Fluid Fortune and How Shit Grows Flowers
The Spiritual Wisdom of the Chinese Farmer
In life, not assigning value to events becomes vital, spiritual wisdom. Life’s unimaginable interconnectedness goes beyond “good” or “bad.” Determining an event as “good” or “bad” violates the idea of nondualism and the Hermetic Principle of polarity, In turn, this undermines our ability to ebb and flow with life. Not assigning value to events is a profound lesson taught to us by the parable of the Chinese farmer. Shit grows flowers and the cycle never ends.
The Parable of the Chinese Farmer
The parable is short, easy and to the point. You may know it already. The parable is popular in Taoism. If you’re not familiar with the parable, here it is narrated by Alan Watts:
The parable teaches us that “good” and “bad” are inseparable and both part of a larger continuum- life. This concept is an extension of nondualism and the 4th Hermetic Principle of polarity. “Good” and “bad” aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, they create each other.
More Psychedelic School Lessons/Psychedelic Wisdom 101
For the record, no one needs psychedelics to learn the lesson of the Chinese farmer. Almost everyone will understand it by watching the video above for example. However, psychedelics can show you this lesson in a powerful and resonant way. Or on occasion, psychedelics prime you for this lesson, so when you come across the parable later in life, you have an “Aha” moment.
I think the Chinese farmer parable is one of the most fundamental, spiritual lessons out there. It should be up there with nondualism and the 7 Hermetic Principles. This type of wisdom can offer us grounding and balance amidst uncertain and chaotic times. Thus, this wisdom can aid our psychospiritual health during times of duress and adversity. This wisdom can also brace us when we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Let me give you a few examples.
Fluid Fortunes
I’ve experienced the fluidity of “good” and “bad” many times during psychedelic journeys. The one time I did bufo, I thought I was going to die, then I had an ineffable “breakthrough” that sent me through cosmic hyperdimensions. During psychedelic journeys, the lesson seems much easier to comprehend and to resonate with. When applied to real life, our emotions often get the best of us and we forget the wisdom. The fluid nature of fortune has touched my life innumerable times.
When I was in grammar school, a neighbor I was friends died. I spent lots of time with Mrs. Grace after school and enjoyed playing with her dogs. She was the first person I was close with who died. After she died, her son bequeathed me her poodle. Walking home with Brandy, a 9 pound teacup/toy poodle was one of the best days of my childhood. In an instant, Mrs. Grace dying wasn’t such a “bad” thing.
I lived in Spain years ago, and was living an extraordinary life in Madrid at the time. Then the Great Financial Crisis hit, and I couldn’t survive financially anymore. I was forced out of Spain, and had to return Stateside to my dismay and my Iberian dream life in ruins. Not long after, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I was glad to be a caregiver for my mom, and to be at her side when she needed me most.
When Covid hit, I was convinced the world would turn into a sci-fi dystopia. When it didn’t, and I realized the propaganda didn’t match up to my lived experience, I said to hell with lockdowns and quarantines. I wanted to live my life as best I could. I took up an adventure and traveled Mexico for a year. I stood atop 2 or 3 pyramids in Mexico alone. I was the lone tourist. These were peak states to say the least. You were able to have unique experiences that weren’t possible for a hundred years or more and may never be possible again. Covid was great for travel.
Having a peak state while the world was taking a dump.
In a broad context, some of the best examples of fluid fortune come by the way of lottery winners. Have you ever read some of the stories of lottery winners? Often people who never managed lots of money, or had financial discipline, win ignorant amounts of money. Afterwards, atrocious and horrible events befall them, that manifest from their newfound wealth.
Jack Whittaker’s story comes to mind. The Powerball lottery winner donated millions of his record jackpot to churches. In 2003, he was drinking at the Pink Pony strip club when someone broke into his Lincoln Navigator. They stole a briefcase containing $545,000. To be fair, poor Jack made a number of mistakes, but you get the idea. Bad fortune has crossed so many lottery winners, that now, not winning the lottery has almost become a meme.
This Wisdom Extends from China to the Yucatan
During my 2021 travel year across Mexico, I spent a week deep in the jungles of the Yucatan. By chance or by synchronicity, I met a Maya shaman. He asked me if doing a Maya spiritual ceremony interested me. I didn’t hesitate to say yes.
The ceremony didn’t even involve any plant medicine. Pedro had me do a barefoot, walking meditation on rocks. I walked in circles on rocks that went from smooth and soft to hard and painful. Pedro kept repeating to me, “This is life.”
Forever, life always has its smooth, “good” times and the rough, hard, “bad” times. One can not be had without the other, and neither lasts forever. This was the greatest hands-on, or in this case, “feet-on” lesson I ever learned in my life, and it was on vacation in Mexico- not in school.
This wisdom also upends the Western ideal of “happiness.” The way “happiness” has been packaged and sold to us is a complete scam. We tend to believe that if we achieve and acquire X, Y and Z, that we’ll achieve this point in our lives when we maintain a state of permanent happiness until we die. This is a lie and impossible.
This is almost a deft form of spiritual propaganda. Being obsessed only with the “good” (“white” or “light”) becomes a form of spiritual bypassing and serves to weaken our resilience when “bad” times are certain to arrive again. Those “bad” times are as certain to arrive as taking a morning dump.
Shit Grows Flowers
I sum up the wisdom of the Parable of the Chinese farmer by saying “Shit grows flowers.” Sure it’s crude and low brow and you can’t beat the economy and force. Best yet, it’s true in a literal, natural sense.
I was the boss of a hobby ranch for a year and I dealt with a lot of shit. I shoveled a lot of cow, horse, and donkey manure. I built compost heaps with it, which we later used to fertilize the gardens with. A lot of delicious food came out of those gardens. When the rains came, the compost heaps also grew hundreds of mushrooms. So good things grow out of shit all the time.
Think about bat guano. Bat guano is the best fertilizer out there, followed by chicken shit. When the gold rush ended, and the claims came up dry, some pioneers and former 49ers turned to farming bat guano in caves in the American southwest. So they didn’t find gold, and many still made fortunes collecting tons of bat shit. Alas, the cycle reset, as many guano collectors got sick from the cave fumes, went mad, and their mental health went to, uh, well…shit! Thus the origin of being “bat shit crazy.”
Examples of this spiritual alchemy aren’t hard to find. Some people believe it’s good luck to be shit on by a bird. During Christmas in Catalonia, Spain, families perform the tradition of Tio Nadal. Tio Nadal is a wooden log, with a blanket on it. Children sing a song and whack poor Tio Nadal with a stick, until he “defecates” candies, goodies, and presents for the kids.
Shitty Times Fertilize the “Good” Times
Take this wisdom to heart, as spiritual alchemy is a potent tool to manage life’s inevitable ups and downs. In the wild times we live in, when it’s too easy to see life taking a giant dump on us everywhere, always remember- Shit grows flowers.
Oh, and take a big, beautiful whiff of those flowers now. Enjoy them, because they won’t smell that way for long. Whenever you’re hit with anxiety or stress about the state of your personal and/or current affairs, remember how those flowers smell.
On the contrary, the ultimate irony is when you appreciate the smell of feces, because you know something “good” is growing and on its way soon. So even though a cesspool stench wafts through the prevailing winds today, perhaps we’re not shit out of luck after all. During these trickstery times, maybe, just maybe, we’re shit in luck!
