Focus:
Trusting the signals our own bodies give us.
Repetition:
My body speaks to me and I am learning to listen.
Thirst, hunger, rest, and rhythm are gifts.
I trust the wisdom God built into me.
Never Stop Learning
You have built incredible foundations at this point. You understand your terrain, your microbes, your minerals, your nervous system, and your food. You know how to read your own body and how to ask better questions.
That foundation is not the finish line. It is the ground you will keep building on for the rest of your life.
The Mass Exodus Back to Being Human
There is a mass exodus happening in our time, a return to being human. People are walking away from food that was never food, from light that was never light, from lives lived entirely indoors and online, and from the idea that a body is a machine with interchangeable parts.
There will continue to be more and more information coming as this movement grows. Microbes, frequency, light, reverence, and community will continue to grow as medicines, as long as we keep learning. We are early in understanding all of it, and that is exciting rather than frightening.
Keep reading, keep listening, keep watching, and keep asking why. Keep a list of your questions the way we learned to do in Week Twelve. Follow the people who are healed and calm, and let go of the ones who traffic in fear.
Stay Open to Expansion
Remember to always be open to expansion. This applies to our bodies, and it applies just as much to our minds.
Here is something that happens quietly to almost all of us on a healing journey. We find something that works, we cling to it because it saved us, and before long we have built a rule out of it. Then the rule hardens, and one day we notice we are holding a dogma we never meant to pick up. Release any dogmatic views you may have cultivated without realising it.
Here are a few signs that it has happened.
- You have food rules you can no longer explain the reason for.
- You feel a flash of contempt when someone describes healing a different way.
- You defend a teacher instead of testing an idea.
- You feel afraid of new information rather than curious about it.
- You catch yourself saying “the only way.”
None of this makes you a bad person, it simply means it is time to open your hands again.
People Heal Many Different Ways
This is one of the most important things I can tell you as you go out into the world. People heal many different ways. Someone will tell you they got their life back through Ayurveda, or Chinese medicine, or homeopathy, or a season of eating raw, or a surgery, or a medication, or a pilgrimage, or simply by leaving a job that was killing them.
We would only ever want to add to their experience. We never disparage it, and we never tell them they are wrong. When someone shares what helped them, our first response is gladness that they are better. If they want more, we can offer something to add, one small thing, gently.
The terrain work we do is additive by its very nature, and it sits peacefully alongside almost anything.
Reverence in Our Relationships
As ARP people out in the world, let us continue to become more and more reverent in our relationships. Reverence means we treat the person in front of us as holy ground. It means we listen more than we speak. It means we do not use another person’s suffering as an opening for our information.
Sharing hard truths when asked is a very different thing from sharing them despite not being asked. It is also very different from correcting someone’s beliefs. When you are asked, tell the truth, kindly and fully. When you are not asked, love them and keep your peace. People rarely change because they were corrected, and they often change because they were loved and then grew curious.
Your Life Is the Testimonial
Remember that the greatest testimonial you have is a life well lived that makes people ask questions. Your colour, your calm, your energy at fifty and sixty and seventy, your children who are rarely sick, your peaceful home, your table, your patience in traffic, and the way you handle hard news. People notice these things long before they ask about food. And when they do ask, they are finally ready to hear the answer. Live the life, and let the questions come to you.
Free Will Is a Gift
Our hearts want to help everyone, and this is a good thing! It is love that makes us want to hand the whole protocol to the people we care about.
But everyone has free will, and everyone gets to live and eat the way they want to. God Himself does not override a person’s will, and neither may we. Your grown children, your parents, your siblings, and your friends are allowed to make choices you would not make.
It is far easier to live and love as a healed person if we release control of how we want others to heal and behave. That release is not giving up on them. It is trusting that the Holy Spirit works on people long after we have stopped talking. Pray for them, keep your door open, keep the meat stock on the stove, and let them come in their own time.
This Week
- Write down three questions you want to explore this year.
- Find one book or one teacher on something you know very little about.
- Notice one rule you are holding and ask yourself honestly where it came from.
- Think of one person whose healing choices frustrate you, and pray for them instead of talking to them about it.
- Practise listening to someone all the way to the end of their story without adding anything.
Keep Learning, Keep Loving
We will be students for the rest of our lives, and that is a gift. The body is God’s design, and we will never come to the end of it.
Stay humble, stay curious, stay reverent, and stay kind. A person who keeps learning and keeps loving will always have something to offer.