Story 1.) The Secret of Trees . . .

THERE WAS A RIVER running through Everland which was so clear and sparkling and beautiful, it would gladden the heart of anyone who saw it. In the lovely level open place, through which it flowed, after it left the hills were deciduous trees growing all along its banks, on either side. This lovely place was like a parkland, emerald green and luscious, where roe deer wandered; and the trees were all wild fruit trees. They were fine and delicate and mysteriously fragrant; and in full flower, they were resplendent in their pink and white dreaming.

   It was a beautiful bright sunlit day with a stiff breeze blowing and my heart was soaring within me. As I walked beside the river, set free of every encumbrance, I saw the wind in the trees. I saw how it moved them and I was fascinated. I walked more slowly and gazed upward. Some of the trees, the more supple ones, were moving so urgently that it seemed to me as if they spoke; or that they had within them, even a vital story to tell. Filled also with a longing to communicate my arms just lifted of themselves; and raised were waving as a tree. I was a tree. My swaying branches signing to a deaf world hell bent upon its own destruction ‘Copy me! See the trees! Life has turned us inside out and sent us in another way!’    

   Oh, the trees knew! They were bidding me copy them. They knew the way would open---waving in another dimension---in ‘a more excellent way.’ Constantly, they were changing with the times. Only human nature thinks it knows better, and inside stays the same.

   The season changed. I was in another place. And as so often happens in the course of our sojourn on the earth, a month of somberness came; when my awareness of the continual Presence within was waning; seemingly, being taken away? But for good, I learned later, that it may grow even stronger. And that is hard.

   Of course it is hard, I realized. But that is only because I am ignorant: having not previously taken much notice of the way of living things, nor learned from them how life is continually changing its form; and sometimes so slowly I do not see it at all. Like how mothers cannot tell the day when their babies became toddlers; and, as schoolchildren walked each day from home until finally they left it for their own. Though we stared at them every day, they every day looked the same; but they were not, they were each day changing. Yet so normal was it that we didn’t notice the change. Nor could we pin it down when it was. Nor did we cry for the loss. It was so gradual we didn’t see it. 

   Oh---like the seasons of fruit trees! 
  And I remembered that happy day, when, borne by the wind, I had walked among the living trees along the River of Life in faraway Everland. Suddenly I understood more of what it was that they had been trying to tell me that day. Of course, however sweet the blossom of their springtime they do not cling to it, or grieve at its loss. They know their beauty must fall away for the fruit to form. This was the way of real life. And, as it was true, in the natural world, so is it in the spiritual. And then I saw to my rue that I am not so wise as a tree. Having not learned of them, that in my own life, the lovely blossom of my first light and life, will drop away. As it is meant to. And for something greater than showy blossom---some further life in me. The budding fruit of inner truth and wisdom in which is the continuing Seed of endless life; growing, maturing---falling---and dying---down in the dark underground---and then, living, shooting up---in and into the light. 
   It is the awakening. 
  An inner life such as the living world of nature knows---and all around me changing with the times---taking me with it. That is how I will be as a fruitful tree; and bring forth a harvest of glory.

   No falling: no springing up. No endings: no new beginnings.

   I had been unobservant I had not applied this free and living wisdom to my own life: to perceive and comprehend the way of all life, and the manner in which it will change---and there was joy.

  

                                        … TWO …                            

SEASON BY SEASON I watched the deciduous trees. Behind our house was a huge and beautiful, liquid amber, maple tree. And as I gazed at it, in spirit, it was here I learned the fact, that if at every season, old leaves fell for the next leaves to grow, then all my past thought-patterns-of-life were passed, and I didn’t need them anymore, by reason of the glory that excels in the growing leaf! For if I would have all I needed, by life, then all my old leaves of knowledge must fall, for the new leaves to come.

   All things became new, each time the old gave way, and fell. Though the new leaves which came looked much like those that went before, they were not the same ones, of course. And just as it was for the tree, so it was with me.

   Nothing grows that is not living. So I saw that anything life had given me had to remain in life to live. So all my current understanding had to be put under in the living place. Like a seed, I had to put it underground for it to live. 

   Oh, and anyway, it was only by putting it back, under, that it really was, under-standing; for it was only by putting it under that I could stand on it. Staying at the back of my mind, where I buried it, it was under good ground. Because now it was where life begins, the life was the light of men, put in that realm where the light worked---in the dark---from where it shines. That untouchable place, where I could not contaminate it by my own opinions, for the darkness comprehended it not. Put in that invisible place of The Unknown, there in the dark, it would live, and grow; and then come shining out. The light shines in darkness.

   Out of darkness the light shines. Only there I can see it.  There it would sprout out all by itself. The seed of life and light sending out its tender shoot in the fullness of time.

   Whatever the light had shown me, some new seed of truth, some newness of its beauty perceived, it would live---if, kept in the growing place, the dark. Growing there by being alive there in ongoing, overcoming and surrender, it would eventually come out, all by itself in new leaves of new light in some new form. New words would come out, to give shape to what was heard within. And, that way, living leaves of renewed thought would come out at every season. If, that is, they were surpassed, at every season, by my forgetting them, and letting them go; even as the trees did.

   GOING they went. DYING they lived. RELEASED they travelled. Just as a living tree releases its leaves as soon as their work is fulfilled, and had therefore come to an end. In that season of falling those leaves went travelling on the wind, the wind of the spirit, far and wide. And as the season of the fall is for the good of the trees, so is it for me.

   And in this I took comfort, that if my leaves should seem to go nowhere, at least they were fallen at my own feet; and, going under them, and breaking down, they became the fertilizer for my further under-standing; just as the un-flown away dead leaves of the living tree, are enriching the ground in which it stands. Trees are the only created things that never stop growing throughout their entire lives.

   And so, I saw, that if I was nothing but a living person, as a tree is as a ‘living person,’ then my understanding would be ever, current; for it would be forever going, under, in ever falling, once it was full. And ever beginning, again, ever new; even so was the glorious liberty of life in Everland.

                                        … THREE …

AND THE PROCESS OF IT was, rest, and simplicity, itself; and the hidden wisdom that baffled the princes of this world. Why if I lived as a living person I didn’t have to remember anything. Anything living just was and just did. It was happening life---happening. It was all in me right there where I was. Having need of nothing outside of me everything needed was always available, and I didn’t have to do a thing. Just like a tree did nothing but hold out its leaves to the sun, and drink in the rain. There the light entered and nourished the tree. So could I live that way, too. Fed by the light, just the same. Through my own leaves. I learned the most about life and me through my own leaves of writing---writing me out. Writing down those things I was taught within, by life within, where wisdom is. 

   Of course, I learned the most about life and me through my own leaves. Being as I was as one particular tree of one peculiar species. Because, if each particular species, grows in its own peculiar way, predetermined right from its seed, then my leaves would carry on telling me, of my own continuing story, if I would only listen. Telling what was known that I didn’t know yet, being as all my future leaves were all written in embryo inside the seed of the 'tree' I grew from right from the beginning. My daily bread was only a matter of daily being. Only believe. ‘See, the trees!’

  

                                          … FOUR …

AS A TREE LIVES IN THE LIGHT of the sun, and the light enters its leaves, and gives life and sustenance to the whole tree, I kept on sending out new leaves of new thought---new pages of writing---at every season. No longer worrying about losing them, or what happened to them; or wondering where they went; or, if they went anywhere at all. No more than do trees worry where their leaves go.

   But, by keeping on, and falling when I am full, the flame lives; and the sap rises again. Everything grows and changes if it is alive. I had always known it. It was by this I grew, and stayed alive. In always putting under every living idea which came to me. Putting it where, ‘I,’ ‘me,’ could not touch it; for then it would grow, and expand, being as it was in the place out of which all seeds grow---out of the dark---their rich nurturing place---out of faith their endless living place.  Out of its ashes a phoenix rises. In its fourth dimension.

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