We talked for 3 full hours and we parted with the agreement that he would take to the primary forest once the rainy season ends (in about a month)..
I was very impressed by the amount of first hand experience he gathered during the years spent in the forest.
Here is his story:
The Chain saw and the Forest within – the drama of Josia.
Several years ago, Josia was working for some illegal logging companies responsible for having chopped down most of the original forest in this region but also worked somewhere in the deep forests of Para´state..
He would spend weeks or months in the forest, living and eating from it, healing with plants, improvising, surviving wild and poisonous animals.. During this period of his life, he met with many souls telling him to stop doing that horrible job but he did not want to listen: trees were just inanimated "things" for him, therefore why not chopping then down and make some good profit out of it? After all, he - like most of us - needed money to go on with his life..
Many times during his work - that roary chain saw in his hands - he would still hear a particular specie of trees scream while this merciless sharp blade cut its way thru their trunks but never paid too much attention to it; "perhaps it is just a trick of the mind" he said to himself and his collegues, "a weird noise from the machine.."
Today, recalling those times to memory, he barely can keep tears away from his eyes. I can read into his eyes that he always knew those were the voices of the trees he was killing. Josia the man in his 40s, with a family to feed and a mortgage to pay, did not allow himself the time to feel that for every tree he cut, a part of him was also dying with it.
Despite being heavily wounded, tortured and mutilated, Nature continued to do its job of spreading forth the seeds of hope into the soil and a spiritual one must have surely gotten into Josia´s heart, to finally blossom in a latter season of his human life.
It was only after he retired, in the apparent calm and monotonous daily routine that his love and respect towards nature - and especially about ancient trees - came to soothen the old, violent memories of those days back then when he could not value the generosity of the forest enough, when he could not freely abandon himself to that invisible, impalpable, unconditional love that kept him alive..
The old Josia needed help now, to escape from those terrible ghosts lurking inside his conscience. His weak body, his restless mind, his broken spirit - like those screaming trees - were crying out asking for Forgiveness.
And Nature once again came in to help, to relieve the pain of his spiritual scars, just like when she physically healed the scars of his body with the woody skin of one of her tree- creatures.
Today the Josia I met is a man totally confident in the wisdom of the forest, that found total redemption in the arms of Mother Nature, that exclusively cures himself with homemade plant/bark/leaf extracts, oils, resins and tinctures/medicinal wines made with the gallbladder of the "paca".
He gifted me with freshly squeezed copaiba oil l, truly raw, no processing, extracted exclusively on a full moon night.
I feel profoundly honored.
He also knows several allucynogenic wild plants from the forest he drankt the tea to heal from poisonous bytes. He told me of a leaf that makes somebody vomit out just the poison, instantly relieving from any symptoms..
Josia thinks the best natural medicines are the most bitter ones and if a medicine does not taste bitter or make you feel sick/stoned for a while, he would not consider the drug effective..
Because in his philosophy Nature needs first to clean you out for good, "purging" the sick for having strayed from her, sending this sinner to its sensorial hell, burning its guts like flames would, then finally heals you, showing abundant mercy , just like a caring mother does with her sons.
I asked how did he learn all these things about plants and he said to me the Forest told him.
Everytime he would get lost, needed to renvigorate the body and the mind, he would lay on the ground with his forehead touching the soil and just wait for the knowledge/strenght to infuse the spirit and the fleshes. That if I want to energize by embracing a tree, I should choose the ones between 120-150 cm in diameter. The bigger trees have less energy, according to him.
During our chat he kept saying: "we (humans) die but never learn". Looking at his grandchild, he feels sorry for not having preserved intact that valuable body of knowledge Nature stored in its creatures. He is left with little or nothing to show him, to validate the truth of his words, making sound his real experience like a fairy tale - hard to say where reality ends and fantasy starts.. Memories of the big Great Forest from another world, vestiges of our once original Home.
All this story saddened me a bit but also fueled me with new energy to continue in my pursuit of reclaiming my status of "earthling", accepting my "true nature", fulfilling the purpose I was created for; a vessel to hold divine Light from above.
Just like Josia, I feel the need to totally surrender my ego that like a hungry chain-saw is deforesting the wild spirit of Nature within me.
Gratidao, Josia.
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