Guts

To trust in one's intuition is a feat not easily accomplished by most in today's society. We have all been programmed and perhaps bred to trust our frontal lobe. We believe what we can see, what has been proven. There are entire sensory organs that are now essentially disappeared from our species since they have been replaced by an evolving brain. The loss of these instinct-based systems decreases our awareness and stunts our ability to use our intuition. A secondary sensory organ (still found in some newborns) used to function to detect heightened olfactory stimuli. This was useful for smelling food that should not be eaten, and perhaps sensing sickness and pheromones. Now we believe we know better than that and we "think" that we can or cannot eat things - yet food poisoning remains a public health crisis as evidenced by the current outbreak of hepatitis A here in Hawaii. It seems a common trend for humans to think we are more evolved than we are, or more intelligent than we were made to be.


A wonderful woman, student, and teacher of Hawaiian herbal medicine reminded us today that it is our intuition that connects us to the earth and to each other. We ask for permission to use plants for medicine, to take from the earth. We ask for guidance from our ancestors, the spirits that journey with us. If we are listening, we have so much help out there... why do we feel like we are above this? This is not unique to Hawaiian spirituality. Whether you ask God or Jesus or Mary or Mohammed or Buddha or the source or the universe for guidance, prayer and the acknowledgment of those who paved our way, those who came before us and made sacrifices on our behalf, is an often unifying factor. I have known surgeons who prayed before operating, asking for their hands to be guided in healing. This is no different than asking that we be directed towards the right flowers or roots to make medicines. Our secondary olfactory organs would have perhaps been very helpful here as well.

I have to wonder if things wouldn't be easier if we would truly listen to the voice inside us saying "Don't do that. Don't eat that." or "This is the right place to be, wait here". So often we kick ourselves for not doing what we "knew we should have" or vice versa. How much happier could we be if we could hear our own voice?

With Light,
Michelle

All Photo credits to Jamie Cohen Breneman