Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, awareness, consciousness, deep ecology, listening, meditation, metaphysics, methods, nature, nature photography, perception, practices, silence, spirituality, teaching, techniques, tree consciousness, Tree spirit on April 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Downloading
The message
of the great trees
is communicated from within
and by means of
their great silence.
If you have a wish
To communicate with
The spirits of trees
Then go with a willing
Quietness.
Take time
Just to be
In the presence
And receive packets of information
For later unravelling and
Investigation.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, birch, consciousness, deep ecology, druid, Goddess, healing, meditation, metaphysics, nature, photography, poetry, silver birch, spirit, spirituality, teaching, Tree Spirit Healing, trees, visualisation on April 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Birch Breath
“Bone white
birth reveals
all in beauty.”
The birch is amongst the most graceful of trees. Its white bark and long elegant boughs, often with down-swept branches, make it easy to see from a distance wherever it might be growing. Birch is a pioneer tree inhabiting the poor, rocky soils of heath land and lower mountainside. Living on the edges of the inhabited world of man it is easy to associate the tree with the spirits of the wild, particularly female lunar and fertility deities. In keeping with its character as a liminal dweller on thresholds the birch carries associations that appear contradictory but elucidate its significant role and symbolism.
The ghostly white bark represents both light and life- the power of life to conquer and regenerate, to give birth and flourish – and also of the cold, lifeless bones of the dead, the dwellers of the Otherworld and the ancestors. In the Scottish Highlands the birch is sometimes seen as a benevolent female spirit, a dangerous, devouring witch or a home for the spirits of dead girls. This symbolism may well reflect an ancient association with the Great Goddess, whose aspects included the nurturing fertile Mother at the same time as the ravening destructive force of War and Destruction. She is the Mother who goes to all lengths to protect her offspring from harm.
The name ‘birch’ derives from the same Indo-European root words as ‘light’, ‘shining’, ‘bright’. But birch also shows that all beauty is balance, for the white purity of the bark splits to reveal black underneath. There is no birth without death, no light without darkness, no beginning that is not also an ending. We cannot rest our eyes on true beauty until we accept the whole interaction of life with death, until we stop favouring, stop judging, stop comparing. The oldest traditions of the Great Mother are uncompromising in their clarity. All aspects of human experience, good and bad, are manifest in Her forms and faces. There is no possibility of compromise with human frailties or wishful thinking if we want to attain a true state of clear, birch-like awareness.
Breath:
Breathing in through the solar plexus.
Breathing out, imagining the breath swirling around the inner walls of the body(as liquid swirls around a vessel).
Tea: All parts are useful, including the rising sap in early spring which can be tapped to make an excellent wine. The bark is diuretic and laxative. The leaves are high in potassium so taken together with the bark can prevent the sodium-potassium imbalance that can occur when taking other diuretics. Both the leaves and the sap are anti-inflammatory and are useful for arthritic conditions and skin irritations like psoriasis. The buds can be used in cases of cystitis (the alkalising effects of potassium helpful here as well).
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bardic traditions, british celts, celtic tradition, dawn redwood, deep ecology, five senses, metaphysics, nature photography, opening doors, philosophy, shamanism, spirituality, sutras, teachings, Tree spirit, Tree Spirit Healing, trees, triads, Wales on April 14, 2013| Leave a Comment »
THREE QUESTIONS: THREE TRIADS
What is tree spirit healing?
A reminder of wholeness.
A reminder of belonging.
A movement towards balance.
What are the tools of tree spirit healing?
The five senses, the quiet mind,
The open heart of natural stillness.
What are the methods of tree spirit healing?
Walking towards opening doors,
Looking through other windows,
Paying attention.
(Triads are traditional mnenomic method of the British Celts (Welsh). Similar to Hindu and Buddhist sutras, they act as reminders to teachings and evoke deep unconscious responses. They can be obvious, or gnomic and obscure. Triads often come in the form of question and response.)
***
(dawn redwood trunk)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, contemplation, deep ecology, dimensions, meditation, nature, openness, perception, reality, spirituality, technique, Tree Spirit Healing, tree spirits, trees, understanding on April 4, 2013| 1 Comment »
Size isn’t everything.
How big is a tree spirit?
Rather like a physicist looking at an elementary particle, time and space, the means we have to measure ‘things’ cannot be used.
Time and space are intimately connected to physicality. Indeed, time is only the relationship of different things in space.
As the spirit reality is outside of our experience of time and space, our measuring devices become unreliable.
Experiencing the energies of tree spirits can be a little like carefully examining an object but not knowing whether we are looking through a telescope at something very large or looking through a microscope at something very small.
Our attitudes to what we experience may well vary depending on what assumptions we make.
So qualities of size, questions of appearance, questions of relationship to others – of individuality, and so on – all ways of identifying things that we are familiar with using, become equivocal and changeable.
It will depend upon our state of awareness and our understanding of what we perceive.
It is not a matter of belief, though belief may affect our interpretation.
It is a matter of open contemplation.
Of floating upon our experiences, our sense impressions, our thoughts, without struggling to fit them into pre-existent boxes. Relax and float.
As soon as intellectual or emotional tensions creep in, like floating on the sea, we will sink beneath the surface unless we relax completely, remaining buoyed up by the silent consciousness and shared (understood) sentience of human and universe, you and tree, here and there, big and small.
Tree Spirit Healing 