Trees, Trolls and Transformation
Chicago Intensive
June 5th - 8th, 2025
Week One of our Pre-study Time together - Gardens
Dear Retreatants,
It has long been my desire to visit the most beautiful gardens in the world, to spend time in deep contemplation of the symbolism of the garden, trees, plants and birds. The garden is first mentioned in the book of Genesis and is a symbol in all the major spiritual traditions of the beauty and peace, of the eternal state of our consciousness - in other words, of the enlightened state.
It represents the cultivation of the wilderness, the forest, i.e. the natural animal instincts of our human state. It is the ordering of the inner chaos, the taming of the wild and the befriending of the beasts and trolls that inhabit the untamed and unaware psyche until all aspects of self can live in harmony and peace within. it represents the final process of the long gardening exercise of our own personal lives. We plant and nurture, prune and cut back, transplant and re-pot, rearrange and create paths, sanctuaries, places of inner beauty, calm and repose until we have the garden of our consciousness free of dis-ease, bearing fruit and flowers, flowing with streams of tinkling water and fountains of sparkling beauty, deep lakes and green trees that offer sanctuary to every aspect of our created selves.
Consider the picture of the Christian idea of the lion and the lamb - the symbol of God living together with the innocence/ignorance of humans. In other words, our own consciousness living in harmony with even the youngest most innocent part of ourselves. This is really just the same symbolism as the troll living under the bridge of transformation in the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, in the beautiful countryside of Norway, where the fairy tale originated. Each age must be in relationship with the troll of shame and fear that lurks beneath every transformation, change and move we make in life. When we think about symbols and metaphors, it is not the image or object but the meaning and principle behind them that is trying to be conveyed, in the every day experiences of human beings.
It is no mistake that the Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree - one of the most beautiful trees, in my mind in the world. We will be exploring the metaphor of the garden and trees for the next three months in our preparation to implementing many practices of meditation when we visit specific art masterpieces in the Chicago Institute of Art and then follow it up with visits to the beautiful Botanical garden and arboretum. You will be given specific and detailed instruction both on self guided explorations at the various sites as well as in the deep shadow work of group time together. We will also have some delightful time of just enjoying the pleasures of the world - good food, theatre, laughter and shared delights.
In preparation, I will be posting teachings every week from March - June for your study. I invite you to immerse yourselves in these teachings, to ask questions, to share insights with one another and to join in our group times together ahead of the experience. We highly encourage you to form informal times to discuss the teachings, the recommended books and the issues that arise, inevitably around travel and group process. An intensive like this requires effort in stretching and opening, to really contemplate metaphor and symbol as reflections of your own inner states of consciousness and stages of development, and with that effort, you will expand your own vision and awareness of how the universe operates - and you will be constantly reminded that the universe operates within your own consciousness. All manifestation lives within your own consciousness - this is a gradual realization and revelation as you gradually come to know a little more of how amazing you actually are! It is our great joy to be able to spend this deep and meaningful time with those of you that live within our own consciousness with so much love.
Contemplate the three images on the side, and truly imagine yourself in each of the situations … what temptations distract you from the ongoing knowing of your own Self as consciousness? How would you depict them? Can you befriend the distractions so that they stop pestering you? Can you slowly learn to live in harmony with all that arises within your own consciousness? This is the starting practice for the next three months.
Gardens are not made by singing, “Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting in the shade. ~Rudyard Kipling
Suggested Exercises:
Draw a plan of a garden you would create if you had unlimited resources. What are the elements you would include?
Collect pictures of gardens that appeal to you and study them - create a collage cutting out pictures from magazines.
How is the world the garden that Consciousness itself created? Contemplate this idea and see where you feel immense sorrow, remorse, regret, joy, awe, wonder, protectiveness.…
"When a garden is used as a place to pause for thought, that is when a Zen garden comes to life. When you contemplate a garden like this it will form as lasting impression on your heart."
~ Muso Soseki in The Temple in the House by Anthony Lawlor
Recommended Reading
Creating Sanctuary: Sacred Garden Spaces, Plant-Based Medicine, and Daily Practices to Achieve Happiness and Well-Being. ~Jessie Bloom
Week Two - Trees
How do trees deal with injustice? They grow a branch wherever they are cut. And how do sparrows deal with grief? They open their tiny wings and swoop at anything that glistens. So, why am I all cut and hungry? Because I do not know the tree that is my soul and refuse the sparrow in my heart. ~unknown
Dear Retreatants,
Today Charisse and I took a hike, hmmm… more like a leisurely walk, through the “Pledge Nature Reserve,” right here in downtown Knysna. You walk from the bustling holiday town here in the Western Cape Province into a silent sanctuary of peace - a Cathedral whose structure is made up of the trees. The great Yellow woods (a relative of the redwoods), the wild figs, the mahogany and Keurbooms, overshadow the small paths weaving their way through babbling brooks and ponds, up the mountain to give you a magnificent view of the lagoon. The minute you enter this reserve you feel like whispering. It is silent other than the gurgling of water, the song of birds and the faint rustle of leaves. We spent a lovely morning, not only in nature but speaking with the volunteers that are developing this spot into a 30 acre botanical garden that will be the soul of the town of 80 000 people. Already it is a place, where once a week artists, sculptors, musicians and poets gather as a group to support each other in contemplation, sinking deep within themselves and the world soul, for inspiration and restoration. Look it up and meet Maggie, the lovely woman who volunteers there for nothing, to create this for everyone. What a beautiful vision!
https://www.pledgenaturereserve.org
And so this brings us to a contemplation of the tree - the symbol of our own life and our own death. Trees are the living symbol of our own life and death. This is a deep meditation. Please read more on the spiritual teachings here - The Tree of Life and the Tree of Death - The Cross
This teaching will include exercises, meditations and a lovely video on trees to watch with Judi Densch
Suggestion
Download the free app called Seek - this not only creates a data base and furthers research of the worlds plants, insects, birds, reptiles and trees, but it provides endless fun in knowing what you are looking at and coming to know it more intimately. It is one of the most fun treasure hunts I have ever embarked on.
Week Three - The Garden in Art
“…have a kink as solid and full of habit as the ones in the hose. Slowly I pull out the full length of the hose and lay it where it needs to be before I turn on the water. Inside, too, I must unroll my full attention. Old habits of thought twist themselves into kinks and knots. We will be forced to acknowledge this again and again.”
~Gunilla Norris, A Mystic Garden: Working with Soil, Attending to Soul
Dear Retreatants,
It has been so much fun for me to get your initial questions, comments and suggestions for our time together and to hear your insights as you see the teachings as applicable to your lived experiences of life. Thank you for your enthusiastic participation!
Our first outing together in Chicago, will be the Chicago Institute of Art and I have chosen a selection of art works related to gardens and nature, that I would suggest you research and then find in the art gallery, using each image, whether a painting, sculpure, ceramic or stained glass as a projective. This means to contemplate and explore what it reflects back to you about yourself. What does it make you think, feel, remember in your experience and inner dynamics and processes? How does it reflect something back to you that you know about within? Explore your reactions of attraction or revulsion or plain disinterest…. the question is why? What does it mean about you? The more we know about a piece of art and the artist, the more it will “speak” to you in a meaningful way, so in preparation for the experience of the actual art. As you scroll through the images, you might be puzzled as to why it is included, you might immediately like some and dislike others - each inner response is telling you something about yourself, not the art. What is this reaction telling you. Remember that art is symbolic - everything painted is symbolic of an inner meaning. For instance, the first painting in the list, is of a magnolia. This beautiful flower is imbued with meaning - if you don’t know it, research it. It might mean purity - if this is the meaning that sticks out to you, then what does purity have to do with your inner work, your inner experience? What is the opposite of purity and what does this evoke in you in terms of experience and trauma? Just that one word could give you enough work for the whole year!
To experience the art works, click here
Of course, although I will ask you to look for these paintings specifically, they will take you to parts of the gallery where you will experience way more than this small selection, so I hope it will be a rich and meaningful meditation for you all.
Recommended Reading - Thank you, Karen
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56587382-the-island-of-missing-trees
Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars.
Gaze at the beauty of earth’s greetings.
Now, think.
What delight God gives to humankind
with all these things.
All nature is at the disposal of humankind.
We are to work with it.
For without we cannot survive.
~Hildegard von Bingen (1098 - 1179)
Week Four - The Lotus Garden
Dear Retreatants,
This story I wrote many years ago, is a metaphor for the cross. Read it carefully and see if you can understand the stages of growth and states of consciousness that are described. Read it Here. When you have read it, there is an exercise below, that would be very helpful for group discussion with one another and for self-observation in your own life or for journaling. The lotus is the flower of enlightenment in the East and the Rose in the West. Consider all the stages of growth and how one cannot exist without the other and nothing is every discarded in the growth to flowering.
Exercise:
In the Sutra in the story, what is being described is that when dark and light come from the heart it is all good. When the dark and the light come from the unaware shadow of unawareness in shame and fear, then good and bad are both “bad” and yet even this is included in the Light of Consciousness (Love). This is a high teaching on the cross - contemplate this in your own life and see if you can see the intersection of good and bad in a heart pierced open to be able to love. Out of a heart of compassion and wisdom, even what is seen by the world as “bad” actions, is truly good, and “good” actions are aligned with love. When the heart is closed to the feelings of fear and shame and there is unawareness and lack of compassion for these feelings,” good” and “bad” actions are reactive and socially bound and therefore, neither what is socially unacceptable, or acceptable, is loving or truly good and yet, it is still held within the Great Consciousness of Truth and Wisdom.
Draw a cross and explore the dualities of acceptable/unacceptable, good/bad, right/wrong - or any other duality you struggle with. How are you nailed to the heart of suffering - a heart encased by defense and filled with shame and fear? How are you on the cross of duality, but your heart has been pierced and you see with compassion and wisdom all your past actions and choices of “good” and “bad.” How have you died to the dualities and are off the cross living a life of connection, unity rooted in the compassion and wisdom born from your dark unaware suffering? Where in your journey of the cross are you as related to the growth of the lotus lily in the garden of heaven and of existence?
What actions in your life came from conformity out of fear of rejection and that you learned were “good” behaviors. How did you rebel out of anger and need to assert your ego identity that were considered “bad behaviors.” How do you still do the same things, but from a different state of consciousness. What part of the growth do the lotus do your behaviors represent?
“The great physicist Niels Bohr said, “There are two types of truth. In the shallow type, the opposite of a true statement is false. In the deeper kind, the opposite of a true statement is equally true.”
~Gunilla Norris, A Mystic Garden: Working with Soil, Attending to Soul
Recommended Reading - Thank You, Catherine
Clarke, Abigail Rose. Returning Home to Our Bodies.
Read this site:
https://goodgroundpress.com/2020/06/30/hildegard-of-bingen-patron-saint-of-green-and-growing/#:~:text=Hildegard%20made%20up%20the%20word,out%20is%20greenness%20in%20motion.
Again I am in turmoil.
Should I speak, or must I be silent?
I feel like a gnarled old tree, withered and crooked and flaky.
All the stories of the years are written on my branches.
The sap is gone, the voice is dead.
But I long to make again a sacred sound.
I want to sound out God
I want to be a young juicy, sap-running tree
So that I can sing God as God knows how.
O God, you gentle viridity
O Mary, honeycomb of life
O Jesus, hidden in sweetness as flowing honey,
Release my voice again.
I have sweetness to share.
I have stories to tell.
I have God to announce.
I have green life to celebrate.
I have rivers of fire to ignite.
~Hildegard von Bingen
A POISON TREE
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
~William Blake
What poisoned apple have your given people in your life? What poison apple were you given as a child that you still choke on and become comatose on? Draw the tree that bore the poisoned apple. Can you see this poem as similar to the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Have you seen the recent Disney film?
Perhaps a group field trip would be fun?
Week Five - Trolls
Dear Retreatants,
On our pilgrimage to Iceland in 2024, we had a lot of fun looking for trolls in the craggy volcanic mountains, waterfalls and rugged landscape - it seemed they were everywhere. They very much still dominate the psyche and mythology of the Icelandic people. Every culture has its pantheon of nearly human creatures - goblins, witches, trolls, zombies, gnomes, vampires and so on. And they all have malevolent intents some of the time and sometimes they are sent to help. So a symbol of the duality of human life, and a projection of the dualistic nature of your own ego. When we are in unaware ego consciousness we are all truly trolls - we do “good” things to serve our own sense of identity and we do “bad” things that are reactions to unaware fear and shame we all feel in this state. We do not yet know ourselves as fully divine beings in human form and so we act like trolls.
When you contemplate these beings, do you feel dread and horror, fear and revulsion or do you feel warmth, affection and amusement. Do you seek them out or do you avoid them? Do they seem big, or small and inconsequential? Consider what your relationship is to the inner trolls of your psyche. Remember the external representations are only symbols of an inner dynamic within you. Unfortunately the troll exhibit at the Morton Arboretum was dismantled in 2021, but I encourage you to seek for your own trolls as you stroll through the trees.
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
I am sure all of you know the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. If you are not acquainted with it I highly recommend your read this Norwegian folktale and deeply contemplate the meaning of it in your own life. Remember in any good story or myth, every player, dynamic and symbol is representing some aspect of you and your own inner relationship to the different aspects. I read this story so often to my children when they were little that it worked on my psyche for years until I found the troll under the bridge in every experience of my own life.
Trolls of hidden shame and nastiness are most often found at points of transition and stress represented in the story by the bridge. If we are not aware of our feelings, they threaten to emerge from under the bridge of transition and change, threatening to gobble us up in their fear, anger, shame and frustration. We are seeing a lot of troll behavior right now in the uncertainty of the massive changes occurring in our society. And it doesn’t matter how old you are, the Troll always shows up. When we are very young we rush to get to the other side of the bridge because we cannot yet deal with the huge deep, hidden feelings of shame that lurk in the river of consciousness beneath our waking life. Even as teenagers and young adults, we cannot face the feelings and past experiences that gave rise to them. It is only when we have the wisdom of age, represented by the great horns and long beard of the last billy goat Gruff, that we can face the feelings, the past emotions and experiences head on and bring compassion, wisdom and limit to the acting out trolls of our hidden emotions. We need to be in relationship with our trolls with warmth, limit, kindness and understanding. We need to tame them - not get rid of them. Then they become human expressions and aspects of self that we relate to with humor, affection and most certainly limit. If we are big enough in knowing ourselves in consciousness, then they pop up as small and rather insignificant aspects of living in the world.
“ You are not the troll. The troll of feeling, thought and behavior arises within you as function, not identity.”
Exercise
In the next week, notice every time an inner troll rears his ugly head up from the unconscious in terrifying shame, fear and anger. Notice if you ignore, suppress, rush on, allow it to act out, or face it square on. If you can catch one and face it head on, see how would you represent it. Draw a picture, create a collage, journal, write a poem, take a picture and share with the group your experience and representation of it. What was the transition? What feelings arose? How did you relate to the feelings? How did you befriend the troll?
Recreate the story using yourself using your own symbols. Three sisters and the wicked witch, or Three little bunnies and the fox, or three little pigs and the big bad wolf….. What appeals to you given your cultural milieu and upbringing.
Week Six - Lessons from Trees
Dear Retreants,
We just concluded our first meeting together and many insights, questions and observations were shared - it awakens me to the inner joy of connection at a level not often encountered - thank you all for your profound and deep sharing. One participant talked of his love of trees and hugging the cottonwoods on his land. I too love cottonwoods - one of the most beautiful sights of the American landscape, and yet, in my neighborhood I have heard a great deal of troll-complaining about how “messy” they are with no appreciation of the proliferation of millions of seeds parachuting on cotton fluff, that fill the air to land on some fertile piece of soil to start to grow into a small sapling that becomes a magnificent and beautiful tree. I hear the same thing in South Africa about the gorgeous Jacaranda trees that blossom prolifically in spring and drop their flowers creating great shadows of deep purple under them. A “mess” or utter beauty? For such beauty, such joy, I gladly clean up the “mess.”
I have thought about why people would instantly “hate” something so beautiful. Take a moment to examine this tendency in yourself. Why do you complain about a mess? Why do you judge it? Why would someone call the proliferation of beautiful wind born fluff balls of potential new life, “a mess?” Why is chaos frightening?
How were you shamed as a child for “making a mess?” Think of an instance and see if you can analyze the parental attitude, feelings, belief system and needs that would have created their response to you. What did you internalize from that experience? How are you still reactive to “messes,” instead of open and accepting of whatever occurs externally and internally? As long as you cannot accept every aspect of the dual nature of creation, you cannot be free - you will be nailed to the cross of suffering, feeling shame and anger when things are not the way you want them to be.
Babies bring poopy diapers, orgasms come with exploding “messes” just like the cottonwoods. Messy bloody birth comes with messy stinky death. Creating art results in lots of messes that require cleaning up. Mistakes and bad behavior require cleaning up your mess with apology and self responsibility that results in new growth. Catherine share with me years ago that the mighty Redwoods on the west coast need fire to release the seeds from their cones. The burning of the fire is not a “mess,”but a necessity of life.There is not one without the other. Think of all the ways you crave on one side and how you reject the other side. You want creation on your terms, just as parents wanted children on their own terms.
Can you find the beauty underlying it all and accept the manifestations of creation and messy chaos in your life without comment, without resentment, without judgement and transform your judgments into wonder, questions, searching and finally understanding that leads to acceptance. You may always have preferences, but you will not suffer the intensity of shame and fear that comes from the resistance of seeing deeply and accepting it all - and if it is unity and salvation - at-one-ness - we seek, then we must accept it all with compassion and wisdom.
Exercise
Notice in the weeks to come all your anger, irritation and resentment at having to “clean up,” what your regard as a mess that either you or someone else makes, and rewrite your inner script about it from the heart of compassion and the insight of wisdom. We look forward to hearing your stories.
Consider a world in which there were no cottonwoods and no jacarandas, or any other plant that made a “mess.”
Choose one mess you have made and clean it up, notice the complaining and resistance, and do it anyway.
Research everything you know about a favorite tree - including the “messes” they make. What arises out of the mess?
"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts." - Nikki Giovanni
"Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow." - Mary Tyler Moore
Watch this video - youtube - the messiness of trees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAsgDulyCrU
As you watch this short video, what feelings and judgments arise within you regarding the arborist and the people who hack trees? Are you choosing an external side, or seeing deeply within yourself? Do you identify with the neighbor, the arborist or the tree - you are all three, remember! This video will stir up an inner response - what inner work do you need to do? Pruning is a necessary part of gardening. However this is not pruning, it is hacking. What is the difference? What needs pruning inside of you for you to grow really well? How have you hacked at yourself which has only made the whole system sick and debilitated and has inhibited growth? How will you do it and from what state of consciousness?
Recommended Reading
Powers, Richard. The Overstay https://www.richardpowers.net/the-overstory/
Best book on trees!
Week Seven - GOOD TIMBER
The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.
The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.
Good timber does not grow with ease,
The stronger wind, the stronger trees,
The further sky, the greater length,
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.
Where thickest lies the forest growth
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.
~Douglas Malloch
This poem speaks to the truth of all growth, whether in trees or whether in ourselves. I often hear the question about why some people grow and evolve, expand and self-actualize and others do not. There are two essentials - one is enough hardship, suffering and difficulty in life to push us forwards from behind, and enough desire, longing and vision to pull us forward. The photograph above is taken in the foot mountains of the Himalayas in Bhutan. The size and magnificence of these trees are not done justice by the snapshot. The terrain is rugged, mountainous, rocky and the climate extremely harsh and yet the green life force within the trees has persevered against all odds and the result is beautiful beyond measure, as it is in each of you. With the right ratio of suffering and longing, both trees and humans can put down deep roots and grow to great heights. Consider for a moment if the suffering is too great and too prolonged. What can happen to the life force? What if there is great vision and great desire, but no perseverance, drive and momentum of discipline and struggle? How has this manifested in your own life? On what did you just give up? How did you persevere in other ways despite difficulties and set backs?
Consider for a moment what nurtured your early life so that you could put down deep roots. What was in the soil that gave you the foundation in which you are rooted? What were the external environmental forces of your life that challenged you - physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. Did your growth become stunted in some ways? Did some branches die and others grow to compensate? Is a tree that is perfectly formed really as beautiful as one that has grown gnarled, healed scars in the bark, battled the elements, survived the onslaughts of man and beast? One of my favorite trees is the baobab - it is often deeply scarred by elephants who drive their tusks into the soft bark to get nutrients and stored water. How have you been deeply scarred by the needs and demands of others when you were to young to protect yourself? Has the wound healed into a beautiful scarring - a symbol of initiation to growth?
“The leaf of every tree brings a message from the unseen world. Look every fallen leaf is a blessing.” ~Rumi
Vilancula - Mozambique - 2023
Recommended
There are two free apps that you can download to your cell phones.
Seek - when you take a picture of any flower, plant, tree, bug or bird it identifies it for you - you earn points for the number of species you collect . There will be a prize for the one who gets the most identifications by Sunday afternoon.
Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab - this helps scientists know the migratory roots of birds as well as numbers in locations.
https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other - Watch this video and consider what connects all humans? How are we one organism at a very deep level? How is the destruction of forests mirroring our own inner destruction and so our outer destruction? Who are the “mother trees” in our human world. How are they being cut down?
Week Eight - Seeds
Read or listen to the story below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZgowtRZbao
F rog was in his garden. Toad came walking by. “What a fine garden you have, Frog,” he said.
“Yes,” said Frog. “It is very nice, but it was hard work.”
“I wish I had a garden,” said Toad.
“Here are some flower seeds. “Plant them in the ground,” said Frog,“and soon you will have a garden.”
“How soon?” asked Toad.
“Quite soon,” said Frog.
Toad ran home. He planted the flower seeds.
“Now seeds,” said Toad, “start growing.”
Toad walked up and down a few times. The seeds did not start to grow. Toad put his head close to the ground and said loudly, “Now seeds, start growing!” Toad looked at the ground again. The seeds did not start to grow. Toad put his head very close to the ground and shouted, “NOW SEEDS, START GROWING!”
Frog came running up the path. “What is all this noise?” he asked.
“My seeds will not grow,” said Toad.
“You are shouting too much,” said Frog. “These poor seeds are afraid to grow.”
“My seeds are afraid to grow?” asked Toad.
“Of course,” said Frog. “Leave them alone for a few days. Let the sun shine on them, let the rain fall on them. Soon your seeds will start to grow.”
That night Toad looked out of his window. “Drat!” said Toad. “My seeds have not started to grow. They must be afraid of the dark.” Toad went into his garden with some candles. “I will read the seeds a story,” said Toad. “Then they will not be afraid.” Toad read a long story to his seeds. All the next day Toad sang songs to his seeds. And all the next day Toad read poems to his seeds. And all the next day Toad played music for his seeds. Toad looked at the ground. The seeds still did not start to grow.
“What shall I do?” cried Toad. “These must be the most frightened seeds in the whole world!” Then Toad felt very tired, and he fell asleep.
“Toad, Toad, wake up,” said Frog.
“Look at your garden!”
Toad looked at his garden.
Little green plants were coming up out of the ground.
“At last,” shouted Toad, “my seeds have stopped being afraid to grow!”
“And now you will have a nice garden too,” said Frog.
“Yes,” said Toad, “but you were right Frog. It was very hard work.”
~Arnold Lobel
Questions:
What messages are you are getting from this story? What did toad need to learn? What qualities did he need to develop?
What is the sun in this story? Rain? Earth? Garden?
What is required for growth to happen?
Whose need was Toad trying to get met? What was his need?
How was he feeling?
What beliefs did he have that informed his behavior?
How often do you see parenting like this?
How often do you relate to yourself in this way? Can you give an example?
How often do you relate to your clients in this way?
How hard have you worked to make them grow? How does this feel? What happened?
How did toad feel when he didn’t see the seeds growing?
Is there something “wrong” with what Toad was doing to get his seeds to grow?
How does this challenge your beliefs about your role as a therapist/healer?
How was toad projecting on to the seeds in his garden?
Is our perception always accurate?
What must happen to a seed before it shows above ground?
How have you experienced this in your own life?
What might hinder the growth of the little sprouts in toad’s garden if he doesn’t learn his lesson?
“A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible.”
~ Welsh proverb
As you explore the gardens keep your eyes open for seed pods and seeds and use them as a deep contemplation of what the seeds represent metaphorically
and symbolically.
What have been seeds in your life that have grown - into either weeds or beautiful plants, or mighty trees?
Take pictures of seeds and seed pods. Use the picture to journal, write poetry, do art - let the seeds grow within you.
Look up each plant of the seed you find and find out how that seed propagates and how it has to break open and suffer in order to grow.
What suffering has caused you to crack
open and start growing?
Read the quotes below. Which one speaks to you at this time. Use the quote and the picture in some creative way and make it a gift for someone on the Chicago Intensive.
May your offering be a seed in their life.
Even if seeds do not grow for themselves, they are nutrition for others. Consider all the foods that are seeds.
Study each seed pod for its sacred geometry - notice the circles within circles, the number 9 in the lotus seed pod. What does it all point to inside of you?
“Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth?” “Earth!” he repeated. “What do you mean?” “To plant seeds in — to make things grow — to see them come alive.” ~Frances H. Burnett, The Secret Garden
"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant." ~Robert Louis Stevenson
"Tomorrow, our seeds will grow. All we need is dedication." ~Lauryn Hill
"Just as you would not neglect seeds that you planted with hope that they will bear vegetables and fruits and flowers, so must you attend to nourish the garden of your becoming." ~Jean Houston
" The fact that I can plant a seed, and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another's, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises."
~ Leo Buscaglia
"Whatever our dreams, ideas or projects, we plant a seed, nurture it and then reap the fruits of our labor." ~Oprah Winfrey
"The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?" ~Jack Kornfield
"An ordinary favor we do for someone or any compassionate reaching out may seem to be going nowhere at first but may be planting a seed we can't see right now. Sometimes we need to just do the best we can and then trust in an unfolding we can't design or ordain."~Sharon Salzberg
"Every leaf that grows will tell you: what you sow will bear fruit, so if you have any sense my friend, don't plant anything but Love." ~Rumi
"Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature." ~Steve Maraboli
"Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another." ~Napoleon Hill
"I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seed every spring and never counts the loss, because it is not loss, it is adding to future life. It is the tree's way of being. Strongly rooted perhaps, but spilling out its treasure on the wind." ~May Sarton
"You cannot transmit wisdom and insight to another person. The seed is already there. A good teacher touches the seed, allowing it to wake up, to sprout, and to grow." ~Nhat Hanh
"Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant — a seed — this plants the giant miracle." ~Ann Voskamp
"Legacy. What is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see." ~Hamilton, the Musical
"Life is the soil, our choices, and actions the sun and rain, but our dreams are the seeds." ~ Richard Paul Evans
“Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds. The harvest can either be flowers or weeds.” ~William Wordsworth
“You never quite know what you do in life that leaves a seed behind that grows into an oak tree.” ~Michael Portillo
“We can’t change people, but we can plant seeds that may one day bloom in them.” ~Mary Davis
For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ~Cynthia Occelli
“The seeds of resilience are planted in the way we process the negative events in our lives.” ~ Sheryl Sandberg
“When your heart is broken, you plant seeds in the cracks and pray for rain.” ~Andrea Gibson
“Love is the seed of all hope. It is the enticement to trust, to risk, to try, to go on.” ~Gloria Gaither
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.” ~Henry David Thoreau
“A seed knows how to wait… a seed is alive while it waits.” ~Hope Jahren
“You plant seeds every single day, in the world and in others, with every thought you think and word you speak and action you take. You have influence. You’re making a dent in the universe, and you matter, in a very real way.” ~Jennifer Williamson
Taproot - feelings and needs - hidden (but never separated) beneath in the soil (body) in the unconscious
Leaves, branches, stems, thorns etc. - thoughts and actions - visible and obvious in awareness above the unconscious
Flowers natural expression of Spirit/Life Force inherent in the seed that grew and that will result in more seeds
Seeds - Spread by the wind to give rise to new plants of the same kind if given the right conditions
What kind of plant are you? What seeds are you spreading? How do you practice seeing deeper than the obvious?
“A seed neither fears light nor darkness, but uses both to grow.” ~Matshona Dhliwayo
“In every forest, on every farm, in every orchard on earth, it’s what’s under the ground that creates what’s above the ground.
That’s why placing your attention on the fruits that you have already grown is futile.
You cannot change the fruits that are already hanging on the tree. You can, however, change tomorrow’s fruits.
But to do so, you will have to dig below the ground and strengthen the roots.”
~T. Harv Eker
Recommended Reading
https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/04/25/love-letter-to-a-garden-debbie-millman/?mc_cid=1d17990e59&mc_eid=e89c9aed50
Week Nine - Rings of the Tree and Photosynthesis
“If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
During our last meeting we talked about using the metaphor of the rings of the tree to consider our own growth. One of the biggest spiritual mistake we make is to reflect on all the metaphorical inner rings of the tree and the experiences that that year of growth represents, and then judge whatever get aware of developing as a result of the environmental stressors that we endured as children. We blame ourselves for what happened thinking we were to blame for the needs that were not met, the fires that burn us and the chapping and hacking of criticism and judgment. And so, as we were hurt and judged, so do we now repeat the dynamic within ourselves, judging the very things that helped us survive but forgetting that we too obeyed the deep inner spirit of which we were not even aware, that says, “Expand, grow, I will shine on you with the light of my love, and I will support you with the sustenance of the earth, no matter what befalls you.”
When we look at the rings of a tree we do not judge the ring that represents the year of deprivation, drought and struggle and how little the tree grew that year. We do not see the black ring of fire and judge the way it grew lopsided that year as a result of being burned.. We are in awe of the resiliency, the tenacity and the the beauty of the tree that obeyed the internal imperative to survive and grow and evolve, no matter what it took and how misshapen the tree is as a result. In fact we find the less symmetrical growth beautiful. The tree itself does not judge itself, it just continues to grow - and even if it branches and takes detours, it still strives to go higher, by its roots going ever deeper. It obeys the beneficence of the soil, its nutrients and moisture, and it obeys the shining of the sun to expand and grow, no matter what.
Consider the process of photosynthesis in which energy from sunlight is harvested and used to drive the synthesis of glucose from CO2 and H2O. By converting the energy of sunlight to a usable form of potential chemical energy, photosynthesis is the ultimate source of metabolic energy for all biological systems, including ourselves. Photosynthesis produces life-giving oxygen. It meets our need for life itself. The process of photosynthesis is literally the practice of tonglen for each of us. We ask you repeatedly in groups and in your practice, to stop avoiding the pain of life, to “breathe in” the toxic carbon dioxide, so to speak, and to then “breathe out” the life-giving oxygen that you need so desperately. As you learn to do this, so you learn to do it with and for everyone. You fulfill your purpose on the planet - to bring expansion, light and love to the dark places in your own psyche and to everyone else’s dark places so that we may all grow together to be a great forest that provides shelter, love, and life to all. Trees do this naturally without thought. We have to practice over and over again to be agents of transformation to our own lives and those of others. And yet, how much more natural could it be than to breath in and be present to pain and need, and then have your out breath be the warm embrace and love that is required to transform the dark to light, the pain to healing, the shame to self value. To practice Tonglen, you have to embrace even judgment with love so that it can be transformed into self forgiveness, deep understanding and compassion for yourself.
EXERCISE
Start making Tonglen meditation your daily practice.
Stay committed to be present to all the little hurts, shame, fears that arise in your psyche throughout the day, by asking yourself, “What am I feeling?”
In the beginning you will only notice the feelings that register at a 10 but by now in your practice you should be identifying even the little quakes on the richter scale.
Breathe in, and be present to the feeling.
Identify what it is that you need.
Relax your whole body around the feeling and the need
On the out breathe visualize yourself embracing the pain and meeting the need within the warm and loving embrace of your breath. Let every exhalation be a transformation, until you are living in accordance with the natural; state of your truest Self, that is in alignment with Spirit.
At the end of the day seek to understand the source of the pain and need in your childhood experiences, the milieu within which you first experienced the world.
Journal about this, and bring understanding through the connections you make to the part of you that misunderstood the meaning of what was happening as a child. . Understanding naturally gives rise to empathy, instead of judgment.
“There is a bench in the back of my garden shaded by Virginia creeper, climbing roses, and a white pine where I sit early in the morning and watch the action. Light blue bells of a dwarf campanula drift over the rock garden just before my eyes. Behind it, a three-foot stand of aconite is flowering now, each dark blue cowl-like corolla bowed for worship or intrigue: thus its common name, monkshood. Next to the aconite, black madonna lilies with their seductive Easter scent are just coming into bloom. At the back of the garden, a hollow log, used in its glory days for a base to split kindling, now spills white cascade petunias and lobelia.
I can't get enough of watching the bees and trying to imagine how they experience the abundance of, say, a blue campanula blosssom, the dizzy light pulsing, every fiber of being immersed in the flower. ...
Last night, after a day in the garden, I asked Robin to explain (again) photosynthesis to me. I can't take in this business of _eating light_ and turning it into stem and thorn and flower...
I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden. Maybe I would call it eating light. Mystical traditions recognize two kinds of practice: _apophatic mysticism_, which is the dark surrender of Zen, the Via Negativa of John of the Cross, and _kataphatic mysticism_, less well defined: an openhearted surrender to the beauty of creation. Maybe Francis of Assissi was, on the whole, a kataphatic mystic, as was Thérèse of Lisieux in her exuberant momemnts: but the fact is, kataphatic mysticism has low status in religious circles. Francis and Thérèse were made, really made, any mother superior will let you know, in the dark nights of their lives: no more of this throwing off your clothes and singing songs and babbling about the shelter of God's arms.
When I was twelve and had my first menstrual period, my grandmother took me aside and said, 'Now your childhood is over. You will never really be happy again.' That is pretty much how some spiritual directors treat the transition from kataphatic to apophatic mysticism.
But, I'm sorry, I'm going to sit here every day the sun shines and eat this light. Hung in the bell of desire.”
― Mary Rose O'Reilley, The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya-1qxswcLI - watch this beautiful video on Youtube
- Secrets of the Forest
WHEN THE WIND TAKES A TREE IN ITS ARMS
Three-quarters of the world dances all night,
the waves moving as they do on the seas.
And when the wind takes a tree in its arms,
what happens then?
The green branches of the earth may seem to
reach out to touch us if we near them in a forest,
a meadow, a field.
Does not all sway to a rhythm that began long
before we stood upright?
We are in the mountain’s home, just guests.
Guests of the sky, the streams, the giving soil
we nurse from.
Would not you be happier following their
example—bowing in unseen ways, then rising
up?
~Hafiz
Exercise
Examine this picture that Clive sent us. Pay close attention to the first thought in your head - it will tell you about the stage of development from which it came. Did you judge it in terms of “Like, not like.” Did you judge it it as “weird"?’ Did you dismiss it and want to walk past it. Did it grab you and result in deep reflection about what it means, evokes, feels like inside of you? Was it disturbing because it cannot literally understood? What meaning did you read into it and how is it a replication of your own inner beliefs, values, desires, feelings. What are the symbols the artist used? Ask yourself these and other questions and see what emerges from your own unconscious that can be brought to your awareness. What will you practice as a result of relating to this image? It is imperative that we learn to think abstractly, metaphorically and symbolically - it is only then that the door opens to more expanded realms of consciousness.
What relevance does his art have on our current social situation?
See more of his visual artwork here.
Watch a 2-minute video about his work in QAGOMA's Triennial Exhibition here.
Watch his 30-minute musical performance with the plung, a traditional flute played by the Mro people and present in many of Roaja’s drawings, paintings and performances here. The plung is a symbol of unity and resistance.
Lastly, you can learn more about and see more examples of his drawings and paintings here..
Joydeb Roaja - Indigenous Artist from Bangladesh
QAGOMA (the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art) in Australia hosts a triennial exhibition for artists across the Asia-Pacific. This year they included visual artwork and a musical performance by Joydeb Roaja, an Indigenous Artist from Bangladesh. You'll see that his visual work directly speaks to the relationship between humans and trees, as well as, other natural flora and fauna. It also speaks to human-caused environmental destruction that many indigenous communities are fighting to stop and prevent.
"The Chittagong Hill Tracts in south-eastern Bangladesh are home to 11 different Jumma, or indigenous peoples. Their connection to their lands, as guardians of the natural environment, is the focus of Joydeb Roaja’s practice. Roaja belongs to the Tripura community and is one of the area’s most prominent artists. His work is dominated by distinctive figurative paintings and a multidisciplinary practice that continues to intersect with his practice as a performance artist. He has become a powerful and poetic voice expressing his peoples’ symbiotic relationships to nature and the fraught history of land and human rights in the region."
Poem & Visual Art from The Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrating the woods
Watch a 1-minute video celebrating Earth Day and National Poetry Month with W. H. Auden’s poem “Woods” here.
"Secrets of the Forest" - NOVA Documentary on PBS
Can forests help cool the planet? Follow scientists working in spectacular forest landscapes in Costa Rica, Brazil, Australia, and beyond as they try to untangle complex networks of trees, fungi, and creatures large and small – all in a quest to tackle the twin threats of climate change and species extinction.
Watch the 54-minute documentary here.
Week Ten - Practices for Transformation
THE MAPLES
I asked the stand of maples behind the house,
How should I live my life?
They said, shhh shhh shhh…
How should I live, I asked, and the leaves seemed to ripple and gleam.
A bird called from a branch in its own tongue,
And from a branch, across the yard, another bird answered.
A squirrel scrambled up a trunk
then along the length of a branch.
Stand still, I thought,
See how long you can bear that.
Try to stand still, if only for a few moments,
drinking light breathing
~Marie Howe
Exercise:
How can we live a natural life, in harmony with the experience of being a creature and part of nature. How did we become “unnatural?”
We are a part of nature. We are animals. And yet, we find ways to live out of harmony with our truest nature and create the same disharmony externally with the rest of nature.. As you walk through the beautiful spots you will be visiting, take time to stand still, drink in light and breathe, like the trees. Read the poem carefully and consider what it means to stand still, be quiet, drink in light and breath. What get’s in the way. We must see this. Our awareness is the sunlight. How did your roots grow into the soil of society and family, that was filled with troll behavior, that has affected and stunted your growth?
As we experience these beautiful gardens, take time to stand still, be quiet and drink in light, inhaling and exhaling deeply and calmly and notice everything that gets in the way of being able to do this. This is your clue as to where the work lies. - it points you to old wounds still unhealed in the rings of your tree, so to speak.
"I have known for many years that the next step in our evolution [will] include a quality of cosmic consciousness, as humanity becomes aware of the deeper significance of its place not just within our solar system but within the greater cosmos. How this will unfold we do not know, except that there will be an inner and outer relationship between our planet and the cosmos. A time of isolation or separation within our own individual world will have come to an end.
Rather than projecting this transition into science fiction images of aliens or galactic travel, I would begin with the microcosmic understanding of what it means to us individually to step outside of the isolated sense we have of our own separate self, and instead embrace and live from a consciousness of oneness in which we KNOW how we are part of an interconnected whole."
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
From the new book DARKENING of the LIGHT: Witnessing the End of an Era. Available here: http://tinyurl.com/n3wlnuwphoto.phpSpiritual Ecology
"If we embrace the sacred within all of life, we will find that life will speak to us as it spoke to our ancestors. A veil will be lifted and this innate knowing will be present again. This is the ancient wisdom of the Earth itself, the Earth which has evolved and changed over millennia, whose wisdom we desperately need at this present time if we are to avoid an even greater ecological disaster."
~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, from the article Sustainability, Deep Ecology, & the Sacred, first published on HuffPost Green, #tbt http://tinyurl.com/copr9ux
Week Eleven - Practice for Transformation
A Garden Beyond Paradise
Everything you see has its roots
in the Unseen world.
The forms may change,
yet the essence remains the same.
Every wondrous sight will vanish,
Every sweet word will fade.
But do not be disheartened,
The Source they come from is eternal –
Growing, branching out,
giving new life and new joy.
Why do you weep? –
That Source is within you,
And this whole world
is springing up from it.
The Source is full,
Its waters are ever-flowing;
Do not grieve,
drink your fill!
Don’t think it will ever run dry –
This is the endless Ocean.
From the moment you came into this world
A ladder was place in front of you
that you might escape.
From earth you became a plant,
from plant you became animal.
Afterwards you became a human being,
Endowed with knowledge, intellect, and faith.
Behold the body, born of dust-
How perfect it has become!
Why should you fear its end?
When were you ever made less by dying?
When you pass beyond this human form,
No doubt you will become an angel
And soar through the heavens!
But don’t stop there,
Even heavenly bodies grow old.
Pass again from the heavenly realm
and plunge into the vast ocean of Consciousness.
Let the drop of water that is you
become a hundred mighty seas.
But do not think that the drop alone
Becomes the Ocean –
the Ocean, too, becomes the drop!
~Rumi
Read the poem carefully and meditatively and then journal about the following questions:
What distracts you from knowing yourself as the drop of the ocean and the ocean in a drop?
How do you, a mere drop of the ocean become a hundred mighty seas?
How can you live as an angel here on earth?
What are your fears about dying - they will point to your fears of living well now. What prevents you from living well now? It will point you to your fears of death.
The rungs of the ladder in the poem are also the rings within the tree - using the metaphor, map out your own evolution - how have you emerged from one state into another? What did you believe that you no longer believe in the same way?
What does Rumi mean about soaring beyond heaven? What is meant by heaven? How do you get there? What will you do to get there?
Look for the spiral of growth in the gardens, that replicates the spiral of evolution from 14 billion years ago - an ever expanding expression of Consciousness
If you have dedicated yourself to speeding up the process of evolution in yourself through diligent spiritual practice then you are going to become aware of ways in which you were not aware and the ways in which you were destructive and hurtful to yourself and others along the way. Before evolution come involution. Before the return journey to Source was the journey away from Source. This is the way it works. It cannot be done any other way.
One of the biggest mistakes I see people making is to become aware of some destructive pattern, and immediately damn themselves instead of blessing themselves for waking up to a new way of life. Judgment and self recrimination are the functions of the ego. To live in your Soul means to accept graciously the places you have been. If you do, it is easy to make amends with yourself and others. If you do not you remain defensive and filled with shame and impede your progress. Do not punish yourself. Learn to unfold, gently and softly, like the petals of a rose warmed by the sun of your self acceptance. Only then, will you be able to do this for the world.
Earth Mother, star mother,
You who are called by
a thousand names,
May all remember
we are cells in your body
and dance together.
You are the grain
and the loaf
That sustains us each day.
And as you are patient
with our struggles to learn
So shall we be patient
with ourselves and each other.
We are radiant light
and sacred dark
-the balance-
You are the embrace that heartens
And the freedom beyond fear.
Within you we are born
we grow, live, and die -
You bring us around the circle
to rebirth,
Within us you dance
Forever. Starhawk, “The Spiral Dance.”
https://www.ted.com/talks/luella_zhang_save_a_tree_save_a_life
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_haskell_trees_people_and_interconnection_we_re_all_made_from_relationship
Week Twelve - Practice for Transformation
Well, the first thing to recognize in human-earth relationships is the Earth is primary and humans are derivative. Humans are for the perfection of the Earth rather than the Earth is here for the perfection of humans. Because the Earth project, reading people like Aristotle, some of the great classics, and particularly Aquinas at an earlier period in human history, mentions that the planet Earth or the universe is the ultimate and noblest perfection in things and everything in the universe is ultimately for the perfection of the universe. So humans give to the universe a consciousness of itself. In fact, in a certain sense, humans are the way in which the universe creates itself, because the human can be defined as that being in whom the universe reflects on and celebrates itself in a special mode of conscious self-awareness. So in this manner, the first thing to recognize is that humans must become integral with the Earth. This is a very new approach, to the Western world, who have been so transfixed with the glory of the human and with the rights of humans that they have missed the point as regards humans and their relationship with the Earth.
~Thomas Berry - interview 2006
https://youtu.be/DiD9IjEwMuo?si=Y9_JD1qeKYfa_Uvr
Listen to the video and take notes assessing places you recognize in your own spiritual development.
When you observe the natural world and how it lives and reflects the consciousness of creation, can you see how you are not in alignment and harmony with nature and, therefore not in alignment with the consciousness of creation itself. We have the capacity and potential, through awareness to bring ourselves into alignment with consciousness itself, in awareness and so become co-creators. Consider this statement and create a statement of intention for your life’s practice. One that you will take with you long after this retreat together has ended. Look at the pledge of Taman Sari - one of the places we stayed on our pilgrimage to Bali - can we find this consciousness and intention within ourselves and how will we achieve it?
To preserve the natural world as the primary revelation of the divine must be the basic concern of religion. ~Thomas Berry
One of the pervasive lenses through which the Western world has viewed nature is the one of the rational, masculine energy of the intellect, that splits and creates hierarchy. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the interpretation has been of spirit as masculine, superior and transcendent, and matter, including the earth, body and functions of the body as well as women as bad and evil, fallen and inferior.
As a result of this understanding, the earth has been plundered, used, exploited and raped just as women have been exploited, raped and used.The goal as seen from this stage of development, has been to transcend the body and live a “pure, spiritual and transcendent life” which means denigrating, rejecting and punishing life on earth. God is seen as a male who dominates from high up - somewhere split off from the affairs of mere mortals. Men come next in the hierarchy, and then women and the “lesser” species of the planet. The model was one of either malevolent or benevolent domination. Either the earth was there to be used or there was the more benign expression of the patriarchy, the Stewardship model - the earth, women and children were to be cared for and pitied as weaker and “less than.”
However, as humanity evolves, the split is gradually healing as we, as a species, recognize that spirit imbues and lives through every living thing on the planet - that the entire universe is a living expression of divinity and spirit: that nothing is superior or better than any other aspect - all is of infinite value to be treasured, respected and protected. As humans awake to the divinity of their own souls and the love within their own hearts, they can recognize the divinity in everything.
The hope for the future lies in us awakening to the fact that spirit is not something separate, split off and far removed - spirit is the life of every living thing. Nature mysticism, eco-feminism and eco-spirituality are movements that recognize the divine in all live, the interrelatedness of all life on the planet, the infinite value of each part of the living body of the universe. Eco-spirituality is about interdependence, inter-being, interrelatedness, equality, mutuality, reciprocity, co-operation, collaboration - all words pointing to a paradigmatic shift from the old patriarchal world view.
© Lyndall Johnson
Watch this video from Lorena and think about the complexity of issues it raises about living in harmony with nature, within ourselves, in relationship to others and to the natural world.