Below any mushroom is a hidden root system called mycelium — a web of often white thread like branches that exist predominantly beneath the forest floor (sometimes also found on old and forgotten bread)! This root system can grow and spread to be immensely large. The largest known of was 2,200 acres in size and 2,000 years old.
Mycelium forms a great web of intelligence that not only guides the forest in many ways but also contributes to it by distributing information and nutrition, defending it, supporting it, helping hold the soil together and, quite possibly, it is mycelium that helped create the soil in the first place hundreds of millions of years ago, allowing the forest to grow into what it is now. The air to be breathable, and us to be here doing all the amazing and strange things we do now. (Before then, 420 million years ago, it’s said that the tallest plants were only 2 feet tall.)
We can learn a lot from this web of intelligence; or Wood Wide Web of intelligence, and ’nature’s internet’ as it is being called.
The Interconnected Lessons Of
Mycelium and Medicinal Mushrooms
The very word mycelium, literally means ‘more than one’ and this gives a sense of the lessons it holds for us like:
Sharing Our Gifts
The fungal internet exemplifies one of the great lessons of ecology: seemingly separate organisms are often connected, and may depend on each other.
- Mycelium is the ‘mother’ generating humus soil across Earth, nurturing the forest by distributing nutrients from one tree to another; even from one species of tree to another.
- It can pull humidity out of the air and turn it into water for the Earth when when needed so both the mycelium and the forest benefit from the relationship.
- It is the ‘supporter’ that helps hold the soil together (able to hold up to 30,000 times its mass says mycologist Paul Stamets).
- It is the ‘informer’ sharing information with the rest of the forest, warning plants or trees when an invading pest has landed on another tree so they may release the needed chemicals as defence from possible harm.
- It is our ‘telecommunications expert,’ accomplishing this sharing through a resilient many branched system. If one branch of communication is broken, the nutrients and information are sent down an alternate pathway.
- It can even sabotage unwanted plants by spreading toxic chemicals. (Sometimes acting like a socially responsible mafioso.)
Imagine we shared our gifts together as humans as freely as this.
Imagine we distributed honest information, nourishing goods and services, rich ideas and our varied gifts, freely where they need to go for the health of the whole eco system without attachment or fear of not having enough. Knowing we receive a solid ground of health and well being that can, and will, lift us up when needed too.
What if we all acted as philanthropists, in a mutually benefiting way by treating our blessings and gifts not as ‘mine’ but as ‘ours’, highlighting the fundamental fact of our interdependence together, and the joy of sharing our natural gifts? And just like mycelium, if our offerings, if our gifts, are not received — if the lines of communication are broken — instead of thinking, ‘What we have is not wanted’ and going into a whole psycho-emotional spiral making it mean something about our very being, we can simply find an alternate root, another branch of communication, to share what we have, knowing it will land where it’s needed.
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Our philanthropy can come in many forms. It could be money, food, goods and services, but it can also be our gifts and the many skills we each have, whatever they be — art, being a good listener, speaker, writer, singer, motivator or, nurturer, offering a compassionate hand or sincere well placed smile, skill as a cook, or as an awesome bear hugger. A gift is a gift. Attune to the right branch of communication and let it free!
There are always spaces through each day where our gifts — both small and big, simple and complex — can be put in place.
Equanimity
Mycelium treats the forest as one organism, not discriminating between trees, plants, animals or insects. It doesn’t judge a tree for being different from itself or for having different interests, nor does it treat one tree as being more important than another just because they get along better, or they share the same love of decomposing mushrooms (which becomes mycelium’s food) or whatever mutual recognition. Each part of the great forest is treated as an integral part of the whole. In this way it stays strong, diverse and adaptable.
So we can ask ourselves — ‘Where in my life do I discriminate?’
Do we treat all with equanimity and loving kindness or do we reserve that and show preference for certain types of people who like the same things we do — the same music or team, or if went to the same alma mater or grew up in the same neighbourhood or whatever? Of course we will be closer to some people and have deeper rapport and resonance, but that does not need to take away from our respect and loving kindness to all the faces of this world.
So are we able to ‘infuse all landscapes’, move in any circle, be part of anything, relate to humans, adults, children as human beings on a level deeper than our superficial preferences? If the answer is not a complete ‘yes’, (which most likely it isn’t yet) and we do want to work towards this possibility, there are ways to practice this equanimity, this non-discriminate interaction and relationship with the world around us. No matter how resonant or dissonant something is with our particular beliefs or attitudes, our likes or dislikes, we can still find connection, understanding, even care and positive feelings through compassion. The wisdom traditions are full of inspiration and means.
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Try catch your mind if you find yourself discriminating between one or another, drawing lines like friend or enemy, choosing to help one and not another, simply because of a superficial difference or lack of understanding.
Practice offering what the Buddhists call ‘loving kindness’ to all indiscriminately, with equanimity and compassion, remembering we each have our struggles. We each have our hopes and fears. We each smile. We each suffer. Beneath our superficiality, below the specifics of our stories, below the waves on the surface of the water, we are not so different after all. And sometimes the most opposite are the most alike in the depths both have lost sight of.
But make no mistake, this is a difficult, yet ultimately rewarding lesson mycelium offers us. If you are really challenged by this it can help to remember that, like in any ecosystem, without diversity — we as a race, as communities, as businesses, relationships and partnerships — cannot stay adaptable, have longevity or thrive in strength. And that’s true even when that diversity pisses us off a little. We still need each other.
Harmony and Service
Mycelium shares with the forest, giving to it and guiding it in what it needs, but it also removes what doesn’t belong, sabotaging certain plants it doesn’t want there by spreading toxic chemicals to them. Sometimes life calls us to weed things out of our lives so that our lives flow with a greater harmony, and with greater focus, without being scattered in too many directions or spread too thin. Have you ever had to drop a job, friendship, relationship or anything else in the name of focus so you may do what you need and want to do better? Or because it became toxic to a new phase of life as it didn’t or couldn’t change with you?
Mycelium also has amazing potential as a cleaner and healer. With its ability to clean polluted soil or oil spills, making insecticides, treating smallpox and flu viruses according to Stamets and others. Medicinal mushrooms are also a source of strong antibiotics, powerful immune boosters, not to mention the well known healing properties it has in more cases of more serious diseases (which we will not name here, but you can easily do your own research on) in the medicinal mushrooms.
Now mycelium didn’t create the mess or the illness in the first place, yet it’s there to help. How often do we say, ‘Well that mess isn’t mine, that piece of garbage wasn’t mine. Why should I clean it, why should I pick it up?’ Of course, we too have the potential to clean, heal and defend, not only ourselves but the world at large. The human race has, in many ways, made a damn mess of things, but we are seeing a surge of energy to defend the planet, to clean up messes, to heal it and ourselves in the process.
It’s not that mycelium is all ‘good and positive and fairy light’. Many of mycelium’s mushrooms are deathly poisonous to humans. As the old saying goes, ‘Anything can either be a medicine or a poison’. What it comes down to is the role it holds in the grand scheme of things, and how it’s used. Humans can be destroyers or a source of great life, vitality and harmony as caretakers of each other, this Earth and the spirit.
So take this lesson of mycelium to heart: We shouldn’t say, ‘It’s not my mess or my issue.’ We are in this together and we each have a role to play. If there is something we can heal and clean, it may be our responsibility to do so. And the more of us doing this, the faster it happens. The easier it is. No one is meant to carry the whole weight on their own. Just as mycelium holds the forest with the strength of an interconnected web.
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Next time you walk in the forest bring a small garbage bag with you and carefully pick up some of the trash you see; even if you didn’t leave it. It’s not your responsibility to pick it all up; but help out. Be part of the web of healing.
One way we can work with mycelium to clean and heal our own bodies, is through taking medicinal mushrooms such as Purica’s Reishi, Chaga, Cordyceps and Lion’s Mane. These mushrooms are adaptogens, and work similarly within us to the way mycelium has been described above.
They address the whole organism as one, adapting to and acting on whatever needs balancing and healing within in each of us for optimal health, according to the strengths of each mushroom. A well formulated mix like Complete 360 will address many areas of our own bodily ecosystem.
Serving The World
— Mycelium Style
The potential lessons in mycelium are as endless as the help we get from them. If we, as a human race, could take our cues from the intelligence and harmony of mycelium, acting as one, sharing our strengths, treating all equally, offering a helping hand, defending and being an activist for all life, treating all messes as our messes, healing ourselves and the planet in the process, we too would know the profound resiliency, strength, efficiency, and sense of belonging in all the brothers and sisters of our human family working together in relationship with the environment around us.
A great many of the problems we’re facing would end almost over night. And it starts with each one of us; even if the rest of the human forest are, at times, acting like selfish a$&##&es… You’d be surprised at how things adjust in the great field of intelligence. Sometimes just one person consistently helping sparks an unseen movement in the ethers and suddenly you’ll walk by one day and others will be doing the same. The magic of the field of life is well at play.
So let us learn the magic of unity that mycelium can remind us of.
Let us create supportive roots that extend all over the world, knowing that when one is uplifted, we’re all uplifted.
Let us make the web of reality a bright miracle of lights. And let us begin today.
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Mycelium plays many roles:
- The Godfather — helping create the Earth’s soil and the forest as we know it.
- A sort of socially responsible mafioso — defending the forest and removing unwanted plants.
- The mother — Nurturing and sharing resources throughout the forest.
- The cleaner, supporter, distributor, and on and on.
In all these roles, mycelium innately keeps the life and vitality of the whole in mind. Knowing that what is best for the whole is ultimately best for each individual. We too play many roles in any given day. Contemplate how you can or already do incorporate any of mycelium’s lessons into your daily roles: Be it as wife, husband, teacher, parent, C.E.O, friend, gardener, even as a stranger. It may help to write down which of mycelium’s lesson struck you most and take a look at, specifically, where in your life and with whom you could better incorporate it.
At the heart of it all — in an Indo-Tibetan perspective — is compassion. Compassion is the force and intelligence that guides and unites this intelligence and wise action.
Compassion and empathy practices also help us feel as unique but intimate parts of a whole, and not as such separate, isolated (and possibly even alone or lonely) entities; which is much closer to the mycelial and mushroom nature of and reality.
On the note of compassion and wise heartfelt action — If you’ve ever appreciated walking through the forest, surrounded by towering trees and fresh air, supported by the giving nature of the forest floor, you have a lot of gratitude due to mycelium which literally holds the forest floor together. And the best way to pay it back is to help the forest we love thrive. And try to let it be an act of heart, not a ‘duty’ or something you think you ‘should do’. Compassion is not forced. A genuine appreciation and awareness of our profound interconnection can inspire this natural response from within. And remember that no action goes unnoticed. Mycelium is sentient. Heed these lessons and be good out there because mycelium, like Santa Clause, is watching us.
