Tree of Life

On a warm night in January of 2009, while taking a very necessary year-long hiatus from independent adult life, I sat down by a tree in my parents' backyard and wept bitterly about my own feelings of alienation from myself.  Sometime during that powerful release of grief and fear and shame and longing, I began to press my whole body and face into that old, familiar tree in their yard.  I suppose I must have called out to the spirit in that tree in some way that evoked its presence, because very soon I began to feel a visceral kind of sweetness reaching out to me from deep within the tree.  I let my exhausted body and mind yield into that small miracle of connection to nature, and from a place of gentle surrender, I began to feel as if that generous spirit in the tree was also within me.  My mind was suddenly able to see how I had been trying to live my life out on the furthest, most outward-facing branch of my experience, and that this was in fact the cause of my suffering.  I realized then that by choosing to live out on this fragile limb, I had become completely identified with the weather patterns - or vicissitudes - of my immediate subjective experience. 

From a sense of deep kinship with this tree, however, I began to feel curious about my own sturdier branches, trunk, and roots -- my deepest, most essential self.  I believe that this connection with the tree afforded me both the courage and the grace to discover how I might symbolically turn around from my outward-facing position on that limb where I had been living, and look deeply into my own origins instead.  I reference the need for courage because I remember exactly how terrified I was to look that deeply into myself; I was almost paralyzed with fear about what I might find there!  I also understand that grace played a part in this experience, precisely because I did not know how to bring my own conscious awareness into what had remained so willfully unconscious until then.  

But I learned how to do it that night!  And with my back pressed into the trunk of that ordinary tree, I swallowed hard, and surrendered my ego's firmly held position on that far-reaching limb, in order to actually see my-Self (consciously) for the very first time.  To my utter amazement, I saw something so neutral, timeless, cohesive, eternal, spacious, and incorruptible that I began to laugh out loud!  I could not believe that I had been so afraid of this profoundly empty, receptive, flowing, spacious, awareness.

I wrote a poem of sorts that night, which I later understood to be a kind of reflective love letter to my most Essential Self.  And the poem goes like this:

Lover.

Filled with wonder.

Playmate of the Universe.

More curious than afraid - a steadfast friend to Mystery.

Soft.

Tender.

So soft and tender.

Spacious enough to include all beings.

Different than trustworthy: Entrusted.

The way a river has a course, yet is absolutely Free.

I've kept those words and that embodied understanding with me ever since -- and my experience of mySelf has never been the same.  The profound feeling of alienation ended in an instant.  I also understood in an instant that I would continue living a life full of plenty of mistakes.  The lasting transformation for me, however, has been that I've never doubted for a single moment since this one that I could find my way Home to this place within myself whenever I notice that I've lost my way.  

A few days ago, I painted a picture of a naked, yet luminous tree at a friend's arts-y birthday party (see image below).  I had never painted anything before, and was amazed that this image was willing to manifest itself through me that night.  It felt like another gift from that same spirit I first connected with inside that old tree.  The next day, I showed a picture of this painting to one of my colleagues at work.  He took one look at it and said, "It sort of looks like you - I mean, it has a feeling to it that reminds me of how I experience you".

I don't know this man very well, but he gave me a tremendous gift inside of that simple statement. It made me feel like my Essential Self was indeed infusing my outer branches with it's innermost Truth more and more consistently.  I went home that evening after work and looked for the poem I had written back in 2009.  To my astonishment, I discovered that I made this tree painting exactly 4 years TO THE DAY that I had this experience I've described above.

Looking at this painting now, I feel grateful for my own human journey - and simultaneously less and less afraid of being down here on the earth; where pain and beauty seem to always exist in the same place at the same time, and nothing worth having ever comes easy.

May the grace and courage that was given to me four years ago continue to assist in the liberation of all sentient beings.  Namaste.