Nonfiction

If We Live in a Sick World, We Get Sick. What Happens if We Choose Refuge Over Righteousness?

For ourselves. For others.

Find Part 1 of this story here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here.

In late afternoon, returning to the outpost of a town that was my starting point, I’d find a spot to have milk tea and a meal.

I hesitate to call these “restaurants.” Simple, one-room structures with a table or three, they served watery tea and tough meat stew. Maybe it’s changed with the years, but back then, that was all. It was perfect.

I go through phases — including currently — of eating a vegetarian or vegan diet. Prior to leaving for Mongolia, I had not eaten meat for years. After my return, I didn’t eat it for a few more.

Yet, while there, eating animal flesh was deeply healing. There were no vegetarian options in Khövsgöl. Every meal was the same: a simple stew with a hunk or two of tough meat. On rare occasion, there’d be a token piece of root vegetable or potato.

The taste was bland. Chewing took much work. I did not mind.

This food offered perfect sustenance. This food was infused with reverence for life and with the spirit of animals. Nothing lost. Everything honoured. Humans, other beings, landscape, sky. Communing in a single, un-ended cycle.

I cannot tell you the story of Mongolia’s people. Nor the story of their animals. I was an outsider then and things have no doubt changed since.

Still, I’ll share a few things, seen through the lens of a stranger. Refracted through a heart desperate for some alternative to her hegemonic Inheritance.

First, I’m not certain “their animals” is quite right. I’m not certain possession of other beings has anything to do with it. More than ownership, there seemed to be a living with.

Perhaps guardianship. Or stewardship.

I do not know. I’m hesitant to define and contain others’ experience. My gaze is unwise, curious, awed. Trying to make sense. Fearing objectification. Knowing…nothing.

From what I could tell, children were riding horses from the earliest age. Horses, oxen, and other hoofed beings were woven into ritual and daily life.

To my star-struck eyes, animals seemed sacred in the most immediate sense. Bridging the everyday and the divine. Bringing remembrance and reverence into each mindful act. Refusing to stuff God in a box.

Anyone who eats meat but has a sterilized, species-centric relationship to the beings they consume should see this.

Anyone who doesn’t eat meat and claims ethical superiority over those who do should see this too. All the more so if they eat industrially processed fare packaged in paper and plastic. Or crops grown on razed and raped ground.

Also anyone who over-consumes and wastes anything — food or otherwise.

I include myself in these groupings. Most of us have something essential to learn here.

In Mongolia, I left my righteous eating identity and -ism’s behind. I ate simple meals of tough-meat stew, meditated, and walked.

I opened my arms wide, face upturned, in devotion to spaciousness, kindred spirits, and deep silence. In gratitude for the chance to reconnect, catch my breath, care for my soul.

We, as a so-called “modern society,” don’t do this — not enough and not really. We don’t allow space and time to truly take it in. To truly see, listen, grieve, and heal.

We pay homage to it, sure — self-care and therapizing are having a moment.

This moment has been co-opted, compartmentalized, and commodified. Another to-do. Another thing to post and double tap and righteously declare and defend because, if not, did it happen?

This moment is always on. Always “connected” in a way that demands disconnect from body, breath, Nature, Oneness. Always distracted in a way that precludes going deep or learning to stay.

I’m caught too now, tangled in the strangeness of our times. But I’m grateful it came late for me — in my thirties and forties rather than all my life.

I’m glad I understand the difference. I’m glad I know my way back to what came before. Almost. Barely. But still.

And, of course, this problem predated email and smartphones and social media. The disconnect and addiction to noise, consumption, and filling all silence and space is a disease with deep roots.

Illnesses of body and mind are one symptom. Illnesses of Mother Nature are another. If we live in a sick world, we get sick.

This is true whether we try to game the system or rail against it. It’s true most especially if we buy the lie that this is normal. That we who think and do otherwise are the sick ones. That we are too sensitive. That we are the addicts and patients.

No. We are canaries in a toxic coal mine.

We are screaming: This is not right. Something is very, very wrong here.

We are pleading for someone — anyone — to do something. For all of us to please get quiet, get still, and deeply listen. To our heart, others, the Earth, the sky.

The listening and turning inwards are important. I’m not talking about “activism” here — directing the focus outwards and blaming others for what is wrong and what has been done to us.

On a certain level, that is more of the same. Hate in name of activism is still hate. Violence in the name of activism is still violence.

Then we’re left with more hate. More violence. More insistence on accusing others because focusing inwards and truly resting there, with all of it and all of ourselves, feels too uncomfortable. Too frightening. Too shameful.

In this place, we are them. We are hate. We become the worst of us.

The only way out — the only way to do better really — is to face it. To go straight in and meet all that’s there. All of who we are.

No denial. No excuses. Meeting oneself as a whole human, holding all that a human holds. Existing with others, in concert.

That is where we learn, finally, that hate is horribly painful and horribly violent. To this world. To ourselves.

That is also where we learn to soften. Seeing finally and fully the pain hate causes — feeling the futile tragedy of it — the response is one of grief, compassion, love.

An understanding that transcends the news reel and transcends our species. An understanding that goes back to our beginnings. An understanding that exists because we are more than a little self.

We are a soul and we are One.

In Mongolia, living simply and close to land, heart, and sky, this was clear. The veil between truth and the everyday was thinner, more immediate.

Waking on silent, chilly mornings to the sounds of fire catching in the stove at the centre of my yurt brought me home. Walking through forests in solitude for long hours allowed me to finally, finally be alone with myself and spirit again.

Not just my mind, but body and soul.

And when my path on rare occasion crossed that of another, true seeing arose. True listening. An innocent, curious, kind presence that didn’t need to be practiced into being. It just was.

This was the Medicine I sought. This is the Medicine I seek now.

When I left Mongolia, I promised to go back — and I will. But also, this refuge lives inside me. It lives inside each of us.

It’s not one place on our beautiful, strong, dis-eased Mother Earth. It is all of her. As part of her, we hold it too, in our hearts.

Note: This excerpt is part of a larger work on Inheritance, Medicine, Madness, and Prophecy.

Find the first parts of my Mongolia journey, here:

Find similar reads, right this way:

Thank you for reading. I’m a doctor of Chinese Medicine and write about sobriety and soulful living. Find all my links here: