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Archive for December, 2012

Maintaining Balance

A tree does not choose its place of growth.
It can only survive and flourish by adjusting its form to harmonise with the prevailing conditions.
A tree that grows up, matures, flowers and bears fruit shows that it has succeeded in maintaining that balance for tens, hundreds, even thousands of years.
It is this ability to remain balanced and flexible,
to absorb and to let go,
to remain quiet and harmless,
that is transferred to us when we contact the energy of the tree and its spirit.

(from “Tree Essence, Spirit, Teacher” p.59)

Replacing chaos with silence
Replacing excuses with responsibility
Replacing ignorance with awareness.
These are the qualities that are encouraged when we absorb tree spirit healing.

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Yew Breath

Breathing in: as if a vortex shape is being imagined pulling deep into the earth – like the action of a diaphragm magnified.

Breathing out: the breath moves out in a widening circle into the world.

( Tree breathing is a technique to integrate and absorb the spirit energies of a tree. It can be used for contemplation, healing and meditation. Because of the combination of breath and body-based visualisation, tree breathing can be very helpful for those who find the concept of meditation, concentration, silence etc. difficult to put into practice. Get a feel for the practice for a few minutes, then relax, then do a few more minutes, then relax and notice the shift of awareness and consciousness. The world is full of deep pools. This is a safe way to get beyond paddling and diving down).

“Infrasound
stirring
healing poison”

The above is the tree sutra of the yew tree. Tree sutras are short, evocative, gnomic phrases and images that attempt to encapsulate in their feelings the way a species of tree interacts with us. They give clues to the energetic substructure of the interactions we experience with what we call ‘tree’. They can lead to elucidation. They can lead to ambiguity. They are signposts, not the road ( which is, as ever, your own). They are an amusement and an oracle. They can lead to the Deep Forest.

” Tree Sutras” is available as a pdf file from http://www.greenmanshop.co.uk
( look under ‘books’ on menu). ” Tree Sutras” contains 101 sutras, with the visual keys ( Tree Spirit Key) for each tree.

—–
Spell of Yew.

In your deep shade
Time’s whispers
Dull and fall.
Thought cinders:
Feathers of flame.

Centuries revolve,
A round vowel
In the poet-bard’s
Recitation.

The histories
In your deep heart’s remembrance.
Red, dark,
Hub of this land’s
Wheel.

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Well – Rooted.

The root – branch polarity.
Understanding the existence of both the still, hidden , dark roots
and the moving, visible, bright boughs.

The ability to contain apparent opposites (dark/light, over/under, earth/air),
within the same, still, strong awareness.

That which sustains us is often hidden.

The one eyed, one eared, one legged scientist
who fails to see with imagination.
The one eyed, one eared, one legged magician
who fails to discriminate information.

Poetry is the use of the two and two ears;
moving, balanced on two feet,
acknowledging both roots and branches.

Science – imagination.
Objectivity – subjectivity.

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“Skyline trees –
stitching together
heaven and earth.

The Great becomes Small,
The Small becomes Great.

The Oak tree. Its energy is to maintain the balance within physical reality. The maintenance and harmonisation of opposite forces, the tying together of light and dark, sky and earth, void and form, existence and non-existence. All this can be intimated from the consolidated, rigid tension within the large boughs of the oak tree. As if each oak tree represents a stitch that holds our very reality together in its potent form. Each tree is a vortex of energy. Simultaneously a white and a black hole, drawing into itself and its surroundings the tendency of things to separate and fly apart, to dissolve back into the formless matrix of potential existence.
Oak demonstrates the means by which the individual is able to manifest from out of the many possibilities of how reality might be constructed. Oak absorbs within itself all these possibilities and then reveals new patterns. It helps to define and clarify, allowing communication, the flow of energy, from the hidden sources of existence. Seemingly weaving together impossibly thin threads to create an unbreakable web that will be able to hold all perceptions fast.
Oak itself remains free of time, outside the flow of events, and can thus bring a sense of timelessness, a place of the deepest calm within which to consider possibilities of action and understanding.
Learning the way of oak is treading the labyrinth – always seeming to turn in different directions, but always heading towards the one central, invisible goal without fail.

(from “Tree: Essence, Spirit, Teacher” p.39)

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Original print by Simon Lilly of the Oak Spirit Key symbol using the colour sequence that is aligned to that tree.

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Another lovely green jewel from N. Filbert ( whose name, of course, is “sweet nut of wisdom”!)

All my Words are Silent

Here is page 3 of my blank-book daughter-gift “The Notebook” (click here for parts 1 and 2)

Notebook - Ida

                                     

Notebook 3

and the typewritten text:

3

In Which the Wood is Entered, Entering

As we grew we noticed things.  The more we interacted in the woods, the more we found in common.  Or perhaps the woods created them – our commons.  In any case, as we examined the woods we came to see ourselves, or began to think we did.  It appeared to us that very little passed us by without record.  Hewing through a heavy trunk we remembered an ancient drastic storm, here marked as darkened whorls, ripples in an inner ring, where many limbs were lost.  Currents of nourishment functioned over years and years, flowing from the core in hairline strands…

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This is a lovely bit of writing from a great blogger. This seemed the most appropriate place for it!

All my Words are Silent

Here is page two of the blank notebook from my daughter as it fills:

Notebook

and here it’s typeset form:

2

In Which is Entered the Rich Thicket of Woods

 

In the beginning was the wood.  It took us much time to discover its uses.  We ate its tough skin for roughage, we mashed its soft heart into pulp.  We chopped it to bits, we rearranged them.  We played games with it.  Sometimes it was all that kept us afloat.  Sometimes we structured them carefully and turned to them for shelter.  As we learned what woods could do, we began to comprehend their value.  At times we relied on them for everything necessary to survive – the fruit of a tree gave us sweet liquid and meaty flesh.  The fragility of the dead still warmed us as it disintegrated in the flames.  They grew to be almost sacred – the…

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