Art of God

So are trees "born" enlightened?

So glad you asked :)

Yesterday, during my morning walk, I was passing a tree on the street - and suddenly stopped dead in my tracks cause it occurred to me: this tree is only what it is. It is a tree.

It seemed a wonderful realization at the time, and it does still. Tree is a tree. It's nothing else, it's never been anything else. It is fully, completely and only itself.

I am not sure, therefore, if the term "enlightened" applies to trees at all, or to nature at large. "Enlightenment" describes a realization, doesn't it? A realization of one's true nature. But how can one realize something one always was?

I don't think that, at any point of tree's existence, does the tree "realize" it is a tree. Tree simply ... is ... a tree. And nothing else.

I think that we, humans, have so much trouble being who we are because we don't really want to. We want to understand who we are, know who we are, discover who we are, realize who we are, we want to get enlightened, find enlightenment - we want to DO all kinds of things.

But all we have to do is - nothing. We just have to BE.

We, humans, have refined and perfected DOING. It is my observation that nature has refined and perfected BEING.

I had a pizza dinner last night with some friends. They were all of the "sterner sex", which is, as it will turn out, an important fact to mention.

We all sat around a table chatting in a light, friendly manner, skipping from subject to subject. At some point the enslavement of women over the ages came under discussion, for a second or two. One of them (friends) said something about how "We let them vote and it all went downhill from there". I smiled amiably, no reaction rose in me, no reaction seemed needed - they all happened to be conscious and intelligent men and it was quite obvious that they were joking. But I noticed that, while the remarks about women were being made, one of them watched me. It was a curious, almost expectant look, as though he was waiting for me to react somehow, to respond.

German Tots Learn to Answer Call of Nature
By MIKE ESTERL
April 14, 2008

IDSTEIN, Germany - Each weekday, come rain or shine, a group of children, ages 3 to 6, walk into a forest outside Frankfurt to sing songs, build fires and roll in the mud. To relax, they kick back in a giant "sofa" made of tree stumps and twigs.

The birthplace of kindergarten is returning to its roots. While schools and parents elsewhere push young children to read, write and surf the Internet earlier in order to prepare for an increasingly cutthroat global economy, some little Germans are taking a less traveled path - deep into the woods.

I had a little car crash yesterday. Not much, just scraped another car a bit, mine a bit more. I was a very good girl, I left a note (the poor, innocent car was parked when I drove into it), talked to the owner when she showed up, she didn't want to go through insurance, we agreed to talk some more about it...

I took a workshop with Brooks this weekend. It was very intense, very butt-kicking, very much excellent ... and I have nothing to say about it!

I have nothing to say not for any of the usual reasons, but because what we worked on was so far beyond mind, so free of structure, of anything to hold on to, anything describable that, well, it can't really be described. Not using words in the established, traditional way.

I have realized something today while taking my morning walk with Ghani (having a dog is a fantastic catalyst for spiritual realizations by the way, I highly recommend it :).

I thought about the workshop I took last weekend and about being who I am, being who I am in relationship, and I realized that who I am in relationship to myself is crucial. This is exactly what Brooks said but I haven't seen it so clearly then - I do now.

Who I am is all in relationship, it exists in relationship. More specifically - in how I am in relationship, how I relate. There is a choice that we have, I believe. A choice of who we identify with, our mind, or ourselves. This choice, once made, will make itself clear in the way we relate.