Datura: Queen of the Desert

Walking through the once-was-Lake-Shastina mostly spongey, occasionally cracked and definitely mossy + feather-spattered strange terrain filled with equal amounts of goose poop and glimmer kept me in a constant state of confusion: Was it gross or beautiful? I truly didn’t know. Color pops and shifts in radiant shades of greens, reds, and yellows painted a unique canvas. As my friend promised, the land was full of surprises. As I drank in the experience of grotesque and gossamer, trying to make sense of it all we came upon her: Datura, the Queen of the Desert. The milky hew of her pin-wheel-petals lures the senses. Memory took over from there: Datura was one of the flowers my own teacher Jim Hall taught us about during my time at the California School for Herbal Studies, in Forrestville, California. While the plant herself is poisonous, the flower essence is a deeply revered.

Upon returning home that night, I was bent on finding the flower essence I made at CSHS nearly a decade before. As I re-read my notes from that initial experience it felt clear in my heart: I had to go back and make a flower essence with this particular Datura, at this time, in this place. As I grimaced while removing the goose-poop anointed bandana from my sweet little pooches neck, remembering the complexity of the visually curious and yet somewhat repulsive place I just left, I realized I didn’t even understand yet, why that particular place called me.

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Making flower essences is a several-hour-at-minimum-experience. Literally, the plant is sharing her energetics — her spirit, with us through the making of an essence. We ask permission, we smudge, we clip + let steep. During that time, we want to be conscientious of our energy around the plant. So further exploration seemed like a good idea. As we embarked from our medicine-making-camp, replete with a water offering to any animals that may have happened upon our process, I was amazed at the conversation that began to pour from us; It felt like Datura was literally working us just by being in her presence. As walked I began to notice my own relationship to the terrain was shifting. I felt less repulsion to the distasteful and more awareness of the fact that life was happening all around me — maybe not my preference of life, but it was life none-the-less. And, where did I get my preferences, anyway? I pondered the concept of conditional love, something I have been meditating on for a while in relation to this concept: If I can only accept my own ideas of beauty and wonder, how much am I really fully present to life? If I spend so much of my energy shunning what is not in alignment with that idea, what am I missing. I began to drink in this place a bit more, with the vital knowledge that all phases of life are essential. Even this wasteland, in time would become something else — either a resplendent lake once more or a barren desert possibly?

During our process we mediated for quite a while with Datura. I have been blown away multiple times by what comes from meditating with a plant. The connections are medicine in and of themselves. The messages I received from this particular plant, at this particular time, is the medicine of being with life as it is, in this moment — finding the beauty and the gratitude, even. Especially when, it seems as though there is nothing to be grateful for. It is a potent practice of inquiry to come up against our own walls to that process. What stories to we cling to that prevents us from finding such gratitude? What pain, or trauma still lives there within us? What part of us still lives there with those stories?

Datura, it turns out grows in the neglected and forgotten spaces. She thrives in the vacant lots and abused earth. She has the power to heal the land of contaminants from chemicals and toxins. As an energy medicine, she asks us to consider what is poison in our lives? Behaviors? Relationships? Beliefs? She asks us, “what needs to ‘die,’ in order for us to evolve? Without attachment to the next phase being “better,” or “more evolved,” enthusiasm is deserved enough just in trusting that the next phase is as necessary as the one we are departing from currently. To learn to love ourselves unconditionally, is to learn to love all of life — the parts that are pleasant and the parts that are really unpleasant.

And, once we open our eyes to it, seeing objectively our participation in our suffering. Can we have gratitude for that phase of our life too? The wasteland is still apart of life, even if it’s life we want to push away. Our own dark night of the soul is a crucial part of our life, even if it forces us to look at parts of ourselves we are not proud, or comfortable, or particularly, “like.” It is going through those phases that bring us to the place of deeper understanding or expression. It is a potent piece not to be missed.

It’s the turning away from what is unpleasant we also turn away from ourselves. Datura invites us back. Gently, encouraging us to see we can not compartmentalize. We cannot pick and choose our way to wholeness. Her medicine is one of presence. Her invitation is one of deepening connection — to Yourself…to myself, to Spirit. She doesn’t have the answers; And, she’s cautious of anyone who thinks they do. She’s protective of her medicine and she practices discernment. She wanted to know my intention before allowing me to make medicine from her. She needed to trust that I didn’t have an agenda. I get that.

It’s apart of our human culture to misconstrue the illusion of power over another as true power. There is a force that connects us all — humans, plants….all beings. And, the only true power is connecting to that force. Though, how often do we turn to another for that very connection? We mistakingly give our power away to another thinking they have something we don’t and that we “need,” them in order to have apart of ourselves. In truth, we each have it within us. It is our birthright. (And, I don’t believe much is) to connect to Spirit and ourselves in a way that no one can do but us.

Sitting in absolute awe and wonder of this deeply majestic plant, the mystery of her medicine became more and more ineffable. Like god, or love — One has to experience it to fully understand.  And, your understanding will be different from mine, and that’s okay. In fact, that’s how it’s supposed to be (if anything truly is). She holds space for the sacredness of this moment. Within her, I understood a trust for the one that will come after too —equally sacred, no matter how it arrives, pleasant, unpleasant…it matters not to datura. It is all  She has the grace to let go when it’s time. And the courage to be fully present anyway — even though life is fleeting and unpredictable, and not guaranteed. The potency of her energy is enough. It is her expression of life.

In my own way, I understand her completely. In my own recent inquiry and understanding that true unconditional love is Full presence + acceptance. It’s all matter of fact to her. The spiritual comes in when we can be with the discomfort of each moment as a necessity of being. Joy of life and respect of death are the same. They feed into each other like the snake that eats its tail. But datura, asks you don’t hear that in your head, you feel that in your heart. Because this medicine is one that needs to be received from the place of “being,” which can only happen there. The heart, can truly hold it all. Without judgement. Without need to label, categorize, and control.

Life happens on life’s terms. Can we be with it