One way to try to comprehend the awesome abyss of Deep Time is to envision the whole history of earth as taking place over the course of a single twenty four hour day. On the scale nothing stirs until six am. Earth is a dead place for nearly the first quarter of its existence. The morning and afternoon and most of the evening are primitive but eventful: simple celled bacteria evolve into more complex multi cellular organisms. Sexual reproduction brings still greater variety and diversification. Life partitions itself into plant and animal kingdoms. Yet the day is all but gone before much of anything resembling modern life forms develop. Dinosaurs don't show up until around 10:40 pm. Humans arrive on the scene after 11:58 pm. Civilization, the whole great passionate drama of recorded history from the pharaohs to the internet takes place the last second before midnight.
You do not need to go far out into the forest to find an appropriate tree to work with. Trees that are used to having people around understand our energy and are actually more accessible and friendly than those far out in the wilderness. City parks and suburban yards are filled with powerful and accessible trees that would love to have closer relationships with the humans that dominate their environment.
There is a certain size range within which trees are most accessible to human beings. When a tree is too small, it does not have enough energy to make much of an impression on you. When the tree is too big, you have the opposite problem, so it takes more persistence to get large trees to take an interest in you. As a source of healing energy, it is best to choose a large, robust tree from within the accessible size range. For playful interaction it is best to choose a small to medium sized tree. While it is not necessary to climb the tree to develop a relationship, it does open up a whole new world, Climb gently and carefully so as not to harm the tree. Trees operate on a longer time scale than do human beings. You can help to bridge this gap by returning again and again to the same tree, so that a relationship develops. Visit regularly so that the tree knows when to expect you and can look forward to seeing you. You may have the distinct impression that the tree really misses you when you are gone for a longer time than usual. Feel the energy of the tree first. When you feel the Chi of the tree, use your mind, eyes, and palms to absorb the Chi through your palms. Move the Chi up the inside (the Yin sides) of both arms to both shoulders, both sides of the neck, and the left and right ears, to the crown. From the crown move the energy down the Functional Channel to the mid-eyebrow, throat, heart, solar plexus, navel, and the cauldron behind the navel. Paul Watson is a Canadian known around the world for his daring efforts to stop the killing of whales and seals by direct intervention. Although he was one of the originators of Greenpeace, he broke away from that group to form the Sea Shepherd Society, which is dedicated to protecting marine mammals. As captain of the ship Sea Shepherd, Watson cuts a swashbuckling figure, charging between whales and their hunters. I asked him how he ended up spending his life sinking whaling boats and getting beaten up by enraged sealers. He told me the dramatic and moving story of the day that changed his life.
In 1975, we had encountered the Russian whaling fleet just off the coast of northern California. We had come up with this idea to put ourselves in inflatable boats, to put our lives on the line, reasoning that nobody is going to kill a whale if they have got to risk killing a human being. We were reading a lot of Gandhi at the time and we were quite naive… Anyway, Bob Hunter and I were in a small rubber boat. And we were blocking a Soviet Harpoon vessel. This 150-foot steel vessel was bearing down on us at twenty knots. And in front of us, eight magnificent sperm whales were fleeing for their lives. Every time the harpooner swiveled the harpoon, I would maneuver the small boat… to block his path; this worked for about twenty minutes. Then the captain came down the cat walk and screamed into the ear of the harpooner… and we knew we were in trouble. And a few minutes later, the harpooner fired the harpoon over our heads and this 150 pound exploding grenade zoomed over our heads and slammed into the backside of one of the females in this pod of sperm whales. And she screamed. Blood was squirting everywhere. The largest whale in the pod suddenly rose up and dove. We had been told by all of the experts that the whale would attack us, because we were the smallest targets and it would be very angry. As we waited with a great deal of anxiety for fifty tons of very angry animal to come up underneath us, the ocean erupted behind us and we turned in time to see the whale hurl himself from the water straight at the Russian harpooner who was on the bow. But the harpooner was waiting for him, and he very nonchalantly pulled the trigger and sent a second harpoon at point –blank range, into the head of the whale. The whale screamed and fell back into the water, blood everywhere now. And he was rolling and thrashing about I caught his eye. And he saw me. Then he dove. I saw this trail of bloody bubbles coming straight towards us, real fast. The whale came up and out of the water at an angle, so it looked like he was just going to come forward and crush us. And then it was almost as if he stopped in mid-air. He was so close I could have reached up and grabbed one of these six-inch teeth. I looked into his eye, which was the size of my fist, and what I saw in that eye was understanding. That whale knew what we were trying to do, because the easiest thing for the whale to do was to come forward and crush us or seize us in his jaws, and he did neither. He just very slowly and deliberately and with great effort slid back beneath the waves and died. There was something else I saw in that eye, and it was pity. Not for himself but for us. |
book quotes
some poetry too Archives
November 2017
Categories |