Sacred Trees II: Windows on the Dreaming

A Thousand Year Old Yew Tree

"Nothing happens unless first we dream."

-Carl Sandburg

1. The Dreaming and Trees

Okay finally (!) we have a post about trees that is a post about trees, at least to an extent. What are my most characteristic experiences with trees?

First off I should say that I have very few experiences that involve gods or goddesses in a traditional pagan sense. That's one reason why I say I am not a pagan but an animist. This is not to say that I think they are not there, I have some reason to believe that something of the sort exists, but that if they are there I only encounter them through things in the world. If I encounter a spirit through a tree, I have no reason to think that the spirit is other than the spirit of the tree itself. In fact I always feel confident that I am talking to the tree itself, not a spirit inhabiting a tree. I recently had a goddess-like encounter with Water, but even there I cannot say for certain that it was an encounter with something entirely separate from Water Itself. This is not something that is faith-based, I only know what I encounter and experience personally through real things. I encountered Water in a fuller-than-normal sense, is all I can say for certain.

The most common experiences I have with trees, aside from the frequent simple happy greetings, are with trees as windows on the Dreaming. What do I mean by that?

First off, the future and past do not exist apart from the present: the present is all that is real, but the present itself is anything but a chronological dot on a graph. The present is as Heidegger suggested a continual hiding and unveiling, continual becoming, a continual birth and death, revelation and withdrawal. It is in fact something very alien to the usual chronological sense of time. Back in the beginnings of the Western worldview, the philosopher Zeno tried to prove through his famous paradoxes that movement was impossible, and thus everything was in fact static. This is part of the root that Plato sprung out of, and all the magic and mistakes of the Western tradition flow from those roots. In fact nothing is static, everything is flowing, nothing can be fully understood apart from its movement. The future doesn't happen at a different sequential dot in time, it flows out of the present and overtakes the forms of the present, in the present. The hidden place where the future comes from, the hidden place in the present, is the dreams and habits and actions of all the beings that are in this moment: plants, rocks, people, stars, everything. Thus the future exists in the present hidden in the Dreaming. This does not however necessarily exhaust everything the Dreaming is. Because the Dreaming is to some extent inherently hidden, we cannot know anything that is in the Dreaming until it chooses to reveal itself. The Dreaming is probably, to some extent, inexhaustible. What mysteries are hidden in the Dreaming are unknown until they are revealed in some way. Potentially entire worlds unknown to us, which are yet in some way connected to this world.

The best way to talk about how this is, is to give an example that actually happened today. I foolishly decided that I needed to do a two and a half mile walk in the heat of a Texas summer, with temperatures exceeding a hundred degrees. This is part of my overall personal recovery scheme, to work to repair the havoc of years of my neglect of my body. I needed to walk, and there was no other better time in my schedule than in the middle of the day, or so I was thinking. Had I known how close to the edge my walk would take me, I might have reconsidered, but also I had many very powerful experiences during it. Sometimes you have to commit your body to a risk, if you want to achieve anything. Anyway, when I got to Flag Pole Hill Park, I felt this live oak tree beckoning to me. It was standing alone in the grass. While this exchange did not happen in words, it happened. These exchanges never happen in words. I might actually say words to the tree, but what I am really doing is feeling and imaging to the tree and it is feeling and imaging back to me. Meanwhile I am touching and looking at its bark, looking up at its leaves, inhaling its scent, engaging it with my whole body. Anyway, I was at that moment very much in the grips of psychological withdrawals from tobacco (I have been trying to quit smoking) and that's what I talked to it about, and to me it was very much like a son talking to his father or mother. I did not encounter that tree as a peer, I instinctively encountered it as above me in respect. A holy tree, in other words. 

And then it showed me something remarkable, something I have a hard time putting into words. In part, it showed me a life that was already beyond tobacco, free and clear and whole, without any addicted feelings. As if I were already there. At that moment, in some sense, I was there, and yet it was also set out before me as a moral lesson of sorts. Something I should aim for, what I am falling short of, in ways beyond just my nicotine habit. But it was much more than that. There was also a taste, and I like to use non-visual words to describe it, a taste of something I encountered before. Of a place in the Dreaming I encountered before. Something I don't fully understand. I have a name for it: Elysium. 

My "kamidana," my equivalent of a Shinto home shrine. Somewhat similar in general intent, though not otherwise similar.

2. Elysium

I do not know what Elysium is exactly, these are my impressions of it. Shortly after I had dedicated my home shrine as a way of communicating with what I did not know, I was sitting in front of the opened shrine and meditating. The shrine has a lid closure of sorts, it is not normally open unless I am using it. As soon as I had put up and first used the shrine, I started having some sleep disturbances which continue to a degree to this day, I probably should not have put such a powerful thing so close to my bed but I was short on space. I wonder sometimes if it talks to me in my sleep. 

Anyway, I was sitting meditating in front of it, when it became as if a door to another place. It did not visually seem different, but it was different. It was if a refreshing cool breeze was flowing out of it, carrying sweet smells of grass and flowers and growing things, and if sunshine had a smell it would smell of that too. Anyway, to my eyes it looked the same, to my other senses, the senses I use when I talk to the trees, the senses I use to perceive the Dreaming, it was an open window not a wall, and on the other side of this window or doorway was something inexpressibly wonderful. I called it Elysium after the Greek afterlife of the same name.

It seemed a little bit like the Native American folklore about the Happy Hunting Ground. Neither the Happy Hunting Ground nor the Greek Elysium were considered to be exactly separate from the world we know, but as it were past the horizon of the world we know. At the same time, like the vision from the live oak tree, it was both a thing that could be perceived now, albeit in the Dreaming, but also a model for how things should be in this world. It was both a reality I could perceive then and there, and also what should be on this side of the portal. Both a reality and a moral lesson. From what I could perceive, it seemed to be much like this world, but one in which all things were optimal, beautiful and harmonious. The vision from the live oak tree was much similar to this vision, but a bit more practically-centered. In other words, the live oak was showing me the implementation of Elysium in this world. Since the physical shrine itself is not a being, something was using the shrine to communicate with me. Could something have been using the tree in a similar way? I cannot say for sure, except that my sense of it was that I was communicating with the tree itself.

You now know about all I know about Elysium, except for actually experiencing it.

3. Blue Star

This is not directly related, but it kind of fits in here. I find myself wishing that the Hopi prophecy concerning the Blue Star Kachina were true, but not believing that it is true. Fundamentally I am only believing what I am experiencing myself, and I have not experienced that. I am not following a faith-based religion, belief is to some degree or other irrelevant and actually counterproductive to me. Believing in what you have no way of knowing is just delusion. But it is possible that I fundamentally misunderstood what the "prophecy" is. I might not be alone in that misunderstanding either, the Hopi themselves may misunderstand it.

For those who might not be aware, this is the prophecy in a nutshell and I apologize if I am misrepresenting any part of it. We are living in a time of increasing insanity, increasing human lust for power, increasingly unnatural life, increasingly destructive life. At some point, the Blue Star Kachina will initiate the Purification, in which most everyone on the planet will die. If we are lucky, a remnant will remain behind to start things aright again, and the world will be renewed. 

Now why in the heck would I want that to happen, particularly if I and my loved ones would be among the casualties as would be likely? Well if the alternative is planetary death, ya I want that to happen. If the alternative is just increasing insanity and people mutating themselves and everything else into monsters, ya I probably still would prefer the prophecy version of events. Problem is, I don't really believe in prophecies too much. I think that the prophecy like almost all prophecies is almost certainly wrong. 

But what is wrong with this picture??? Why are the Hopis, who do not even have a precise translation of the word future in their vocabulary, now describing things that are going to happen in this future??? Future is an inherently unshamanic concept. It is a Western concept.

Where did I say the future actually exists in or comes from? From the Dreaming. What is this future in the Dreaming? Precisely the wishes and plans and actions and dreams and habits of all living things. Multiple potential futures exist in the Dreaming, though only one will manifest in fact. Does anything in my actual experience of the Dreaming correlate to the state of the world as it would be after the Purification? Yes, Elysium as implemented in the world.

So it isn't a prophecy at all. It is a realm in the Dreaming. It isn't a prediction, it is a misunderstood prayer. It is not that it will happen regardless of what we do, but rather that we need to be busy Dreaming it. We should be praying and working and living it into existence, not waiting for it to happen. It was never a prophecy at all, it's a project. If the alternative to the manifestation of this Dream is some version of what I have laid out, planetary death or increasing confusion and chaos and insanity and monstrosity, then ya we probably should get busy bringing it into existence, not passively waiting for it like dummies. And maybe in the real world, we can do it without the 7 billion casualties. That would be a plus, eh? Just a thought.