Plants’ experience of being in the world is very different from the experience of us animals. Because plants cannot move about, they exist in a state of profound acceptance and peace within themselves. Emotions such as fear, hate, jealousy, possessiveness, etc. are wholly unknown to plants and would serve no useful purpose. On the other hand, plants are capable of experiencing a wide range of higher emotions the like of which we animals could scarcely conceive.
At the same time, there are feelings which plants share with us animals, such as love, pain, joy, thirst, etc. It is the feelings we share with plants which provide the basis of our ability to communicate with them.
Feeling with plants is not so different from feeling with people. For example, when we are about to have sex with someone who really turns us on, we feel a palpable surge of sexual energy connecting us to that person. Similarly, when we walk into a room to face someone who is madder than hell at us, we feel connected to that person by a palpable wave of anger and fear. When a baby smiles at us, we feel a rush of joy that has us automatically smile back. However, most of our interactions with other people do not have this feeling of connectedness and emotional immediacy. Most of the time we don’t even look the people we are addressing in the eye, let alone feel with them. Because of our social training, we tend to regard sharing feelings with other people as threatening. We are taught to close up and defend ourselves, and to keep our interactions as sterile and devoid of feeling as possible.
In order to communicate with plants (or people), you have to be able to regard them as your equals. If you are afraid (ashamed) to talk with homeless people, beggars, crazy people, etc. then you’ll also find it difficult to talk with plants. However, it’s actually easier to communicate with plants than it is to communicate with people because plants don’t have defenses and self-importance agendas in place which engage our own defenses and self-importance agendas. To feel with plants (or people) doesn’t mean to gush all over them; all it means is to recognize them as beings whose feelings are as important to them as your feelings are to you.
When first learning to communicate with plants, it helps to be in contact with the same individual plants on a daily basis. Ideally you should go out, preferably alone, to the same tree or meadow for at least a few minutes every day. If you can’t do this, cultivating garden or house plants will work just as well, although it’s easiest to communicate with large trees. This is because from a feeling (light fiber) point of view, humans and trees are very much alike – the light fiber (auric glow) configurations of both humans and trees are quite similar, whereas that of insects, for example, is very different from either. It is easier for humans and trees to communicate with each other than it is for either to communicate with insects.
