Our beloved tree will be staying.
She stands just on the other side of our property line, 5 stories tall, a gorgeous broad leafed Maple. Her lot was recently purchased, and the owner planned to remove her to build. Several of us began creating an energetic field where she was still here. We advocated for her in love. That was a rough go for me for a while, grieving the possibility of her passing. I had a lot to learn. She seized the opportunity, and began teaching me about death and life, as the master guide she is. Meanwhile, linear time progressed. The current owner ran into some snags and put the property up for sale again. Someone else bought it, and sent the surveyors to mark the boundaries. Stakes with pink ribbons appeared. Change was imminent.
And here is what she has taught me, and continues to teach me: Death is No Thing. Nothing. It does not exist. Not even a whisper of it. She spoke very specifically to me last week: “There is no change in death, no matter the appearance of the change of form. It is seamless.”
As she spoke this to me, a friend shared a dream where he and his father were in a helicopter. His father was piloting, and was having some trouble. My friend tried to help his father with suggestions and direction, but as they headed straight for a cliff, he realized there was no changing course, and that they were going to crash and die. So he surrendered. And die they did. Here was the amazing thing: There was no change of awareness, not even for an instant. Awareness was constant and seamless. Their “bodies” both crashed and died, and “they” also continued straight through the cliff without so much as a blip. They went on.
My tree has been teaching me this for months. “See me,” she says. “See what I truly Am.” So I look and I behold her energetic form (revealed in some of these pictures). She is light. She is motion. She is transparent and enlivened and sparkly. Her leaves dance like a thousand angel wings, glistening in her inner glow, a light that is the same within and without. “See me! Can’t you see that there is no way I can not exist? I will always be what I am.”
She also shared that she is completely unattached to this life, and her form. She loves being a tree, and she is fine with moving into her next energetic iteration. She’s been very consistent in this, her absolute peace with any course. This morning, now that we know she will be staying (the builder has excavated around her, severing huge roots, and will trim her branches substantially, and the tree man tells him she will survive it), she said to me, “See? Life is easy! So is death. It’s all easy.”
I call her “our tree,” never mind the property line. But of course she isn’t ours, any more than any of us ever could belong to anyone or anything, even life itself. We are life. How can we belong to what we are? And also, we belong to each other, as the One that is Us. We are all free, fully unbounded, and life is amazing in the knowing of this freedom. Life is easy. So is death. Because We Are it All.
