Earth Rebels Session 7 - The Four Medicines

In this session, we will learn about the people of Ladakh. Inspired by their way of life, we will contemplate four kinds of medicines that can heal the cultural sicknesses in our hearts and minds. The first medicine is gratitude, the second is the smile of a rebel. The third is forgiveness and lastly, we have the medicine of the soul, the spiritual and creative dimensions of life.

Transcript

Last module we worked with four different types of red pills.

Today is much nicer.

We are going to work with four kinds of medicines.

I say medicines because there is so much sickness in our day and age.

Not just flus and illnesses but sicknesses in our minds.

Parasitic entities like chronic worry,

Chronic planning syndrome and a complete inability to live in this present moment.

Before I introduce these medicines,

Let's begin with a story about the people of Ladakh.

Ladakh is a mountainous region in the Himalayas between India and China.

Here people have lived more or less undisturbed by the warfare,

Colonization and industrial development that has gripped the rest of the world.

The people lived simple lives,

Herding cattle,

Growing some crops in the few summer months,

Sharing what scarce natural resources they had access to.

1975 something happened that would change everything in Ladakh.

The government of India decided that the region should be open for tourism.

It had been closed off due to the border dispute with China.

A Swedish anthropologist named Helena Nourbe was one of the first to travel there to learn the language and document what happened when Ladakh came into contact with the so-called civilization.

The first year of her visit she could hardly believe what she saw.

People were so genuinely happy that she kept believing they must be faking it.

Smiling all the time,

Laughing and playing like children.

During the long winter they had celebrations every week in someone's house singing and dancing.

It took Helena a year to understand that what she saw was real.

It was true happiness in these people,

Even though they used iron pots and had no internet,

No TV,

No radio,

No hospitals,

No schools.

They grew all the food they ate and they made all the clothes they used.

She also noticed more things.

They had no diabetes,

Hardly any cancer or the other modern diseases.

They had strong connections with their neighbors and parents.

When a couple started a new family they often moved into the daughter's house and the family built a new smaller house for her parents on the same yard.

In this special culture people still prayed for the seeds when they planted them and sang for the animals.

And they still do.

In some parts of Ladakh all this is still being kept alive,

But as civilization crept in things slowly changed.

More and more people lose the old ways of life.

The young people growing up become enchanted by the West's ideal of money,

Of money,

Of cars,

Of wealth and expensive clothes.

They get hospitals,

Subsidized coal to burn with,

Schools and tourist offices and their local economies get disrupted.

It no longer makes sense to work hard in the fields day after day where you can get chemicals and a tractor to grow four times the yields.

But the old ways of farming had been working for thousands of years and were enjoyable if you did them in moderation.

Now Ladakh is in the crossroad,

One foot in the old world,

One in the new.

For me the story of Ladakh is so powerful because it shatters the myth of success of the Western industrialized society.

We love to think that civilization has never been better than this.

We love to think that all these technological toys we have and all our knowledge from science is the biggest achievement of mankind thus far.

Just look on how many illnesses we have cured with vaccines and antibiotics.

And just look how much food we can grow with our chemicals and tractors.

And look at all the clothes and electronics we can create in our factories.

Guess sure.

Let's also look at the sicknesses our technological and spiritually bereaved civilization has created.

Look at all the chronic illnesses we have created with the lifestyles that hold together this civilization.

Diabetes,

Heart diseases,

Autoimmune diseases,

ADHD and so much more.

And look at the two world wars and countless biotopes we have ruined.

How many do you know who are smiling like the Ladakh every day,

Taking every moment as a blessing?

Who can smile even when their harvest and all their hard work gets ruined in a storm?

This is why I think Ladakh is an advanced culture,

A monumental achievement in the history of humanity.

And yet they are considered backwards.

We think they need our help to get proper medical institutions and education.

Education in the Western rational mind.

So we get them paved roads,

We get them schools,

Tourists,

We get the machines.

And the Ladakh way of life gradually collapses.

But we can still connect with their wisdom.

We can still connect with their way of life.

It's never left us.

It's just buried deep inside of us.

The original way of life.

And to cure all the layers of disease and numbness which have been brought into us by empire,

We need medicine.

We need a lot of medicine,

Both the sweet and the bitter.

But let's begin with the sweet.

The first medicine might come as a surprise.

It is only this.

Thank you.

Yes,

Thank you.

Greatfulness,

Gratitude,

To give thanks.

This simple act with our heart to acknowledge any goodness we have received.

Be it air to breathe,

Water to drink,

Food to eat,

Friendships,

A partner,

A roof over our head,

Our health,

Our body.

Greatfulness to yourself for doing your very best constantly,

Every day,

Every moment.

Greatfulness for our very life.

Even when we feel like shit,

Buried deep in pain and misery,

Gratitude can take us through.

By focusing on all the beauty,

All the goodness that is still here,

We replenish that energy in us,

Which gives us hope and a sense of yes,

There is something in many loved ones worth living for.

Drawing this breath of air deep into our lungs.

Thank you earth,

Thank you forests for giving us air to breathe.

Thank you clouds for the water we drink.

Thank you plants,

Thank you animals,

Thank you insects,

Bacterias.

Thank you mountains,

Lakes,

Rivers,

Oceans and deserts.

Thank you for your courage in taking this course.

This gratitude is always here,

Always available.

But in our darkness,

In our bitterness,

Pain or resentment,

It is very difficult to connect with.

And if we can't,

There are luckily other medicines.

The second medicine is your own smile,

Not the normal instinctive smile we have been taught to subconsciously show off in social situations,

Regardless of how we actually feel.

The other smile,

The kind of smile that reflects an inner joy.

The smile of being alive.

Yet another day here on planet earth.

Another day to play,

To breathe,

To love,

To revolt.

And there is something special about this smile.

It can grow even stronger the more we are oppressed.

I get reminded by my dear friend Deep from Syria.

I met Deep during my peace walk through Europe when I passed Denmark where he lived.

He had faced oppression like few others.

He had seen people being killed by gas attacks,

Almost lost his eyesight.

One of his legs had an injury from a sniper shot.

And after he managed to escape Damascus,

He went on a death journey for five months to eventually land in Denmark.

Five months in the merciless hands of smugglers and bandits.

During the journey he saw women being sold as slaves.

And he was left helpless together with hundreds of people drifting both in the Mediterranean.

When he finally arrived in Denmark,

What awaited him?

The most fabulous legal processes.

And his own home was vandalized by racists.

Despite all of this,

Deep had this smile.

This smile that can light up all the darkness in the world.

This beautiful smile and joy.

We all have this smile.

It's one of those ultimate weapons in Ragnarok to give this smile straight in the face of all evils.

When we reclaim this smile in its original innocence,

A shiver goes through the spines of our emperors.

Because they know what is happening.

They know that we,

The people,

Are breaking free from the conditioned joy.

The never fully satisfying joy of owning new technological toys,

Of achievement and career steps and worldly successes.

They know that we are breaking free with the joy of life.

This natural state of happiness that is our birthright.

This happiness that is death to the empire.

So let no one rob you of this smile.

Smile of a true earth rebel.

Now let's get to that third medicine.

Forgiveness.

That oh so bittersweet medicine.

Forgiveness to all our oppressors.

Beat bullies,

Coaches,

Teachers,

Parents,

Employers,

Peers.

And also forgiveness to our oppressing mind.

Forgiveness can't be pushed or artificially created.

It has to come naturally.

A willingness from the most sensitive place in our hearts.

However,

Forgiveness doesn't mean that the harm wasn't done.

It doesn't mean that you have to love the person.

It doesn't mean anything.

Except that you stopped holding on to that hot call of vengeance and bitterness in your heart.

That call of resentment that we can hold for years and years and suffer deeply from.

It can help to remind yourself that all who hurt you either acted out of ignorance or out of sickness.

Because a truly wise person would never hurt someone knowingly.

And a truly happy person would never hurt someone with the intention to do so.

It's like when Jesus was hanging on the cross.

He prayed to his God.

Forgive them father.

They do not know what they're doing.

He knew that his oppressors were acting out of ignorance.

If you look at your upbringing,

How many of your classmates,

Colleagues,

Relatives do you think were acting out of ignorance?

To what degree would their actions and words be influenced by their wounds from their own upbringings?

And from their stress and internal pressure from the cultural forces they were subject to?

When we look at it this way,

Our oppressors are like logs floating down a river.

When we get hurt by a floating log in a river it's pointless to get angry at the log.

It's just a log.

Its motions are controlled by the flow of the river.

Similarly,

People have yet to wake up from the slumber.

People are still living the zombie life are just like this log.

We can only love them.

Forgive them for not being wise enough,

For not being taught wisdom.

Forgive them for not being compassionate.

Forgive them for not being loved enough.

And do our best to protect us should they float too close to us.

And we need to forgive ourselves too.

For being like that log.

For floating on the river of ill wills and less than noble thoughts and habits.

Forgive ourselves for all the hardships we have caused others and ourselves in our confusion.

And remembering that we did our best with the awareness we had at the time.

So we forgive and start over again.

Get a new chance every breath.

So what is the fourth medicine then?

It's the perfect medicine for the age of Kali.

The dark age of materialism.

When we have forgotten our spirit and emotional realm.

It's the medicine of the soul.

This medicine is found everywhere,

In music,

In dance,

In painting,

Writing.

Any expression of your soul.

It's found when you paint your misery,

You dance your joy,

You sing your sadness and you write your wonders.

This medicine becomes even stronger when you go from passive consumer to active co-creator.

Remembering that singing isn't just for professional singers and dancing isn't just for dancers and painting isn't just for painters.

What does your soul long for in terms of creativity?

Be it clay pottery,

Stitching,

Remaking clothes,

Gardening,

Anything creative.

The soul has an endless way of expressing itself.

And there are so many beautiful expressions from cultures around the world that we can explore in this age.

Yoga,

Meditation,

Prayer,

Chanting,

Ceremonies,

Alternative therapies.

Let's not forget the medicine from our plant and mushroom allies.

These medicines,

Known as psychedelics in the west,

Have been used all around the world by indigenous cultures.

From the fly agaric mushroom by the Siberian shamans to the boga plant by African shamans.

Salicibin mushrooms by Mexican shamans.

The Samphedrine peyote cacti.

And of course ayahuasca,

The grandmother plant spirit,

Used by hundreds of tribes in the Amazon.

There is even evidence that cannabis was used ritually by shamans in 4000 year old civilizations in the middle east.

The traditional use of these plants is very far from today's distorted view.

How could it suddenly become illegal for someone to use the traditional medicine that their ancestors have been using for several thousands of years?

Most of this is explained in the 70s.

It was here,

With the discovery of LSD and the rise of the hippie era,

That these traditional medicines began to be spread more widely.

This made the people at the top of the pyramid very scared.

And in the end,

Those people,

With US president Nixon in the lead,

Managed to put in place a worldwide ban of all psychedelic plants and mushrooms after the United Nations psychotropic convention in 1971.

To use these medicines in sacred ceremonies with experienced guides can be life changing.

They can open our eyes again to the great beauty of the earth.

They can help us find love and forgiveness again.

And they can help us navigate through the dark shadows of empire to reach our inner light.

However,

Using these medicines can also be a very scary and potentially dangerous experience if not done in a proper healing context.

So tread carefully and follow the longing of your soul to lead you the right way.

Reviews

Wonderful.

Your series is educational and inspiring, thank you for creating it. Regarding psychedelics, I'm glad you recommended caution. I have bipolar disorder and believe taking such drugs would be destabilizing. However, in many ways I see my psychic breaks as providing similar experiences of reconnection to underlying truths.