TREES…

Photo: ‘Trees’ by Marion Wunder – Pixabay
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“When knowledge becomes a calling that calls us toward our own being, we can discover it in art and music and poetry as well as in rocks and trees and stars. Knowledge is found in all living things, as well as in numbers and symbols. It is found in all creativity and inspiration. Knowledge is beauty, delight, and joy, like rich, full humor and laughter. It is love and appreciation, alive with the richest feelings that the heart can offer.”
… ‘Knowledge of Time and Space’, by Tarthang Tulku, p.293

“Drawing on our own mind and senses and feelings, we can open the heart of space and enter the depth of time. What starts as an idea discloses its availability at the center of all that is. As the magnitude of the positive is amplified, the wholeness of experience steps into the light. Freely and easily, knowledge walks forward to greet us, inviting our participation with a gentle smile.”
…. ‘Dynamics of Tine and Space’ by Tarthang Tulku, p.339

I was concentrating on a thought, about ‘a tree of knowledge’… I happened to look up, and then saw the trees… things just opened… I’ve spent a lifetime enriched and protected by trees. I have a deep-rooted and multiform appreciation for them…love for them. They surround my favorite place to sit to observe and reflect – the back porch – dotted by five October Glory maple trees, plus assorted evergreens that I planted several decades ago.

They stalk my favorite spot, mirror my interior landscape, they are positioned for viewing, while they shade and shadow, buffering the prevailing winds of weather, and thought. They also anchor me to the present. They are my muse as I sit on the moving edge of the unformulated and engage the writing process. I look up and they form a gateway to the wide-open… from the confined to an expansive horizon… the unbounded from which the useful and appropriate arise, and then is trimmed and refined.

Trees ‘re-mind’ consciousness and expand awareness. Their leaves flutter and flatter the breezes, and color my senses with texture and tone. They are a call to mind that we insufflate the air they refine, and that we share a structuring form to this breathing planet, and universe. Their roots remind me of mine, a child-seedling mesmerized at the second-story window, a bedroom facing oak and ash trees that undulate and sway, amplifying the subtle sounds of the air and dreams… exciting my heart with the rich depth of emerald and jade patches. The scent of earth, grass, and moist air swelling awareness of the living moment… ‘inviting a gentle smile’… my tree-house home…

And when they eventually drop once kaleidoscopic green leaves, time-turned to yellow and crimson, I feel the melancholy… the shedding tears of loss of dear one’s… a hollow…