A teacher once told me, humanity treats nature as they treat their mother, and vice versa.

At that time it sounded like nonsense, until I started to repeat that to myself everytime I watched the news, went to a park or even listened to myself while fighting with my mom.

After a while, I learned in another class how indigenous communities related with the nature, and how the metropolitan cities that surround them react to that kind of relationships, and although this is a delicate subject in which I won’t emphasize right now, it is important to take in to account, the capitalist world where we live, tends to be exploitative with indigenous communities where people still practice agriculture as a daily and self-sufficient routine. Besides agriculture being one of the primary sources for food, it is also a spiritual practice. Plants such as opium, salvia, cannabis, peyote and a whole lot more of species tend to be the most spiritual complements in some indigenous communities, and why is this? Mostly it is because of their psychotropic effect, which connect mortals with gods (who, by the way, most of the time are part of the same natural environment), but besides these being an excellent connector between the sacred and the profane, other properties of these marvelous plans make them excellent for healing processes: from analgesics, anesthetics, relaxing to anti-inflammatory benefits.

The main problem society has around these kinds of natural medicines is the lack of knowledge and respect. For traditional communities it is important to be ok with nature in order to receive it, if you don’t respect it, it might never work for you. The perfect combination in these kinds of processes is to have a healthy relationship with yourself in order to connect with whatever the environment has to offer you (yes, of course that includes you mom!). In the way you do it, nature will answer the same way. Do not exploit it, criticize it or underestimate it, respect it as you would do to your mother, and you’ll see how it will always treat you well.

Remember the planet we live on will always be there for us, trust it, take care of it and take whatever it has to offer. Relate to it and let it heal whatever it has to (in you), spiritually or physically, just, let it work how it is supposed to, respect and enjoy the process.

Nature is wise. The wise nature.