lives of prosperity, abundance, and beauty.
A hallmark of a master gardener is that they know that there is always far more to learn than they already know. They have only become masters in this art, because they love to learn! They will forever be students of Mother Nature, each plant, the sacred waters, and all of life. They keep the gardens green and their own hearts green as well. They bring love and heart to all they do, because they know that this love nourishes the garden as much as the water and light.
If you come with an open and sincere heart and ask to learn, the master gardener will share with you all of their knowledge, insight, and personal journey. This knowledge leads to a much quicker path of success in creating nourishment, sustenance, and health for you and your family. They will teach you what each plant and seed needs, and once grown how to tend and harvest this abundance. They will share with you: designs to build your own tools; the methodologies of to work with earth, soil, water, wind, light, to create the happiest garden which grows the happiest people; how to plant with the moon, sun, and seasons; how to build rich soil through the composting of the old, how to enrich the plants with soil amendments and intention; and most importantly they will share their failures as well as their successes with you, because they have learned so much from both. And if you choose to honor, appreciate, and love them up, they will continue to love you up, and the great flow of reciprocity unfolds. Out of this mentor/student relationship nourishment, sustenance, health, well being, and beauty blossoms for the next generation.
As you learn by doing, eventually someone comes to you, asking to learn the Way. As they show up over and over with sincere hearts and generous reciprocity, you of course will share what you have learned, because there is no better way to keep learning and growing, then to offer the teachings.
Learning to work with the master teacher plants is exactly like learning to garden. This is why working with the sacred plant teachers with loving, kind, generous, truthful, and wise mentors in ceremonial lineages is infinitely more powerful than starting from scratch. One way or another, with enough determination and perseverance, you will get that seed to grow and be able to harvest the fruits. However, having the guidance, support, oversight, and encouragement from experienced mentors, is a very different learning process. Your relationship with the land will guide you everything you need to know about how to heal and awaken- your role is to learn how to feel and listen, to nurture and tend.
I am so grateful and honored to be held within the lineage of Love that is the Pachakuti Mesa Lineage, as well as the lineage that I have been welcomed into from North America, the ancient Goddess ways, Vajrayana Buddhism, and the Yogic traditions.
We share all of these teachings with you from this place of lineage, and we are only here sharing these, because we stand on the shoulders of our many ancestors from all over the Earth. We can only offer this to you because of the “master gardeners” in Darcy and my life that I call dear heart friends, elders, and mentors. This course is a ceremonial initiation and transmission offered from the Heart of Lineage and lineage of Love.
May the medicine garden of your heart and life, grow beautifully!
With great love and honor of your sacred journey of healing and awakening,