~ Welcome all to Tree Temple music ~
The Rowan moon just gave birth!
Most people have never listened to a full album while lying on their back staring up at the trees. This is a problem, because this essential activity provides:
-Marvelous beauty.
-Improved breathing.
-A form of guided meditation.
-Communion with the tree spirits.
-High quality, analogue entertainment.
-An inner journey, and fresh ideas you can cherish for years!
Be sure to choose music that will hold your attention!
Secret pathways await our stillness, and our listening ~
An excellent method of stress relief and inner stabilization is having a place in our imagination, our minds eye, that we can return to regardless of where our physical self may be. This place serves as a doorway to a deeper inner journey.
You can build this place intentionally, based in a fond memory, an existing place such as a childhood home or favorite park, or even in a song or whole album.
Without knowing, I raised a shrine from the underbrush to commune in the trees' own realm. Before having explanation, I built a dwelling place in those woods in which to keep my heart and spirit.
Place slowly each table, each tree, each picture hanging on the wall. Sing the words, listen behind the melody. Each plant, each stone. What is the pattern of the carpet? What is on the ceiling or among the branches?
Upon my first step into the thick, burgeoning foliage of the Fifteen Deer Wood one day, I adjusted my headphones and pressed play on my portable CD player. “Back in the World of Adventures” by The Flower Kings slowly and gently breathed its first movement.
Savoring every note of the music, I let my thoughts of school, family, and the world drift gently away, pace by pace through the kaleidoscope of green and brown. Not far from the path's beginning grew a few thin, tall trees in a little patch of dirt that was bare of underbrush. For some reason I was drawn to this patch today, having seen it before. Stepping carefully, barefoot among the thorns and poison ivy, I made my way off the path to this place.
I gathered seven fallen branches at a length of my own height or longer. I heaved them standing upright, one by one arranged within this brown sanctum. I sat within, the green and blue distance undulating all around, far beyond. As I listened to the music, I learned each branch's name and story. Not stories or names made by ape minds, but of trees' growing. Not stories or names of language, but of movement. Very.. Slow.. Movement..
In the passing of an age, in the blink of an eye, the album had finished. I gave one more fond gaze to this woody altar, and continued on into the forest.
Through the dry brushes and down the thorny brae. Across the lush stream and into the tall green grasses. Along the hilly path of pines that led by the stream. Into the deepening shadows of late-afternoon, the golden glow of the woodlands thick like honey, the dust of ten million plants an ocean of waves within the light.
Drinking in this ethereal mead, I switched out CDs. Next up was Heritage, by Opeth.
Melancholy was my friend. Solitude, my sister. The darkening wood, my sanctuary.
I remember veering off the path, most of the way up a long rise in the land. I came to a point looking west, where I could see the sun begin to set over the treeline on the next hill beyond the Fifteen Deer Wood. A dim and misty mix of orange and purple blanketed the scene.
The sorrowful, earthy music a precious mirror for my spirit, I stood in reverence of the coming darkness for the length of the record, emptied by the shifting shadows of the forest.
I was one amongst hundreds of simple, upright trees, shining a dull grey. Holy brown and green at our roots, sinking ever so slowly into the ground. Blue-grey drifting from our branches, off into the night. Furtive rustling of the squirrel and racoon, our serenade. Darkness brought us all together in her magic blanket, and gave us peace.
It was not yet full-blooming spring, so eventually the cold snapped my mind back on. As I made my way back out of the forest, I did not dwell on the place I had just been. However forevermore I would have a home in the forest there, knowing one of my deep-selves to be a simple tree of grey and brown.
No radio programming or school books could cross the shadows between us. No bullying jeers or strict orders could be heard through the blanket of darkness. No science of man or intellectual philosophy could come near the profundity of our roots twining together in the dirt.
Twine your roots with mine in listening <3
~ Compassion ~
~ <3 Trolli <3 ~
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