cultivate your spirituality. cultivate hope.

(this is part 7 of a 10-part series, a life's journey to become an herbalist observing gail faith edward's article on the subject. you can find part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.1, part 4.2, part 5  and part 6 here.)

gail's seventh step in her ten-fold path is to cultivate your spirituality. she says:

"Cultivate your spirituality. Learn to pray. Pray often. Smudge by burning herbs. Give thanks often, many times a day. Fall in love not only with plants, but with all of life. Fall in love with your clients. Commit to them. Pray for them. It is on this level of prayer, the spiritual level that you will connect most deeply with both plants and your clients.

Develop a spiritual discipline if you do not already have one. Cultivate your innate spirituality. Whatever that means to you. Be upright, honest, fair, clear and impeccable in all your dealings. People and plants have to trust you. You must be worthy of that trust. You have to keep your word. You have to be true. Be ethical in the way you interface with life and especially with the earth, with plants, people and all living things. Your way of life, attitudes and sense of ethics, as well as your approach to herbs and herbal medicine, is in large part what will attract others to you.

Cultivate hope. Hope is a critically important part of the healing equation. Your positive attitude is critical to your clients ongoing healing. I tell my community herbalist students that if your client does not turn around to you at the end of a consultation session and say words to the effect of “Thanks, I feel so much better already.” Then you have not done your job."


this is something i need a lot of work on. there just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day to get everything done and so spirituality has taken a back burner. i do want to change this though. i have a book on simplicity and quakerism that i keep tucked into my ballet bag for reading before and after class. that's just once a week but it's a few moments i can steal towards more moments...

gail's words are right on with quaker teachings..."be upright, honest, fair, clear and impeccable in all your dealings. People and plants have to trust you. You must be worthy of that trust. You have to keep your word. You have to be true. Be ethical in the way you interface with life and especially with the earth, with plants, people and all living things." this is one of the quaker testimonies, to be honest and fair in all of one's dealings. i do hope people see in  this manner as i do try to be honest and fair at all times. i find myself being dishonest when i don't want to hurt someone's feelings and i realize this is a major weakness of mine that i need to work on. more so, i need to learn tact so i can be honest tactfully. i tend to be blunt and not always sensitive. not on purpose though. 

i'll be thinking about this step a lot over the next few weeks while i try to find the time to focus more on my spirituality and with living the quaker beliefs i'd like to be living...

how do you cultivate hope? how are you spiritual? how do you cultivate your innate spirituality?