How to Befriend a Tree
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c. Establishing Communion with a Tree
There are certain methods to approaching, interacting with, retreating from and taking leave of a tree. By following specific steps you create a ritual of silent communion that both you and the tree can understand, and so increase the potential for harmonious interaction. The steps were derived from observation of the natural course of events in subtle energy communion, and apply to communion with just about anything: tree, rock, human, or animal, although the following is concerned specifically with trees.
First of all, each tree, like each person, has a personality, desires, and a life of its own. Trees differ widely in their taste for human contact. Some are very generous and want to give you all the energy you can take. Others are weak or ill and need your comforting and healing energy. Some are just friendly souls who enjoy human company. Others are quite indifferent to you. You can learn and grow by working with all of them. Try to be open and respectful, rather than pressing the trees to serve your own purposes. In this way they will provide you with more than just another source of Chi: friendship, playful expression, and love.
Trees operate on a longer time scale than do human beings. You can help to bridge this gap by returning again and again to the same tree, so that a relationship develops. Visit regularly so that the tree knows when to expect you and can look forward to seeing you. You may have the distinct impression that the tree really misses you when you are gone for a longer time than usual.
Spiritual communion with trees resembles resembles love more than any other human activity. As such, a quality of sensuality and tenderness should be present. You do not always have to be in control of the situation. Allow some time to just relax and melt into the communion. Let the tree lead you into the wonders of its own inner life. Working with trees in this way can help to ease sexual frustration. You may find that some of the practices presented here can be easily adapted for use in lovemaking.
2. Practicing with a Tree and the Earth’s Force
a.Use the Palms to Absorb Yin Chi and Help Balance Yang Energy (Figure 2-29)
Morning to noon time is the best time to practice with a tree.
1. Assume a Position. Stand or sit one or two feet in front of a tree.
2. Open Yourself to a Tree. Relax and center yourself. Feel your boundaries soften. Allow yourself to become more receptive and somewhat vulnerable, ready to make contact with the tree. Feel your energy field open like a flower, neither emitting nor absorbing energy, just becoming open and available (Figure 2-30).
3. Offer a Welcome. Extend your arms and face the palms of your hands toward the tree. Extend your energy toward the tree with a friendly ‘offering” attitude. When the tree responds by extending its energy to you, accept it, breathing it into your body with an attitude of “welcome.” Use your mind and eyes as follows. With the lower part of the eyes, concentrate on the tip of your nose. With the upper part of the eyes, look at your palms and at the tree.
Let your intuition guide you as you respond to the tree again with another “offering” gesture. Proceed with several of these exchanges. Take your time and really feel what is happening.
Use the left palm, the mind, and the upper part of the eyes to absorb the Chi.
4. Parallel Tracking. Remain centered within yourself, neither approaching nor retreating, and simply observe the subtle relationship between you and the tree. Use meditative concentration to become very absorbed in your connection with the tree, without actively trying to change or analyze what is going on. Do not try to deepen the communion or lessen it. Control your own energy and watch the tree while the tree controls its own energy and watches you. This is known as Parallel Tracking. Such a neutral state may occur several times during a session at deep as well as shallow levels of intimacy.
5. Draw and Hold Close. Allow the energy field between you and the tree to intensify, thicken, and contract to Draw and Hold Close the two of you together. There may or may not be physical movement involved. The sensation is that the two of you are being enfolded in a cocoon of energy while more and more of your inner cores are exposed to each other. Finally you hold each other in an embrace of deep intimacy.
Drawing and Holding Close often happens spontaneously as the offering and welcoming escalates to become circulating and sharing, or as the circulating and sharing moves to deeper and deeper levels.
6. Guide the Chi. As with all Healing Tao practices, it is necessary that you train your eyes and mind to move and guide the Chi. This practice is also useful in training yourself to recognize and be aware of the quality of the tree’s energy. Feel the tree’s energy when it enters your body. As you send it out to the tree, combine it with Human Plane (Cosmic Particle) Energy. Notice how the energy feels when it returns to you from the tree: enhanced with a cool, healing quality. Notice also how the quality of the energy changes after nine, eighteen, 24, and 36 cycles.
Move the upper part of the eyes to guide the Chi slowly up the inside Yin side) of the left arm, to the left shoulder, the left side of the neck, the left ear, and the crown. From the crown move the Chi down the right side to the back side of the right ear, to the right neck, the right shoulder, inside the right arm, to the right palm. Project the Chi out into the tree trunk. Absorb the Chi again in a circle (the Yin Energy Circle): 36 cycles for men and 24 cycles for women. (Figure 2-30)
7. Extend to a Deeper Level. Now begin to exchange energy with the tree on a deeper level. To share with the tree on a deeper level means to place a particular part of your body in contact with a particular part of the tree’s body, and breathing the energy back and forth between them. To circulate now means guiding the energy along a path which passes through both of your bodies and returns to its starting point. You can guide the Chi as in (6) above. Eventually you will discover many different patterns are possible.
8. Drawing and Holding Back to End Gracefully. Drawing and Holding Back is very important. It prevents you from absorbing more energy from the tree than you can harmoniously utilize. It also prevents you from draining too much energy from a small or weak tree, or leaving such a tree with too much of your unprocessed negative energy. In addition, it seals off the connections you have made with the tree so that energy is not leaked into the environment after you leave. All in all, it makes for an aesthetically complete meditation and shows respect for the tree. When you have had enough and wish to begin your return to normal consciousness or just to a less deep level of communion, try to do so slowly and gradually so as not to disturb the beauty of what you have just shared. The sensation is one of gradually returning to yourself, sorting out the energy that belongs to you from the energy that belongs to the tree, and re-establishing the boundary between you.
It is important to note at this time that if, after you have done the healing, you still feel a lot of energy in your hands, close the crown point to seal it so that your healing energy will not continue to flow out.
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