Blooming in the Shadows
Lessons from an underworld plant, Ghost Pipe.
The truth of life can be ugly.
Things really aren’t what they should be. We can be optimistic, but it’s just as important to admit what isn’t working. courage, compassion, and vulnerability are needed to look in the mirror and say “this isn’t good enough” and not immediately reach for the next thing.
The other night I lay in bed wondering if I’m doing okay by my kid. An awareness crept in of the places I’m not. Of course I fall short. And it’s likely that I always will in some way.
Sometimes you see the consequences of your shortcomings in the mirror of reality and there is no immediate solution. It is what it is.
It doesn’t mean be lazy or stop trying.
This reflection extends to world affairs where we witness historical patterns resurfacing in distorted troubling ways.
If you have the strength to take a sobering look at these painful truths and carry on with life in good spirits, it’s commendable.
The path of consciousness, the path of seeing, is rife with ugly truths most people will do anything to evade. Denial, avoidance, dissociation, blame, spiritual bypassing. For some, seeing the truth is overwhelming and all-consuming.
I’ve been consumed by painful truths more times than I can count. But how do I show up if I’m swallowed whole? How do I mother? How do I tend to myself and my community? How do I find a way to keep blooming in the shadows?
Enter Ghost Pipe. A compassionate guide for helping you face what is. A benevolent midwife of pain. An exorcist of karmic, collective, and ancestral ghosts. A conduit of the exchange of wisdom and healing across the ecosystems of mind, body and spirit, much like the mycelial network it grows from that nourishes the forest floor.
When ugly truths are in my face, when the collective pain of the world threatens to consume me, when themes from my personal life start to spiral me down the toilet, and when things just feel too big and difficult to be with, this is the plant I call on.
1. Ghost Pipe, mysterious underworld plant, and my ghost pipe story
Ghost Pipe, also known as Indian Pipe or Monotropa Uniflora, grows in the shadows, where the humus is wet and decaying, where under the surface of the forest floor networks of fungi are working hard to turn matter into life. It is unique in that it does not filter water and sunlight the way other plants do. Instead of photosynthesizing, it blooms in the shadows, feeding off decay.
Ghost Pipe exists in a symbiotic relationship with the mycorrhizal network. For those unfamiliar with what the mycorrhizal network is, it is the power grid of the forest. Web-like Mycelia usher and exchange nutrients and essential communication across vast distances to the entire ecosystem. This plant is interconnected.
Ghostpipe entered my life like a silent guide in the dark, urging me to pause, to listen, and to dive deep. At the time, I was a single-mother of a 2-year old navigating my way out of a very karmic, compelling, toxic relationship with my daughter’s father. I was deep in initiation…training every day to identify and master the triggers and patterns that had me in this choke hold of a pattern and exorcize the ghosts that kept me there.
I tried everything. Coaches, rituals, online classes, ice baths, kundalini yoga, kambo, books, and more in attempts to free myself from the suffering of this relationship. While the tools and insights I gained from these experiences were extremely valuable, they merely brought me to the surface of something. Something I couldn’t learn or heal away.
One night, I was connecting with my higher wisdom. I sought help. I had a sense of myself peacefully floating in the ocean when my ego chimed in: “Look how well you’ve learned to ride the waves now!” Swiftly, a deeper knowing replied: “No. Everything you’ve done was just to bring you here, and now you’re ready to dive deep”. Spirit humbled me.
While I thought I’d felt all the pain I needed to “feel to heal”, I didn’t realize I was addicted to this pain. I was addicted to emotion, to the victim narratives about my life and my past, to the identity of the wounded healer, to “mental health struggles”. I was addicted to the intensity of “healing”, the dopamine hit of another practice to liberate or eradicate. I was floating on the ocean until it was stormy and thrashing me against the rocks again and again. And I was addicted to this too. All of this allowed me to bypass what really needed to happen.
To truly deal with pain, you need to learn to stand beside it. Not suppress it, not avoid it, not bypass it. You have to feel it AND not be consumed by it. When you can be truly present with your pain, you can understand it without letting it overwhelm you. You can process emotions without further repressing them. You can learn how to cope moving forward towards wholeness, and long-lasting healing occurs.
Ghost Pipe brought me to the threshold of some of my deepest pains. In my conscious communion with the spirit of this plant, I was guided through a process of following my triggers to their origin stories. As Ghost Pipe stood beside me, I could stand beside my pain and see it, grieve it, and not be consumed. From there, I could cross the thresholds of this world into the subtle bodies of the mind, body, and emotion, and into the spiritual realms where the troughs of this pain wore deep and needed help.
The Ghosts in this story are addictions, emotional wounds, and unresolved traumas. They are the lingering residues of personal shadows, haunting in their persistence. They embody the collective unconsciousness that shapes our behaviors, relationships, and perceptions, often without our conscious awareness. Ghost Pipe skillfully brings you face to face with these ghosts, these ugly truths, the legacies of these hauntings through time, and walks you through the journey of seeing and feeling these things so clearly that they lose their power over you. Pain loses its power over you.
These ghosts compel us to confront the uncomfortable truths we inherit and perpetuate, urging us to break the cycles of pain and dysfunction. Ghost pipe, emerging from the shadows of the forest floor, blooming in the darkness, is the compassionate ally we need as we navigate and heal from the echoes of our past in a world seeking harmony and understanding.
3. ENERGETIC MATERIA MEDICA OF MONOTROPA UNIFLORA AND HYPOPITYS
Ghost Pipe, Monotropa uniflora, with its tiny singular flower pointed down to the lower world, is as a fearless friend against foes, grief, pain, and the hauntings of memories from the past, ancestors, past lives, and more. There is no place it can’t accompany you into the crevices of darkness where things may need to be left or retrieved.
Ghost Pipe also teaches discernment and deft in sensing and knowing how to work with these “ghosts”. This is true in the psyche and soul, as well as in physical spaces and with clients. It is also a wonderful ally for psychopomp work, supporting you to support souls crossing over into the afterlife.
Over the weeks that I’ve been writing this article, it’s been wonderful to work with Ghost Pipe again and experience how my life has improved. I’ve been able to meet so many difficulties with equanimity. In fact, what inspired me to write this essay was leaning on GP when things felt too hard to bear. The current consciousness catapulting through the cosmos: political distress, genocide, and so much more, is A LOT. Not to mention the difficulties we face in our personal lives. As I mentioned before, we are in the midst of personal and public powerlessness in many ways. How do we face what is before us? Monotropa uniflora holds our hands through this. If we learn to wield its power even more, I believe it can help us summon the frequency of something better, even as we surrender to what is.
This leads me to pink ghost pipe, Monotropa hypopitys, with its multiple flowers and dappled pink hues billowing towards the ground. The energetics of this plant are distinct from its kindred brethren, Monotropa uniflora. There is a feeling of mastery with this plant. The multiple blooms represent the ability to move and shift through multiple dimensions and worlds, bringing forth more light and color. The teachings of the white Ghost Pipe, to me, allow the medicine of the pink Ghost Pipe to create and integrate, holding the frequency of “something better” and imprinting it into our and the collective “forest floor,” like mycelia. This myceliating process brings thriving life models online as a result of all the growth with uniflora. With Monotropa hypopitys, we are in the new body, creating in the new body. Monotropa uniflora helps us “cross over” as we come into a new relationship with pain and suffering, lightening our loads, and Monotropa Hypopitys builds the bridges and new creations of something else.
Overall, Ghost pipe helps us stand beside emotional and physical pain and not be swallowed by it. As a flower essence or spirit medicine, it serves emotional and spiritual healing by allowing us to both stand beside the pain in a way that makes it possible to go to the necessary places to really heal. As a tincture of the whole plant, it is a nervine that supports people to be beside their physical pain instead of overcome by it. Overall, ghost pipe is an ally for dealing with pain that is too much to bear and gaining enough space from that pain to work with it in ways that encourage true healing. It’s pink counterpart is the ally for creating and bridging the new energy of what happens after this, the healing in the new and lightened body. The integration and co-creation.
4. How to work with Ghost Pipe
Appropriate times to work with Ghost Pipe could be…
When you are unable to cope with emotional physical pain
Deep grief
When you are triggered and need space and support to get to the source
As an ally to help you face pain that is controlling your life
To help you face the deep scary places where you need to bring the most light
To help exorcise the ghosts of your past that haunt you
As a guide to help you safely move through the spiritual, emotional, and physical thresholds one may need to navigate when retrieving soul parts or doing soul work or psychopomp
In the aftermath of acute trauma where you are “beside yourself”
In the face of difficult to face current and personal events
To put the pieces back together and immense growth
To blueprint the patterns and frequencies of the new way and new body of relating to yourself and life
To help weave and craft into the collective consciousness these new ways of being
For all matters pertaining to blooming in the shadows
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