Ode to Lavender

By David Crow

Like serpentine waves of color undulating across the continents, the lilac hues of lavender farms weave together all that is good about us humans. For love of beauty, people flock to the cascading purple terraces of Provence, New Zealand, Himachal Pradesh, and California, drawn like the bees climbing through their miniature labyrinthine worlds of ultraviolet scent.

Because there still lives, somewhere in our heart and soul where the artificialities of modernity are not allowed, an innate indescribable love for nature’s tender expressions, the soft voice of lavender’s gentle spirit is universally understood. Because there still abides beneath our hardened, agitated, aggressive, restless madness an inescapable vulnerability to the feminine power of the earth’s compassion, lavender’s soothing touch transcends our painful imagined differences, bonding us together again in the simple childlike truth that we all suffer and need comfort.

Open a bottle of fine lavender oil, as if you were one of those who feel reverence because it has cured them of sorrows in ways that science could not do. Bring it slowly to your nostrils, for inside lies more than you ever realized. Can you perceive the fresh notes of rain, dewy transparent pearls rolling off silken petal and leathery leaf? Draw your attention further inward: there await rich earthen notes of loamy fertile soil or mineral notes of harsh wild landscapes.

It is easy to get lost in the smell of purples, the sweet aquamarine notes of fruit and flower so distinct yet so indescribable, but anyone can do that. Do you sense the pungency, the soft sharpness of sunrays, the fiery acrid heat of Mediterranean summer days? How can you not notice the cool air of evening that settles on the flowing contours of color at dusk, changing the heliotrope undertones to fuchsia, then magenta, then indigo as the plants exhale their purifying breath into the night sky?

But wait, there’s more… that was only the terrain the oil came from. What has created this wonder, this sublime artistic expression like a fragrant Impressionist painting from a palette of wind, water, earth, and fire? What intelligence, what evolutionary force, what biological necessity, what inborn instinct, what genetic genius, what devic magic has mixed and melded and separated and compounded and purified and refined this alchemical gem, this elixir of healing, this infinitely valuable aromatic talisman of protection? Can we name it, or should its name not be spoken, so profound a mystery it represents?

More importantly, can we smell it? We must, for its presence now permeates the cavities of the sinuses, aroma molecules now vie for receptor sites, receptor sites now fire in unison, enzymes cascade in torrents of information converting the sheer pranic power of this supreme presence into holographic neural networks. In an instant, something that did not exist a moment ago is now manifest: the fragrance of lavender within our own unique private universe of perception.

Rest a moment and breathe; new revelations will appear. Notice how this apparently simple essential oil has, in its profound botanical wisdom and primal spirituality, covertly carried the nutrient life force of the earth, the soothing cooling touch of water, the energizing rays of sun, and the uplifting breath of air directly into the deepest recesses of our brains, our hearts, our minds.

Notice its effects.

Are the sinews not softer, the nerves somehow more translucent, the joints younger? Are the pains of unconscious habitual contractions and chronic irritation of smoldering inflammation not receding? Is the chest not more open, the breath smoother, and the heartbeat steadier?

Notice also the effect on the intangible parts of our being. Is the mind not more clear, the mood more elevated? Can you not feel the somber cloud of collective despair and frustration, so closely entwined with the empathic fibers of our being that we can no longer perceive its weight, lifting, in its place a simple joy that needs no cause to arise?

Give thanks. Thanks to the compassionate plant that heals a multitude of ailments without causing harm, to the ancient intelligence that enlivens it, to the soil that nourished it, to the water that moistened it, to the air that it breathed, the sun that awoke it from slumber. Give thanks to the men and women who labor with love tending their precious children until mature, and then tending them more. Give thanks to the sacred alchemical arts and sciences of distilling the essence of these beneficent beings, and the lineages of teaching and knowledge that have brought us this precious blessing in humanity’s hour of need.
 

David Crow, LAc is one of the world’s foremost experts and leading speakers in the field of botanical medicine and grassroots healthcare. He is a master herbalist, aromatherapist, and acupuncturist with over 30 years experience and is an expert in the Ayurvedic and Chinese medical systems.

David is a renowned author, a poet and is the founding director of Floracopeia Aromatic Treasures. Floracopeia was created as a way to help preserve and promote the use of botanical medicines as solutions to solving numerous interrelated global problems: lack of healthcare, poverty, environmental destruction, and loss of ethnobotanical knowledge.

David has presented his vision of grassroots healthcare, preservation of botanical medicines and the use of plants for ecological restoration to hundreds of audiences, ranging from small private groups to conferences and lecture halls to a panel discussion with the Dalai Lama broadcast internationally to millions of viewers. Through his visionary synthesis of medicine, ecology, and spirituality, he has helped transform the lives of thousands.

In 1987, David journeyed to Nepal in search of teachings in Tibetan medicine and Buddhist meditation. For the next 10 years, he studied with many teachers. Using his newfound knowledge, Crow opened a clinic in Kathmandu and another in a small mountain village, where he treated beggars from the street as well as high abbots of monasteries. In Search of the Medicine Buddha interweaves medical teachings with insights into Tibetan Buddhism, evoking the beauty and wonder of a faraway land.