Insights From a Silent Pilgrimage

A complete rainbow at the summit of the hill. 

On one side sun, on the other rain. 

The rainbow at the boundary between light and shadow.

"The deeds and sufferings of light". 

Goethe

The woods battered by the weather, 

Trees with limbs missing and some fallen and broken. 

The scars of their experience. 

Nature just accepts and transforms the scars into new beauty. 

We also have our scars as we journey and gain new experience. 

The scars are the records of our life's pilgrimage - ever transforming, ever changing,

Transient like that rainbow, but leaving a record etched on our souls.

Based on a comment at: http://www.meetup.com/Dublin-Re-Creating-Science-Meetup/events/228399196/

Growth in the pain

 Image from: http://lizhester.org/in-every-acorn-is-a-mighty-oak/

There is growth in the pain....

The oak seed shoot has to smash the acorn open to become a tree.

This Morning

sunrise over Killiney Bay


This Morning,

I lost myself in the sky. 

Expanded, clear, empty,

But immersed in fullness. 

Swimming in a diamond candle lit cave,

Pervaded by deep pools of blue wisdom,

Within music.

Flowing forms like water,

Taking the shape of trees,

And fusing up into the lightening sky,

Dappled by red tendrils of flying lightforms,
Enriched by blackbirds,

Dancing on roof ridges,

For fun.

Jan 8, 2014: As I was leaving the house this morning, the sky was amazing.. I really opened up to it and allowed it to immerse itself in me for a while..a deep dark blue in the west and a subtle light blue undergoing slow, but steady dynamic change to slightly lighter all the time...then some clouds flecked by the beginnings of the tendrils of sunlight growing from beyond the horizon....

It took my breath away. ...

...And then when I got home here after dropping the kids at school, a blackbird on the ridge of the roof of the house, then joined by another one.... they chased each other along...it all looked like great fun... Beautiful! 

The View from Here: Killiney Hill

I'm sitting cross legged on a layer of brown leaves... soft they are, fulfilled and expanded by the winter dampness that pervades this wood. To my immediate right a slab of granite is exposed....caressed by green moss.  

I realise that I also sit on another huge granite rock who wears his leaves as a crown... a King in His Woods. Blue  tits jump around restlessly on the twigs of the trees above.  Their staccato song fills the cool damp air within which I have my Being.  I am truly alive here.  My bare feet Earthed in the leaves, my eyes scanning the stark bare branches above that are dappled by the in-streaming, cold January sun. 

To my left, a wise old Beech tree slumbers.  An old friend, dozing. She murmurs to me in her sleep..... dreaming this wood into existence. The wind tickles her branches and they move in free flowing patterns of evolving forms. The slender fractal twigs at the end of her reach, extending like antennae upwards towards the sky. Could it be that she is listening to the voice of the cosmos flooding in to her reverie? Is this the source of her dreams?

And down, down, way below, the inexorable sea at high tide alights on rocks... singing a song of serenity, of rhythm and flow and real power ...in trust and patience... the cold blue-grey winter sea. Enjoying the way her fingers, the waves, stroke the beach. Just as her song flies up from below and reaches my ears and the heart of the beach tree too. 

I'll meditate in this place for a while and on all of that, all of those spinning thoughts and intuitions, and then I will walk away bare-foot on the cold damp leaves lining the pathways and corridors of the wood like magic carpets. I'll be feeling refreshed like the beech tree after her sleep.

A Birthday Trip to Glendalough

I was drawn to Glendalough - every so often, I get a yearning to go there (it's only 45 mins from home in the Wicklow hills and is such a special place). The weather was so, so windy...

As I walked down towards the lake, I was being buffeted by the wind and I noticed the fact that most of the leaves had gone from the trees, though not all - a surprising number still clinging on despite (or to spite) the wind. I began to wonder about the wind and the trees and the leaves and began to make internal - external connections... 

The wind was somehow an outward expression of the energy that's been flowing around in me the last few years. I felt the wind represented my breath, the energy within. Sometimes unruly, buffeting me, challenging me to stay in balance, or even gain some balance. I looked again at the trees.... they had shed most of their leaves, but not all in the whirling dervish of the wind...this surprised me, but then I began to go deeper into the mystery...

When I looked into the trees further and focused on the leaves, I realised that this external vision of golds and yellows and browns and oranges and reds and all hues in between of leaves clinging to trees and trees releasing leaves was about me releasing attachments to things that I've put energy into over many years. About releasing, slowly and with thanks and blessing the old energy.

 

A huge amount of the tree's energy goes into producing the leaves and, in turn, the leaves repay the gift by creating energy from the sunlight for the tree. Then the tree, in the Autumn, withdraws the energy that is left and gradually, slowly releases the leaves. 

It is not an active giving away, a violent prising, but a natural release. The leaves have served their purpose, now they are released in an act of blessing to fertilise the soil and so the cycle continues. But, even in this wind, not all the leaves leave immediately. There are some tight attachments that remain, but they too will have their time for release.

I felt I understood something more about nature and more about myself and where I am right now. I'm releasing those things that have provided me with energy in the past and that have served me well. There are some attachments remaining, but those things too will be released when the time is right, when the tendrils that bind them to me dissipate and dissolve. I don't have to actively work at changing myself into something new in a mechanical way, for the transformation is organic. It occurs in due course. In time. With patience. In cycles that come and go and flow within and without. Like trees blessing leaves as they release them.

Next spring, the trees will awaken from their slumbers and the new shoots will spring forth. The new leaf buds will peep out fresh faced into the warm winds of spring, caressing them into the damp early morning light and the new cycle will begin again as they grow and develop and once again enliven the life of the tree.

A dance of love performed at the centre of the polarities between leaving and arriving, of coming and going, a creative tension that brings forth new shoots! Like this dance of ours with words and the feelings between within and beyond the words. 

It is now Autumn, going into winter, but the spring will come again and new life will appear. It may look the same, but it will also be very different. And so we in our wondrous ways will be the same, but different next spring.

One Who Sits Alone

There is one who sits alone,

Under the tree.

It looks like he stares into the distance,

Towards the horizon.

And indeed he does,

But he also stares within.

The Beauty Of Apple Trees

In the orchard, the apple trees were loaded with fruit...so much, falling down on the ground...all around...

When she wrote, she didn't know about the trees, but she said:

"I guess the meaning is not to "look" at an apple tree with enthusiasm and interest as a child that sees an apple tree for the first or third time, but to acknowledge that we see an apple tree and let the energy of the apple tree reach us and flow into our eyes and heart...."

This seemed to me to be a wonderful description of how to sense Beauty....

Actually, what we see is only a small fraction of all the energy emanating from the apple tree - the energy our eyes can capture...just the electromagnetic wavelengths of visible light, but of course the tree - made of matter (crystallised energy if you like), part of the visible (to us) universe) is vibrating at a virtually infinite number of energetic frequencies, so it (the tree) actually exists in realms/dimensions of reality beyond our senses in addition to those we can see with our eyes.....

So, this is why no matter how hard we try to "see" the apple tree, our vision of the tree (through our eyes and processed in the mind) will never give us a complete appreciation of its Beauty.....

We should allow ourselves to "see" the tree with the aspects of ourselves that are also vibrating at these higher frequencies. The higher frequencies correspond to higher states of consciousness, and to do this we should allow ourselves to transcend the idea that we are separate from the tree, so that the energies passing between us and the tree can interact/exchange more easily, so we then truly begin to "see" the tree with our hearts by allowing "the energy of the apple tree [to] reach us and flow into our eyes and heart...."

I believe this is what happens when our consciousness expands from the heart - it fills the surroundings and we feel much more at-one with everything, since we become more sensitive in picking up the signals/energies in the environment around us....we sense the Beauty in our surroundings....

Letting Go and Non-Resistance: Lessons from Water and Trees!

I have been focusing a lot on not fighting things, but going with the flow and allowing the universe to do its work. I can now see the reality that our inner thoughts/focus of our intent/heart-based consciousness creates the reality around us...it is an amazing thing to see the way this happens...I had a few instances where in the past I would have got stressed, but this time stayed calm. For example, I needed to prepare something ahead for my summer student who had a microscope booking later in the afternoon, but I got busy with something else and couldn't do it then, but I didn't panic and, lo-and-behold, a spot appeared available later on because someone had cancelled, so we had more time to do what we had to do...other instances too....also had to carry out some very difficult timetabling with a colleague for a new course I'm running next year and, again, didn't panic, and the seemingly impossible conflicts in the schedule were resolved one by one as things simply fell into place and the timetable now works!


... I had been reading some stuff on 'right breathing' as well - breathing right down into the solar plexus chakra. Most people breathe in a very shallow way, at best stopping at the diaphragm - I had been focusing on deeper breathing and found that I had much more energy - bringing the prana/chi (Universal energy) into my body. I took some stroke-improvement swimming lessons this week. The synchronicity was with the swimming lessons, which were great and there was obviously quite a lot of focus on correct breathing and not fighting the water...this was perfect for the way things were developing for me on the inside in terms of my conscious focus on right breathing and letting go.


And a related event... I came to work today to find that a big old sycamore tree outside our building (I could see it from my office) was diseased and a branch had broken off in the wind. I felt quite sad about this - a lovely tree - they sawed it up and took it away, but they will plant a new one. I told a friend...she said:

"I guess the more conscious we are, the more we see. “Letting go/be non-resisting” in different contexts appears to be an important thing in life. Maybe the tree symbolizes this in a nice way…. don’t be afraid of letting go, don’t resist changes, welcome life and future experiences" ...beautiful and....

...  I was reminded again of Ecclesiastes Chapter 3 verse 1:

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:"

....and I guess, for a tree, a time to be planted and a time to die!