CHEROKEE TRAIL OF TEARS

After many attempts to describe this Essence, I decided to give the job to the Native American grandmothers who overlit the creation of our Cherokee Trail of Tears garden and orchestrated the creation of this Flower Essence mix.  Here is what they have to say about this project,  “We are containers. Our job is to hold the wisdom of our tradition and people in a pure form, distilled beyond the dramas of right and wrong, good and bad. At best, this is a wisdom in which personality and personal dramas are not factors. Corn is a sublime expression of the process of holding pure wisdom in form. This is one reason why seven traditional corns were part of this garden. Each variety of corn holds many generations of wisdom, as well as knowledge about how to be containers for such wisdom.

As we look at our experience on the actual Cherokee Trail of Tears, we see that it called us, the traditional wisdom keepers, to refine our wisdom profoundly. The event was a convulsion in our culture, leading to a new wisdom and self knowing. It helped us remove strands of previously unknown illusions, so we could hold a more refined and pure experience of ourselves. 

During the creation of the Cherokee Trail of Tears garden at Green Hope Farm, this purification was both remembered and amplified by the weaving flight patterns of the many turkey vultures visiting the farm. 

While our refinement process on the trail eliminated misunderstandings about ourselves, it also served to transmute the illusions of our persecutors. Our harvest from the Cherokee Trail of Tears is an offering to the collective human consciousness of a deeper wisdom than existed before the event and can be accessed through the vibrational wisdom of this Flower Essence.

To explain the specific wisdom garnered on the trail and imbedded in this mix, let us look at the notion of duality. When we label people in a drama good guys versus bad guys, the only eternal truth about the situation is lost, namely the truth that all is God. To define ourselves as good guys is just as detrimental as when we define ourselves as bad guys. Both labels feed an illusion of separation. Both labels cut us off from an experience of sacred oneness. If we assign ourselves the role of “good guys”, then we cut ourselves off from the sacred life flowing through the “bad guys”. If the “bad guys” also perceive the dynamic as us against them, they too are cut off from their wholeness and oneness with all creation. 

This dynamic of judgment impedes harvesting the lessons of a drama more than any other factor. This collision of cultures during the Cherokee Trail of Tears was a drama set up to lead all of us forward in our spiritual evolution. It was not created to polarize us further in duality.

Let us explain. Separation is the defining idea of the old world with its creation story of being thrown out of the garden of Eden. The Cherokee Trail of Tears and all actions to removed us from land where we lived was an acting out of the old world’s primary myth, that a child of God can be thrown out of God by an angry father God. For the natives of this continent, this myth of separation from an angry parent was an alien myth. Experiencing the drama of this myth at the hands of our conquerors created a tear in the fabric of our own experience of life and our, until then, unchallenged mythology. 

Our own mythology was not so much story as experience for us. Our mother was the earth that cradled us. Our father creator poured down his life in the form of sunshine to sustain us. We, like the corn, were children of both sunlight and earth. Our myth was different but still involved duality. We separated ourselves from our creator by experiencing ourselves as loved children while the new arrivals to this continent separated themselves by experiencing themselves as unloved children. Neither of us experienced ourselves beyond duality as one with our creator.

This meant that the drama of the Cherokee Trail of Tears was a gift for all.  The harvest is a lifting of the veil of separation from God for all of us. 

The intention of any human drama is to move us towards a clearer view of truth. This drama was no exception. The people of the new world played one role and the new arrivals from the old world played another. The point is not assigning guilt or pointing fingers of good guy or bad guy, but harvesting the crop we planted together.

This garden and its Essence is about receiving the harvest and not getting log jammed in blame or the issue of justice. True justice is a universal law which takes care of itself.  Each soul involved will come to a balancing of his or her own behavior with or WITHOUT enforcement by other humans. This universal law frees us to harvest the lessons of the drama without emotional baggage about what did or did not happen to the participants of the drama.  The universal law of justice returns us to the priority of harvesting the events’ lessons. This harvest was why the drama was created in the first place.   

That said, getting to the harvest took even us seasoned wisdom keepers time.  As we began this walk,  it was hard for the women of the tribe, the traditional containers of sacred truth, to believe there could be a harvest from such suffering. This is one of the reasons journeys of suffering are so difficult.  They take us away from our familiar structures of faith and leave us no certainties. Being ripped from our experience of “mother” and relocated to alien territory was a profound suffering and loss of our old faith. 

However, as we walked our trail of tears, we found that we had not lost our mother. Our mother was in the chaos as much as she was in the land we had loved and lost. We discovered we could not be lost from our mother father God because everything is in God and of God. God traveled within us as our own eternal identity. This was a new and more complete faith than existed before the walk.

As our self awareness clashed with the self awareness of the old world, something better for both of us was born. We, the grandmothers, have harvested and held this wisdom. Now this transcendent experience of oneness with God is ripe for everyone to harvest.

The dominance of the old world culture means that most events have been and continue to be analyzed and understood not through the heart, but through the mind. The mind likes to feel in control. It is easier to feel in control when events are organized by the mind in terms of duality. The mind clings to duality as to a life raft.  In fact, the mind cannot move beyond duality, only the heart can do this. So, to be in the mind, frozen in good guy bad guy thinking, is to miss this harvest. 

As the limits of the mind become clearer to the prevailing old world culture, the movement will be back towards the neglected heart which can hold this harvest, the wisdom that ALL IS GOD.  For most people, it will be personal versions of the Cherokee Trail of Tears that move them from their minds to their hearts where this wisdom can be experienced fully.

Usually the mind does not serve the heart willingly or abandon its structure of duality unless there is serious stress. This is why suffering may be necessary to bring in this harvest. A realization of the limitations of the mind must be experienced. This kind of realization often comes from experiences of suffering. Once the limitations of the mind are acknowledged, the resources of the heart are ready to serve and in this case, bring in the harvest of life beyond duality.

The intent of this Flower Essence is to make each person’s personal Cherokee Trail of Tears as gentle a journey to the heart as possible. This Essence offers comfort on the trail, reminding you that you are not alone and that the destination, however unclear to you, is a good one. From our vantage point, we truly know “you and I are not we but one”. We offer this Essence combination to encourage you on your journey to knowing this for yourself.

We are way showers but we cannot walk your trail for you. We can encourage you on the dark part of the trail when you feel disoriented or lose faith. We can promise that all that is genuine, essential, and eternal is not lost in your suffering, but will be uncovered in your suffering. We can tell you that the journey is worth the pain but you must walk these trails yourselves to know this. This is because mind wisdom is not true wisdom. You can understand something intellectually by hearing about it, yet not understand it fully. Your journey in your body and in your heart take mind wisdom and transform it into heartfelt body wisdom. This kind of wisdom is fully yours.  

Just as we are way showers, this Essence is also a way shower, lighting your way to your heart and a new self awareness, ever encouraging you onwards on your journey to reclaim your true self. This particular Essence offers a vibration that you are safe in God, no matter the personal chaos, because you ARE God. By ringing this vibrational note in your electrical system, we hope to help every cell in your being to recognize and embrace this truth when you encounter it on your trail.

We created this garden and its Essence so that we could offer support to you in as tangible a way as possible. We know that we cannot walk the trail for you as it is your own unique journey. Nor would we want to walk this for you because we know there are great gifts to be had from walking your own trail.  However we believed it would be a gift if we could create an electrical vibration of companionship and comfort amidst your troubles,  a sweet song of our love to take on your journey. So we did.

A more detailed description of this project is available online or as a free handout. The Cherokee Trail of Tears garden was one of the most life altering and joyful endeavors of all my years here at the farm. I would love to share with you a fuller description of this garden project with you. Please ask for this information if you are interested.

Anasazi Flour Corn, Black Aztec Corn, Bloody Butcher Corn, Brittle Wax Bean, Carrot, Cherokee Trail of Tears Pole Bean, Dragon’s Tongue Bean, Fin de Bagnol Bean, Italian Flat Bean, Lettuce, Mandan Red Flour Corn, Oaxacan Green Dent Corn, Orange Lady Marigolds, Purple Queen Bush Bean, Rainbow Incan Corn, Red Cranberry Bean, Red Spider Zinnia, Stowell’s Evergreen Corn, Tongue of Fire Bean