“Victory is celebrated in the light, but it is won in the darkness.” – Dune Prophecy
I just landed back home after one of the rockiest months of retreat work I can remember.
Two weeks in Costa Rica, running a plant medicine intensive for ~20 practitioners.
Followed by two weeks in the Amazonian jungle, guiding a group of nine through an even more intense plant medicine journey.
It wasn’t easy.
But it armed me with a powerful lesson that will not be easily forgotten.
Here’s the story…
First, I got sick shortly after landing in Costa Rica.
And had no choice but to thug my way through six healing ceremonies, running on snotty, congested fumes.
(“sorry guys I know you spent thousands of dollars, two weeks of your life and a gigantic leap of faith on this experience, but I’m feeling stuffy so you’re on your own” wasn’t really an option)
Then, while traveling from Costa Rica to Peru, I got hit with a mystery bug.
I still don’t know what it was, but I stumbled through two flights with crippling body pain, feverish chills, and a splitting headache.
(third world airports are not the place to be when you should be bed-ridden)
Then came the Amazon:
The mecca of elite-level plant medicine work, where the most skilled healers in the world tackle the hardest problem-cases humanity has to offer.
As a participant, it can be profoundly transformative:
Life changing like nothing else I’ve ever encountered.
But as a practitioner, it’s another story.
Working as a healer in the Amazon is like entering a thunder dome:
A colosseum where light goes to war against darkness, and healers stand on the front-lines against the underlying energies that cause disease, dysfunction, delusion, and destruction.
I promptly got whacked.
The next two weeks were spent fighting my way back, losing some battles but ultimately clawing my way to victory.
And, gaining lessons that will be with me permanently.
The most powerful of which is this:
Darkness…
(pain, suffering, confusion, trauma, fear, doubt, anxiety, illness and disease — everything that knocks us out of our optimal state of being)
…Is not scary.
Darkness is not scary; fear of darkness is scary.
Without fear, darkness is nothing more than the obstruction of light.
And when the obstruction is removed, all that remains is the light that has been there all along.
The same way the sky is always present behind the clouds.
In the process, we learn how to find our light through the darkness.
We learn where our vulnerabilities are; the cracks in our armor that allow the darkness in.
And we learn how to seal those cracks, to fortify and grow stronger.
These are lessons that cannot be learned second-hand, through books or teachers.
They can only be learned through experience:
By going through the darkness.
It can be easy to ignore lessons from the light, when life is smooth and easy.
But darkness refuses to be ignored.
Which, in the end, makes darkness one of our strongest and most reliable teachers.
And, one of our greatest allies.
I hope it serves you well.
- T
P.S. It’s good to be back 🙂
Also, this just dropped…
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