Knock on Wood

After you are comfortable in your ability to visualize the flow of minerals, water, and energy as it creates the tree,  feel your own awareness join in the flow of information to and from the tree. You have established a relationship with it. Give it some water.

Knock on wood.

People have been knocking on trees for thousands of years to wake up the good spirit that lives inside.

The knocker was asking for the good spirit to pay attention to a wish. The biggest trees were the oldest and their spirits were always considered the strongest.

The bigger trees influence much of what happens around them. Their roots reach deep into the soil and pump up water even during droughts. The water vapor emerging from their leaves contributes thousands of gallons of water every day to the forest air.

A whole forest of trees creates the local afternoon rain, creates and holds the soil, keeps the temperature down in hot weather and protects the all its friends from storms. The longer a tree lives, the more it changes the movements and growth of all creatures around it. Very powerful spirits indeed.  So knock on your favorite tree. It does indeed have a spirit. Here is how to get to know this spirit intimately and objectively.

Look at the seed.

Find the seed of a tree, preferably under the tree you are experimenting with.

Hold it in your hand. It becomes the tree by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Nitrogen , water and minerals from the soil. And combining these with the energy of sunlight. Everybody knows this. But think of the memories in the seed actually accomplishing this.

Think of the awareness of the tree as it sprouts from the seed and reaches down into the earth with its roots, feeling for the water and minerals it needs. Reaches up into the sky, unfurling its leaves and branches to the sun. Think of the awareness of the tree as the spirit and try to "feel" it's experience as if it were your own fingers reaching into the soil, your own face lifting up to the sun.

And knock on the trunk of the tree to say hi.

Put your hand on the trunk.

As you feel the solidarity of your tree, feel also your influence in the flow of information to and from the tree.

Feel your breath leave you, loaded with carbon dioxide, and visualize it entering the microscopic little mouths on the underside of the leaves. The carbon that was an integral part of your own body now (right now this instant) becoming an integral part of the tree.

If the tree has branches with leaves close enough for you to touch, gently hold a leaf and exhale on it to heighten the actuality of your vision. Visualize how your own torus blends with that of the tree.

Inhale and feel some of the atoms of oxygen released by the leaves of the tree enter into your own body, mixing with your blood, becoming your own memories of the tree and how it feels.

 

Hug the tree.

Pull your own body against the tree. Your torus and the torus of the tree are parallel and nearly the same. Close your eyes and focus on the sensation of rising up the inside of the trunk. Feel yourself divided, flowing outward into the branches, divided again and again into twigs and leaves, moving with the flow of water from the earth. And feel yourself liberated into the air, floating out from the topmost branches.

Now be aware of the whole cycle of elements through the tree.

Do not let yourself be carried along with the flow. Instead become the torus, the whole process, from the liberated water vapor in the leaves to the water entering tiny root hairs deep in the earth. Your mind encompasses the whole tree all at once.

When you are finished you have knocked, most intimately, on the spirit of the tree.