Tiny worms are teaching me a big lesson

Tiny worms are teaching me a big lesson.

Story of Honey Mushroom

About a month back, I was hiking in the Ramapo mountains when I came across a European couple harvesting Honey mushrooms.

I have always been interested in mushrooms.

Seeing my interest, they offered them to me also.

I thought it would be interesting to take it home, cook it, and eat it, more as a wild experience rather than actually enjoying it, as I wouldn’t say I actually like mushrooms.

So, I brought a small bunch of Honey Mushrooms home, returning the rest to them.

I was excited to cook it and experience my primal instinct of eating wild food.

While washing the mushrooms, I noticed a small white worm wiggling on one of them.

I didn’t think much about it, and I just washed the mushrooms thoroughly ( 5-6 times ), believing they must be good to eat now.

Then I googled and found out some recipes.

One of the recipes advised boiling the mushrooms in salt water, so I started doing that.

And that’s where the problems started.

Suddenly, I started seeing hundreds of white worms floating helplessly on the surface of boiling water.

They must have been hiding in the gills of the mushrooms.

I immediately shut off the stove and put the whole thing in my compost pile.

I felt so bad about hurting the worms, which were doing only a simple thing: feeding on the mushrooms as a part of their life cycle.

That day with a great remorse, I decided I would never harvest any wild mushrooms, ever.

Wild mushrooms are creations of nature, shared equally and harmoniously by so many animals, insects, slugs, etc.

Leaving them where they are created by the nature, is synchronizing with the harmony of nature.

Today, I found another bunch of Honey Mushrooms and that brought back painful memories of my last encounter with them.

I looked at them closely.

I saw signs of many life forms feeding on them.

Watching this drama of life unfolding, filled me with great joy and gratitude for nature, like a mother orchestrating feeding her children.

This was non-violence in real life, happening in front of me, as a proof.

Non-violence when practiced as a dogma, becomes a burden.

When it arises spontaneously in your real life moments, it becomes a gift descending directly from the heavens and leaving you with the fragrance of the almighty consciousness.

Respecting the life forms, brings a joy which is priceless