root chakra – The Light Behind the Story

It’s been an emotional week as I process the energy of rebirth. In this time of spring, this is what I am choosing to call the destruction around me. On Tuesday and Wednesday, seven trees were felled in my yard in an effort to bring the unfiltered energy of the sun to my too-shaded home. There is mold my attic, there is green mildew creeping along the white edges of my siding.

You could say I put this off for too long, but each cut of the chainsaw was felt inside my heart. My love for trees extends back, I am sure, lifetimes, but my memories begin in my childhood as a little girl seeking happiness in a life of loss and new beginnings. When I was five-years-old, and beginning a new life apart from my birth father and extended family, I climbed the slender limbs of young maples to seek refuge and to find peace. Here, in the embrace of a tree, I found a joy that was often elusive on the ground.

All of us can benefit from the energy shared by trees. When I walk in a forest of trees, I heal my inner child. Sometimes I find myself laughing and skipping with joy. Sometimes, I sing and dance. I am alone, but I am not.

Trees, with their ability to live for hundreds to thousands of years, harbor souls of wisdom. Their roots mix and mingle with the energy of the underworld, where the Earth radiates love to bring forth life. The arms of trees bloom into canopies of green, harnessing the divine energies of the universe. Stand or sit with your back pressed against a tree’s trunk, and you cannot help but feel this powerful connection of energies. It is sacred.

Before the seven trees were felled, I visited each one individually. Placing offerings of found feathers, dried sage, and lavender at their feet, I whispered words of gratitude, and asked for forgiveness. With my body aligned with theirs, I felt our energies joined into the universal energy of love. Along with their forgiveness, I asked the elemental spirits who tend to the trees to rebirth their energies into new life.

It has been a week of rain and sun, which is fitting for rebirth. Today there is the sky exudes the energy of gray stillness – the aftermath of death, which is not death, but a pause as energy is recycled and repurposed. The only water that drips is from my eyes. Although I await this new life, and the sun’s healing rays, I mourn the loss of seven trees.

Some people believe that the year 2012 is the end of the world. When the Mayan calendar ends in December, so will our world. A belief seeped in fear. But, the foundation holds truth. Spiritual leaders throughout our world speak also of this year as an ending. The ending though, is a shedding of old beliefs that drag us down; a shattering of the structure of our individual and societal foundations, so that we may rebuild and evolve at a faster, higher vibration. It includes every being on this planet, as well as the planet itself.

This upheaval is palpable. You have only to open your door, or your newspaper, to see it. You have only to open your heart.

Over the past year, in particular, I have begun to explore the seat of my spirit, my heart chakra. When I first stepped into my heart chakra through meditation I tried to design this sacred place with my mind. I’m a writer. I wanted color, texture, characters. I thought it must be green, like the energy it harbors, verdant with the elements of the natural world. It was fun to play with…but it wasn’t real.

Today, when I stepped into my heart chakra while listening to Jennifer McClean’s 1/12/12 Prayer Circle replay, http://www.mcleanmasterworks.com, I allowed my inner sight to open to my surroundings, resisting the impulse to paint my room. I saw red. I saw flesh. I saw a womb. This, I realized, was the image that comes to me first when I visit. My sacred place of birth and rebirth. My heart as a womb. It was not grand, but it was perfect, for me.

Later today I received an email from a dear friend of mine; a fellow writer/poet; an artist. She wrote to me about waking from a dream where I appeared with her and another friend of ours. It matters only to her that I was there and our other friend, as most often, characters in dreams are facets of ourselves. In my friend’s dream she drove to my home, which appeared to her as an old, red brick building in need of some TLC on the outside. When she walked inside though, wearing her bright red sweater, my friend saw warmth and texture, plants and more colors, including red. She saw me holding an infant I had just bathed.

You may notice, as I am observing with myself, that your thoughts and life events will eerily spread and seek connection, through no conscious effort of your own this year. Two days ago I was sitting at a pub in New London, NH, eating lunch with a dear friend, another fellow writer, the other woman in my friend’s dream. We spoke about the upheavals in our lives, we spoke about seeking roots to ground us back to the earth so that we could make sense of, and work through our chaos, and we spoke of the pains of our past. Red. Root chakra issues that had blocked our other energy centers.

My lunch companion was reopening her heart chakra, and in doing so, giving balance to the more masculine energies that had ruled her adult life. This was her fortress of protection, wrapped around her heart, from feeling unloved and unwanted as a child. For weeks she had been crying, releasing the dam and allowing the female side to find space. She was learning out how to love without fear. I couldn’t help but think of the 10 of Cups card I had drawn for her a year ago in December, as well as the World card. Through her pain, I could see her destination of becoming whole. I was witnessing a part of her rebirth.

A year ago I had also done a tarot spread for my friend who shared her dream from last night. Her destination card had been Judgement. Literally, in the Rider/Waite tarot deck, the card of awakening to new life. Rebirth. The baby, recently bathed in her dream. Self-babtism. Only she knows how she will evolve.

Later, during my meditation with the prayer circle, after I explored my heart chakra, I took a journey through my own body. I looked for the blocks, those shadows that shun the light. The shadows are always on my right, including my brain. I played with the possibility of light and watched what it would bring for me. A landscape opened before me, textured by gentle hills. I stood tall upon one, ready to climb the next. I was so tall, I almost doubted the vision. I almost laughed. How could I be this giant who had conquered fear? Still I let it play out, and watched as I crested the next hill and took flight. My body found its form, naked, it became light. From my back I sprouted wings.