Plant Spirit Communication, Part I: Your Native Langauge

When I was new to my first job, a colleague had given two of us both who had been recently hired an elephant ear plant seedling for our offices. Our offices were next to each other, both with the same window. Each plant was planted in an identical pot and in identical soil. My elephant ear plant grew quite large and beautiful, while my colleague’s plant kept sending up small shoots and dying back. Finally, she said to me, “Why is your plant doing so much better than mine?” And I responded as a druid, totally without thinking, “I just talk to the plant and it tells me what it needs.” She rolled her eyes at me, let out an exasperated sigh, and walked away. She was never a very pleasant person, but she was particularly nasty to me for some time after that. Perhaps she thought I was mocking her, or unwilling to offer the right information, but I wasn’t. What I had said to her was true, but she couldn’t accept it. Eventually, I saw her watering the plant a tiny amount, and I bought her a bigger watering can and some organic fertilizer (I used my own liquid gold, but that is certainly not something I was going to tell her!) and eventually her plant did grow. But, this short interchange offers some insights into the cultural challenges present for those of nature-based and animistic paths with regards to plant spirit communication.

It seems that only modern western industrialized civilization scoffs at the idea of plant spirit communication or any spirit communication. Further, this culture insists such things aren’t “real” because they can’t be scientifically observed and measured, and science is often put at odds with spirituality. This means that for those of us growing up in mainstream westernized cultures, particularly here in the US, it means that that we likely haven’t acknowledge or had the opportunity to cultivate a whole set of human gifts that humans in other places and times have.  For some of us, it takes a while to strip this cultural conditioning to be able to communicate–but we all have this ability.  It’s just about acknowledging it and honoring it.

Westernized culture is a bit of an anomaly in terms of spirit communication, however. In ages past, and in most indigenous cultures still today, the idea of communicating with the spirits of animals and plants was a daily part of life, something that at least a portion of the population did regularly. In fact, you can see examples of spirit communication in nearly every major culture in the world other than modern western culture. For some cultures, every person had this ability, but in many, often it was certain people who had the gift or were selected and specially trained to communicate with the spirits in more deep ways. Some cultures–ancient or modern–had an animistic perspective (see Graham Harvey’s amazing book on animism for more on this) while others preferred to talk with other non-corporeal entities, like ancestors, spirits, deities, and so forth, but the basics of spirit communication is the same. Deep listening, respect and reverence, and time are all needed.

In a recent post, I talked about developing deep relationships with plant spirits through cultivation, harvest, and sacred relationship.  In an earlier post, I’ve also talked about listening to trees on the inner and outer planes, both of which connect to today’s topic. So for the next few weeks, we’ll explore plant spirit and tree spirit communication in more depth. This applies to all kinds of plants, large or small, and I’m just going to use “plant spirit” to mean pretty much everyone.

Cultural Deprogramming

To develop plant spirit communication techniques, many of us from Western civilization have to engage in some cultural deprogramming before we can begin the actual plant spirit communication. The first is illustrated in my opening interchange–getting past the “disbelief” that this can’t really happen, that it is a made-up fantasy, that it is not real. Because these things are continually reinforced in daily interactions, moving beyond these cultural mindsets can be hard thing to do and it can take considerable time. It may also take time due to the programming our birth religions may have left us with (this was a real struggle for me). This work ultimately involves deprogramming ourselves of that “inner voice” that tells us that we are “making up” and encourages us to disbelieve.

This deprogramming process can take time, and it is certainly a cyclical process that you may need to return to as your own practices deepen. A few things that helped me both with cultural and birth religion deprogramming are as follows:

• Talking to others on the path. Having a second person, or group of people, validate your experiences, and share plant spirit communication experiences of their own is deeply gratifying.
• Avoid the “shoulds/Shouldn’t”.  Don’t tell yourself what you should believe, what you should do, what you should or shouldn’t experience.  Just be open to the experience and try to withhold judgment.
• Examine places where you feel uncomfortable. These may have to do with longer unexamined ideas or patterns from culture, birth religion, etc. Getting to the bottom of these places can help you understand them and move beyond them.
• Going in with an open mind and open heart. Be willing to suspend judgment and simply experience what comes. Set aside preconceived ideas about what you may experience and simply be open.

Ultimately, this deprogramming and coming to a place of acceptance is a matter both for the mind and the heart. To me, some of the primary work is to move us out of a “head-centered” or “logic dominated” space and into a “heart-centered” space of feeling and intuiting. Its not that we discount the mind and its inner workings; its just that Western ways of thinking essentially deny heart spaces, they deny intuition, and these non-physical ways of knowing, and so it’s important to recognize, and cultivate, and open of the heart.

Plant Spirit Communication: Your Native Langauge

In working with a lot of different people over the years wanting to learn spirit communication, what I’ve found is this: we each have a “native language” when it comes to spirit communication. This native language can manifest in a lot of different ways:

• Clairaudience: Being able to hear the plant spirits speak.
• Clairvoyance: Being able to see things on the inner planes, or see the spirit of the plants
• Empathy: Being able to feel emotions tied to spirits or places
• Intuition: Having a deep “knowing” about a plant, a knowing that comes from within
• Energetic: Being able to sense the flows of energy of a plant or place
• Tool-based: Being able to read and interpret messages with the use of tools (pendulum, tarot, ogham, runes, bones, etc)
• Signs and Omens: Reading the physical landscape for signs and omens (a breeze, clouds, movement of birds, swaying of leaves, etc.)

When a person starts out exploring plant spirit communication, he or she will likely find that you have a “knack” for one or more of these but may have great difficulty with the others. For example, one member of my grove had an incredible ability to read the energies of plants and sense emotions, but couldn’t hear or see anything. I, on the other hand, started out the opposite–hearing messages clearly, but not seeing or feeling much for a long time. With time and patience, all of these different gifts can be cultivated powerfully.

I’ve found that the key to cultivating your plant spirit communication is to start by discovering what your “native language” is and then strengthening it, working with it first, as much as possible. This is going to be what is easiest for you and what you’ll get good success with, especially initially. Once you have a good handle on that form of communicating, try branching out into one or more other areas. Recognize that these are skills that need to be cultivated, and that cultivation takes time. For some of us, these are entirely new ways of engaging with the world, so be patient and kind to yourself as you learn.

Meditation as the Gateway

Westernized culture is afraid of silence. It fills our minds constantly with other people’s images, words, and chatter: from televisions in waiting rooms to smartphones to constant news streams in airports and doctor’s offices, it is as if our minds never have a moment to be quiet. This culture seems to fear quiet and fills it as best it can. Because of this, deep inner listening for the voices of the plants can be difficult at first.  If all these other voices are talking, and if our own voices are talking, the soft voices of the plants have no room to be heard. Even for those of us who have worked to create a peaceful space in our lives and homes, we can’t always easily avoid the pressures of daily living or their regular stressors. This means we still need a “buffer zone” in order to effectively cultivate or use any of the above methods. Meditation is this buffer zone, and daily meditation can create this safe space.

There are many ways to meditate, but I’m going to focus on suggesting three that are particularly useful for setting you up for plant spirit communication:

Empty Mind / Candle Meditation. This technique I see as almost the prequel to many other kinds of meditation. Set a candle in front of you and simply focus on your breath. Begin by taking three deep breaths and focus on looking at the candle and breathing. If thoughts come into your mind, let them go. See if you can get to 10 or 20 breaths (harder than you think!). The point of this is to help clear your mind so that spirits can communicate. If you always have a running narrative in your mind, or your mind is full of other people’s noise, you won’t have any room to allow the spirits to speak.

Nature-Based Observation Meditation. This next technique is a variation on the first but uses a natural setting (preferably, near one of the plants where you want to communicate). Seat yourself comfortably near a plant and quiet your mind. Breathe naturally and lightly. Observe the plant – notice features of the plant like its petals, leaves, the way it moves, and the way the sunlight or rain interacts with it. This second meditation can lead directly to one form of plant spirit communication, see next section.

Music / Drumming Focus. A third precursor to the actual meditation work is to use some kind of musical aid to help you with your focus. Many traditions use a steady beat of some kind – a drum, a rattle, an instrument playing low tones – to engage and focus the mind. You can do this by playing yourself, using a recording, or listening to someone else play. Even regular music, like classical music, can be used as a focus aid, where your goal is to only listen to the music and lose yourself in it (or get into a trance as it is called). The point here is to let the beat focus you so that you can listen.

Practicing regular meditation is the single most helpful thing you can do to prepare yourself, and your own spirit, for plant spirit communication.  Even if you do nothing else for months or years, this preparatory work will aid you considerably.

Next week in this series, we’ll look at different aspects of plant spirit communication and techniques you can use. Our final post will go into more depth about plant spirit journeying.  May the blessings of the plants be with you!