Making high quality bio fertilizer from our poo is amazing, but really: the topic goes much deeper than that.
We have seen how damaging the "normal" sewage treatment model is, and how disconnected from nature we have become as a result.
Why has it become so normal to poison our environment with our poo, rather than turning our "waste" into something beneficial? Why is it so taboo to talk earnestly about pooping in Western societies? How is it that we tolerate the abysmal state of affairs when it comes to how our part in the cosmic cycle of life is misdirected, abused and erased?
We don't see ourselves as part of nature anymore. The way most humans handle their refuse is a symbol for our state of mind.
We have lost sight of our relationship to our environment and much like death, pooping is a topic that has been swept under the rug rather carefully. And persistently.
Rewards immeasurable!
Recycling our toilet contents brings great rewards with it, many of which are not merely material. Sure we get a steady supply of healthy, high quality fertilizer we don't have to buy and we stop participating in the behemoth that is the sewage treatment system infrastructure of modern societies...
We can also be sure that the soil in our garden is perfect: not laced with poisons and chemicals, but rather loaded up with good intentions and attention. We will always know where our food comes from because we have been with it through its whole cycle...
But spiritually speaking, there is something else. Living this lifestyle where everything I eat will end up right here where I am raises my own awareness over time.
It dawns on me that I - as an individual with my own body on this cosmic stage we call life on Earth - can help produce and transform the building blocks for life itself.
I am connected to the bigger picture by interacting with my environment. I can choose to taint my outer world or I can help it reach its full potential. I can make a choice to actively take part in an immense health & abundance spiral of fertility, connectedness and prosperity that will help nature become... garden Eden really.
Composting what comes out of us lets us take part in eternity on the material plane, as everything we eat we already know will end up in our garden, further enriching what we eat in the future.
The garden's richness will attract and house many other beings we don't think about too often. By repairing and maintaining the natural nutrient cycle of human beings we start creating ecosystems almost automatically. As gardeners we can choose to hold the reigns while nature is giving us feedback as to what works and what doesn't. So that she can serve life even better. And better. And better.
If we add to this the notion of decentralization... of considering that we can always compost what we ate, regardless of institutions, power outages or inflation... we become free agents of nature. We become the very opposite of slavery enablers to a fictional system of debt and false idols.
We will harvest surpluses. We can choose to spread that out among our friends and neighbors. And we can show other human beings how they have been had. Everybody wants good food in their lives, and everybody pays the bills for their groceries. Everybody wants to be healthy and everybody goes to the toilet every single day. It's the perfect setup to take the leap to true freedom!
There is a reason politics and media hype up certain topics and narratives and fight others. And that is to be able to completely ignore and silence the topics that seem most important once you look under the hood.
As long as human beings have to use toilets, this topic will remain relevant. In nature, things eat other things. It's how life is set up on Earth for whatever reason.
Why would we want to voluntarily give up that inherent right of immediate participation? Because we have not thought it through... and don't understand the basis of our own physical existence. We are currently curiously absent from all these depictions of the nutrient cycle...
Humanure champions for thousands of years
The humanure handbook mentions the story of the "Healthy Hunzas", an old tribe in Northern India (today Pakistan).
Those people have practiced humanure composting for thousands of years. And guess what - they are among the most long-living, physically fit and happy peoples on Earth. As stated in the book (page 51):
One man who studied them extensively, Sir Albert Howard, stated, "When the health and physique of the various northern Indian races were studied in detail the best were those of the Hunzas, a hardy, agile, and vigorous people, living in one of the high mountain valles of the Gilgit Agency... There is little or no difference between the kinds of food eaten by these hillmen and by the rest of Northern India. There is, however, a great difference in the way these foods are grown... [T]he very greatest care is taken to return to the soil all human, animal and vegetable [refuse] after being first composted together. Land is limited: upon the way it is looked after, life depends."
Jenkins continues (on page 151):
Their extraordinary health has been attributed to the quality of their overall lifestyle, including the quality of the natural food they eat and the soil it's grown on. Few people, however, realize that the Hunzas also compost their humanure and use it to grow their food. They're said to have virtually no disease, no cancer, no heart or intestinal trouble, and they regularly live to be over a hundred years old while "singing, dancing and making love all the way to the grave".
Wow. Now that's a vision I can get behind.
Toilet humour and sh*tty insults
Our twisted relationship to human refuse is plainly visible in our language today. "Fecal language" is mainly used a a form of insult in the west, with unanimously negative associations. Fecal jokes also show that we have hangups when it comes to our own poo, we associate it with the worst things. It is taboo'ized.
The other large part in this plays "fecophobia" as Joe Jenkins describes it.
There is an almost superstitious resentment of our own poo, to the point that some people talk about it as if it were nuclear waste or death itself.
As I said in this series: It is a good idea to not come in contact with our poo when it is poo. There is a reason we get rid of it daily!
But, after composting it is no longer poo, and it would be disingenuous to keep calling it poo. It has become fertile soil again, humus! But to some people that simply doesn't seem to matter, they insist that it's still somehow questionable or dangerous. No matter how many studies show complete and utter pathogen death with proper composting... the separation of us and nature in our minds continues. We are unfree as a result. We continue to rely on the hazardous systems for "sewage treatment".
And we continue to believe that certain fictional hazards threaten us by default, while the actual threats against our life, happiness and health that go on every single day continue to go unnoticed. Like our trained toilet habits as society for instance.
Nature gets no feedback
Spiritually speaking, there have been other interesting ideas as well. Some people claim that it is generally a good idea to mimic ecosystems in our lives, as natural systems tend to stabilize by themselves. When there is a deficiency somewhere nature will close the gap and make up for it. Where there is poison and pollution nature will eventually clean it up. The natural homeostasis of Earth kicks in eventually and takes care of the mess.
And here is the issue: We eat foods grown in the Earth (however chemically fertilized) but we never give them back to nature after our processing them!
The "broken nutrient cycle" may have serious repercussions for our survival and well-being on Earth that we as materialist culture cannot yet comprehend: Repercussions that simply do not exist in a materialist worldview. As far as the mainstream is concerned it is all about the nutrients in the foods, about the "matter". But is it really? Water may always be H2O but there is an incredible difference between tap water H2O and a fresh gulp from a mountain spring.
This is about energetic quality, not about physical building blocks.
To me it's completely feasible to consider then that a garden - enriched with our own composted humanure - will be better able to provide for us the things our bodies and minds need the most. Because nature is an intelligent system and she adapts.
I see the sheep fertilizing the meadows where our van is parked and their poo slowly turns into Earth again, making the grass grow that they themselves eat every day.
It's a symbiotic relationship of different organisms - it's an ecosystem. A humble cycle. And everything thrives! The cheese of these sheep tastes unbelievably good and there is a sense of balance and health in the air everywhere I look around.
Compare that to a broken nutrient cycle monoculture farming patch on the other side of the river and the difference in approach becomes obvious to any child that is old enough to formulate a question... It's only us indoctrinated adults, children of our broken era, who ignore this observation and flee back into habits and our adopted "mind program".
As magic mushrooms grow on the decomposed dung of cattle, horses and goats I feel composting and using our own refuse can give nature back what the matrix system took from her: Natural feedback about how well we are and what is up with us. Maybe she can offer support if only her plants knew what they could do to help us!
It is speculation on my part but I can easily imagine that your garden would start to shift nutrient balances in food crops in order to help us make up for our deficiencies. Like any ecosystem where a new situation is introduced, it will adapt, however long it takes.
We then see how living a more connected life by participating in the natural cycle can radically shift our sense of purpose and connectedness to all that is. Over time it will dawn on us subconsciously that this approach may be valuable in life in general: Instead of forcing things to work out, we instead adapt and find a better solution for the problems we face, that things may sort themselves out more easily.
At the beginning I thought this was about saving water costs, now I feel like a completely different being. Elevated in understanding.
And still... nature calls!
Every day ;=)
This concludes the series on humanure composting.
If you want want to catch up on the topic, check out the other parts of the series:
Thanks for stopping by <3