## Metadata - Author: [[Monica Gagliano and Suzanne Simard]] - Full Title: Thus Spoke the Plant - Category: #books ## Highlights - Because of this experience I had on the reef, I had developed a profound internal conflict sparked by the realization that, for me, there was no scientific question significant or exceptional enough that could justify the killing of another living being. This was immediately followed by the horrifying problem of how to continue doing my scientific research without the slaughter. I tried to, and it was not good enough—in the temple of modern science, a blood sacrifice to the old gods of the Enlightenment is still, for the most part, the required ceremonial procedure. So without realizing that I was to be the sacrificial offering this time around, I fumbled in futile attempts to desperately hold together what had already come undone, what had simply run its course. ([Location 282](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=282)) - This book offers you a fresh, imaginative space for reconceiving the connections between plants and humanity and contemplating improved human-to-nonhuman habits of living on this planet as part of a whole. ([Location 295](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=295)) - As such, these stories emerge out of a human-plant collaborative endeavor and a mixed writing style, which I think we can fittingly call plant-writing. Through plant-writing, this book transcends the view of plants as the objects of scientific materialism and empowers a new and yet timeless vision of the world, one in which we encounter plants as the persons and companions they are and in which we bring kind-heartedness to each encounter. By weaving these plant-human stories together into a magical journey of discovery and interconnectedness, this book reaffirms the precious gift our partnership with plants has been throughout the evolutionary history of our species and our search for understanding who we are and what are we here for. ([Location 306](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=306)) - These are our stories of what it takes to stay aligned with a greater vision and go though the process of bringing it to life in the world. These stories belong to the heart of our humanity, encoded with the memories of our species and all the life forms we descended from. Like in a magnificent orchestral symphony, each story is notated separately for individual plants, and still, all stories are sounding together to remind us of our deep history of connection to and interdependence with all others (humans and nonhumans) and to reconnect our magnificent minds with our precious hearts so we dare to dream a truly inspiring future for the whole. ([Location 316](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=316)) - Ridiculed, scorned, or deliberately ignored, the truth about anything is quirky and awkward when it first emerges. Germinating at the margins of familiarity, the seeds of truth are anomalous occurrences. Out of context—like invasive weeds that do not belong in the well-established terrains of cultural consensus—these anomalies become especially troublesome when they gather to the point that they can no longer be ignored. Then they pose a serious threat, that of undermining the confidence of the existing field, as their blossoming opens the mind into completely uncharted realities and extraordinary possibilities. Beware—these flowers are not for picking! Each belonging to itself alone, the knowledge they carry can never be taken, only gifted. The knowledge they gift can never be owned, only shared. Respectfully. In the end, all knowledge is only ever borrowed. ([Location 561](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=561)) - And for thousands of years, indigenous healers, witchdoctors, and shamans around the world have been learning the songs of plants as a way of communicating with these other-than-human persons and acknowledging them as the guarantors of human existence, the true philanthropists of the world. ([Location 579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=579)) - Without idealizing them unnecessarily, it is fair to say that many indigenous cultures have maintained strong traditional systems of custodianship over these relationships to safeguard their knowledge and uphold the associated responsibilities for their use.2 It is quite the opposite in contemporary Western society, where the lack of appreciation for the preciousness of our relationship with these vegetal others has promoted a destructive attitude that fails to recognize both our absolute dependence on these relationships and our obligation to protect, nurture, and care for them. In this state of neglect and disregard, the cultural construction of plants as objects becomes an indispensible distortion—wheat, oats, and barley are reduced to slavery as crops on production lines and eucalyptus and pine trees tamed and confined in plantation camps, often far away from home, while the unruliness of a natural rainforest is burned or bulldozed to be deplorably eradicated—to support our utilitarian exploitation and monopolization of these vegetal beings as “resources” and to justify our misappropriation and misuse of the knowledge they have brought to humanity. At its worst, this disconnection reveals one of the many faces of colonialism: the capitalist agro-scientific psychosis whereby plants are seen as commodities to be taken without sanction and the wealth of traditional knowledge regarding them is used without permission. Illogical and offensive, the first order of business of scientific colonialism—also known as biopiracy or bioprospecting, for a more politically correct designation of the same—is to devalue plants and the traditional knowledge of them. ([Location 584](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=584)) - Breaching out of their rooted darkness, breakthroughs are seeds of nonconformity determined to sprout into the light of freethinking. ([Location 620](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=620)) - In all his spiciness, it was the chili pepper who posed the zesty question to me—how would you learn of what is presently unknown about our vegetal ways of communicating if you are not looking for it and do not even realize that it may exist? Generously, he had also provided the answer—exclude the known to allow yourself to see what unexpected things might happen. And the unexpected is exactly what happened. ([Location 628](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=628)) - In the midst of the rich symphony of nature, plants appear utterly silent.10 Because we are designed to believe our own perceptions, our human experience of their silence is so obvious and undeniable that we forget to question whether plants truly are as voiceless as we perceive them. Admittedly, without offering some proof of plant voice—assuming we agreed on the definition of voice11—we may rightly deem the question itself to be nonsense. However, to forget to ask the question, in effect, dismisses any chance for the proof to emerge. As a matter of fact, this is exactly what colonial ideologies of domination and manipulation have succeeded at; by scorning traditional knowledge as unsubstantiated and fanciful and erasing our ancestral memories that spoke of other possibilities, humanity has found itself locked inside the experimental box of a restraining sociocultural view. ([Location 725](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=725)) - Like the plants in my experimental matryoshka boxes, we are besieged by a barrier of emptiness designed to block any possibility of communication. From this viewpoint, of course, plants do not speak! The good news is that by simply asking the question regarding vegetal speech, we are free to move away from the self-righteous slumber we have numbed our mind with. By merely asking the question about plant voice, we set ourselves free from the preconceived notion that construes plants as inevitably voiceless, and we open ourselves to observing plants as they actually behave and to discovering the reality we share. That’s right, because voice is an inter-subjective affair. Voice exists in the place of relation, the space between the self and the other, and it is what we bring to our encounters with plants that defines the quality of our communicative rendezvous—those we allow to speak (or those we silence). ([Location 733](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=733)) - By raising her voice, corn had done something more, something different. Beautifully unexpected—like a rare flower blossoming out of season—her voice had brought into awareness a new perceptual field extending beyond ownership and custodianship, a vision of nonhierarchical co-participation. By revealing the vegetal voice, corn had come to ask that we recognize our attempts at silencing plants, because humans have something of a track record for silencing those whose voice they do not want to hear. We do this by unconsciously ignoring them or deliberately stripping them away,16 and this is an injurious act because it violates the very thing that makes dialogue possible—the recognition of the other as an equal. ([Location 761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=761)) - From this perspective, both ownership and custodianship break down the foundation of a true dialogue with the vegetal. Although the two attitudes are different, both are validated by the apparent inability of plants to express themselves, which creates a justification for objectifying them. Denying the morally relevant value of the interaction, ownership is designed to override the subjectivity of plants in order to control and abuse with no restrain. On the other hand, custodianship inadvertently patronizes them by treating them with a kindness that gives away our feeling of superiority. ([Location 768](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=768)) - In dialogue with the plant world, we are asked to relinquish these built-in ideas that make our perspective better than, wiser than, and superior to the other, all these attitudes bring us to the same ethical and moral cul-de-sac. And with a few chirpy sounds, corn had effortlessly brought it all to the surface for us to honestly view it, if willing. Personally, I had always considered myself as a custodian of the vegetal world and, more generally, of nature, but seeing myself as a steward above and separate from the rest was a position no longer tenable. In opening the conversation, corn had delivered a transformative message—plants and nature can be heard. They are not property to be owned. They need not custodianship, but a commitment to a nonhierarchical respect, a space of communion in which we come to understand the world and take the pathway toward understanding each other. ([Location 776](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=776)) - “Sit quietly in the darkness of your soul. There is no fear. It is the darkness that contains all the potential to become light.” The next thing I knew was that I was buried in the ground—yes, planted in the soil, like a seed, a seed of potential. I knew then that before growth, I had to sit in the darkness that resides under the surface. ([Location 856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=856)) - During this period, I experienced several bouts of profound anxiety accompanied by a deep sorrow for the possible loss. Scared, I was frantically flapping my wings, trying to escape the chilling whispers of a hopelessness that wanted to consume me. Years later, I would learn what my experience of emotions like anxiety was really about and how to harness these emotions’ gifts—yes, gifts. Anxiety, for example, is a valuable messenger, one that speaks of my prevailing belief construct and its sphere of influence. This belief construct is like a container, which I take to be objective reality, and anxiety always arises to alert me when I have reached the edge of the container. Anxiety speaks of the uneasiness of staying within the container’s fortified walls once their restrictive presence is felt, and in this rests its precious gift—the call to break down the walls of personalized assumptions and outgrown perspectives, the invitation to realize new possibilities, when my current restricted understanding sees only impossibilities. This is why coping with anxiety does not really stop the anxiety; the answer is not in understanding and resolving anxiety, but in changing perspective so that anxiety simply disappears. When it happens, the precious gift it brings is one of joy and excitement for life. ([Location 894](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=894)) - Sipping my coffee, I would stare at the sunlight as it poured over the surface of the water and flickered here and there with a kind of restless aliveness. At times, the sunlit surface would have a liquid calmness about it; then, as by some kind of magic, it would be persuaded into a dance of familiar lines, a fluid movement drawn by the appearance and disappearance of a pod of glossy fins, irregular triangular silhouettes decorated by personalized markings, the living scars of existence. ([Location 906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=906)) - These were moments of an inspired … something, a something that would percolate from the roots under my feet, rising up to bring the fresh breeze of self-assurance to my heart. No longer flapping hysterically, but uplifted by a sense of deep courage, I would open my wings wide and, keeping them extended, as eagles do, I would catch my inner updraft and circle high in the sky of my mind. From that perspective, I could not see what the future held, but I could see what the present called for. I answered. ([Location 915](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=915)) - No knowledge is ever lost; nothing can ever be forgotten. Carefully held by the trees, the memory of our knowledge is continually scribed by the land. How do we know it once more? We need to forget what we think we know to remember what we truly do know. We need to remember that memory, in its distinctiveness, is never a private something that belongs to one; rather, it is a shared heritage constantly reimagined in the body of the whole. Flickering in the space of experience between all kinds of relationships, memory is a dynamic witness to all relating. Our remembering of relationships mineralizes the bones of the future, the endless possibilities for the exchange of intrinsic vibrancies, growing afresh in becoming something of another. Hence, nothing is ever forgotten, only constantly re-membered from a matrix of information that sparks the future into present being. We are here to remember the future, reverberating whole galaxies toward us as we breathe in. ([Location 1067](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1067)) - When Mimosa folds her leaves shut, her capacity to forage for light suddenly plunges by half, and the “survival-unfriendly” risk of starvation becomes a reality. This makes the reflex an exorbitant living expense—a justifiable one to pay if the danger is real, but a downright waste of precious opportunities to forage for light and thrive when a situation turns out to be not dangerous at all. ([Location 1151](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1151)) - How little do we truly know of our nature and the nature of those around us, human and nonhuman. We keep writing books about books that debate ideas of ideas about the fundamental processes of life, such as learning and remembering, which are found everywhere and all around us—processes that are self-perpetuating and self-controlling with or without our ideas of them, stories about them, and debates over them. ([Location 1332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1332)) - What if we were able to stretch that imagining far beyond our eyes, letting our vision travel far wider than the brushstrokes the mind has learned to comprehend …? But how can we learn the art of seeing that which we cannot yet imagine? Vision is an art, and nature an old master painter teaching us how to see the underlying reality of things to be—before they actually are. Unleash the mind into seeing across invisible territories; then an amazing vision will bring the as-yet-unmanifest world into being. ([Location 1368](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1368)) - “There is nothing for you to acquire, only to remember,” said Ayahuma. “Watch those false ideas planted inside your mind. Each false idea is a delusion created by a solidified thought pattern, an insane habit that keeps your attention fixed. But nothing is fixed; everything is fluctuating, changing, evolving.…” Before I could ask how you get rid of these false ideas, she answered with one simple but enigmatic instruction: “Turn in to find the curse of a false idea within the idea itself.” And with that, she disappeared, and I woke up. It has taken me years to start grasping what Ayahuma shared and to begin to recognize the insanity of my delusion. The madness she pointed out truly is the work of a master trickster, a Machiavellian sleight-of-hand pulling the wool over the eyes of the innocent mind. Like a noxious weed planted in the most pristine imaginative ground, the delusion takes hold to fix the mind in place, immobilized into a place of anxious preoccupation. Then, through a socially perpetuated conditioning system, the pure knowing of our infinite nature is squandered in exchange for the penitentiary of a distorted awareness. ([Location 1445](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1445)) - Then the big question surfaced—why do we seem so incapable of taking the steps and actions required to create a world where conflict, poverty, and environmental devastation are things of the past? The simplicity and profound wisdom of the answer moved me deeply as it touched the shores of my awareness. Throughout human history, we have constructed boundaries to define reality in an attempt to soothe our need to feel safe in our own skin and at home in a world we are, fundamentally, so afraid of. Threatening the very thing they promised to protect—our feeling of being safe—these boundaries are, and always were, fictional walls that restrict our understanding of who we truly are and that replace clear seeing with misconception—the illusion that we need to control a world we have no control over. Our need to feel safe (and, correspondingly, the feeling of not being safe) in the world seems inextricably linked to our need to control it. But what if we were to realize that the only reason we feel unsafe in the world is because we believe we need to control it? ([Location 1584](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1584)) - As the sacred jungle Tobacco would teach me a year later, we have no control over the circumstances that face us until we surrender the need to control them. As long as we need to control our circumstances, we also need to feel unsafe and insecure about them, because the two states are bound together in a self-perpetuating and irreconcilable loop that goes something like this: we try to control because we feel unsafe and believe that by controlling our world, we will feel safe in it—and yet we never do, and we cannot feel safe in the world if we keep believing that the world needs controlling because, without our control, there is something unsafe about it. ([Location 1593](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1593)) - The greatest insanity of this merry-go-round is that the loop we have invented has no possible internal resolution. The anxious feeling of not being safe is a necessary stipulation within our contract with the need to control; with no loophole to be found, we don’t know what to do. As I had experienced in my lab when my experiment didn’t seem to be working, what if we accepted that there was actually nothing to do? And once faced with this dead end, what if we stopped and waited in the darkness, like I had to on that Sunday morning? And as we relaxed in the belly of the unknown and handed ourselves over to life, what if we discovered a surprising clarity to see what is truly happening and what… ([Location 1598](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1598)) - It seems our society is ready for a perceptual shift capable of undoing this silly loop by overthrowing our conditioned seeing, ready for a disobedient disruption emerging from the tidy background of silent obligations and prepackaged reality that have prevented us from seeing the innovative solutions that could bring planetary well-being and peace into being. The walls that entrap us in the loop are not as impenetrable as we believe. Porous,… ([Location 1605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1605)) - Just like I had experienced with my clever peas in the darkness of my lab, it is when we are willing to let life surprise us that alternatives and unanticipated solutions become visible and accessible. And the best part of this entire process is that once out of our insane loop of control and insecurity, we are effortlessly delivered exactly where we are going. Infused with a sense of awe and deep trust in the life that we are, we wait without waiting to know exactly… ([Location 1609](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1609)) - True leadership gives… ([Location 1616](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1616)) - Hidden in plain sight, continuities elude us. Unnoticed threads that endure throughout the fabric of the universe, continuities ambush our tenacious proclivity to split the world in one or another version of itself, so that perceived polarities may be reconciled. By dispelling the myth of polarities, continuities release us from the unbearable, but needed, tension involved in having to make choices between absurd opposites. This tension is needed as a constant invitation to sense the presence of a glitch in our perception. Once this glitch is seen, continuities can deliver us right in the middle of an unnameable emptiness, where all polarities cease to exist, as they arise into the manifestation of each other. And it is by experiencing this paradox that we arrive in the middle. The middle—despite the common use of that word—is not halfway between here and there, beginning and end, birth and death, right and wrong. The… ([Location 1618](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1618)) - Despite the transparency of its walls, however, the greenhouse has also sheltered ideologies of elitism, protecting the complex mélange of power, knowledge, and wealth represented by exotic plants. And it continues to be an emblem of a privileged social status enabled by knowledge and secured through economic profits. Greenhouses today—whether standing in the world’s most famous botanical gardens and at educational and research institutions like the university where I worked or dedicated to the intensive production systems of the agroindustry—are still devoted to complex biopolitical agendas. Evocative of colonialist approaches of subjugation and oppression, they continue perpetuating the objectification of plants as pure commodities within a capitalistic model of production and consumption. ([Location 1663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1663)) - Our capacity and willingness to make good choices and sound decisions is not hardwired in our genes; it is a learned skill, and plants can be great teachers. They know that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to a challenge; they know that diversity and acceptance of the other are the keys to any successful survival strategy; they know that an all-embracing approach allows for different possibilities to emerge and merge into remarkable, even surprising, ways of solving a problem. ([Location 1685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1685)) - “Responsibility is that which you are moving toward,” the plants have told me. “It is not a moral obligation, but rather the actual movement that supports the expression of care.” ([Location 1776](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1776)) - It is, then, the quality of our actions that tells the story of who we are and where we are going. Unfortunately, many of our current actions are violent, and we are living in the delusion that we can distance and guard ourselves from their consequences, as if our well-being is separate from that of the whole. Well, we cannot. We cannot because the notion that there are independent objects, each fighting for dear life in a Darwinian struggle of existence, is a lazy and archaic conjecture that does not do justice to contemporary scientific findings. There are no conflicting opponents, even when two organisms appear to have mutually exclusive properties;7 there is only the remarkable play of one nature displayed across a palette of rainbow colors. However, until we see ourselves inhabiting a world of polarities, we can only perceive ourselves in conflict with the whole—and our neurotic violence keeps chasing and biting at our own figurative tail. ([Location 1784](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1784)) - ultimately, a choice is as good as the level of integrity we can bring to it, and it is integrity within the actions that reveals us and that ultimately defines us. Are we able to make the choice that is required and move away from our global environmental crisis by standing for what we must? Human prosperity is not in conflict with the prosperity of other species and the planet; on the contrary, thriving abundance is made-with,8 cocreated with others in a continuity of exchanges and sharings. In this continuity, we have no conflict to resolve and no riddle to be solved. We only have choices to make. ([Location 1810](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1810)) - Like the peas in the maze, can we move away from what injures, even if this means moving away from what we think is most wanted? In order to keep the Earth and all her living species (including ourselves) safe from the threats posed by environmental deterioration, climate change, and mass extinction, are we able to accept the fact that human behavior has to find other ways of being? The faulty thinking stopping us from making the most appropriate choice is prolonging our destructive impact on the planet and, hence, ensuring that we may experience only conflict and destruction. At this crucial juncture in the evolutionary history of the planet and all living species, the circumstances are asking us to dream ourselves beyond the discordant format of a polarized reality and forward to more supportive futures. ([Location 1816](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1816)) - Just like the peas in the maze, it is our conduct toward releasing the knot of the current eco-cultural tangle that reveals us in the end. And while the deafening sound of too many words still echoes between here and there, right and wrong, from life to death and back again, it is in the silent quality of our actions that the genuine spirit and kind heart of humanity is revealed. And it is then when alternate possibilities, which seem too far off, become so close; from the space in the middle, these choices are separated by only a thin pane of glass. ([Location 1822](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1822)) - Note: The adjacent possible! - All the stories we tell seem to start long ago in some faraway place. Like a beacon of inspiration, they are the voice that reminds us of the place we are going to by showing us that we have already arrived. The path unfolds as a remembrance of itself, forward to the beginning, a point of origin where all timelines and dreamscapes join, dissolve, unify. When we truly understand that nothing really ends and nothing really begins, we transcend the story, all of the stories we tell of ourselves. When we clearly see the very nothing we have been pursuing far and wide, we arrive. This nothingness contains all the beauty and horror of our stories, which emerge as the dream we are having. And yet, intrinsically, nothing happens. ([Location 1833](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1833)) - Because stories are never just stories, the stories we tell come to describe the way we shape and move in the world. Of course, we can choose whatever story we want, but given that stories frame what beliefs we elect to embody and which path we choose to walk on for our becoming as individuals and society, shouldn’t we be extremely observant and mindful of the stories we tell and subscribe to? ([Location 1863](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1863)) - Our current scientific knowledge allows us to appreciate plants as sovereign subjects of their own lives rather than usable objects of ours. This makes the Aristotelian proposition of plants invalid. It also shows that GM plant research has been inaccurately presented as a scientific practice, given that its premise—the use of plants as inert objects, made by humans for entirely human purposes—is unsupported by modern scientific evidence (that plants are living subjects, pursuing their own raison de vivre of being themselves).10 Under these circumstances, the scientific method demands us to rectify our approach by de-objectifying plants and no longer granting scientific legitimacy to GM plant research. At a time when modern society relies on its scientific prowess to provide answers and, ideally, solutions for the current socio-environmental crisis, applying the scientific method with the uttermost integrity is not optional. Failing to integrate new knowledge and scientific evidence and correct or, when appropriate, reject old beliefs is what defines pseudoscience—theories and beliefs that are regarded as scientific facts but lack controlled experimental evidence carefully collected by appropriate scientific methods. ([Location 1903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=1903)) - Time “out there” keeps us caught in a place of no power, a place from which we cannot arrive to our actual evolutionary destination as fully integrated, multidimensional beings. This is a highly dysfunctional state, a disease that should be treated as one. While the early signs are subtle and vague and may not be immediately obvious, this destructive condition worsens as it progresses and leads to premature death. At the individual level, the symptoms range from disorientation—we don’t know who and where we are or where we are going—to poor or decreased judgment, so we become forgetful and confused, a danger to ourselves and others. It also leads from changes in personality—we become fearful, suspicious, apathetic, or uncommunicative—to loss of initiative, whereby we become passive and require prompting to become involved … in anything. These are common symptoms of an individual suffering from a syndrome broadly defined as dementia. As humanity, we are suffering from a collective form of dementia. ([Location 2101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=2101)) - This invention of time as human property that we own and control is probably one of the most sophisticated acts of planetary hegemony we have ever conceived, and, of course, it is a clear sign of the fundamental predicament—the deep delusion of separation—we have caught ourselves in. By replacing true time with an artificial, mechanical time that does not even exist, this device has succeeded in controlling humanity itself by abolishing (for the most part) its multidimensional potentialities and possibilities. If it is true that by controlling time you control everything, then reclaiming time “in here” is possibly the most powerful and revolutionary act of empowerment17 we have to bring ourselves and the whole planet away from the brink into oblivion. ([Location 2113](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=2113)) - How do we get there? By absolute and pure … chance! It is in chance, not control—variation, not homogeneity, and diversity, not uniformity—that existence thrives, evolves, develops, and learns. Chance is the untamed spirit of all-inclusive creativity, defiant of the safe rigidities imposed by control, which finds definition of itself by exclusion demarcating the boundaries of what is not. Chance is the dynamic continuity of existence that takes the exciting risk of inspiring the brilliance of this enchanted world. Chance is our antidote to the collective dementia we are entangled in—a medicinal nectar that flows to allow a different ending to our story. ([Location 2119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=2119)) - Memories—in the light, our memories are washed away, and we forget everything we knew. We forget who we are. It is in the darkness that we know the world. It is in the darkness that we know where we came from. The darkness remembers us, and when we remember who we are, we return to the most remarkable nothing. ([Location 2149](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=2149)) - Note: This is exactly.the journey I did with Steve Gallegos today. - And the Peruvian duo vanished, leaving behind the seed of a promise, the answer to the awkward how question: how do you open eyes that you think are open? At the time, I had not even a vague sense that in the darkness below the surface, the resolution to the riddle had already started germinating. But it had. And one spring, the promise bloomed. ([Location 2194](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=2194)) - “Forgiveness,” whispered Tobacco, “this alone illuminates the way out of the maze humanity has created with all its beliefs.” Once again, Tobacco answered my question before I knew I had asked it. “Forgiveness is not a doing. It is an undoing of the imaginary ‘self,’ the one you have come to believe you are. The arrival of forgiveness calls for the annihilation of this counterfeiter and its belief system. Be vigilant! This mock doing of yourself will strike its final deceptive manoeuver to keep you trapped in its maze in a state of separation—the belief that you do not deserve forgiveness because you are guilty of all possible wrongdoings. But this is simply not the truth, because you are none of your doings. Accept this, even if you do not understand this now. Accept this, and you will remember who you are. Accept this, and you will know it to be true. And through this, you will realize that, in the end, the love that you are does not need forgiveness at all!” A flooding of tears washed over me, inside and out. I finally understood. Inside the maze of smoking mirrors, ghostly impressions, and bleak illusions with no meaning, we never feel safe and at home. Believing that we lack everything, we keep doing by seeking something that we need without even knowing what that something actually is. What we truly are does not lack anything, does not seek or need anything, because it is already being everything. Tobacco was right; forgiveness is not a doing, but an emerging out of all illusions, a waking that dissolves the grief of separation and simultaneously returns us to ourselves, to the only reality we cannot not be—to love. Here, we find peace. Here, I found peace. ([Location 2271](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079WL73XL&location=2271))