A bunch of cut daffodils were in a vase on a table. This was the sight that met my Granddad’s eyes as he walked into the house. After decades of not knowing where his children were, if they were even alive, of thinking he had no descendants left, he was walking into a house where his grand daughter Mary, her husband Richard, and their ten year old daughter Anna, lived.
He described to me, the flowers on the table, the pink tablecloth, the white curtains, the grey-green sofas, the russet-brown carpet, the smell of roses in the air from the garden, the books on the side table.
I was impatient. I asked him to get to when he saw them – his grand daughter and great grand daughter.
He said to me, “The clock struck twelve in the afternoon. I got up to my feet. And they came down the stairs and then in through the door. My grandchild was like the moon walking and her child holding her hand like a piece of the moon.”
He then went silent and I let him be.
After a while he said to me, “Cara, look at my finger nails.”
I did. They seemed quite normal to me.
“They used to turn black,” he said, “Now and then, when I thought it was time to die.”
I waited for him to continue. He seemed to take forever.
“My child, your destiny is a force even your body cannot defy. Destiny brings the flowers back year after year.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Sometimes Destiny will take its time. You have to weather the storm till it’s time.”
“Oh no… I don’t like that phrase ‘weather the storm’.”
“Forget it then,” he waved his hand. “Learn to regenerate yourself, to come back from the ground after being cut down.”
In the years since then, I’ve given it a lot of thought. Regeneration is not just something for people at the end of their lives. It’s what makes children’s wounds heal, and makes us recover from illnesses.
It is the real problem facing modern healthcare – because even allopathic medicines depend on the body’s being able to actually recover from assault.
In a nutshell – ALL real healing is about being able to regenerate oneself.
Secrets of Regeneration
1) Let it be
In sleepy old towns on the highway, that seem to live on despite a ‘lack of interest’ from the rest of the world, is a secret of regeneration. If you just let yourself be, things will work out. Life is powerful on its own.
There’s no need to push life energy. Just let it take its own course. But when it does move….
2) Discover where your heart goes and build a chapel there.
My Granddad told me of this man. When he was three he went to a circus and saw an elephant.
He grew up in London and Liverpool and then moved across the pond to work in the US and he didn’t get to see an elephant in they ears after. At forty five, he was a busy man with a large family and lots of responsibilities. He and my Granddad were sitting in a restaurant as he explained to my Granddad a project he had in mind, something he’d been working towards for decades by then.
He said to my Granddad, “Every time I come so close to actually doing this, something or the other goes wrong. Once I fell and broke my arm. Another time I had a bad case of the hives. Just the day I had a meeting with investors I fell ill with such a terrible cold. The next day, the investors had gone and the cold had disappeared.”
Granddad asked if he had a folder with papers to do with that project on him. He said yes, he did. He carried that folder with him all the time.
He got it out and Granddad smiled.
It was an orange leather zip-up folder with an elephant embossed on it.
“You like elephants?” Granddad asked.
“Oh yes,” the man gushed almost blushing. “They’re such a magnificent animal.”
It turned out the man could speak more about elephants than even his pet project.
That summer, he and his family took a holiday just to see elephants in the wild.
I asked Granddad if the man’s project took off after that. Granddad said, “That is not our business, Cara.”
Granddad would only spend his time and energy removing blocks to the natural flow of emotion, by finding out what the person loved that they were blocking up. He wouldn’t stick around to find out what happened next because he already knew. There were people trying for decades to locate him to tell him that he’d turned their lives around.
Granddad told me that once he was in a ship’s cabin, beneath the level of the water, so, outside the porthole, he could see fish swimming about. A big orange fish noticed him and bumped its nose into the porthole in a ‘Hello’. The fish then swam next to the port hole in company with Granddad for a mile or two. That’s a lot for a fish.
Yet, Granddad said, at the end of the journey, the fish did a big somersault in front of the port hole and looked at Granddad and then did it again… a show of energy and strength.
Granddad laughed. “The fellow was telling me that he had enjoyed our time together. When you do what you love, you feel regenerated at the end and full of beans.”
Find out where your heart goes, and follow it and build a chapel there. Set up your flag there. Make it your world. Live there.
3) Herbs for Regeneration
Herbs are our natural partners in life. They and us manifest together in this world to share our lives together. It’s the first instinct of an animal in this world, on feeling any sort of discomfort or pain or facing a problem, to go looking for a herb to eat.
In a natural environment, you wouldn’t need to go very far or look up things on the internet to find a herb that helped you with your problems. It would appear right near your door, or on the path you took every day.
In today’s world though, they could very well come to you in an email newsletter (*wink) or in one of your social media feeds.
Keep on the lookout for what draws your heart as that is where your healing lies.
Over the years as I’ve experienced many herbs, I’ve zoomed in on three that are my absolute favorites for regeneration, ie. recovery from long term stress, chronic illness, tragedy – emotional or physical that derails life and such.
These herbs will wrap you and cocoon you and help you find in the rubble and shards of your consciousness, the threads of life you need to connect up once again to regenerate your body and your life.
When I tell you about them, I’m telling you about my family, my very close friends, because they’ve nursed me through, like only love can, some conditions that most others never recover from.
My favorite three herbs for regeneration are: Spikenard, Datura and Bamboo.
Spikenard or Nardostachys Jatamansi
found me when I was at zero in every way. I found the essential oil and rubbed it on my wrists after my shower in the evening one day. I sat down to meditate. And the rest is history.
Spikenard loosens the tension in the center of our bodies so energy can flow to wherever it needs to go. That’s all that’s required to change your life forever.
My article on Spikenard – Energy Releasing Deep Healer is here.
Datura or Jimsonweed
found me when I was so muddled up with so many things to do, and none of which led anywhere really. Energy short circuit was how my days and nights went.
It’s for when your vision is so garbled, it feels like you’re viewing the world through multiple lenses that are distorting everything so you don’t know what’s what and who’s who. Accordingly, your energy is all over in the place, surging sometimes, crashed other times.
Datura will simply cut the crap, turn your awareness inwards to what you really need to experience, and give expression to the parts of your sub-conscious screaming for attention.
I use Datura extracted into oil externally for all its benefits. It is my painkiller of choice for all cold-related pain and swelling.
My article on Datura – Deep Space Datura – Truth Serum, Pain Relief and Divine Justice – has become one of the most visited pages on my website.
Bamboo
isn’t exactly any tradition of medicine’s go-to herb. But got my attention in a big way many years ago when I was taking photographs of two monkeys enjoying chewing on bamboo leaves. In the few seconds it took to focus on my camera on them and zoom in, they went from sitting down like respectable members of society to actually doing it – I mean – really DOING IT – as I clicked and clicked, still thinking bamboo in my head. I became aware of people around me staring at me and then realized it looked like I was making monkey porn.
Since then I’ve realized the amazing restorative powers of Bamboo. It can be taken powdered, infused as a tea or any other way you please.
Click here to read all about it – The Curse of the Bamboo (Video and Article).
There are other restorative regeneration experts like Houseleek or Sempervivum but we’ll keep those for another day.
