Essential Essences and the Wisdom of the Earth with Barry Kapp, by Diane Cooper

Diane: I understand you have spent your life discovering and working with plants and plant communication. Is that correct?

Barry: Yes. Plants and trees.

Diane: How did you find yourself in that arena?

Barry: I always attribute my interest in plants and trees to my father's influence. He was a self-taught herbalist at a time when there was no real training available. He just had a passionate desire to learn, and found others of like mind to share notes and information.

My father started talking to me about the plants and trees when I was a child, but I really started getting into it when I was fifteen years old. It was during that year that I had a couple of angelic experiences that changed my life. I realized that I was not alone.

The basic concept my father transmitted was that the plant and tree kingdom are all about relationships. This is what I still teach today. When you come to the plant and tree kingdom, you hold out your hand and choose to become vulnerable and surrender and ask if they will be willing to teach you their deeper secrets — energetically, medicinally, emotionally, and spiritually. And you begin to know that this kingdom can be trusted.

At first I was engrossed in learning about herbs, while dabbling a little in the medicinal essential essences that are my focus today. My angelic guides played a big part in my learning experiences.

Diane: What an amazing experience for a young man.

Barry: Yes, well, it actually caused me a good many struggles. I couldn't really relate to other people, and had a lot of fear about sharing my experiences with my parents and friends. I didn't think they would believe me.

Also, I felt as though I belonged somewhere else. I was hearing about violence, fear, war, and injustice in the world, and that didn't seem to fit in with what I was intuiting from my guides and what I was learning from the plants and trees. At that time, the collective consciousness was already working with my Being, and the plants and trees were constantly showing me their ability to co-habit and relate together peacefully and harmoniously.

Diane: Let's talk about some of the attributes that come from relationship with the plants and trees.

Barry: Okay. One of the Stargates, which I learned from Druvalo — the feminine Stargate — is that Love and Truth create Beauty.

Beauty is one of the major attributes the plant and tree kingdom give to us here on Earth. Beauty is everywhere. Even in the deepest "asphalt jungle," you can't walk very far before you find a plant or a tree.

Of course, plants and trees give us oxygen. Without that, you and I wouldn't be talking. And they give shelter, food, and medicine. But it's beauty that is intricately related to how we must come to the plant kingdom. We can see the beauty, feel it, and touch it. We can even taste and smell it. Smell is the oldest sense that we have, according to modern science.

So with reverence, and a sweet, delicious humility, you can sit down in the garden or forest and say, "You know, I'd really like to get to know you, Miss Oleander." And you sit down, and you touch her, and you take in her energy, and give her your energy. And you say, "Could you help me to understand how to take care of you?" And you surrender, right there.

It's a totally different attitude than reading a book on Oleander and pretending we actually know something about her. Oleander just sits back and waits in a very patient way until we come to her with a totally different attitude.

Diane: There are many folks who have a "green thumb" — who seem to have a natural ability to connect to this kingdom. I've known many elders who have this talent. Can anyone develop a green thumb?

Barry: Yes. And it's very good you're bringing that up, because the secret is not for the elders alone — it is for all of us. The difference is that the elders — like the masters — know what it means to be and to love and to feel at one with everything. And that at-oneness is always the chamber we must walk through in order to meet the plants and trees, or the rock and bird people.

So, yes, there are people that have this ability naturally, but it can be developed. Today, teachers like Dr. Brian Weiss and others say that everyone is psychic — it's just whether or not we've understood the secrets of the kingdom we are attempting to enter and can approach it with humility and wisdom.

Many people say that I have a green thumb. But even when I am called a Master Medicinal Aromatherapist, the real truth for me is that I'm just a facilitator and messenger of love and truth via the plant and tree kingdom. And I'm also a facilitator of healing via the same realm.

Diane: I understand that many pharmaceutical drugs are patterned after the qualities of plants. I'm thinking specifically of the drug Valium, which is patterned after Valerian root. Why do you think that as a society we have gone down the pharmaceutical road, instead of staying natural?

Barry: From my perspective, after studying history, many people in power know that they can control humans by controlling certain areas of life, like religion, politics, and sexuality. And a big control area is health.

The American Medical Association (AMA) and the pharmaceutical industry, which have basically been "married" for the past hundred years, have taught us to distrust Mother Earth and to trust them, instead. So our system is not really geared to healing people.

And you can't financially monopolize organic material, so with a plant like Valerian, the pharmaceutical industry says, "Okay, let's see if we can isolate one of the chemotypes that make up this plant and recreate it in the lab."

One problem with isolating chemotypes is that, taken by itself, a chemical from a tree or plant could be toxic. But in nature, all the parts work together. An isolated chemotype could be toxic, but not in its natural state, in combination with so many other components. If you take the essence of the plant itself, there will be anywhere from fifty thousand to sixty-five thousand chemotypes in that essence.

The second problem is that there's no chance that an isolated chemotype is actually going to represent the plant as a whole. For example. . . do you have brothers and sisters?

Diane: Yes, I do.

Barry: Okay. So let's say I got together with some aromatherapists, and we sat you down and asked you a bunch of questions about your personality and character. Then, ignoring your parents and your brothers and sisters, we introduced you to the world and said, "This is Diane Cooper. We've isolated her from the Cooper family and recorded all her attributes and characteristics, and this is the way the entire Cooper family really is." This is the kind of thing that the pharmaceutical companies are doing with natural herbs.

And it's not valid. Sassafras is banned in the United States because of a chemotype called saffrole, which has been shown in lab tests to be carcinogenic, but it's totally ridiculous for them to do that. You cannot isolate a chemical from a plant or tree and come to a conclusion from that as to what the whole plant is going to do — not when there are sixty-five thousand chemotypes in that plant, all acting synergistically in a collective consciousness.

Each and every plant is a collection of thousands of chemotypes working together to create beauty and wholeness — to create the plant that we see.

Diane: Many people say that pharmaceuticals do have a place, such as in the treatment of cancer and other serious health concerns. What would you say about this?

Barry: Tough question. The bottom line for me is the saying "at least to do no harm." This is what Mother Earth has taught us. But over the past decades in high-tech countries like the U.S. we've been blinded and reprogrammed to integrate that which harms us. Chemotherapy and radiation treatment are specific examples of what I'm talking about. It is a fact known to everyone, including allopathic professionals, that chemotherapy and radiation treatment are a disaster for the immune system.

If we could get true statisticss on the percentage of chemo and radiation therapy that has ended up giving people miserable deaths on top of already having cancer, then maybe we could get a real perspective on this issue.

From my viewpoint, allopathic methods always seem to do harm, so they have no place in my life.

Diane: What about all the media coverage on how certain herbs have created illness and even death?

Barry: There have been many articles written on this subject. But you have to ask yourself who's writing the articles. I feel that this kind of publicity is a ploy to sidetrack our knowledge of the efficacy of the power of the plants and trees.

I think if you looked overall at the incidence of illness and death created by misuse of herbs and compared it to incidents created by the misuse of non-prescription drugs, you'd likely get a perspective beyond the sensationalism put forth by our media.

Mother Earth expressing in the form of plants and trees is extremely loving and extremely harmonized on a molecular level. Natural remedies are friends and relatives of the molecular structures of our bodies.

Diane: Tell me a story about the magic of communicating with the plants and trees.

Barry: Well, there are many, but I'll tell just one...

This story is about an artist and her husband who had a 40-acre plot back East where many cedar trees were growing. When their children were young, this couple considered clearing an area there for a ball field. But they were sensitive to the earth — nature minded — and felt that for some reason they should not clear those trees, so they abandoned the idea.

About five years ago, when this woman was in her early seventies, she kept having a desire to meditate in a certain spot, out in this grove of trees. She'd go out there at about 6 a.m. and sit in her chair for her quiet time. And one morning, when she was out there meditating, she heard a voice that said, "Thank you for saving us."

"Who are you?" she asked.

The reply came, "We are the cedar trees you didn't cut down. You heard us, but you didn't know who we were."

"How come you are only just now telling me this?" she asked.

And the trees answered, "Because you are only just now beginning to listen."

Diane: Are you hopeful that humans will wake up to the wisdom of the plants and animal kingdom?

Barry: My partner Audré recently had a dream where the shift had already come to our planet. All the plants and trees, all the animals, all the insects, and all of us humans were gathered together, and every one had an equal voice.

In Audré's dream, humans were no longer taking the position of control that we've maintained for several thousand years. The deer had a voice. The dragonfly had a voice. The pine tree and dandelion each had a voice. Everything had a voice and spoke on how to keep us in harmony.

It was a new time and a new age. Once again, we were in the true happiness that we have all been longing for.

Diane: Wow, what an amazing dream.

Barry: It was unbelieveable.

Diane: Thank you, Barry, for sharing your wisdom with us.

Barry Kapp can be reached by mail at Wisdom of the Earth, 2680 N. Page Springs Road, Corneville, AZ 86325, and by email at BarryEssence@acninc.net.

Barry's products soon will be carried in this magazine's upcoming new Ma'atShop — so be sure to check back in September for a listing of essential oils from Wisdom of the Earth.