Meeting the Mother

March 10, 2012

The air is crisp.  Stepping outside I am aware my heart feels heavy.  It seems so self-indulgent to feel this heaviness, aloneness.  Walking down the pathway of the property to the roadside, I am towered on either side by magnificent, tall Red Cedar and Arbutus trees.  My life is filled with incredible blessings and privilege – who am I to indulge in these feelings?

Blue-grey sky.  The hills on this road are steep.  My mind and feet both wander.

Heavy heart – I miss my teacher and spiritual mother.  Four years apart have flown by.  Twelve years of work together…  I am transported to being 28 years old – feeling emotionally and mentally “broken.”  During 12 years, she helped me to disassemble my tangle of wounds, illusions, and unhealthy beliefs, confront my fortress of fear with its maze of walls and shadows, and reassemble myself.

Whispers… When I left, I was following a whisper…  A whisper that called me away from family, from clients and students, and all I had built over decades.  For what, I didn’t know.  The whisper was so strong – was it Spirit?  Or perhaps I was just running away from myself?

She was willing to know me inside and out.  She listened through all my turmoil and still loved me. She sat with me, asked me to sit with myself – “sit in your shit a little longer” she would gently say – to feel.  Is it indulgent to long for a teacher and elder, or simply wise to seek guidance?

Breath moves heavily, quickly, as I round the corner at the top of the last hill.  In front of me is a small knoll with a scraggly path, not easily visible except to those who know where to look.

The spirits have guided me for as long as I can remember.  Struggling with my own self-judgement, I wonder how can I call guidance from disembodied spirits, or from nature, or from inorganic objects "teachings?”  How can I justify this form of knowledge?  I can't.  It just is.

Last week, while walking the forest path, looking at the ground and wondering who my next teacher might be, I suddenly looked up as if something was calling to me.  My heart jumped! I was mesmerized.

Gnarled, thick, twining and twisting vines...  I didn’t see anything more than what met me at chest level.  My heart was pounding.  I wasn’t just seeing this… this creature.  I was being met by her.  She was reaching out to me.  She pulled me to her.

Why hadn't I noticed her before?  In the four years I have been walking these lands, why hadn't I seen her?  I felt shocked with my inability to “see” something so stunning.

I enter the forest now, where I first encountered her, to spend some time with her, to have a conversation with her, if she is willing.  I walk off-path to try and find her.  Closing my eyes and feeling with my heart, I sense her nearby.  I look in the direction of that feeling, and there she is, spiraling the large red cedar tree.  I sit next to her.

After a few quiet moments of observing her, she begins to speak:

"We are the same, you and I."

"What do you mean, the same?" I ask.
She grows quiet.

I look at her more closely.

Her body does not take up much space – graceful turns in her bark as her body wraps around itself and the tree she grows on.  Her life relies on her relationship with others.  Some might say she is opportunistic.  She grows up the trees that support her toward the light through the high canopy.  She shares with them – or perhaps makes use of them to bring her higher.

I observe the roots spreading out along the forest floor, embedding themselves to become new “independent” vines.  She whispers, "The teachings spread quickly and in ways you cannot fathom.

I teach from the heart."

I pause and take that part in, not fully comprehending the vastness of her meaning.

"What is your role in the forest?" I ask. I am trying to understand her nature. "My medicine is diverse. I treat many beings and conditions."

"...Your offering to trees and land?" I persist.  She seems impatient, somewhat exacerbated with me. "Humans perceive me as strangling trees or plants, but in reality, my greatest gift to them is a communicator, a communication network, an early warning system."  Her answer was curt.

I ask her to explain what she means – communicator, early warning system?  Still curt, she says, "I tell the plants and trees and soil what they need to know.  I look out for them – do not be fooled by appearances.  I ground them."

Then she shifts the focus. "You have not yet "seen" me with your heart.  You have just seen my outer form with your eyes.  You must prepare yourself – clean your diet, sleep and dream well, and strengthen your body.

And you must spend more time with me."

She offers a dead branch from a nearby vine. "When you approach me, you must bring a physical offering... Do a burning, sometime this week, and dedicate the fire to our work together...

And know, I have not revealed myself fully to you.

I am your Mother, and guide-Teacher.

Honour me.  I am wise, and you must spend time cultivating a relationship with me."