The power of connection

(5 min read)

We are living through a time in which many people are remembering. I see this is like an immune response to what is happening on our planet. There are agents of change coming to life and gifts that are beginning to emerge.

At a time when so much healing and support is needed, many people are remembering gifts that have always been within them. Amongst these are the gifts of peacemaking, healing, medicine making and interspecies communicating.

For a long period in our history communing with spirits, with nature and with the living world was condemned and in many ways is still a source of cultural shame and grief. Through colonisation, Our inter-relational cultural roots and canopy were hacked and our relationship with the living world was disrupted.

Today, something is being restored. Whether through animism, shamanism, nature connection or other earth centred paths, people are remembering. The bond between the land, the community and the living spirits of life is beginning to be renewed. People are restoring their own native and land based spiritualities and remembering that they belong to the living Earth.

As these innate gifts emerge, some people discover an ability to communicate more deeply with plants, animals, landscapes and other dimensions of life. They become bridges between worlds, helping others to remember their own relationship with the living cosmos.

This restoration is beautiful and deeply needed. Yet every period of remembering also asks something of us. It asks for discernment, humility and responsibility.

There are moments where misidentification can happen.

On a personal level, I have witnessed times where people begin to attribute another person's healing to themselves. It could be easy to believe that because someone experienced healing in our presence, we were the source of it. Yet over the years I have come to see healing differently.

We can create the conditions for healing. We can offer presence, listening, knowledge, compassion and experience. But healing itself belongs to something much greater than any individual.

As we cultivate a deeper relationship with life, we need to remain mindful. We need to continue doing our own inner healing so that we can share our gifts with clarity, integrity and harmony. Shadow work is not separate from the path. It is part of the path. Without it, our wounds quietly shape the way we relate to our gifts and to those who seek support.

There are also times when we project. We may place a mentor, teacher or healer upon a pedestal because we are searching for something perhaps certainty, belonging or healing. Sometimes our own wounds attach themselves to the power we perceive in another. It may come from a need for validation, an insecure attachment, low self esteem or a longing to be saved from our own suffering.

In those moments we may unconsciously ask another person to carry something that has always belonged within ourselves. We imagine that they possess a power that we could never have.

The same misidentification can happen in the opposite direction. If enough people project power onto a teacher or healer, the teacher may begin to believe those projections. Slowly, the role becomes confused with the person. The gift becomes confused with the giver, Service becomes identity.

Power itself is not the problem. Our relationship with power is.

After more than sixteen years of walking a healing path, learning with different indigenous elders and wisdom traditions, for which I am deeply grateful, I began to notice a recurring pattern. Sometimes those who had been initiated into respected lineages or entrusted with genuine healing responsibilities slowly became identified with the role they had been given. The lineage carried wisdom. The tradition carried medicine. The community offered trust and respect. Yet over time, the ability to help others could subtly become understood as personal power.

A lineage may carry medicine. A ceremony may create the conditions for profound transformation. A healer may develop the skill, discipline and capacity to support others. Yet none of these make an individual the source of healing.

Healing emerges through relationship.

It emerges through the willingness of the person seeking healing. Through the support of community. Through the wisdom carried by the tradition. Through the intelligence of the natural world. Through spirit, however each person understands that mystery. The practitioner participates in that relationship but does not make it happen.

This is why shadow work is so important. It helps us remain fully human. It reminds us that our gifts are not diminished by humility. Rather, humility allows those gifts to remain in right relationship with life.

Over the years I have come to discern that, as human beings, one of our core gifts is our ability to cultivate relationship.

Relationship with ourselves.

Relationship with one another.

Relationship with the Earth.

Relationship with the plants, the animals, the waters, the winds and all the beings with whom we share this living world, everything flows from there.

As we deepen these relationships, through gratitude, reciprocity and listening, healing begins to move through us. Whether we speak of spirit allies, plant allies, nature spirits or the living intelligence of life, the principle is the same. Healing is gifted through relationship.

The true power available to us is not the power to control. It is the power to connect.

To love this sacred Earth enough that we become her caretakers.

To tend the forests, the rivers, the soils and the places that sustain us.

To honour the plants and the animals as our fellows in life rather than resources to be consumed.

To strengthen the web of life through our care, our love and our conscious participation within it.

Through this dedication, this commitment, this passion for life and through the power of listening, we become people who can genuinely support others to heal. Not because healing belongs to us, but because our lives have become rooted in relationships.

Anything other than that is, in some way, a misidentification.

For those walking the path of plant healing, shamanic practice, indigenous wisdom or the healing arts, I believe it is essential that we continue to foster within our hearts the longing for connection. Every season invites us to renew that relationship. Every cycle asks us to deepen our listening. Every year offers another opportunity to participate more consciously in the living web that sustains us.

Like every relationship, It asks for our presence, our gratitude, our attention and our love.

Perhaps this is one of the central questions of the path. How do we continue, year after year, to deepen our relationship with life? How do we grow our capacity to listen? How do we leave an energetic footprint, an emotional footprint and a physical footprint that contributes more life than it takes?

Perhaps that is what is really being asked of us. Not that we become more powerful, but that we become more deeply related. Not that we gather followers, but that we strengthen relationships.

Not that we become extraordinary individuals, but that we become extra-ordinary participants in the great community of life and remember our place.

When our lives become an expression of relationship rather than power, we naturally leave behind a different kind of footprint. Not one of impact or domination, but one of regeneration. A footprint of care and reciprocity. A footprint that quietly strengthens the web of life so that all beings may flourish long after we have gone.