Spirit Tapestries

My Health Practitioner advised me that once I'd identified "my" spirit plant, the next step is to "diet" the flowers. Which means making an essence of them and taking drops of it, similar to flower remedies. She was going to research how to get me a dried lotus.

The next morning, during my chanting, I received the message that I was to return to my lotus meditation spot and collect a living lotus.

At the marsh ponds near Eagle Lake, I raced along on my bike, feeling a little too much like a hunter, not a delicate flower collector.

After failing to find the lotus I'd cupped in my hand on Sunday, I searched for another. Found one that was wounded, with little insect holes in petals now turning grayish. I collected it into my jar, with pond water.

Then I found another, a young budding one about to flower. After swooning at the sight of it and nearly falling into the marsh, I steadied myself, kneeled, and collected it. Then I scooped some black mud and cut two lotus pads, to provide a nice environment for my flowers.

It never occured to me to ask again about picking them, since I'd thought I received permission during morning chanting.

At home I placed each into a separate bowl, with mud and leaf, and placed these on my altar. The budding one had opened so that now I got a chance to smell its otherworldly perfume. After lighting a beeswax candle, I chanted the thousand names of the Divine Mother.

Several hours later, about noon, my blossoms were beginning to close. The sick one seemed to be getting well, but was also closing. I needed to work fast to sterilize jars and put the flowers into pure water. To do this I had to place them in petals first, upside down, otherwise their petals would not be submerged.

The second I dipped them into their separate jars, I was overcome with remorse.

Thinking my feeling was just imagination, I carried on about my business. After a while I returned and sat with the lotuses. Again I felt grief-stricken. Images of all the ways we in our Western culture remove, in excess, so many living beings from Mother Nature--trees, gold, fish, coal, oil--all our plunder over hundreds of years.

I asked what I should do.

The lotuses said, "Return us to the marsh, and the essence water, too. You are not to use us in this way at this time. You are to commune with us in spirit only."


"The wise have attained the unitive state,
And see only the resplendent Lord of Love.
Desiring nothing in the physical world,
They have become one with the Lord of Love."
--The Mundaka Upanishad

I’m searching for a lotus flower close enough to smell it. Riding my bike along the edge of a pond on Eagle Lake carriage road, I find one. I lie down on a boulder, reach, pull the flower to me. Inches away, not near enough to smell. My nose is slightly clogged. I think to choose a petal to take off. But when I ask permission, the lotus says, “No.” Instead I enjoy the delicate, subtle feel of cream-colored blossom touching my fingers, in the water.

As I bike to my “lotus meditation” spot, I seem to have become a very large lotus.

After turning down a path, off the road, I lean my bike against a boulder and make my way down to my hiding place. Only one lotus is here this week (last week there were four or five). Fall is in the air, some lotus pads have turned yellow.

Again I watch and listen—a frog croaks once, a dragonfly hovers, tiny fish jump. Trees turning red on opposite shore are reflected in water, sky reflected between two hills creates a pathway of light.

My eyes fall closed. I am still a lotus.

My first chakra is connected by stem to the mud under water. The lotus tells me to hold awareness of that. A drop of rain falls onto the middle top of my head, exact. Then a light rain creates subtle percussion sounds on lotus pads, reeds, and water, like a rain stick. After some time the rain slows to dripping.

I have lotus petals growing all around me, up from stem. The pistil is my body. At the second chakra the little spirits of the lotus, pointy-hatted and elf-like, fly in and around my second chakra, sort of tickling, for a long time. Then they close over the chakra with a lotus petal.

At the third chakra, a giant dragonfly feeds, like hummingbird sucking flowers. I’m a little nervous and think I should stop now, but the lotus tells me the dragonfly will look at me, eye to eye, when it is finished feeding. It does that after some time.

We move on to my heart chakra. The lotus reminds me to keep awareness of the stem connected to first chakra and below that to the mud. My heart needs cleaning apparently, as the elfin lotus spirits get to work, with pipe-cleaner-like instruments. It’s hard for me to stay. “Come on, hurry up; I have to go purchase my goat milk.” I surrender as best I can, as love spreads all around.

At the throat chakra more cleaning is required, it seems, as elves chip away at barnacles that appear to be childhood memory-wounds.

At sixth chakra, a smaller lotus settles there.

At crown of my head, Amma seems to be trying to come out. “Oh, dear...too big,” I think. Then she mists into subtle and spreads into a brightening gray sky

After some time I thank the lotus and leave.

Shopping for goat milk at the Farmer’s Market in Bar Harbor is a little difficult, as I am still not quite “here.”


“What was its wrapping? Where? In whose protection?
Was water there, unfathomable and deep?
---Nasadiya Sukta

You may remember about my new adventure into healing through plant spirits. That my Ayurvedic/Oriental Medicine practitioner, after loading me up with the healing herbs and diet program, now has me meditating on wildflowers to the beat of a shamanic drum.

In the beginning of this practice, my practitioner had instructed me to find a Valerian plant. She showed me one outside her office, had me smell it, told me she thought it would be good for my hip problem, which she thinks is related to the second chakra, and my womb life.

Searching for Valerian in my own surround, I meandered around outside my apartment, followed my instinct down a path, past the little marsh, and to the small strip mall at the edge of the marsh. Four or five huge plant stocks with white flowers forming an "umbrella" on top, looked a little scary.

A few feet away from these I found Valerian, also in an umbrella arrangement, also white, but on a much smaller stock. I picked the Valerian, brought it home, drank the juice from soaking the plant in water, and put some in a vase. That night I had a dream of a Valerian plant sprout growing out of my second chakra.

Later I thought I'd picked more Valerian in other locations. But these turned out to be Queen Anne's Lace, which to my untrained eye looked similar, though lacked the strong musky perfume. I didn't suffer any ill-effects from drinking the juice, but am not inclined to continue that practice for now.

Frustrated with not finding flowers in the guide book I'd purchased, I now have an excellent wildflower guide, Peterson's.

While perusing the white flowers section in my new book (Valerian is white), I found Poison Hemlock. Oh, my God! I think I've identified those huge, scary plants next to the Valerian!

I returned to the scene. My new book states that the Poison Hemlock can be as tall as "six feet"...yes..."the hollow, grooved stems spotted with purple"...yes... "unpleasant smell"...I didn't get close enough to tell... "juices very poisonous"....

Under Hemlock-Parsley, just in case I was mistaken, I found: "...similar to Poison Hemlock (but lacks the spotted stem and fatal qualities)."

Yes, we have Poison Hemlock in great abundance growing on the backside of the liquor store and very upscale flower shop. I thought it best not to inform the owners.


"As the rivers flowing east and west
Merge in the sea and become one with it,
Forgetting they were ever separate rivers,
So do all creatures lose their separateness
When they merge at last into pure Being."
---Chandogya Upandishd

I'd just finished weaving a chickadee for a medicine bag, and then taken off on my bike. Fog hovered low over Norwood Cove. I left my bike against a tree, and picked my way across the narrow passage to the bridge over the tidal waterfall. I settled on a boulder below the bridge. Couldn't see anything except ghostly outline of the shore and the clear water a few feet from me, rushing out to sea.

Suddenly something moved in the fog. Something at the edge of the sand, in the calm waters. A tall skinny something, wading. Good heavens! What is it? I shivered. It's as tall as a man, skeletal. Or does the reflection make it so? Is it a phantom? Or strange trick of the eye? No. It moves. It's real. But what?

Then all at once it shrank. Oh heavens, it's just a seagull and the rest my imagination.

Then it grew tall again and moved towards me, slowly. Bony long legs, longest neck I'd ever seen. Not quite as tall as a man.

Now it was just fifteen feet away, stepping gingerly across the pebbled sand. It turned its head to profile, revealing long beak, mask over the eyes, S-shaped curve of the neck. No mistaking its identity. A Great Blue Heron.

The Great Blue continued to walk toward me, everything about it becoming so clear I could see individual feathers on its wings. Then seeming to show me how it could telescope its neck to unbelievably long, and then shrink its neck to the size of a seagull's and bend it's knees to seem short and squat. Up and down it stretched and shrank, always slowly. Then it began to pick at something on its chest and under its wing. Pesty insects perhaps.

For a long time it let me take in its ways. I have to say I've never seen such a big Great Blue, or maybe never up so close. Or maybe never stretched out to four feet tall.

Then suddenly from seagull-size position, it spread its wings (72" tip to tip), sprang into the air, and flew off. A man walking across the bridge had frightened it away.

I asked the man if he'd seen the heron, spiriting itself away in the fog. No, he hadn't.

Then riding my bike down a dirt road to home, I came upon a elderly man with skinny, long pale legs, strolling along, using a slender walking stick.


"There can be no water without the sea, no touch without the skin...no form without the eye...no walking without feet..."
--Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Yesterday I reclined on a boulder at the edge of a calm Atlantic sea, listening to the lapping of the gentle incoming tide. Blue sky, sail boats crisscrossing, and Cranberry Island just an arm's length away.

A family of ducks paddled up to fish right in front of me. Surf Scoters, a mom and five ducklings.

I'm pretty sure it was the same family I'd stopped for a few months back to let them cross the nearby road at Seawall. On their way from the roadside marsh to the sea, single file, chicks still tiny fluff balls. Now those ducklings were almost as big as mom, not quite.

With vigor they dove and surfaced. Sometimes with tails up-ended, webbed feet paddling the air. Sometimes standing still on their heads. Often they'd bob up gulping something down their gullets.

One caught a two-inch-long fish and had to make a dash for it when a sibling wanted to claim the spoils. Not an easy feat to escape brother or sister and hang on to a wiggling thing that's wanting to get free.

Mom sometimes raised herself up, treading water, flapping her wings, as if to dry them off. Most of the time she just floated around, all calm and easy, not interested in fishing, but only in monitoring her kids, it seemed.


"Let them show by example how work is holy..."
---Bhagavad Gita

My Ayurvedic practitioner has expanded her healing methods for my case. She believes, in addition to all the herbs I'm taking and diet, that my particular condition will be benefited by asking wild plants to help me.

She has asked me, in preparation to receive plant spirit medicine, to gather the following materials: someone to beat a drum or a drum recording, a small amount of loose tobacco or cornmeal, a reliable and easy to use field guide to local flora, a notebook with pen and colored pencils.

The wildflower guide, recommended by the local college, cost $20. It poses 5 questions I'm to ask with and then follow the "easy" identification procedure for each plant.

At Eagle Lake I was attracted to a small bush with single translucent orange round berry-like fruit or flower, hanging on a few single branches. I couldn't find what it was.

Next was a gorgeous lavender-blue flower in the marsh next to the lake. I was unable to get close enough to see how many "regular parts" it had or if they were "irregular" or if they were "indistinguishable." The large heart-shapped leaf was unique, however. And so I examined most of the 1,375 wildflowers in my new book and finally located the leaf. My flower is a Pontederia cordata or Pickerelweed. I figured someone named Pickerel named it, as otherwise it isn't what I would name such an elegant plant.

After a few more ventures I found out how important it was to distinguish a shrub, vine, or wildflower. In the end, over two days, I located 3 flowers in my book of the 5 that I tried to find.

Then I read further in my instructions from my health practitioner. I am introduce myself to the flowers I'm attracted to, speaking aloud, and explaining that I have come to learn from the spirit of this species, and then to experience the world as the plant does, and become one with it.

I'll have to go back to Eagle Lake and have a conversation with the Pickerelweed.


"I am the sacred smell of the earth, the light of the fire, life of all lives, austerity of ascetics. Know me as the eternal seed of everything that grows."
--Bhagavad Gita

"Do you know how the pelicans die of oil?" asked Dean Wilson, executive director of Atchafalaya Basinkeeper. "They open their wings, thinking they are drying them in the sun, and they just cook in the sun. Thousands of birds are dying like that because of the greed of a foreign company."


The above quote is from an article published on Tuesday, July 20, 2010, on Common Dreams, by Inter Press Service, "BP Oil Poisons the Gulf of Mexico's Food Chain," by Dahr Jamail

NEW ORLEANS - Shellfish in the Gulf of Mexico grow with drops of petroleum inside them, coyotes eat oil-soaked birds, and sharks suffocate when the oil coats their gills.

Oil droplets have been found beneath the shells of tiny post-larval blue crabs drifting into Mississippi coastal marshes from offshore waters, says Harriet Perry, director of the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.

Many kinds of fish and shore birds feed on those young crabs. And this is just one of the many examples of how the crude oil that began to spill April 20, 2010, from British Petroleum's (PB) Deepwater Horizon well has already taken its toll on the Gulf's food chain.

Henderson explained to this reporter that oil-soaked birds are being eaten by coyotes, which are then later eaten by alligators further inland. (To read full article, go to: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/07/20-0)



"When those who are foolish become wise, they give light to the world like the full moon breaking through the clouds. When their good deeds overcome the bad, they give light to the world like the moon breaking free from behind the clouds."
--The Dhammapada

My friend and I, on our way to see Amma, camped out in an urban National Forest, outside Boston, about twenty minutes from the Amma program site. We'd noted on-line that there was a lake to swim in, beach and all, as part of the deal.

It had rained just before we arrived, causing scuzzy waters to pool at many camp sites, including ours. The park ranger moved us to a little hill where we raised my friend's palatial tent.

I'd forgotten that it often rains just before Amma arrives to a city, anywhere in the world. An auspicious sign, a cleansing.

Meanwhile my friend and I, towels and swim suits hung over our arms, headed to the lake. "I smell peanuts roasting. Just like in India," I said. I wondered if someone was cooking something that smelled like peanuts.

My friend was too busy looking for the lake to take a sniff, to see if she smelled the same.

Then we almost walked right on past the lake, a scummy pond, dense and dark green. "I'm not swimming in there," I said. "Nor I." And so we watched the geese bedding down on the shore and then headed back. It was getting close to dark.

After eating the kicharee I'd cooked and brought along, we turned in. Too excited to sleep, we chatted long. Then, with sleep nearly upon us, airplanes flew low overhead. "Must be a new flight pattern and we're under it," said my friend.

"India again," I said. "The planes, the muggy musky smell, the roasted peanuts."

We finally fell asleep, but I woke up at midnight, my mind rattling around with the usual practical details of before and after my visits with Amma. I noted that for some reason I am never able to imagine my actual visits with Amma.

And so, with the sound of distant urban dull roar and city lights giving the sky an eerie glow through the trees, it came to me to do something different with my mind--to let it enter the time between the before and the after.

Just that thought raised Amma's presence somehow, amidst all the spicy moist smells and motor sounds of India. I let myself sink into the between time, no before, no after.

As if slipping from a cloud, I fell into nothingness, awash in a bright white mist.

Then I must have slept, as I awoke when my friend bonked me gently on the head. I said, "What?" And she said, "Hmmm." I looked over and saw her fast asleep, holding a mudra, with one bent arm raised, and the other reaching out.

She must have found her own version of between.



"Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again."

--Caliban in Shakespeare's Tempest

Yajnavalikya came to Janaka, king of Videha, saying to himself, "I will not talk today." But earlier, while they were discussing the fire ceremony, Yajnavalikya had promised him any boon he wanted. Now the king asked the sage permission to question him.
Janaka:
"Yajnavalkya, what is the light of man?"
Yajnavalkya:
"The sun is our light, for by that light we sit, work, go out, and come back."
Janaka:
"When the sun sets, what is the light of man?"
Yajnavalikya:
"The moon is our light, for by that light we sit, work, go out, and come back."
Janaka:
"When the sun sets, Yajnavalkya, and the moon sets, what is the light of man?"
Yajnavalkya:
"Fire is our light, for by that we sit, work, go out, and come back."
Janaka:
"When the sun sets, Yajnavalkya, and the moon, sets, and the fire goes out, what is the light of man?"
Yajnavalikya:
"Then speech is our light, for by that we sit, work, go out, and come back. Even though we cannot see our own hand in the dark, we can hear what is said and move toward the person speaking."
Janaka:
"When the sun sets, Yajnavalkya, and the moon sets, and the fire goes out and no one speaks, what is the light of man?"
Yajnavalkya:
"The Self indeed is the light of man, your majesty, for by that we sit, work, go out, and come back."
Janaka:
"Who is that Self?"
Yajnavalkya:
"The Self, pure awareness, shines as the light within the heart, surrounded by the senses. Only seeming to think, seeming to move, the Self neither sleeps nor wakes nor dreams."
--Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

My friend Julie the Virgo librarian and I were walking her beagle across the meadow that overlooks Somes Sound and the Atlantic.

I told her that I was planning to out-source the silk linings for my medicine bags I've been weaving. She said, "But Savitri. You can do it yourself. All you have to do is measure and cut."

Her words carried the kind of simplicity can't be doubted. Of course I could do it.

Then the day arrived, three medicine bags woven and waiting. I had to work myself up to measuring and cutting. I waited a few days before attempting, once again, the simple Virgo instruction. (The first time a couple of months ago had been a trauma).

I knew it would be auspicious to clip and cut things on the days approaching the Solar Eclipse, to deflect the possible negative effects.

I pulled sewing machine out of closet and then went to tend my garden. Two neighbors dropped over to chat.

Pointing to four-feet tall, not-yet-flowered cosmos, one neighbor said, "Are those carrots?"

"Hmmm...giant carrots they'd be," I said. "No, those are cosmos." We all had a laugh.

Too smug was I.

Upstairs in front of sewing machine, the measuring was slightly too short on the first lining, I feared, and I simply could not straighten my mind around how to sew a French seam.

A couple of hours later, I couldn't really tell you how I sewed the first two, each different from the other. I'm hoping the linings might fit when I hand-stitch them in.

Before starting the third and final lining, with the same dupioni silk, fast unraveling, I did a few yoga postures and took deep breaths.

Oh, my. At the sewing machine my fingers and hands seemed to know exactly how to sew a French seam. Zip zip.

Now I'll wait a few days before hand-sewing them into the woven medicine bags. Numbers and straight lines have always been a mystery to me. The truth will reveal itself.


"He is this boy, he is that girl, he is this man, he is that woman, and he is this old man, too, tottering on his staff. His face is everywhere. He is the blue bird, he is the green bird with red eyes, he is the thundercloud, and he is the seasons and the sea."

--Shvetshvatara Upanishad