Experiencing the Personhood of Plants

As we take initiation into the wild green ways, many of us from non-animistic cultures or backgrounds struggle with really experiencing the personhood of the plants. On paper, we understand that they are fully conscious, thinking, feeling, engaged individuals with whom we can have deep spiritual relationships. But we may still find ourselves in a forest feeling all alone.

In this post I’d like to share a simple meditation you can do in a garden, park, forest, meadow, or in front of your favorite houseplant to help open up your faculties of perception, engage a lightly altered state of consciousness (one we inhabit full-time as an animistic perspective becomes our normal operating state), and experience the personhood and presence of the plants in a direct and meaningful way.

Here’s the thing about this work: we love to complicate it! The reality is that plant spirit work relies on the truth of living in a world full of people and in a world that is made up entirely of relationships. So, the connection is already there- we just need to slow down to tree speed and lean into it to really experience it for what it is.

To use this simple method, I suggest carving out 15 minutes of time or more. Again, you may find yourself seated comfortably before the long arms of a living room Pothos, doing laps around a local park, or wandering down a forest path. It doesn’t matter where you do this practice so long as you have plants you can engage with. In fact, I suggest trying this practice in many different spaces, times, and atmospheres to really flex your visionary muscles.

• Single out one plant. Choose based on who attracts your attention most, who is most accessible, or who happens to be there.
  
• Take a few breaths to settle your nervous system, quiet your mind, and slow yourself down a few notches. While breathing, remember that your inhalation is a gift directly from the green realm and your exhalation is a gift to them in return. With every breath you are already in an intimate states of connection to the plant spirits all. The sorcerous work at hand is already being done!
• Visually explore the plant a few times over. Notice colors, textures, size, shape, patterns, and feelings that arise as you scan. If safe to do so, feel free to engage your hands in gentle touches to explore in a different way.
• Now with physical eyes open, using your mind’s eye, make believe, imagination, creative visualization, pretend, or other faculties of non-ordinary feeling, I would like for you to place a sphere of light, aura of light, burst of light, or other feeling near the center of the plant or tree and let it shine out around them. Your physical eyes remain open so that you can learn to superimpose your imaginal power over the world around you. This is a great craft to hone for many aspects of our arte.
• Spend a couple of minutes here. Let this light become as vibrant, detailed, and real as possible. Allow it to have some gravity and some presence. See if while you ‘see’ the light you can also feel it somehow.
• Now, with the plant before you bathed in a light which emits from their own center, allow the power of personhood to rush in. Take your control off the light and let the plant use the light as a meeting point between you and them. Let the plant define what the light does and how it projects.
• Acknowledge the personhood of the plant you are now connected to. Let yourself try to experience them seeing you, them being aware of you sitting before them, them smelling you and bathing in the warmth that emits from your body. Feel seen.
• Now, come gently back to the breath. Inhale the light emitted from the plant, exhale a gift of power, gratitude, and love. Share in sacred breath.
• You may find that communication spontaneously happens here. If so, I invite you to follow it and listen from everywhere while in this state of rapport with the plant spirit. You may find that the whole meditation is quiet and somewhat insulated but that there is a clear sense of presence and power in the plant. This is also good and can be built upon over time in whatever way you like with the support of your plant allies.
• Next time you’re out for a walk, see if you can create a meeting place of light for every tree, plant, shrub, vine, flower, animal, insect, pond, mountain, storm, and human you encounter. This is a profound exercise in first acknowledging, then experiencing the deep personhood of all beings- and a crucial foundational step in the green arte.