When the Image Doesn’t Match the Medicine

I once read a story about someone who searched the world for the best healer.
They traveled deep into the mountains, following whispers of a man known for profound healing abilities.
The kind of healer spoken about in quiet reverence.

When they finally found him, they were confused.
Standing before them was a tiny man in flip-flops, cut-off jean shorts, no shirt, belly hanging out…
smoking a cigarette.

No robes.
No performance.
No curated holiness.
Just a human being.

They weren’t impressed.
Their mind had already decided what “healer” should look like.
And in that moment, judgment tried to protect them from disappointment.

Then the Session Changed Everything

They stayed.
And what happened next dismantled every assumption they were carrying.

The healing was profound precise, present, and transformative.
Not because the healer looked enlightened…
but because he was.

Afterward, still trying to reconcile what they had judged with what they had experienced, they asked him:

“Why do you smoke?”

He looked at them and replied simply:

“Didn’t we come here for a human experience?”

The Illusion of “More Than Human”

It’s easy to imagine we are more than human.
To perform spiritual maturity.
To curate purity.
To build an identity around discipline and separation from anything “messy.”

But the deeper work isn’t about escaping humanity.
It’s about inhabiting it consciously.

Healing does not live in image.
It lives in integration.

We confuse aesthetics with alignment.
We assume the outside must reflect the inside.
But wisdom often looks like comfort in one’s own skin without needing to prove anything.

Relationship With the Habit

This story touches something I’ve been learning in my own life.
A few years ago, I stepped down from a pedestal and let certain “bad habits” back into my lifestyle.

I could create narratives that justified it like I was meeting my beloved where she was, I enjoyed being able to sit and chat with my parents without feeling shame and judgement as we shared a habitual experience,
or that I was simply curious.
And those may hold pieces of truth.

But the deeper truth was simpler:
I loved the connection it created.
It felt like home.

And when the dream cracked when the people I felt called to walk with weren’t currently here
I realized how much healing was inside that loss.

What the Elders Taught Me

The elders taught me something that has stayed with me:

When you smoke, the inhale is for you.
The exhale is for outside of you.

Meaning: the quality of our thoughts and feelings matters more than the action.
Not as an excuse rather as a mirror.
A way of seeing whether we are conscious, or just coping.

Harmony or Resistance?

Healing lives in the conscious choice and in integrating the formless into form.

The question isn’t only, “Do you do the thing?”
The question is:

• Is there harmony… or resistance?
• Am I choosing this, or am I being pulled?
• Is this medicine, memory, or attachment?
• Does my body feel aligned with the story my mind is telling?

The formless awareness, spirit, presence must be integrated into form.
Otherwise, it becomes fantasy.

Form has biology.
Form has chemistry.
Form has nervous system memory.
And the practice is learning how to be honest about all of it without shame and without performance.

The Real Moral

The moral of the story isn’t “smoking is okay.”
The moral is that judgment is easy and often wrong.

We can miss medicine because it doesn’t arrive in the packaging we expected.

We can reject a teacher because their humanity offends our ideals.
And we can build identities around being “better” instead of simply being present.

Healing isn’t found in looking perfect.
Healing is found in being honest.

The Breath Check

If the inhale is for you, and the exhale is for outside of you…
then maybe the deepest practice is this:

• What am I breathing in right now?
• What am I breathing out into the world?
• Is my presence creating harmony or reinforcing resistance?

We came here for a human experience.
The gift is learning to live it consciously.

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If this reflection speaks to your own relationship with habits, healing, judgment, or integration,
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