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.