like sun drops fallen to earth
Meditating Treefully
Three years ago I sat crisscross in a circle with mostly strangers, and three of my in-laws, preparing to participate in my first-ever group meditation. Normally a people watcher, in this intimate circle I found my eyes skittering away from my fellow participants and seeking out the splashes of peaceful, though potted, wilderness arranged at strategic intervals around the room. Ferns and other leafy things I could understand, if not identify. There is nothing intimidating about a plant calmly drinking in sunlight, it is simply doing what it was made to do. Meditation, however, was dangerous, or so I had been taught. Meditation opens your mind, making it easier for the devil to influence you. An open mind lets demons in. (No joke. That is what I grew up believing. Which explains how almighty righteous and judgmental I could be as a teenager.) Having—mostly—grown past my fear of demons by my mid-twenties, I had begun to realize how habitual had become my isolation and anxiety (the two were possibly related), and was in search of a cure. I also wanted to be brave enough to begin trying things I had previously believed were forbidden (and punishable by God withdrawing his divine protection), but the fear remained like a bitter aftertaste. For me, just being here was a BIG step. I resisted the urge to pull my knees up to my chin and wrap my arms around them.
We started with a few minutes of breathing together as a whole group, during which I struggled to make my body relax while my mind spun in hyper circles, valiantly refusing to watch for hovering demons.
Ok. This is Ok. This is fine. I can be here. I’m safe here. Breathe. Just breathe. Innnnnnn…..ouuuuuuuut. I’m FINE. I can RELAX! Innnnnnn….ouuuuuuuuuut….AUUGGHHH!!!
This was not going well. I tried to focus on my breath, whatever that meant, feeling the muscles of my chest lift and then contract. It was easier than trying to feel the air moving through me, but my brain kept jerking my focus back to its little freak out session instead. Finally, our meditation leader with the heavenly name asked us to come back to ourselves, and I gratefully stopped fighting and opened my eyes. Furtively, I glanced around to see if anyone else looked as frazzled as I must. Nope. Everyone looked peaceful and composed, while I felt like I had just been attacked by a pod of wild balloons: all twitchy and staticky. And we were probably only about three minutes into the session. I must be doing something wrong.
Our leader with the heavenly name then divided us up into smaller groups of twos and threes for the real first meditation. She paired me with a tiny but energetically powerful yoga teacher, who was probably younger than me but way more experienced in meditation. Our leader with the heavenly name instructed my partner for this exercise to help me through my first-ever session by “reaching out” in some spiritual sense I didn’t quite understand. I was to “let her in,” again in some vague spiritual sense that was not explained, and I was too nervous to ask. This, I realized, was going to be a very difficult assignment to ace. We had to sit facing each other, knees pressed against each other’s knees and palms resting together atop them. My partner could not have been less intimidating, but just having someone, anyone, so much in my space made my heart pound and my underarms sweat like stinky. Which was awesome. Now I had something else to worry about. I tried to hold my upper arms as close to my body as I could while still reaching her hands, which made me even stiffer than I already had been. My partner closed her eyes, so I did, too. Knees and hands touching, wrapped in silence except for our separate breathing, I tried to…sense her spirit, or something. I sort of…searched outside myself for something not me, some other presence, benevolent and close by. I got nothing. But, it felt surprisingly warm and safe, there with her. I began to truly relax. And then I began to weep.
When our leader with the heavenly name brought us back to ourselves some minutes later I was still teary. My eyes met my meditation partner’s eyes, and she smiled at me. I think she hugged me, too, I don’t remember. The entire experience felt like a hug. I was hooked. Back in the circle, our leader with the heavenly name asked us to tell the group how meditating together was for us. I was still wiping my eyes with a tissue someone had handed me when my meditation partner described an image that had come to her while meditating. It was unusual for her, she said. She didn’t usually get images. But she had seen me as a tree covered with vines that were moving, sweeping down to the ground and then throwing golden glitter up into the air, over and over again. It was all warm and sparkly. I was awestruck. Me? She saw me like that? I sat up a little straighter, let myself feel the people around me, their smiles, their welcome. I wasn’t just Ok with this, I needed this. It felt a little like home.
Unfortunately, that meditation group was an hour and a half away, so I wasn’t able to attend often. And then COVID happened. Every session that I did attend taught me something new and important about myself that I carried away with me like a treasure. Among those treasures was the idea of starting my own yoga practice (“ancient dances to worship the sun,” also forbidden), which I eventually did. I want to become someone who can look past another person’s fear and spiritual repression and see an old-soul tree laden with vines tossing glitter like sun drops fallen to earth.
I mean, how cool is that?
That warm and sparkly image of me is a treasure I have kept like a secret picture in a locket worn close to my heart. Every now and then I take it out and let myself feel as safe and seen as I did that day. It was a poignant image for her to have given me. My spiritual connection to trees began when I was about three or four years old and my parents helped me plant a eucalyptus tree. In those days, my mother was still the earth-loving, tree-hugging, California hippie unschooling mom that I mostly lost when we moved to Ohio and joined the conservative Christian homeschooling crowd. She had kept the placenta from my birth in the freezer until I was old enough to remember planting my special tree. The idea that something that had given me life before birth could also give life to a beautiful baby tree, thus connecting us by blood as though we were twins, was a formative experience for me. Although I haven’t seen that tree in decades, eucalyptus leaves featured in the garlands I made to line the aisle of the church my husband and I were married in. It felt appropriate. Trees speak my native spiritual language. God needs no interpreter when I am in the woods.
The two great things I gained by moving to Ohio was the community of wonderful people I grew up in, especially the family I married into, and most especially my husband; and the thirty-two acres of wooded Shenandoah foothills that have been more my home than any other place so far. My special tree there was an ancient, gnarled oak that crested a deep ravine at the highest point of the property. The woods had been logged to pay the previous owner’s gambling debts long before my dad bought it in a sheriff’s auction, but the loggers hadn’t been able to claim that oak because of where it was situated, making it by far the oldest tree on the land. A shelf of rock jutted out over the ravine close by the oak’s roots, a perfect seat padded with moss of many different kinds that grew happily on that sunny hillside. Moss is therapeutic, as one of my oldest friends said when we visited my special spot, and I’ve always thought so, too. Many years later, it was where my husband proposed to me. I think the oak must have rustled with applause on that day, knowing as she did how often I had brought my hopes and fears to sit with me beneath her branches. Perched on my therapeutic moss bench, with that old John Denver song playing on a slow turntable in the background of my mind, I would raise my face to the sky and let the sunshine wash over me like liquid gold. Sunshine feels like love to me. It is bright and warm and life-giving, and it shines on everyone indiscriminately. Drinking it in feels like worship. I almost wish I were a tree so I could make it my food, too, and truly live on love.
How cool would that be?
I think it was almost inevitable that I would begin reading about Celtic Druidism. “Druid” is a word that loosely translates to “oak,” among other things; the Celtic language seems to be particularly rich in many-layered meanings. The druids never built temples, because it was the spirit of the land itself that they sought to connect with. Trees were especially sacred, as were the four essences (air, water, earth and fire), which corresponded to the four directions. Druidic meditation incorporates a practice known as merging. The idea is to sit very still and diffuse as much of yourself as possible into an external object, such as a tree, or into the Oneness that is all of the natural universe, together. This practice, once perfected, allowed the druids to change their form entirely, giving rise to the legends of druidic shapeshifting. I have no intention of trying to literally become a tree, or a bird, or anything besides me, but the act of reaching outside myself and trying to connect with another, or with the universal energy known to the druids as Oneness, is something I have been practicing, albeit irregularly, ever since that first meditation session. Without realizing it, I have always responded to trees and sunshine by reaching out in a way that felt completely organic and intuitive. I have a great need to be connected to nature, and to the beings who walk this earth with me, regardless of their features or number of legs. I feel most grounded when I am among rooted life.
Today I sit in my kitchen and look out at the damp cold grey of my yard. I long for sun and warm days so I can walk in the woods again. Winter makes me huddle, drawing in small, as though concentrating myself in order to withstand the dark and cold months. By early spring I feel as shriveled and prickly as a hedgehog emerged from hibernation. I need warm air and sunlight to stretch out in. I need leafy growing things. I need woods. I close my eyes, and I am there, hiking alone as I did last summer. Not in my old, dear woods, unfortunately, they are too far away to visit often, but there is a forest that surrounds a reservoir a few miles from our house, and it has been a gift. The forest is my true church. In the woods I can be myself: open, reaching out, diffusing into the peaceful, loamy air that buoys me like water. I can breathe this water, like a native creature of the deep. I am vast and mysterious. I am one with all that is around me. I am wild, unrestrained, and wise. I am.
In my mind I am on the trail again, gazing up through whispering branches at the bright patches of sky. At some point I always find an auspicious place to sit and be still, alone, in the woods. It will usually be a mossy rock or bank, or, if I’m feeling daring, a fallen tree sticking out into the water. Eyes closed, aware of the rock or tree beneath me and the lattice of roots or branches supporting my feet, I let the sunshine pour over me like oil. The waters of the reservoir lap the bank below with gentle waves, a rhythmic sound that always makes me wonder if some deep part of me remembers the womb. Flying insects land on my arms, my face, tickle my skin with tiny feet. I am so calm that I don’t brush them away immediately. They exist, and I exist, and we are part of this day, together. This feeling of oneness is what I wish I could hold on to indoors. In my daily round of responsibilities, in my weekly social interactions, too seldom am I alone and outside…too often I forget who I am in the unshielded sun. It is a process of remembering to remember, and making a point to deliberately honor that remembering. I am trying to make that process a habit to replace the old habit of anxious isolation. Alone in the woods, or in my garden, or just sitting outside on a sunny day, I can become a calmer, more expansive version of me. It is a treasure that I can gift myself. I tuck this image of me away next to my old-soul tree, feel them warm and safe beneath my heart, like drops of sunlight photosynthesized and stored there.
(How cool is that?)
Forever mine.