Listening to Trees

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone." - Hermann Hesse
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Listening to Trees

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“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”

~ Hernann Hesse
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Re: Listening to Trees

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"When we go into a forest that has not been interfered with by man, our thinking mind will see only disorder and chaos all around us. It won’t even be able to differentiate between life (good) and death (bad) anymore since everywhere new life grows out of rotting and decaying matter. Only if we are still enough inside and the noise of thinking subsides can we become aware that there is a hidden harmony here, a sacredness, a higher order in which everything has its perfect place and could not be other than what it is and the way it is.

The mind is more comfortable in a landscaped park because it has been planned through thought; it has not grown organically. There is an order here that the mind can understand. In the forest, there is an incomprehensible order that to the mind looks like chaos. It is beyond the mental categories of good and bad. You cannot understand it through thought, but you can sense it when you let go of thought, become still and alert, and don’t try to understand or explain. Only then can you be aware of the sacredness of the forest. As soon as you sense that hidden harmony, that sacredness, you realize you are not separate from it, and when you realize that, you become a conscious participant in it. In this way, nature can help you become realigned with the wholeness of life."

- Eckhart Tolle, 'A New Earth' -
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A Forest Hymn

Post by Christine »

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The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them,---ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences,
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd, and under roofs,
That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,
Offer one hymn---thrice happy, if it find
Acceptance in His ear.
Father, thy hand
Hath reared these venerable columns, thou
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose
All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,
Budded, and shook their green leaves in the breeze,
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow,
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults,
These winding aisles, of human pomp and pride
Report not. No fantastic carvings show
The boast of our vain race to change the form
Of thy fair works. But thou art here---thou fill'st
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds
That run along the summit of these trees
In music; thou art in the cooler breath
That from the inmost darkness of the place
Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground,
The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee.
Here is continual worship;---Nature, here,
In the tranquility that thou dost love,
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around,
From perch to perch, the solitary bird
Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs,
Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale
Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left
Thyself without a witness, in these shades,
Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak---
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem
Almost annihilated---not a prince,
In all that proud old world beyond the deep,
E'er wore his crown as lofty as he
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower
With scented breath, and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.

My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me---the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.
Lo! all grow old and die---but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses----ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch enemy Death---yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant's throne---the sepulchre,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them;---and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still. Oh, God! when thou
Dost scare the world with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the village; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities---who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of the works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

William Cullen Bryant
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Re: Listening to Trees

Post by Christine »

Listening to the mystery of the soul one finds their connection to trees...

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The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

~ Oscar Wilde ~
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Re: Listening to Trees

Post by moonchild »

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Here, in this ancient embrace, the space between thoughts is a thousand years.
Demon? I'm a Damn Goddess!
Why does the light shy from the darkness?
Open your eye, see the unbelievable
Open you heart, duality is, necessary evil
The patriarchy fears most, what I most prize
Demon? Oh darling, whilst you judge~I Rise!
~Lilith Risiing
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Re: Listening to Trees

Post by Christine »

Embracing the Moon

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The Mysticism of Dan Schreiber and The New Sun Tribe

"One of the things I want to talk about is a True Solar Economy. A True Solar Economy is really about developing or cultivating a new relationship with the sun. Most of us don’t know the sun. All we know of the sun is from a very strange scientific perspective and the sun is absolutely not what we think it is.

The Sound of the Cicadas right now are bringing us a message of the spirit in their sound and just to give you an idea..
I don’t know if you know, but the lifecycle of a cicada is very interesting. In China, cicadas, for the first born, they give a gift of a cicada, a stone cicada and cicada is wind - And there is a whole tribe in Ecuador called the Sequoya and they are the cicada people and they have connection through their Yahé with the heavenly people.

The story of the cicada is kind of interesting because they only have a very short life cycle out and about in the way we are experiencing them. That is flying around, mating and that cicada sound that you hear in the summer. Their life cycles are very variant. They can be 7 years or 13 years or 17 years for example. They are all in these prime numbers and they do that so there is no predation. So you may get a cicada cycle that’s 13 years long and what happens is, the cicada will fly around and have a wonderful sex life for a couple of weeks and then they all die. And they lay eggs in the trees and those eggs hatch and the small grubs fall out of the tree, they burrow into the soil and attach to the tree root.

So what a tree is – Is a tree is a bridge between heaven and earth. A part of the tree is rooted in the earth and we don’t see it – its in the dark. Its like the subconscious. Now, the tree root is very important because a tree is rooted into the ancestors. The soil is literally the decomposing of what’s left of the bodies of our ancestors. The earth is made up of thousands and thousands of generations of beings that have come before us: Dead animals, bacteria, earth worms, plants, mulch, cosmic space dust. All of that stuff forms the earth and its the past.

So the tree is rooted into the past and at the same time a part of the tree grows up and its standing there still in testament - And what it does is it stretches out these solar panels that we call leaves and on those solar panels a very unique interaction occurs that science is blown away by in many different ways.

First of all, those solar panels collect light and they literally turn it into physical form – into sugars, in a magical process. Recently there had been some scientific articles about how the chloroplasts, which are in that leaf, actually capture the sunlight and they do this quantum thing called super position, where they calculate all of the possible roots the light could take. They pre-choose the optimum path. In other words, they are collapsing space time to do this feet of capturing light and storing it in sugars. And what they then do is they pump those sugars down into the roots during the day and they feed the whole soil ecology.

So a part of the tree is growing down into the dark, to the ancestry and part of it is growing up into the cosmos, the light and this beautiful union is what a tree is all about - Its like a vertical being drawing down cosmic energy and drawing up ancestral energy and liberating that in all of it’s products: Its air it produces, its incredible sugars that we call fruits, the medicines that the trees and plants make. And so the tree acts as this vertical axis and humans act as the horizontal axis. Its like a sacred cross.

So the Cicada grub burrows down to the root, which is like an umbilicus to the grub. And so it is receiving the light that comes from our sun through the tree sap elixir. Our sun is like the local internet service provider so the light that comes from our sun is actually a digest of all the light from all the suns – from the great central sun - And don’t let scientists tell you, (I’m a scientist by the way!) - don’t let scientists tell you that that light takes thousands of light years to get here. That’s all bullshit. The light comes from the great central sun through our sun and enters our atmosphere instantaneously. There may be a component that travels at the speed of light that we know - but the spiritual component is instantaneous. So what ever is happening anywhere in the cosmos comes through our sunlight in the form of a solar-sonic-music that all of life is tuned to - And cicadas are very specifically tuned to this.

So the Cicadas, after dropping into the soil and gestating by sucking the tree sap for this twenty plus years in some cases – what that tree sap is, is condensed sunshine in a liquid form. But its not just sunshine, it’s the combination of the whole ancestry, in other words – all the past - plus the light coming from our sun.

So just follow me on this because why I started sun gazing 40 years ago – when you stare at the sun and you start to develop a new relationship with the sun, that particular solar cultivation allows you to speak to the light and it allows you to download a whole bunch of information including a very specific form of nutrition, like a solar nutrition and this, as you may start to glean, as I go on, is vital for all living systems.

If ever you get a chance to look at a Cicada, you’ll see they’ve got a number of eyes but three main eyes with a big third eye which is supremely adapted to telling the temperature and reading the light – And at certain light cues, they all hatch out. So they could have been in the soil, sucking on that tree root, sucking that sap, which is being created by the leaves – And so THEY ARE IN TOUCH WITH THE SONG OF LIGHT HAPPENING THROUGHOUT THE COSMOS – And they are drinking that as a sap through the tree root and when they hatch out after 17 years at the same time – THAT SONG THAT THEY ARE SINGING IS THE CONDENSED STORY OF THE COSMOS FOR THE 17 – And when we hear that, our body, even though we can’t intelligently understand it, gets the download of light of what’s been happening in the cosmos for the past 17 years.

So that’s pretty far out – So next time you’re listening to a Cicada and you’ll hear that each different species has different sounds and you’ll hear they are all like a shamans rattles – And if you just space out, drop out of your mind… and you hear that wave come… and you feel into it… the Cicada can sense, they can hear the listening from your ears. And you can do this with any bird or with any insect. Listen intently to it and it will start singing just for you and there’s nutrition in there’s nutrition in that sound. SO JUST LISTEN TO IT FROM YOUR HEART AND YOU’LL HEAR THIS INCREDIBLE UPLOAD; A SONIC UPLOAD OF DIGESTED LIGHT INFORMATION FROM THE COSMOS. It’s a gift unlike any other and its heard by the trees – so when that Cicada is singing that sound, all of the stomata open up and receive more light.

So there was a guy who came up with an idea to play plants music – And he noticed all of the stomata open and they photosynthesize better and they grow better and he created a product called Sonic Bloom. So what happens is – a forest is a whole, you could say a whole temple of light. All the tree beings in there are columns of water that are adapted to working with light – And when the cicadas come out and sing their song, they create a dome of sound over the forest that is also complemented by the orchestral sounds of birds and frogs and crickets and all the jungle sounds – And they create like a sonic envelope – And that sonic envelope is really important because that sound makes the sunlight more digestible and as we start to remove species from the forest by taking away their host trees – And that frog species disappears and that insect species disappears, we actually create holes in that sonic envelope and that’s when you get pests coming in and that’s when the forest starts to degrade. If you remove enough of the forest, that sonic envelope collapses and forest degrades and eventually dies – And fortunately, we are at a time in history where we’ve hopefully reached the edge of the pendulum swing with the death of the forests, where we are now hopefully at the birth of a new golden age for forestry and replanting.

“My EARTH BLESSING is to SEED, for each ONE of US to SEED the REBIRTH and RETURN of the FORESTS."

- Dan Schreiber
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Re: Listening to Trees

Post by Spiritwind »

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The Tree Cave. Boynton Canyon, Arizona - Photo Scott McAllister


This medieval Irish poem about trees is taken from a text known as Aidedh Ferghusa meic Léide (the Death of Fergus). In the poem, Iubhdán, the king of the fairies, advises the ruler of Ulster, Fergus mac Léide, on the special qualities of trees and which ones can be burned in the household fire.

The pliant woodbine/honeysuckle if thou burn, wailings for misfortune will abound,
Dire extremity at weapons’ points or drowning in great waves will follow.

Burn not the precious apple tree of spreading and low-sweeping bough;
Tree ever decked in bloom of white, against whose fair head all men put forth the hand.

The surly blackthorn is a wanderer, a wood that the artificer burns not;
Throughout his body, though it be scanty, birds in their flocks warble.

The noble willow burn not, a tree sacred to poems;
Within his blooms bees are a-sucking, all love the little cage.

The graceful tree with the berries, the wizard’s tree, the rowan burn;
But spare the limber tree; burn not the slender hazel.

Dark is the colour of ash; timber that makes the wheels to go;
Rods he furnishes for horsemen’s hands, his form turns battle into flight.

Tenterhook among woods the spiteful briar is, burn him that is so keen and green;
He cuts, he flays the foot, him that would advance he forcibly drags backward.

Fiercest heat-giver of all timber is green oak, from him non may escape unhurt;
By partiality for him the head is set on aching, and by his acrid embers the eye is made sore.

Alder, very battle-witch of all woods, tree that is hottest in the fight–
Undoubtedly burn at thy discretion both the alder and whitethorn.

Holly, burn it green; holly, burn it dry;
Of all trees whatsoever the critically best is holly.

Elder that hath tough bark, tree that in truth hurts sore;
Him that furnishes horses to the armies from the sidh (fairies) burn so that he be charred.

The birch as well, if he be laid low, promises abiding fortune;
Burn up most sure and certainly the stakes that bear the constant pods.

Put on the hearth if it so please thee, the russet aspen to come headlong down;
Burn, be it late or early, the tree with the palsied branch.

Patriarch of long-lasting woods is the yew sacred to feasts as it is well known;
Of him now build ye dark-red vats of goodly size.

(Translated from Irish by Standish O’Grady)
I see your love shining out from my furry friends faces, when I look into their eyes. I see you in the flower’s smile, the rainbow, and the wind in the trees....
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Re: Listening to Trees

Post by Spiritwind »

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For the love of a tree...
She went out on a limb.
For the love of the sea..
She rocked the boat.
For the love of the earth..
She dug deeper.
For the love of community..
She mended fences.
For the love of the stars..
She let her light shine.
For the love of spirit..
She nurtured her soul.
For the love of a good time..
She sowed seeds of happiness.
For the love of the Goddess..
She drew down the moon.
For the love of nature..
She made compost.
For the love of a good meal..
She gave thanks.
For the love of family..
She reconciled differences.
For the love of creativity..
She entertained new possibilities.
For the love of her enemies..
She suspended judgment.
For the love of herself..
She acknowledged her worth.
And the world was richer for her.
- Charlotte Tall Mountain
"For the Love of the World"
I see your love shining out from my furry friends faces, when I look into their eyes. I see you in the flower’s smile, the rainbow, and the wind in the trees....
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Re: Listening to Trees

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Re: Listening to Trees

Post by Christine »

Some moments are eternally etched in the soul. Gracias ...

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"For the Love of the World"

For the love of a tree...
She went out on a limb.
For the love of the sea..
She rocked the boat.
For the love of the earth..
She dug deeper.
For the love of community..
She mended fences.
For the love of the stars..
She let her light shine.
For the love of spirit..
She nurtured her soul.
For the love of a good time..
She sowed seeds of happiness.
For the love of the Goddess..
She drew down the moon.
For the love of nature..
She made compost.
For the love of a good meal..
She gave thanks.
For the love of family..
She reconciled differences.
For the love of creativity..
She entertained new possibilities.
For the love of her enemies..
She suspended judgment.
For the love of herself..
She acknowledged her worth.
And the world was richer for her.

- Charlotte Tall Mountain
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