All humans are given countless opportunities throughout life. Each requires that you make choices.
You are given free will to choose your path, to step into the light, to make the first move toward healing and wholeness for yourself, to make amends for mistakes, to develop your talents and skills, to reach out in friendship, to take a chance on your dreams.
Robin in early spring
You choose whether to smile at another or turn away. To speak kindly or destroy another with words, to hide behind walls or come out into the sunshine, to take a chance on your dreams or give up on yourself, to reach out for help or tough out your problems alone, without support. You have the freedom to choose whether to speak up when you witness injustice or be silent
There is no escape from the responsibility of making choices large and small each and every day. As human beings the quality and direction of your experience depends on your choices.
My crown and trunk have been severed and cut up, shredded, hauled away to be burned or used for mulch in someone’s garden … I am only a stump now…
…but my roots still live! New tender green sprouts rise up now, between my thick old bark and what was once my sapwood. Anyone can count the rings now in my exposed heartwood and tell my age.
Grandmother Cottonwood
My little shoots absorb the intense summer sunlight, growing taller each day, shooting up into the sunlit open sky. Trusting life again, fragile, yet stubborn.
I am a survivor!
Dear ones, does new life what to renew itself through you after the storms and traumas you’ve been through? What new growth, new ideas, new energy unfold into your consciousness and begin to move you? What new inner stirrings let you know you are not yet dead, not yet defeated, not yet ready to give up?
Contemplate this question: Is it time to recommit to your life here, to choose this life you’re living once again with full knowledge that life can bring hurt, pain, loss frustration, trauma, injury and also joy, happiness, contentment, blessing, wholeness, bliss, transcendence?
I know that you are stubborn, you endure, you are a survivor. Why do I know this? Because you are here now in a body on our planet Earth at this time. You are meant to be here! Somehow, for reasons we may never know, all living beings have chosen this life even in these difficult times.
Just when you think all is lost, pay attention to your inner world, your spirit and you feel the stirrings of renewed life and unfolding growth inside, the will to live. Give it time to grow stronger, to take root, to gain momentum.
GCW, new growth
You as a human being can choose life again and again throughout your span of years. With all its uncertainty and impermanence, choose life.
The health and life of our planet depends on the collective choices of human beings. You have the agency, the free will, two hands arms and legs, the capabilities and brain power to make or break, create or destroy, build or demolish, weave or tear.
All life on Earth now depends on you and your species to take responsibility for the health and life of our planet! Each and every person, every living being, from the humblest human being to the richest person on Earth, from lowly ants nesting in the soil to the mighty elephants of Africa and Asia from tunneling worms to magnificent soaring birds all depend on the interconnected web of life.
Grandmother Cottonwood
Humans now in this age with the stroke of a pen, the detonation of a bomb, the clear cutting of a mountainside, the gratuitous use of violence, the misuse of words and images have the power to damage or even destroy our web.
By God we need better from you! I speak for our Earth for the web of life, for all living beings.
You have been endowed with the stewardship of our planet and given the care of billions of your kind. All deserve to live in peace and plenty without fear.
Will you see those different than you as expendable as “other” as unworthy of your care or will you recognize your shared humanity? Will you see yourself in the mirror of their eyes?
Put down your weapons, your divisive actions words and thoughts and look inside yourselves. Find wholeness within your hearts. If you can’t find it, ask for help to know yourself!
Search your souls. Access your higher selves. Your spirits and hearts are larger and more expansive than you know. When you discover this you become one with the great wave of human consciousness shifting toward the light.
Cottonwoods at sunset
Dear humans, we spirits of nature have had enough of your drama and trauma! Our patience is growing thin.
Please step up and learn to live together in harmony. Use your power to restore the web of life.
Dear ones, do you use your technology mindfully in support of your highest good, your health and wholeness?
…Or does your glowing little screen rule your life and keep you corralled and dependent? Does it limit your freedom?
Some of the human created reality blasted into your brain each day is meant to get you hooked and addicted to the content others have curated and chosen for you to digest and believe. I ask you for your health and well being to become an expert at discernment, to choose wisely what you will consume.
Think about this. When feelings of self worth come to you from the outside in, they are not genuine, not the real thing. True self worth and autonomy grow organically from the center of your being in partnership with source and radiate outward to enrich the web of life and all beings.
The phony, the fake, that which is chosen to root into your mind and addict you is not in your highest good. The words images are chosen just for you to make you feel insecure, to make you want things, to limit your creativity, to make you click and spend, to make you forget your true self and to make you believe this fake reality this phony feeling of connection is better than the real thing.
In your true and deep and abiding heart, in some corner of your mind your intuition knows who you really are and what is right for you. Do not sell or hand over your most precious gift for anything!
Use your technology wisely and well. You are the boss of your life! Make technology your servant.
You can continue as you have been, or try something new. You can step out of your comfort zone. You can move away from the familiar, try something different from your accustomed actions, thoughts, beliefs, and ways of relating to others.
Try a new path, see where it takes you. Trust. Take heart and try something new when life has lost its color and magic when you do not like where you stand.
Grandmother Cottonwood
I see walkers bikers runners zip downhill past me without losing their momentum. Taking the easy road. Others slow down and take time to notice me and my companion trees. Some of those who slow down on the path will take the gentle turning into the open meadows and continue in a new direction.
The sun at their back as they continue down the hill is now lighting their side as they continue to the south.
Changing your perspective, the angle of light, your inner landscape, changing your direction does not need to threaten your place or overthrow your entire life, but can bring you fresh ideas and new energy.
Even a slight change in direction can open up delightful new possibilities. Do not change direction to escape and deny your reality but to heal and see it from a new perspective to renew and regenerate and bring fresh energy to your life.
Start with baby steps – New ways of relating to others, a new positive belief about yourself. Stir things up a little, and have some fun.
Do you find yourself at a time of choice in your life? Will you continue as you are, or will you explore a new path?
Woodland paths
Does the familiar path no longer feed your soul? Do you feel energized and inspired by the possibilities of the new?
You are beings of free will. When you choose, choose with your whole self. Line up your heart, mind and spirit with your new direction. Don’t look back.
Leave the past and regret behind so you can fully inhabit and experience the new landscape you’ve chosen. Give yourself time to attune yourself to your new reality and immerse yourself in it.
Yellow swallowtail butterfly
Will you take the first step in the life affirming, soul satisfying, self loving direction your heart has chosen, leaving all doubt, fear and timidity behind? Will you choose a new path?
My dears, I want you to know that no matter what mistakes you think you’ve made, no matter what you have left undone, or unsaid, no matter the ugly words that have come from your lips, you can choose differently from now on.
Do not limit yourself to “the way I’ve always been” or “my personality” or “that’s how I was raised.” Why would you choose powerlessness?
I tell you here and now that you have a choice in the kind of person you are. There is the inner part of you that only you know and outer part that you present to the world. Allow those two to become one- the two halves to become a whole.
Do what you know to be the right thing. Say the kind thing. Cease all excuses!
Step up to the shining example of your true inner self that is aligned with the source of all creation.
My dearest ones: Our tree parents simply flowered and went to seed with no effort or planning on their part. They left our existence or non-existence to chance.
You have parents that carry beliefs and emotions that imprint you over the years of your growing . The blueprint for your body, your physical being, comes much like my seed; programmed from time immemorial. The feelings thoughts and emotions of your parents their parents and all ancestors have been bequeathed to you as well! But you can take them or leave them. Did you know that?
Unlike your bodies, eye and hair color you have no duty to carry on family traditions that hurt – that make you or others small – that keep you from your light and power! You get to choose!You have been given free will! If you are not happy, gently explore the roots of those feelings. Even though you may love your parents and those who came before, you are under no obligation to believe think and act as they do.
You invent your inner lives, you choose again and again how to think, feel, act and believe with each moment! You are the ruler, the king or queen of your inner self! You are in command!
Choose life. Choose those beliefs ideas, thoughts & actions that support the life you want to create! You are blessed beyond measure!
Ask Grandmother Cottonwood 