from The Light Tree Journal: Part Two: "The Life of Trees..." and the way of Life...

                                                              
    Season by season I watched the deciduous trees. Behind the house was a huge liquid amber maple tree. It was here I learned that if, at every season old leaves fell for the next ones to grow, then all my past thought-patterns were passed, (and I didn’t need them,) by reason of the glory that excels in the growing leaf! For if I would have all by life, then all my old leaves of thought-patterns must fall, for the new ones to come! All things became new each time the old gave way, and fell. Though the new leaves which came looked much like those that went before, they were not the same ones, of course! And just as it was for the tree, so it was with me.
   Nothing grows that is not living. So I saw that anything life had given me had to remain in life to live! So all my current understanding had to be put ‘under;’ in the living place. Like a seed, I had to put it under ground for it to live! Oh, and anyway, it was only by putting it back, under, that it really was ‘under-standing’…under, and I was standing on it! Staying at the back of my mind, where I buried it, it was under good ground. For now it was in the realm where the light worked – in the dark! – the untouchable place where I could not contaminate it with my own opinions!
   Put in that invisible place of the Unknown, there in the dark it would live and grow; and then come shining out – out of darkness the light shines only there I can see it!  It would sprout out, all by itself; the seed of truth and light sending out its tender shoot in the fullness of time!
   Whatever the light had shown me – some new seed of truth; some newness of its beauty perceived – it would live if kept in the growing place, the dark. Growing there, by being alive there in ongoing overcoming and surrender, it would eventually come out all by itself in new leaves of new light, in some new form! …New words would come out to give shape to what was heard within. And that way, living leaves of new ideas, would come out at every season. …If, that is, they were surpassed at every season by my forgetting them, and letting them go!     GOING they went! DYING they lived! RELEASED they travelled! Just as the living tree releases its leaves, as soon as their work is fulfilled and had therefore come to an end, in that season of falling those leaves went travelling on the wind, the wind of the Spirit, and far and wide! And as the season of fall is for trees, so is it for me!    In this I took comfort, that if my leaves should seem to go nowhere, at least they were fallen at my own feet! And going under them, and breaking down, they became the fertilizer for my further under-standing; just as the un-flown away dead leaves of a living tree, are enriching the ground in which it stands!
   So I saw, that if I was nothing but a living person, as a tree is as a living ‘person,’ then my understanding would be ever, current! For it would be forever going, under, in ever falling, once it was full! And ever beginning again, ever new! So was the life of Everland! Why, if I lived as a living person I didn’t have to remember anything! Anything living just was and it just did! It was all in me right there where I was. Having need of nothing outside of me everything needed was always available, and I didn’t have to do a thing! Just like a tree did nothing but hold out its leaves to the sun! And there the light entered and nourished the tree! So could I live that way, too! Fed by the light just the same…through my leaves!  I learned the most about me, through my own leaves of writings!
   Of course! Being as I was as one tree, not many, and of a particular species, which always grew in its own particular way, predetermined right from its seed, my leaves would carry on telling me my own continuing story, (if I would only listen,) telling what they knew of me that I didn’t know yet, being as all my future leaves, were all written in embryo inside the seed that I grew from right from the beginning! My daily bread was only a matter of daily being! …Only believe!  ‘…See the trees!’    As a tree lives in the light of the sun, and the light enters its leaves, and gives life and sustenance to the whole tree, I kept on sending out new leaves, of new thought – new pages of new writing – at every season! No longer worrying about losing them or what happened to them. Or wondering where they went; or if they went anywhere at all! No more than do trees worry where their leaves go! By keeping on, and falling when I am full, the flame lives. And the sap rises again! Every thing grows and changes, if it is alive; I had always known it.
   It was by this I grew, and stayed alive: Always putting ‘under’ every living idea which came to me. Putting it where ‘I,’ ‘Me,’ could not touch it, then it would grow and expand: being as it was in the place out of which all seeds grow – out of the dark, their rich nurturing place; out of faith their endless living place. Out of ashes a phoenix rises.

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