Imagine for a moment, that all that is, was, and will be is like a forest. It is manifested in an even greater reality, but within itself contains and transcends all manner of things existing. Each tree in the forest is like the forest, a world in itself on another scale, complete and whole in perfect integrity with itself.
Together, the forest and the trees within it, provide the vital transubstantiation of materials and energies that make possible a greater life occurring within their dominion, and participate in the life of the greater good that exists which contains all of it.
But each tree also is its own realm. A realm in which the main trunk is deeply rooted in the earth which provides the fundamental ground of “being” in which the tee can occur. The roots interpenetrate the ground and bring the liquid nourishment that together with the air and sunlight gives the tree life.
The trunk unfolds as limbs, which reach toward the sky and sun in all directions, capturing the vital energy interpenetrating the air. Each limb is an independent force moving and yet connected directly to the trunk from which it is sourced.
Branches reach outward from their center, continuing to interpenetrate the air and light, to carry and support all that is necessary to make a transformation for which the tree is an expression by its form, creating and supporting life.
The branches unfold even finer thin twigs, which hold the essential organs of transformation. Individual leaves provide the cauldron from which emerges a change of state in which together, the material substances of the earth inside space; the water, the air, and the vital energy of the sun that animates it all.
All of it the emanations of the nearest star, our Sun. And all, together, transubstantiate themselves for the greater being of a greater world, in which the forest occurs, endpoint and supports all life on the earth.
And is if this was not enough, because all things hold themselves together, transfiguring in this way only so long before returning to whence they came, the very finest end point of the twigs themselves, and the branches, and the limbs, and the trunk, and the roots also produce a seed.
The seed itself is a mirror in the micro-cosmos containing the possibility of a tree, but not only of a tree. Because without the tree there is no forest and without the forest, the world cannot be born as a living thing. And yet, there is no certainty that any particular possibility will be born, because the seed may become food for something else, or may fall without ever being impregnated in the earth-mother, supported by the nurturing forces that allow it to occur as a tree. And yet, does not the forest contain many trees?
Life’s transcendence, a process together of transformation, transfiguration, and transubstantiation, requires both complete freedom and uncertainty of the possibility that it is, and also the constraints and limits of manifestation.
How many things do we know or recognize in life that is, just like this tree?
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
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