healing

Why do people kill?

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Thorny locust

Thorny locust

P of Des Moines, Iowa wants to know:

Q.  Why do people kill each other? (P is a veteran of two wars)

A. My beloved P, only those who feel separate from the web of all creation commit acts of violence and violation. We – all living creatures are born knowing our vital place in the web. Every one of us, every blade of grass, every tadpole, every mass of algae, every fungus on the forest floor, and yes, every human infant is innately aware of the unity that lies beyond the world you perceive with your 5 senses.

Those who somehow feel separate and alone often have been ill treated so as to distort their knowledge of wholeness. They may feel in their deepest recesses a despair, an anger, a rebellion, all because at their innermost center they know that all is one. But, they see only the surface difference, separation, attack everywhere they look. They see their world through a false lense of distortion.

This is the law of the web: Those who feel separate create more separation. Those who damage others damage the whole and themselves as well. Those who hate themselves cast hate into the web and become a hub of distortion that moves outward enveloping others unless it is rewoven and healed with love. Every action no matter how small reverberates through the web and affects every particle of energy in the universe. If you wish to create love, do so with your thoughts, actions, words.

A  state of being that you call Love powers this universe.  In time, those who feel separate will know and feel this too. Each creature on this green planet may act from separation or from wholeness and connection. Which do you choose? Never underestimate your power of creation!

How can I help the environment?

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Q. D of Des Moines, Iowa would like suggestions on how to focus her energy for the benefit of the environment.

A. Do what is needed for your own inner healing and your own deep benefit and the ripples you create will move outward to heal the environment and your world. Give yourself all that you need – care, nurturing, love, rest, play, admiration, appreciation, good food and water. Surround yourself with loving family and friends. Know that you are inseparable from your surroundings. Your feelings and, emotions are mirrored in your world.

Where are you stuck? Where and how do you allow toxic thoughts and substances to enter your experience? Witness with compassion and see how your inner personal experience is mirrored in your outer world. Clean up that which you have control over – your thoughts and reactions. Forgive those who don’t deserve it, so you can be clear and at peace.

Let go of old resentments and free yourself to take flight with a lightness and clarity you have long desired. Remember always to look within for the healing you seek in others and in your environment. Every thought, every action, every blink of your eyes, every emotion, is reflected in the web of creation in which all things are one.

What happens to tree spirits?

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M of Central Iowa asks:

Q. What happens to the tree spirit when the tree gets hit by lightning or breaks because of ice?

A. When a tree dies by lighting, ice damage, a smothering vine, is uprooted by a flooded stream, or cut at the base by humans, or any other of the myriad forms of physical death, the spirit does not die.

No spirit can ever die. Spirit = pure energy… remember your high school science lessons? Energy cannot be destroyed! Tree spirits are freed after the death of their physical aspect to enjoy the buoyancy and freedom the pure bliss of existence without a material presence, beyond the reach of the seasons, of day and night, of freeze and thaw, of woodworm, of leaf rollers, bark borers, herbicides, fires, flood, and bulldozers. All manner of physical ills are no longer of any consequence and are left behind as easily as a cottonwood seed is carried on a spring breeze.

By and by a tree spirit or a group of spirits may once again recreate the ancient cycle of life on this magnificent planet and envelop a seed or a raft of seeds and choose the beauty, the brilliant unfolding, and yes, the uncertainty of physical existence. To live in this way and feel the expansion of life through our cells, the pull of the sun and the earth is glorious!

Tree spirits and all spirits are an integral part of the web of all existence. They are to be consulted as you consider the world in which you have your being and make your choices. Each spirit is imprinted with the pattern, the wisdom and knowledge of who were created to be before time began.

Cottonwoods and lightning

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Q. C of Clive, Iowa writes: Tell us about the relationship between cottonwoods and lightning.  2013-01-01 00.00.00-571

A. I come from a long line of magnificent giants. Tall, and stately, we cottonwoods reach to the heavens with joy- a joy and pleasure in the unfolding of our seed’s promise, of becoming what we were created to be. To expand is to be alive! Yet, to be alive is to live with the certainty of death at some unknowable time.

We trees have all lived and died a thousand or more times since the beginning of what you call time. Always accepting the great adventure of life’s invitation and expansion with a YES! Saying yes to life is also saying yes to the risk of a lightning strike and a sudden shocking destruction. We would not limit our reach or height for fear of the white blast of death from the sky. For that would stunt and bastardize our true nature; that would be a betrayal of life itself, of our purpose and potential.

We grow, reaching into the heavens knowing that lightning may strike, yet we endure and continue. If lightning comes, and it does to many, we will exit this lifetime in a blaze of fireworks! We become a fiery bridge of powerful life-giving energy from heaven to earth as the final act of this lifetime.

Why are you speaking?

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A of Des Moines, Iowa asks:

2013-01-01 00.00.00-547Q. Why are you speaking? Do you think, do you feel? Where is this coming from? Trees can’t think & speak…!

A.  My dear A, this is why I need a human helper – to be my voice! I plucked her from the crowd. For one thing, she wasn’t wearing those ear buds or talking into a shiny blinking object. She was tuned into my frequency. She stops to say hello on her walks. She can feel my energy. She is paying attention. I plucked your translator from the crowd of walkers, joggers, cell phone talkers, day dreamers, worriers with furrowed brows, and people who seem contained within their own cranium.  The only difference between her and all the others is she’s paying attention!

My energy frequency contains the information she translates into your words. I trust her to “hear me” and make my transmissions intelligible to you.

I am doing this inter-species communication to express to all who listen the deep abiding joy of life in this exact moment in this exact place! I see that so many of your kind have forgotten the oneness, the joy, the flow that is at the heart of life. You must know how miraculous you are, how all that is longs for you and desires you, how blessed you are to be a part of the sweet unfolding of life.

There is a great upwelling of what you call joy in me, and in all living things. This is our birthright for the privilege of living on planet earth, this magnificent community of life forms. I must – my mission is to communicate this to you and those who will hear. This is why I speak through the 2 legged one; for you and our shared planet, for remembrance of oneness and that all beings may know their wholeness once again.

A job too small for her soul

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E of central Iowa wonders:

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Q. Dear Grandmother Cottonwood,

I’m working in job that is too small for my soul. I can’t respect myself anymore, but I feel stuck because of the money I’m earning, what advice do you have for me?

A. My dear beloved, your soul cannot be contained, must not be contained. If you feel that your soul is constricted by this job, then you are not seeing all there is to see.  You are not allowing yourself to be who you are. The job is just an excuse to be stuck. You are as large as the universe, you are vast and powerful, you are amazing, you are infinite. But you keep yourself in a little container, bounded by your fears. You hunch yourself over to fit into the little box you imagine is all there is for you. There is nothing that can keep you stuck in the tiny cage unless you allow it. I dare you to let yourself be infinite at work, to be expansive, to be who you really are, to let your light shine to its fullest extent (chuckles) and then watch the chips fall where they may. Of course, those work people won’t know how to act around the new you, the infinite and shiny new you… but oh, well. Maybe they will learn by example…or maybe not.

I see from my higher treeish perspective, the larger you, the you that you could be if you allowed your full power to be experienced and expressed. You are so much more than you pretend to be! So much more than you think yourself to be, so much more even than you dream of being. You were not put on this earth to be small or to hide your gifts. Grandmother Cottonwood would be remiss if she did not illustrate to you the magnificence that you are, the brilliance that you are, the need here on earth for your true gifts and talents. This world needs you complete and whole, brightly shining, running on full power!

Do trees feel emotion?

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A of central Iowa wonders

Q.  Do you experience emotion?

A.  I experience a moment to moment adjustment and adaptation to the filament-fine nuances of all t2013-01-01 00.00.00-498hat is. The web of existence in which all living things, all humans, all spirits, all planets, stars and galaxies, all particles of soil, all rocks, have a part. Every decaying pine needle on the forest floor, every hair that has fallen from your head, every particle of dust all have their place in this web. All is accounted for.

Emotion for humans is a moving energy that constantly shifts and changes based on your thoughts, that is meant to flow, to teach, to enlighten, to show you what matters to you. If you pay attention you can feel these emotions in your body. They are inseparable from who you are.

I too experience moving energy, but of a different sort. Energy is transported from my roots deep in the earth with the to the topmost leaves of my crown. Then the energy of the sun flows from my leaves down through my branches and trunk to the earth. I am a column, a channel of 2 way moving energy; a pathway between heaven and earth. I experience a state of acute awareness to the web of all that is through this moving energy. It feels expansive and alive and good and you might define this as love.

In the eternal present, I simply am.

What is beautiful about being a tree?

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2013-01-01 00.00.00-38K of Eastern Nebraska asks:

Q. What is the most beautiful part of being a tree?

A. Well, I have trouble thinking as you do and dividing things up into parts. That’s why humans must have nations, borders, fences, walls, and divisions of all kinds. Your language promotes divisions, and the translation from tree to English does not always have the meaning I wish it to. Since I’m letting my voice come through one whose thinking and language is like yours, I will say this:

Simply, it’s all beautiful; from the deepest of my roots, many yards beneath the surface of the soil to the very tips of my leaves, shimmering in the breeze to the unseen aspects of me that you call energy. Seeing me or anything as made up of separate parts like a science diagram is a misunderstanding. I am one. Every particle of me is related to and depends on every other particle of me. All time is one, all is connected in a magnificent tapestry; the eternal now that we all exist in.

The complete experience of being a tree is ecstatic! I am overflowing with joy.

Will loneliness end?

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2013-01-01 00.00.00-493Q. J of southern Iowa wonders… “Is there an end to loneliness?”

A. Loneliness, my beloved, is a state of mind. And through this state of mind you have projected what seems to you reality. It is like a filter or lens that shows only what you expect to see and feel. In this way you miss out on the full spectrum of human experience and feel separate from others. But you are not the only one. Almost every person on this planet does the same.

You can end your experience of loneliness by first connecting with the core of your being; the essence of your soul and experiencing your true self – the black and white parts of you, the tender heart of you, the shadow and light, without judgment. Tune into your heart and acknowledge what you have long repressed and ignored. As you tune in, you must lay the brain, the intellect and the ego aside for they know nothing of your your true depths. They would have you believe that you are separate from all others.

Become a child again and feel. In this way you allow your heart to thaw. There is no longer any need for you to hide the full experience of you – the flawed vulnerable human you – from your own awareness anymore. Become your own best friend, your own loyal companion. In this way you practice what it is to have the relationships you desire. When you learn to do this, you will learn to recognize and connect to the hearts of others.

Life, death, life

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2013-01-01 00.00.00-475A of Eastern Nebraska asks:

Q. What have you learned?

A. I will run with that open question and insert a sermon I was saving for just the right time….

I’ve learned that life and transformation are one and the same. To live is to grow. To grow is to be transformed. The final transformation is what you call death. Every particle undergoes a change from being fed to being food; a change from gaining nourishment from the soil to enriching and feeding the soil, the host for other lives. Have you not seen the beautiful shell-like fungus clinging to and feeding from the body of a downed tree in winter? The youthful vigorous sapling that springs from the stump of its parent and is nourished by it?

All of life is maintained and supported by this endless cycle of life, death, life. This is the physical plane of existence, the plane you study with your science and scholarly studies, your finely tuned instruments.

Now, for the plane of existence you humans can’t see: Here there is no death. All is interwoven into a magnificent fabric of consciousness too fine to measure. Every part of the whole affects every other part of the whole. There is no way to measure where the energy of your aura begins and where it ends, if it does end. Of course, it does not end….even with the death of the body. Your energy continues, it overlaps, mingles, interweaves with the unseen energies of all that is; with trees, grasses, soil, rocks, every sentient being on the planet.

Every thought and feeling that flashes forth in your mind is made of energy. You are energy and each thought alters the fabric or web of all that is for the better, or otherwise. Which do you choose?

Life is the greatest gift, life is to be cherished, life is to be lived full out with every particle of your being. Put down roots, allow the core of the earth to pull them. Reach toward the sun, breathing in the fullness of love that is your birthright.