Human Gardener:
Jocko is not the only spirit I hear and see. My intuition guides me to
contact whomever I need at a particular moment in my gardening and
nature work. I know the spirits of trees and those of the wind. I can
usually know what weather we will be having if I ask the treetops. The
treetops are told by the wind what weather is coming, so I consult them
and they will usually have the lowdown. I can talk to those spirits
that have to do with plants, individual plants and parts of plants.
There is a spirit for each part of nature and all the small parts that
work within.
Jocko is one of my teachers. I will often consult him first if I have a
question and he will send me on to the spirit I need to consult. I have
learned in the process much about the world of the spirits. It is a
hierarchy which has higher spirits with more responsibility. For
instance, there are spirits that govern storms and above them are those
who decide there is going to be a storm. Then there are all the other
spirits that participate in many different ways in making the storm to
come about: spirits of water, of lightning, of wind, etc.
asked and take on each task with joy and commitment. Their work effects
the well-being and work of all the other spirits. They know this and
accept their part in the larger framework of their reason for being.
There is not really a choice in this context for nature spirits. But they do not regret this or long for
freedom. These feelings do not exist for the spirits. They do not have
feelings or longings in the same way we do. They long to connect with
humans, but they do not long to be doing something else. They are part
of a pattern of life and they are happy to be and do this. They do not
have questions about their place in the larger scheme of nature. They
know their place. It is so different for humans who have to search to
find their place and are so full of many conflicting emotions. Nature
spirits do not to deal with all this. They simply are what they are and
that is fine.
the weather will be. Then if the human gardener listens to our leaves in
the wind, we can tell her the weather.
We trees have much we can share with humans. Each of us have lived longer than many plants, so have
experienced so much more as spirits. Some of us have seen your history
pass before us. We form connections to the things around us– another
tree, a building, a garden, a human. These connections, of course,
change much over the course of our lives.
This is a small representation of the high-quality writings you’ll find in every issue of TIFERET.
We receive no outside funding and rely on digital issues, workshop fees, and donations to publish. If you enjoy our journal’s verbal and visual offerings, we hope you’ll consider supporting us in one of these ways.
Click Here to Purchase Digital Issues