Have you ever wondered how a whole community of trees, a forest have a healthy, self sufficient sustaining eco-system and thrive so beautifully? Each tree is grounded deeply within itself…still…being…it does not question its existence, it does not try to control its path, try and change, resist its natural existence it surrenders to life…trusts…and because of that…it gives life. It communicates its knowledge…its wisdom to other trees…through its roots…
A tree is a tree and knows it is a tree. A tree knowing what it is, does not try to be something other than that which it is, it honors who it is…trees do not try to be a bird or a tiger…to fly or swim, they are who they are in acceptance and proud of it. That makes them a precious gift. It is not a limitation to them but liberation in this knowing…a tree is who they are and its beautiful…they are a tree…fully acknowledging it…fully honoring themselves…instead of struggling their whole life’s existence trying to be a bird…or something other than themselves…resulting neither being a bird…nor a tree…always existing outside of their bark…outside of their body…outside of their fullness…they exist and live as they are designed to be…
Can you imagine if they didn’t? Can you imagine the chaos that would bring to the environment and surrounding trees? To the collective forest if they tried to grow wings…its roots would disturb other roots…the land…the ground…there could be no forest. How could they emit oxygen if they refused to be a tree? Perhaps distorted oxygen.
Trees are complete…whole…they are a gift just as you are born a gift.
Trees teach us to exist within our own body, to be our body, to accept our limitations as not limitations but to embrace fully our gifts and share that with the world…to love ourselves completely…not thinking about being something other than our nature…if only this or that…but loving and embracing all and every part of ourselves…resulting in all other trees to be able to do the same…they are being that example for us…
The answer? The answer is not in numbers but in one number….and that is you. Take the the tree’s example so that you may too have a community of healthy individual trees…a healthy collective forest/community.
Trees found on their own here and there outside of forests also equally contribute oxygen to the world…no matter where they are they contribute to the beauty of the world…trees found in places where we have forgotten…there to remind us…to wake us up to our own individual calling, power and contribution. They are equally important…out of place perhaps yet vital…
What glorious beauty found within a forest…your every breath and heartbeat can be taken away…breathtaking…that collective whole…the only existing collective whole…
– 07/02/19
(“Dod yn ôl at fy nghoed,” a Welsh phrase which means, “to return to a balanced state of mind,” but literally means “to return to my trees”).