In the gap between christmas and new year, when my body is hibernating and recuperating from preparations, celebrations and treats, I give in to a wonderful ‘pause’. All the pre-christmas jobs, putting this up, switching that on, making, baking and wrapping, meeting or calling friends and family. It catches up – I sleep longer nights on the shortest days. It’s a brief time of indulgence in films, cosy fires, books, loose clothes, slippers and leftovers. You have to get the timing right, too much pause and you feel grey, zapped of inspiration. It takes a good few days of rest and then I’m back up and out in walking boots and woods. My magnet shifts from busy dreams to dreamy walks.
29 December 2021
2:09pm.
14 degrees C
Stoughton car park
This wood is a roaming wood, on the OS map it’s a limier colour green which means you don’t have to stick to the footpaths. That’s one of the reasons I chose it, but it took a while to make a decision. Towards West Dean it’s a different type of wood, but further to drive; to the north I can get to the south downs way but it’s a steep climb and no parking; then there’s Hooksway, again tricky for parking; or North Marden Down but poor access; where else?? I had stared at the map for 35 minutes trying to decide where to walk. All these options created a static in my mind, of being pulled in different directions. I looked up and recognised what i’d just done and laughed, I’d been faffing over finding the perfect location getting lost in the detail of the map that was supposed to guide me but had delayed me. It reminded me of a recent radio programme on how to communicate in meetings, to not get lost in the detail of opposite sides of a discussion but bring it back to the issue. The issue was not the perfect place, it was the experience. I decided to let something else guide me, to decide for the outcome I wanted and not the way to get it. I wanted to reconnect with nature, then it was easy to choose.
Recently it’s been easier to get a bigger perspective and notice what’s going on, to see through veils of self-delusion. Have you noticed anything similar? It’s like seeing yourself with a bit of distance, seeing through the hologram to what is truly desired.
Parked up and wrapped up I chose the track at the bottom of the woods from the car park heading east, it was new to me. It’s good to walk in the unfamiliar, the senses seem to notice more.
I reminded myself of the purpose of the walk, the aligning in readiness for the year ahead, and turned to notice one of the beech trees. It looked as if it was grown from two trees, two trunks that join together part way up, as if it’s early years were lived split. Below this was canker, mini-explosions in the bark breaking out. The trunk was full of stretch marks that spread from where branches once reached, marks that rippled and wrinkled around each socket. Other marks slid across the trunk. The two leg trunks that rose from the ground join together at about my height into one. I was curious, why is nature showing this to me now? What am i being called to notice here, what makes it significant for this walk? As I drew it and wrote about what I observed in my sketchbook, the message became clear, there will be a joining of the two separate aspects of my life this year. The part that makes things happen, that organises, delivers, measures, reviews, programmes; and the part that responds from the essence of Being, that is guided by soul, higher mind.
On into the woods and I notice another beech. With this one the spread of roots between the trunk and ground were pale and finger-like, as if the tree had reached down from the canopy above to touch the earth.
We are steadied by our reach into our roots, into the earth and into what is hidden, unconscious.
Question: how can this coming year support my growth like the beech?
Answer: To feel into life like I feel into the unknown, and set the intention for the best outcome, learn to see not from fears or beliefs based on past experiences.
Earlier this month I attended an online lecture with University of Sussex on ‘What is Consciousness‘, led by Claudia Hammond. It turns out that science agrees we create our own reality based on what we predict according to expectations based on past experiences, our fears, beliefs and desires (phenomenological control). But the past no longer exists, it only does so in our memories and those are not true. Each time we recall a memory we do so with new experiences and it gets updated. In recognising that everything we are experiencing is based on the past, if we can see it and own it we can see the world in a more true way and see each other more truly. We are constantly reframing what we experience according to expectations. So how do we change this? In the film Mission:Joy the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu talk about reframing their experiences, that in the moment it can be hard to do so but even through great trials and difficulties, their lives became so joyful.
It’s funny, it looks like the beech has a number of ‘thing’ things and will walk off at any moment up the hill. There can be great humour in connecting with nature.
At the end of the track it turns sharply to the right, I step off and follow a path made by mountain bikers to the left. It is in the fold of the valley and behind the sun is low. About 50 steps from this off to the right are two trees close together. One is pale, straight and tall. Beside it a dark and wobbly tree, as if grown drunk, and at about 15’ high it has crossed over the other, leaning on and into it, held. One living thing resting upon the other. What represents the straight and the strong and what’s the wobbly and weak? What aspect of your life is resting on the other?
At first glance I guess the upright stretch of one has the strength of my core soul, and the parts where I have failed to the right in the curves and leanings. What is failure? It’s what we judge it to be so. If we measured success by what has been healed, overcome, there is much to celebrate. The time to observe success in terms of financial reward is exhausted, it diminishes that which has value to people’s experiences, to the experience of nature, each other, to the world. Are we still caught up in our own capitalism of values instead of heart-based values? An example is the some of the paintings and installations I’ve produced that have spoken to me, but maybe I valued less because I didn’t sell the work, didn’t put it up for sale to be fair. The work moved people, it manifest an expression of something unknown. Have I got the two trees mixed up and discarded the meandering long leaning, reaching and exploring tree as something that is failing because it leans on the other? The other that grows straight up and that it’s simple catching of it’s fellow tree makes all the difference.
We are both trees. In a forest. Connected to each other.
2022 won’t begin with to do lists, but with aligning an intention to the best outcome, to stand more in that which sustains me, to appreciate and learn from that which falters, meanders, leans.
Looking around I see the beech-stand, in a glorious winter sweat magnifying the low winter sun.
If you think about it, a tree faces the sun all day long.
So can we.
