In the Forest Reborn
During each of the most difficult periods of my life, it is within the boundless confines of a forest that my life has been saved from being consumed by absolute chaos and confusion. In these times, our human ways of thinking and feeling would seem to betray me: colliding head on within my body and spirit. Mind and heart tearing my soul in two. So many conditioned ways of thinking and believing that would fail me utterly, all at once.
In these moments, I needed to find a place to curl up and release my grief. Though it took me a long time to understand this need, and even longer to fully allow for it. So the process would often be one of great suffering. Each time it looked somewhat the same, as I would walk out and away from the human world, moving aimlessly into the underbrush of the closest woodland. Like a wounded deer, I would stumble my way between the trees and stones, following an invisible path…seeking somewhere remote and quiet to hide away. Somewhere safe. Far from the eyes and ears of other people.
With each step that I took out into the wilderness of my own bewilderment, the grip of my rational mind would slowly weaken. Eventually, the dam would break and my animal being would fall to the ground, shaking with anger, grief, sadness, fear. Whatever was rumbling up from the volcanic depths inside of me. All of the built up pain from this life, and that of so many others. Generations of ancestral trauma dumping from every cell in my body, releasing through me what they could not. My tears carrying everything into the ground, fertilizing the earth in this ancient way.
Once the storm had passed, there was always that perfect calm that would follow. From this still-point, a sacred receptivity would emerge within my being. I was open to absorb the perfect truth and absolute beauty of my surroundings. I can recall so many timeless moments where I would be lying flat-out under some hardwood canopy, gazing up diffusely into the overstory above. In this space, I was subtly and silently reprogrammed; unwittingly surrendering my root-bound existence into a healing matrix of mushroom and mycelia. The neural network of my nervous system branching up and leafing out to mimic the primordial patterns that were surrounding me. Awareness spreading out across the landscape, learning a new way to exist within the warp and weft of nature’s weave.
In hindsight, I can see so much perfection in what I believed at the time to be an absolute crisis. My culturally-conditioned self falling dead before its own failure: its own inability to handle the greater complexities of life. My surface-level personality would often handle this very poorly. Flailing around in a confused mess until it no longer had the energy to resist. It is in this sacred space that my soul would rise up through the cracks of a shattered heart–with a mind temporarily stilled– looking out from a freshly tear-stained face to breath in and remember an ancient, more original way of existing.
Like all of us, the forest exists within a duality…but the spirit of the forest does not. The forest does not fear death and destruction. Nor does it welcome it. It works with death. It uses the element of destruction to become more vibrant and vital. Just as it uses the warmth of the sun. Day and night, light and dark. There is no good or bad. There is only that which is life-giving, and that which is not. It moves and breaths with this truth, eventually expanding into a climax expression of harmony. When we spend time connecting deeply with the forest, especially one that is more intact and unmarred by civilization, we naturally become entrained with this energy and profound intelligence.
As the modern world continues to whirl within its broken understanding of this creation, may we seek a vision of peace within our wild places: one that brings us all into greater harmony with nature’s eternal wisdom and grace. Allowing every experience of personal and collective collapse to be an opportunity for Spring-like rebirth. This so that our grandchildren will inherit a way of being that exists beautifully with the dynamic and ever-dancing cycles of life.