Enlightening Nonsense

When I got to my tree friend, we shared our usual salutation and then I rested my back against him and set my gaze high and unfocused so that I could encompass all into view. I saw the sky and the branches and the light slurry of snow drifting down through them and it felt like I was in one of those things you shake up and it snows. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion and this is how he shared his next lesson with me.

Most of us are constantly running from one place to the next. “I’m picking up my daughter from school,” “I’m going downtown,” “I’m dropping off my rent check.” But while responsibility reigns and duty dictates, we seem to forget that on the way to picking up our daughters, or riding the subway downtown, or walking to the landlord, there is a whole slew of ripe sights and sounds and experiences ready for the picking and savoring.

Looking up, I saw single snowflakes, too light for gravity to take hold of them, drifting on invisible currents toward the ground. The whole world around me stopped and all that was moving were these little white angels falling Earthbound. No worries, no “To Do” list, no thoughts of where I’m going in body or in life entered the scene, for these distracting thoughts are too fast to be felt when you slow yourself down to be fully present for whatever little angels presents their wings to you.

As I left my tree friend, I brought my mind back into play like a net to help me catch this butterfly experience to later translate into words that can still fly, knowing that true experience is like snowflakes that will disappear when the heat of our thinking minds tries to hold onto it. I witnessed my legs moving half the speed that they usually carry my body and everything around me continuing to be slowed down.

While the whirlwind of the world will never stop its tumultuous twirl and the tornado of the times will not disappear by us fighting to hold our legs in place, when we step into its eye, we also enter the “I” of our own center’s silence.

Slowing down can mean physically, to move our bodies through space at a pace that doesn’t feel like we are trying to catch up to a time that is always running one step ahead of us. Just by breathing deeper and slower, the fast things around us still go at burning speeds but we remain unsinged by their fire. It is time to throw away our “To Do” lists and stop rushing to do…and slow down and start to be.

It was 19° F and the “F” stood for “Friggin’ cold!” I had screwed Abandon earlier with a short walk and when I suggested that she just pinch a loaf in the house tonight, she said, “As much as a pile of crap on your floor would go unnoticed in this dump—get your lazy ass up and take me to the park!” While I wear the pants in this relationship, in part because I think people who dress their dogs up in little outfits are idiots who never grew out of playing with Barbie and Ken dolls, I knew she was right—that a pile of crap would go unnoticed—and so I took her out.

The wind was blowing and my nipples had gotten past the point of erect and to the point of risking shattering with any sudden movement. As I approached my tree friend I said, “Seriously, just a few breaths and I’m outta here!” He just smiled at me and in a silence I was too cold to hear said, “That’s all I need.”

After sharing breaths, he guided me to lean my back against him. I said, “Seriously, just for a second. I’m freezing my nuts off here!” I turned around and leaned against him. And suddenly the cold disappeared, like that feeling you get when you find a warm patch in the ocean and think, “This is so delightful!” until you realize that you just swam into a pool of piss from some bastard swimming near you. I could hear and see the wind blowing the branches around me but I somehow seemed insulated from the cold in my tree friend’s warm embrace. At that point, there was no man leaning against a tree or tree supporting a man; our physical forms could no longer be delineated.

He showed me how when you press yourself close to another, not physically but by seeking understanding and union, all the coldness that was between you before will disappear in an instant, for there is no more “between you,” no separation, only One Being. He then told me to be like a squirrel and take my cold nuts home.

“Meeting is the melting of boundaries, blurring of the divisions, overlapping, overflowing.”

—Osho from Meetings With Remarkable People (p. 110)

It was Friday night at about 11:30 and a beautiful full moon was out. It was a bit chilly and while I always enjoy my night walk with Abandon through Central Park, I was looking forward to getting home and into my warm house, whose electricity is now powered 100% by wind energy, which I was told would only add about $7 a month to my bill when I switched but seems to have had added an additional $30 or so each bill, which has resulted in me thinking, “Fuck the polar bears!”

Since it was pretty cold, I thought I would cut short my visit with my tree friend. I shared a few breaths and was going to go but was called to lean my back against him like I usually do when it is more temperate and just like the call to urinate or defecate, I couldn’t resist the call. Actually, I have resisted the call to urinate, like the time when the Six Million Dollar Man 2-hour Bigfoot episode was on and I had to take a piss but held it in for the duration, but you get my point. Uh, just in case you didn’t get my point, it was not that I can “hold my water, Cybil!” but that when something calls deeply, it is impossible to resist—unless a classic Bigfoot show is on, of course.

Looking up through my tree friend’s branches, I saw the full moon blazing away. I was suddenly drawn into the moon, the same way I was drawn into the guitar during one of the The Allman Brothers Band’s long jams when I went to see them at the Beacon Theater after I took a puff of the marijuana cig that was passed down my aisle. I remember thinking, “Maybe music and drugs are not such a bad thing,” soon followed by, “I love you, man!” eventually followed by, “I could really use some chips about now.”

As my vision locked on the bright full moon, the branches that were moving in the wind faded into a background blur of subtle movement. And my tree friend’s next lesson was implanted all at once, without the need for time or space.

He showed me that when one focuses on the light, all the wild movements that tend to occupy one’s attention essentially disappears. If we focus on the light inside of us, meaning our love and our passion, the little frustrations in life takes a back seat, for our heart’s joy is as entrancing and mesmerizing as the full moon. If we focus on the light in another, meaning their inner beauty and their child-like innocence beyond their idiocy, all the silly nuances that tend to frustrate us pales in brightness. He shared with me that it is not that the inner light inside of us or anyone else fades, but only that our focus shifts from Truth to distraction.

The lesson was done; my tree friend didn’t need to expand on what he had shown me so simply and clearly—and I was glad, as it was a little too cold to be listening to a long dissertation. As I walked away I thought about all the “branches” I had focused on and how many “full moons” I had been blinded to instead of blinded by.

I went for my nightly walk with Abandon in Central Park. When I saw my tree friend, I ran up to him and gave him a hug, as life’s challenges were weighing on me and I really needed if not to be held then to hold another. I had seemed to have lost my smile; I was thinking of checking Grand Central Station’s Lost & Found, as this was where I had recently lost my wallet and my inline skates [http://rebelyogi.com/thieves-amongst-us.html].

I released my arms from around his powerful trunk and stood with my back against my friend as I looked up through his wispy branches, now bare from winter, to the sky above. And then he spoke by showing me, instead of by preaching to me like humans are prone to.

When most people preach, there is a level of condescension always underlying their words. “I know better than you!” “You’re a sinner!” “I can’t wait until this sermon is over so that I can get high and sleep with someone who I am not married to, preferably under the age of twelve.” When trees show, their teaching contains nothing but love.

His branches moved with the wind, matching the power that was applied to them like a tai chi master, so that they would move but not break. Looking through his latticework of branches I could see his thick trunk, solid, grounded and steady. In my minds eye he showed me his roots, which had grown deep and spread out subterrainally just like his branches above the ground; nothing short of an earthquake could uproot him.

Life is the wind, filled with challenges and difficulties, and it will blow us around. Only a domesticated tree inside a house will be able to avoid the gusts. But it will also never know the full experience of treehood, of feeling sunshine warming its leaves, and rain soaking its soil, and animals and people climbing and sitting against it.

It is up to us to build a strong foundation on love and consciousness and what’s important to us, so that we can allow our branches to “go with the flow” and keep ourselves ever-grounded in Who We Are.

Last night, Duck and I had a strong disconnect in the dysfunction of the “small box” of Instant Messaging, one of the limited forms of dyscommunication that we currently use to traverse the 3,600 miles between us. Perhaps it brought clarity to both of us about challenges we face and whether they are insurmountable or not. I hope we can both remain grounded and that the only uprooting is of the weeds that keep us from growing to our full height, whether together or apart.