The Wetland Wizard :
Teachings From The Wetland: The Monarch Queen.. 🦋
Today, the Wetland Wizard feels blessed. A wizard’s mind is often a crowded forest of wild ideas, strange visions, and restless concepts. But every so often, a day arrives when the noise falls away, and the mind becomes as quiet as the forest itself. This was such a day. After our morning exercise with Little Fox and a brief visit with the forest chicken we call Chicken Bird, we sat outside beneath the open sky. We listened to the birds singing in the trees and the crickets answering from the grasses. Perhaps this is how the Forest Spirit speaks when we are finally still enough to hear her—not through words, but through vibration, rhythm, and the quiet frequency of peace. And today, she sent an emissary. A Monarch Queen. She appeared in her brilliant orange and black robes, carrying an ancient teaching written into the very chemistry of her body. The monarch begins life by eating poison. The milkweed upon which the caterpillar feeds contains toxins that would harm many creatures. Yet the monarch does not merely survive the poison. She takes it into herself and transforms it into protection. The very substance that might destroy another becomes a shield around her life. The Wetland Wizard was reminded of an old Buddhist teaching of the peacock. The peacock, too, is said to consume poisonous things. Yet somehow, from these toxins, it produces beauty—the magnificent colours of its feathers. Perhaps this is one of the great secrets hidden within suffering. We humans encounter our own poisons. Loss. Fear. Anger. Disappointment. Anxiety. Grief. The endless dissatisfaction that the Buddha called dukkha—the aching unsatisfactoriness woven into ordinary existence. We often wish to escape these things. We try to spit out the poison. But perhaps the Forest Spirit offers another teaching. Perhaps the path is not always to reject the poison, but to transform it. The Monarch Queen seems to whisper: What enters you does not have to become what you are. #wetlandwizard ❤️
2026-08-25 17:55:01