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The next morning about two hours before dawn, Hirah suggests you go for a
walk in the woods by yourself. He says there is a tree spirit with whom
you have an affinity who has been calling to you all night. You ask how
on earth do you ever learn to see or to talk with a tree? Hirah replies,
Enter a dream with your mind and let your feelings flow free. There is
wisdom in these woods beyond all human understanding. Let its peace touch
you.
You think it all very odd but you walk around and finally enter a
clearing. A Cottomwood tree to the SE catches your attention. It
seems to shine with its own inner light. You go over to it walking as if
within a trance and guided by a muse whose presence you have just now
sensed.
Later Hirah asks you to explain in your own words what happened next.
This is your report:
I approached the Cottonwood tree and raising my hand to
feel her energy, asked for permission to connect to her. I
felt a very rich, vibrant energy returning to me in response
as she opened her aura to me.
Retaining the connection, I extended my mind into the
world around the tree. The sky above. It is so beautiful
tonight. From the songs the stars are singing, starlight
falls about me like thick curtains of rain.
I extend my mind also downward into the ground and feel
the lay of the land, its richness, moistness, its
compilation of organic material--the soil, rich in the
memory of fallen branches, leaves turned to dirt, streams
flowing, fields bare and waiting beneath the snow.
And deeper beneath the topsoil, the pathways of ancient
rivers, large rocks, the presence of forgotten ice ages,
mountains come and gone.
I focus again on the tree, touching her is like
touching a living, breathing being.
I travel down into the ground again and pause among the
tree's roots: and feel how they surge and uncoil in strong
growth during springtime. Here, there is so much life in the
soil between the roots I feel like dancing a dervish: while
the roots dig deep and are welded to the earth, above, the
stars spin circles in the sky.
And there it is again, I have heard this song before:
the roots of this tree hear the silence deep in the
earth--the near groaning and reverberating, the mantra the
earth sings to the stars and planets. Listen. Though
Tibetans chanting in saffron robes high in the Himalayan
mountains faintly echo this sound, it comes from far deeper
than the roots of mountains or the voices of men.
At the surface, the land is quiet and still; yet I
sense too, there, deep in the earth is also unmistakably
the fire and the will which moves continents, and in
currents and tides, this fire mvoes ceaselessly in
mysterious cauldrons.
I ascend now into the branches and linger there in the
cold stillness, the silvery touch of the moon and the
occasional sway of the wind. Like the infant bird in a
nest, I lie on the branch, moving with the wind, and feel
myself embraced by both the earth and the sky.
I feel too in the trunk, strength and stability.
As is my custom, I lift my hands up, and between open
palms, gather together the life force, the energy of earth
and sky, light and darkness, and the elements into one
shimmering ball of energy, and I shrink it down into the
size of a grapefruit.
I gently guide this energy and it floats into the trunk
of the tree as a gift; and immediately, the tree awakens.
A tall, thin women appears in front of me: she is fragile
Šand gentle. She is both distant and near. She is the light
which casts shadows in a dream. She is the cry of geese
over water and beneath clouds lite by the ascending moon.
Her eyes touch me from an inner space as silent as winter
and the quiet longing of the Earth.
I join with her and we become one, and now I look out
at the world through her eyes. Although a part of my brain
remains familiar and can still think human thoughts: I see
with the eyes of the tree spirit.
My body is as still as a rock, and I feel the earth
sleeping beneath the cover of the snow. I have entered into
a place between thoughts, not a silence, but a satisfaction
and contentment which is mor ethan human will can know. I
feel her smile upon my lips and the fire burning within her
eyes.
She then speaks to me in my mind. Her words, somehow
bearing sound and weight, say, Come with me further, to the
the Center. And with her, without hesitation, I go. This
place, it is the heart of the year, of the cycle of time.
And I see the seasons are a necklace she wears.
And too, I feel the passion rise within her body, the
warmth in her hands, the blush in her cheeks. This...it is
the passion of Life joined with perfect stillness--a
knowledge that is one with the flow of time.
And now her voice sings to me:
Oh you, Sun above me,
You who awoke me when I was a seed
Hidden in the womb of darkness,
And you Mother,
Out of whom is woven my body and my soul,
With the Seasons are my seeds and leaves born,
And with the Seasons do they give birth and die,
And yet ever do I grow closer to You (the Earth and the Sky)
And turning again to me she says (with the vision of
passing seasons, a vice adorning her words) Receive my gift,
you whose tongue gives voice with human breath to my song:
know and be a part of this: in my heart, the heaven and the
earth are joined, and round about me play their offspring
and children, the Seasons.
I stay here for a time, sheltered in her heart and in
her love, a traveler carried by and drifting on an ancient
river of the soul.
And from this space I now depart.
As we separate one from the other, I hold her hand and
touch her cheek. And in each other's eyes, a mirror
reflecting ourselves. We separate without sorrow or loss.
As I feel again my human blood flowing within my body
and not the sap of the tree, her presence slowly fading.
And yet something clearly still lingers within me--her
wintery, still contentment, the sheltering protection of her
heart, and her passion for the Mystery.
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