Let’s bring some more basics into Groundskeeper P2. Help us all understand one another through some real life stories.
Compassion and empathy, listening
Listening, very important skill, very easy skill, anyone would think it is the most complicated thing in the world at times.
Compassion, and empathy (which has been talked about in P1), are the necessary starting point to listening, to knowing you actually truly do care about the person presenting themselves in front of you. These tools mean having the willingness to understand the situation rather than being on the phone for an hour, only participating to interrupt regarding the solution to the situation. A situation in which there is no solution.
You also must understand yourself to understand anyone else.
Beautiful cooking class yesterday, six people including the host. Two people are leaving town after four years to be with their dying son. He is dying from a type of cancer in which there are no survivors, it is a very rare diagnosis for a young man, 28 or so. Heartbreaking.
The parents still speak about the moment to come and the fight that has passed, they speak with joy, with absolute love. They are living in acceptance now.
These people have had some of the top experts in the states work with their boy, the data driving their determination from Stanford University. They know what they are talking about, they know beyond doubt nobody survives this type of cancer, nobody.
Family knows that one day, some day, somewhere, somebody will survive. From thereon many somebodies will survive, they have without doubt needed, begged, prayed and pleaded for the first somebody to be their little buddy. The reality is, it will not be, there is not enough scientific attention to make the progress needed in the four-months he has left to live. It has been accepted, the fight is over, they get four more months to live and love together, it is what they will do.
As mentioned, they speak in joy, it is contageous, phenomenally beautiful, one wants to only sit there and listen, to be present in this beautiful moment. The last thing they want to be is on the phone looking for solutions, thinking they can fix this person because they have fixed themselves.
Listening, were you to ask the guys above regarding the conversation they will tell you it is beautiful perfect detail. It is detail that came from multiple conversations, every word they said they absolutely know they were heard. Beautiful beautiful heartbreaking story, it is what we are here for, this amazing shit.
But, they also know they were not listened to, or were confused that somebody could think they could read one article after all the family has been through and question the data which has been dominating their life for too too long. This family know what they are talking about.
To, then, react and become defensive when asked if the information provided is peer-reviewed other than saying yes or no, is a clear indicator of an ego-trip. These things (egos) have no place in healing spaces.
Literally, an hour on the phone trying to fix their son, only participating in the conversation to talk about his cancer, your cancer, you being the shaman of all shamans, medicine woman, doctor fucking Quinn, fixing yourself. Confusing and showing absolutely no compassion or empathy, no ability for either, to those standing in front of you.
When a mother says, my son has four months to live and we are going home to be with him, and does it with a smile on her face we know some things. We know they have given everything, absolutely everything, destroyed their hearts in the process. We know they have accepted the outcome, they are at peace with it, they will let the universe do what the universe does from here. Above all, absolute fucking all, we know the two people standing in front of us love their son with their whole being.
They have tried, they know what they are talking. You do not know what you are talking about, even though you say so passionately that you do.
When you have cancer, say lympthatic cancer, some of them, your chances of survival are whatever, there is a chance. Your cancer is not the same as that of our brother here.
When you deny medical treatment and pump a heap of other stuff in your body you do not know which thing it was that resulted in eventual remission. If it was any of them that resulted in the outcomes that resulted.
Then, the most important detail, the moment when you thought you would die, the actual moment of faith, belief, or evidence, where did you put your money? It was not your mouth buddy, it was the pharmaceutical evidence-based medical centres which, phenomenally beautifully, are free to attend in your country when in need for everybody. In this poor as buggery country, you have this beautiful beautiful thing!!!!
Mate, you do not know what saved you, if anything science and not plant medicine. On the other hand these people know it is almost 100% likely that it will not save their son, western or non-western.
Empathy and compassion, simple things, without them you cannot read the room. When you cannot read the room you have not spent a moment reading and listening to yourself.
It’s simple stuff, simple stuff, that ego is getting in the way of. Medicine and healing providers from all walks of life should understand it before even thinking about supporting others.
Like, seriously, don’t you just want to be treated well, to be listened to? It’s all you complain and talk about anyway, seems important at least …. Well, mates, you have to participate in it too. Give and receive, all that good stuff.
Compassion and empathy, one cannot listen without them.