WITHIN SILENCE
There is a manifestation of Lord Shiva, known as Dakshinamurti. He is represented s a radiant youth, sitting silently on the ground with long, flowing hair. His teaching is given in silence, within which all knowledge and all creation exists. Words are simply a commentary on the nature of this Eternal Silence. Dakshinamurti is the mountain, and he is the tree. The tree is the centre of Silence. All Tree Spirit Healing is a set of creative techniques to attain this central Silence, or Harmonic Balance. All actions, a means to attain stillness. All words, a means to settle into presence. A few years back I created an image attempting to recreate the energy of Dakshinamurti, combining it with the concept of the Seated Horned God – on of the earliest prototypes of Rudra, (the red one), who later took form as Shiva as the Hindu pantheon evolved. This image -a human crowned with a stag’s antlers – is found in the Celtic lands, and seems like Rudra and Shiva to be associated with Pushapati, Lord of Wild Animals, and therefore with Lord of the Wild Forest, home of the deepest of sentient silences……
1
Moving without moving (anywhere).
Seeing without seeing (labelling, storytelling).
Hearing without hearing (distinguishing).
Tasting without tasting (difference).
Feeling without flinching.
Breathing without movement of air.
Thinking without thought.
Living without limits.
Being without space and time.
2
Silence is Consciousness.
What we get from the presence of trees is stillness and silence. Out of habit we move and make noise. If we do not like something we run away from it. If we like something we run towards it. So silence and stillness can feel like a lack, like a nothing. We feel worthy when we are doing something. We feel helpless when we do nothing. When we get absorbed into the ‘doing nothing’ of a tree’s energy we soon find out that within the “nothing happening” something is going on. There is a bright interweaving of silence, an awareness, consciousness. This consciousness is not doing anything. It is consciousness by itself. Finding silence is finding consciousness (rather than the manifest activity and noise and movement that grows out of silence/consciousness). Sound and silence – one is not the opposite of the other. One is the expression of the other. Movement and stillness – one is not antagonistic to the other. One is found within the other. Being a tree and not being a tree: both are based in the same silence of consciousness.
3
Dancing Around.
Dancing around the tree
How do we find the real tree?
By forgetting we are human
By forgetting the tree is a tree
By forgetting to make differences.
By dancing the dance of the tree
The tree disappears
The human disappears
The dance disappears.
Silence looks on.
Tree Spirit Healing 