Spiritual Nature

It struck me this morning as I was looking around at my neighborhood from the porch how much trees are used symbolically to show how we humans "should" be. A common grounding technique is to visualize yourself as a tree, with roots that stretch down into the earth to draw up the energy, allowing the energy to rise through you as sap rises in a tree, out down your arms like branches and back down to the earth like leaves falling to the ground. It's a way to stay connected to the earth and her energy, a way to stay present, and a way to release unwanted energy like harmful emotions. We also talk about how trees are flexible, bending with the wind. Sometimes in strong wind they break, but the strongest among them do not. They flow with the wind, supple as well as strong, so that the wind cannot break them. Their branches also slow down the wind, creating an ideal natural windbreak that doesn't interrupt the wind currents. The wind passes through the branches, along it...

Here in the southern Willamette Valley in Oregon, we get wind storms from time to time. Usually once a year, we get a big one that tears through. It usually hits us late winter or early spring, around March or April. This year's hit just this last weekend. As I was walking to and from bus stations on my way to work, I noticed all the tree parts that had come down to the ground in the course of the windstorm. A lot of it is deadwood, old branches for whatever reason were dead, and either had not yet been shed or had been shed but had been caught in the other branches. Some of it was dead leaves or dead needles. Some of it was green leaves on skinny green branches and the early spring flowers, mostly cherry blossoms. It occurred to me that this is like the trees' yearly spring cleaning. The winds kick up and shake down all the stuff that isn't fit. All the deadwood, all the unnecessary leaves and sticks and needles, all the things that are too fragile. Everything no longe...