Amidst all happening in our world, the beauty and the challenge, often I focus on what I feel concern and confusion about, including my own small challenges and troubles. Although I have my own impressions and intuitions regarding what is happening in our world, I also feel how limited my perspective is and how limited my ability is to fully comprehend all that is going on in our world. What feels deeply meaningful to me is exploring how to live in right relationship with all of life, listening to the wisdom of the intelligence of life. I feel the natural complexity and simplicity of our world is beautiful and mysterious, and yet I often feel troubled by how complicated the world is. I ask the trees and plants about larger things going on in our world. My experience is that they share of beautiful natural patterns/laws underlying all of life, and that they also share of the energy of things, teaching me as we go. I hear them sharing their wisdom and how much they want to collaborate with human beings and all of life to create beauty. I also feel them sharing how useful it is for me to be able grow in the way that I work with my own small challenges, so that I may be of greater contribution in our world.

My daughter and I recently moved from one apartment and neighborhood to another. This was not a move that I had anticipated, but that arose out of necessity and care of myself and my daughter. Something related to a neighbor’s behavior began happening in the apartment where we were living that we could not stand to live with. I had a lot of story around it for awhile. The story helped me to process and to connect and relate as I was having the experience. Through the disturbing experience and through my story, I felt the presence of the Willow Oak who was my tree guide for two and a half years. The Willow Oak supported me. She helped me to reflect on how disturbed I felt and to connect with her and her roots to ground and feel my roots still intact, and to relax my nervous system. She helped me to see and feel what was true, connect more deeply with my intuition through the experience, and to accept responsibility for the choices I made. Seeing through my story to the truth that I did not want to and could not healthfully continue in the experience where I was living brought me to accepting responsibility for my choices, and healing and beauty came as my story about the experience fell away. The flow of my emotions and story, coupled with the compassionate wisdom of the Willow Oak, ushered me to a healthier place for me and my daughter. Some of the wisdom shared by the Willow Oak is how our stories nourish and heal us, and how we naturally let them go and they fall away upon healing.

Something else interesting, that felt related, also happened to me during this time. There were a couple of things at my job that didn’t feel right to me, and I spoke up about them, against the grain. I noticed how I felt like a disturbance, even as I was speaking from my heart, speaking up for what I feel is in care of everyone. I don’t like to feel like a disturbance. I asked the Willow Oak about this, breathing with her. I had a beautiful experience with her. As I breathed with her, first I saw the image of me in an enclosed pod at work, and almost instantly as I saw this, the pod wasn’t a pod at all, however a seed. As a seed in the vision I received, I burst first into roots and then into branches, my roots moving through the soil in a way that is nourishing and necessary, deepening. My branches reaching, connecting. I felt how this is the energy of myself and of others. Although I may not perceive it often, I am and we are each one of us much more expansive energetically than we notice, and we are deeply affecting one another and all of the life around us. The Willow Oak seemed to share how this is happening in the way of the hologram, expansively throughout our world

I talked with my shamanic herbal teacher about these occurrences. She tuned into disturbance, and encouraged me to tune in further as well, expressing how it seems that I was being disturbed for a purpose and that I was being called to be disturbing for a purpose. As I conversed more with the Willow Oak about this, she shared with me how the energy of being disturbed is useful and meaningful if we are moving from a place of being deeply rooted, connected, and from the heart. These experiences of disturbance are happening in our world on all scales, in the way of the hologram, and at this time of renewal on our planet. For renewal, the forces of disturbance are essential. Anything that is not serving life must fall away.

Another gift that I received from the Willow Oak is that she led me to a new tree guide close to my new home. She created a bridge for me from her wisdom and support to the wisdom and support of this new tree guide. She continues to support me in various ways, and I have visited her in person relatively recently too. My new tree guide is a silver maple tree. He shared with me that his name is Franklin. One meaning of the name Franklin is “land holder”, and one aspect that I experience through Franklin is his knowing and far-reaching connection with the surrounding land, trees, plants, animals, people, and all the beings. I’ve received wonderful gifts from him, to be shared in coming blog posts.