The white sheep of the family??

The second Tree of Life meeting.

Turns out, everyone had drawn pictures. Felt sensations. Come to understandings that they could map out in coloured pens.

I had drawn a mandala. Basically, I had copied the mandala.

I started to feel, yet again, like the odd one out.

(BTW I think this is a great photo. Maybe better if I cropped the right edge to omit the half sheep. And the top for the wires. And adjusted the colour. Apart from that, it's a great photo.)

My problem is this: I get strong FEELINGS, that I cannot put into words... I'll try... warmth, connection, joy, wonder, curiosity all mixed together and spinning and all-encompassing... I have to follow the feeling to the source - tree, slime mold, acorn, hare, cloud formation, rustling... I am strongly conscious of sharing a moment with something... bound to it at the level of my being and drawn and intoxicated.

Then I get something. It may be a poem - this is how my hare poem came about. But very often it's something like 'old wisdom'. Like, 'You have to be tree before you can understand place.' Or, 'Tree is the alchemy of time and place expressed in tree.' I know, that one's like a koan. Or, 'Tree is its own philosopher's stone.' And, 'Connection. Context. Reciprocity.' Or, 'The given is given through being ready rather than through asking.' And, 'Roots take place into time.' Much of this was today... last week I also had, 'The unseen is as important as the seen.'

What I feel is that for me, everything starts too late in the process. I am not aware of the early stages - calcination, dissolution and separation. I start at conjunction. But then what I have in the coagulation phase is unfiltered - it needs to go round again, back to conjunction - but I can't get past calcination.

My poplar said last week, there's too much fire... but I don't seem able to use the fire to burn through the hyphae of my unconscious sensing to reach the pure seed of conscious understanding.

This week I was trying to meditate on roots and deep experiences using the mandala. Just as well that I had drawn it. I also cut some bamboo cane to make a seven-pointed star.

I'd seen some cool roots. Oak and ivy in a river bank.

And I got fixated on this - when are roots trunk? When does trunk become root?

So I went to the veteran oak with my mandala and bamboo. The tree was very welcoming - and gave that stuff about time and place and the given.

But I don't know what any of it means.