The Council of Trees: December 2008

Friday, December 12, 2008

Up Against the Wall

Dear Friends,

These are such turbulent times!

Can we embrace the uncertainty, the challenges and the changes without falling into the fear zone and then staying there? Life oftens gives us more than we expect. Much of what we thought was solid and supportive may fade or disappear. Then we look into our inner selves for the wisdom of creative solutions. Okay, I'll try to be creative even when it feels everything is falling down around me! The drama is so appealing, isn't it!

Breathe and breathe some more. Listen (and not to the fear!) These recent challenges are no more true than the best things that have ever happened to me. There are the drama of life distracting me from trusting what is real within me. Despite my occasional doubt, I know who I am and while what is happening right now is not easy, it also is not that difficult. I have so much- my unique life, my creativity, my friends, family and my community. What am I paying attention to, what is within me or what is without?

Today in a healing session I saw myself standing, banging my head against a wall that I know I have created. I saw how I started out when I was much younger standing up to what didn't serve me but then not being supported. So I acquised who I was for the support I needed and when I finally realized that didn't work anyway, I wanted back my life, my very own being. I wasn't even aware it was possible! Little by little, I started showing up, first in small ways, trying not to alienate the people who did love me but who I hadn't shown who I really was.
This sometimes meant leaving behind an old friend as I struggled toward finding my own voice.
I often pushed away many who would've given me support had I the courage to face and share who I was. The rejection, or the possiblity of it, stung too deeply. It was easier to walk away first than risk it.

So today I saw myself standing in front of a wall. It was the same wall as always, except today it was made of cotton and practically wispy!

The wall of my own disbelief in myself is fading to nothing. It has been alot of smoke and mirrors, tears and fighting for what has been real since the beginning of time. I can stop pushing back, protecting and hiding. I can now remember to listen carefully to the deep soul of my being and to the play of what's happening around me. I have learned to wait for what is real to show itself, which, with patience, it usually does.

It's a funny thing how everything is born out of an opposite and amazing otherness. We have a creation of challenges and connections that we couldn't or at least wouldn't want to live without. There is a play in front of us and within us that contains all we ever need to know about who we are and how we see the world. Can you see the facade of your own beliefs covering the world?

Can you trust who you are, even if you don't have all the answers just yet?
Can you watch your universe unfold in it's own unique birthing process, knowing that newness and birth come after what's called 'transition', not before it?
Can you give up the sense of entitlement enmeshed in the false, illusionary self and instead embrace a simpler,more grounded and more truthful self?

Can you dance with what comes to your door, trusting your realness and not that of the world?

Warmly,
Laurel

THE BEGINNING

The Beginning
I have always loved trees. Like lots of people I recognized early on what beauty, shelter and magic they offer. So here is the story of how the Council of Trees started ‘talking’ to me.
About 4 years ago I had a session with a friend who was in many of the ColorTherapy courses I attended. She offered sound therapy, which my intuition said I needed. I really wasn’t interested but I have learned to listen to my gut feelings. At the end of the perfectly sweet session she said to me “You are to bring in a new healing technique, go sit in a council of trees”. I asked her lots of questions and she reassured me that was all I needed to know. I left the session convinced I would start looking for that circle of trees immediately. Then I promptly forgot all about it!
I walked in the woods regularly with my dog Lily and never even remembered what she’d said. Then Lily died in late January of ‘05 and of course my heart broke open. A few weeks later,some friends called and invited me walking, then such a strange thing to do without a dog. As we went down a narrow path in the forest, I heard the leaves clattering in an unsual way. Looking up I saw a beautiful circle of hardwoods and remembered what she’d said.
I sat with my back against a tree, facing into the circle and emptied myself to receive. Nothing happened so I leaned my head back and swoosh, I felt everything disappear into the ground except my body. When I came up, I felt good but wasn’t sure anything had happened.
All the rest of the day, I felt there was a voice far back in my head but I was too busy and feeling uneasy to stop to listen. So I climbed into bed relieved on one hand and perplexed on the other- why hadn’t I received even one message?
Just as I deeply relaxed, the ‘download’ began. That’s what it felt like, someone speaking to me and all this new information coming in. I was tired and didn’t want to get up and write everything down and I wasn’t sure I would continue to hear if I got up. After about two hours, I must have fallen asleep. This was exciting stuff! The next morning I remembered everything. And this kept on 3-5 nights a week for the next 6 weeks. There was alot of repetition as the information built an understanding of the process and information I was to teach.
One time I’d sat down to relax in front of the TV and was told to watch a certain program. It was a 60 Minutes show about Game Theory, which says that if we tell friends what we are going to do, then we are more likely to carry it out. This was a bit overwhelming for me and I wasn’t sure I had the guts to really bring in something new. So I told three friends what I was doing and they each gave me a book about healing. I was relieved to be reading others work and thought maybe I could train in their work and teach that. NO WAY! Even as I was reading these new books, the voice in my head said ”this is good, this is not”. It felt nuts! A voice of the council of trees in my head evaluating famous healers and their works. What I was being shown and told was definitely different than alot of what’s usually taught in spiritual circles though I knew deep down that what I was being given was valuable and I could feel it working in my own life.
Many times we went back to find that circle of trees. We thought we were on the wrong path and we would find places that were similar but never the same.
I work every day in a healing practice using CranioSacral Therapy and other techniques. During this time, I found that places in a persons body would light up and I would see what I was learning at night. One day a new client came in to see me. She was a Christian seer or an intercepter, as she called herself. I asked if she had a message for me. She took my hand and told me that I had been climbing the mountain for a long time and was now on the way down, almost to a deep clear pool. Another day she told me that when she sees people, she usually sees a fruit tree bearing fruit, meaning that person has a gift to share with others. When she looked at me she saw a giant Oak tree that was planting seeds for generations to come. I figured I should just keep going even if all this felt a little crazy at times!
If I didn’t understand something, I would just ask for more information or to be shown what I was being told. The information was alot about grounding, balancing and how to bring the heart to neutral. “What was neutral?”, I asked as I drove to Asheville to help my daughter who was opening a new store. I then felt like I was dropped into neutral and held there all weekend. My wonderful daughter was cranky and my granddaughter was her usual teenage self. I felt nothing but love for them. All the conflicts disappeared and nothing else mattered. I felt amused by everything and just stayed in love all weekend. Wow, I thought, this is great!
Integrating the information into a full teaching took some time and the help of my good friend Layla. At first I thought I was only to take people through an initiation process so I offered that to some of my clients and friends. I became discouraged as the process didn’t stick with some or was abandoned quickly by others. Then I realized that the few people who did use the process regularly were going through changes. I started to understand that an intellectual framework might be neccessary to fully incorporate what was shifting in the body. Layla and I slowly gathered the information into a whole teaching and offered classes. We learned alot about what worked and what didn’t as we continued to listen to ourselves and nature.
For a long time it seemed that the council didn’t talk to me and now I understand that I was so busy inside learning to live this new way of being that I don’t think I could’ve absorbed more at that point. In the last few months though, I have been hearing little tidbits during the day or waking with definite sayings that they want me to incorporate into a book for children. I often can’t sleep at night without writing a page or two for a book I’m meant to write for adults also. Gratefully, when these urges come, the words come fast and easy.
Thank you for reading my story. I hope to write regularly on what I’ve come to understand and the new learnings that continue to inspire me. A big thank you to The Council of Trees!
Blessings,
Laurel

Are We Out of Our Minds Yet?

What if you’ve read Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, and worked at the law of attraction, the secret and now you’re ready for the next level?Welcome to Living Wisdom.There is a new path to wholeness that incorporates quantum physics and the wisdom from The Council of Trees.
Years of meditation can teach us that where we go ‘home’ is beyond our thinking processes. Yet the mind is naturally set up for our cause and effect, fear based world and always wants to be in charge to keep us safe. The paradox is that safety feels beyond the mind.The trees tell of a way that ends the war within and therefore the wars reflected outside of us. It’s called Living Wisdom because it is new information that provides a way to get out of conflict and bring in our divine True Self.
We can learn to go home within ourselves and begin to create an external reality based on that deep sense of joy. We become self-full yet generous as we become the creators of our new world, because it’s really new when it is birthed from that wholeness. Creation is born in freedom from duality so we go beyond will or affirmation.
The mind has all of us thinking we are small, which is just safe, yet our world now calls on us to step up into who we really are.The paradigm shift comes from the next step beyond Tolle and Katie, who have beautifully laid the groundwork of presence and acceptance of what is. As we learn to live beyond duality and call in our divinity, we find ourselves in our feelings and sensations, grounded in Mother Earth with a knowing of heaven.
We are still very human as we learn to live more and more as the bridge between heaven and earth. As we learn to open new windows to creativity, we leave victim hood behind and access potentials that have never before been vailable. Somehow it’s time. Some say it’s because the earths grid work has been rewired for a new level of consciousness, some say it’s astrological progressions. The mind has held an over elevated status since Atlantian times say others. Whatever!

It’s time. It’s time to explore a new level of intelligence that goes beyond good vs. bad, light vs. dark and masculine vs. feminine. When the body, emotions, mind and our innate divinity come into equal balance, quad energy is born and new potentials are created. This is your life! Enjoy and love it all:)

Tree Stories

#1
“My dear, the trees do talk too. They do talk. You are part of the trees. The biggest problem is, we humans cannot speak the language.” Dell Wihongi, Maori elder

# 2
“When I die, she said, I’m coming back as a tree with deep roots & I’ll wave my leaves at the children every morning on their way to school & whisper tree songs at night in their dreams.Trees with deep roots know about the things children need.”
Brian Andreas
"We grow a lot faster than trees, he said, so we miss a lot of stuff.”
Brian Andreas
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The Council of Trees

Friday, December 12, 2008

Up Against the Wall

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THE BEGINNING

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Are We Out of Our Minds Yet?

Tree Stories

The Council of Trees

Friday, December 12, 2008

Up Against the Wall

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THE BEGINNING

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Are We Out of Our Minds Yet?

Tree Stories