Talking to the trees..

I was involved in some martial arts training in the outdoors recently. There was a young tree near to where I was standing and, without thinking about the feelings of this poor tree, I decided to practice my side thrust kick. Expecting to be able to break the tree without much effort I was amazed that my kick had no impact whatsoever. The tree simply bent over and then sprang right back to where it was before. So I tried again, and again, and the same thing happened. Being rooted firmly into the earth, but at the same time offering no resistance to the force applied to it, the tree was able to carry on living happily while I was wasting my energy trying to kick the thing.

I learnt a lot from this little tree. The first lesson is that kicking trees is generally not such a good idea. Perhaps I was fortunate that this particular tree didn't retaliate.
The other, more important, lesson was this:
Life is full of movement and change- full of stuff that happens that doesn't quite fit into what we think we need to make us happy. We can mutter and complain and resist the inevitable change, either with it breaking us, or generally making us miserable. Or, like the tree, being grounded in the earth and the knowledge that this is how life is, we can be flexible and move with it. Then life becomes less of a struggle for existence and more of a dance..

On Knowledge

One of the startling discoveries I have made recently is that I seem to know where I need to get to and where I'm going in life. Or perhaps I should say I have a sense of knowing. On one hand the past few years have seemed quite isolated (spiritually speaking) as well as being a random collection of various 'experiments' with different ways of thinking, philosophies, religions etc.
Looking back, though, I see a definite pattern. A journey that has been going in the right direction all along, somehow intuitively guided by a force I have come to know as being my Soul. I'm not saying that I'm perfect or have it all together. It's more of a realisation that there has been more happening than I was previously able to see.

I am busy reading Joan Halifax's stunning book "The Fruitful Darkness". In it she makes the following quote by Thich Nhat Hanh:
"Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with truth"
She then goes on to say:
"the information and inspiration in this book are rooted in my life. This is inevitable, for neither Bhuddism nor shamanism are 'revealed' teachings. Both emphasize direct experience and personal realization over doctrine"

Coming out of a religion of 'revealed' teachings, it's taken a while for me to get my bearings. I guess one could say I've been waiting for the next 'revealed' teaching to come along. Searching in what seemed to be the dark, though, I have somehow found my own way.

I've often reflected on the fact that we know more than we know we know (and it sounds really cool to say that). If I cut myself, I know how to heal myself. Perhaps not intellectually, but I do have that knowlege. I'm starting to think it's the same with spirituality. When we move beyond the illusions of intellectual knowlege and the belief that we are somehow superior in our knowlege to the deep and wild knowlege of the Earth, we start to see ourselves for who we really are - part of Nature and connected in an intimate way to this Ancient Knowlege.

Finding my own rhythm

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's;
I will not reason and compare: my business is to create (William Blake)

I remember around 20 years ago telling my drum teacher that someone had said that they could tell that he was my teacher. I remember his reply was that if anyone ever said I sounded like him I should take it as an insult - I needed to sound like me. At the time one of my biggest goals was to be able to play like him, so I didn't quite get it, but it obviously stuck because I remember it. I remember one of my students a few years later saying a similar thing - that someone recognised my style in him. I have to be honest and say that it was a bit of an ego boost - but I remembered what I was taught and passed on the wisdom.

A few years ago a famous percussionist was in South Africa. He gave a workshop on drumming and percussion that I was fortunate enough to attend. One of the comments he made really stood out for me. He said something to the tune of a drum being your instrument, and you need have the freedom to express yourself through it. If that means hitting it on the side or the rim to get the sound you want, then you need to have the freedom to do just that.

And so it is in life. For a time we follow a system handed to us by others, but we're eventually faced with a choice as to whether we continue following that system, or whether we take the journey of the Soul and create our own system, finding our own rhythm and the means of expressing that.