Return To Oneself Through Nature

An old Lakota legend tells that, at the beginning of time, the Great Spirit (Wakan Tanka) made the world by putting the six directions of the universe in their place . Thus he put the High and the Low, the North and the South, the East and the West. It only remained to locate the seventh direction, in which strength and wisdom reside.

The Great Spirit did not want to leave it within the reach of just anyone, as it contains enormous power. After thinking a lot about it, it occurred to him to hide it like a seed inside its fruit, in the last place that human beings look: inside each of their hearts. Very few have found it since.

In pursuit of this seventh direction we walk consciously or unconsciously. It is the authentic quête , a search for the Grail that we undertake at the very moment of birth, encouraging intuition and the hope that one way or another we will find the answer, when we succeed in asking the question.

An ancient tradition

Getting into the world of trees has been a path of initiation in multiple cultures. Many of the wise men who have been in the world undertook this route following the call of the forest: saints and holy men, Brahmins, Sufis and indigenous people of all tribes were withdrawing from the world to learn the secrets of the jungle, which is the same as take the path towards oneself. “We blacks go to the jungle as well as to church,” Afro-Cuban santeros still say.

And in the Middle Ages, the hermits went “to the deserts”, imposing forests without a soul for a hundred leagues around. Also in the legends and chivalric books there are a thousand transcendent passages in which the hero goes into the forest and finds something similar to what he was going to look for, facing the monsters that oppress him, finding the wise hermit who has his cabin in a small clearing or finally merging with his female counterpart, who has the face of a princess.

As José Saramago said, “the smallest of forests will always be greater than the largest of castles, even if it does not have more history than that of its trees.”

The hero strips off his sword and armor, goes naked and defenseless. The grail, the cup, is the soul itself that must be emptied to undertake the search and thus become receptive, the receptacle that the forest inhabits. It embodies the feminine spirit that receives, listens and understands and in turn must be understood.

Throughout the Arthurian cycle, the forest is the scene of that singular adventure that takes place in the heart of the seeker, and we can suspect that the wise old man Merlin devised a masterful ploy: sending the smug Knights of the Round Table in pursuit of a chimerical Grail, launched them to conquer themselves, separating them from the intrigues of King Arthur’s court.

Disconnection from routine, connection with nature

This intense experience of the forest makes us lovers of nature. Going into the grove, isolating yourself from the maelstrom and routine, a minute becomes eternity. The roots emerge and intertwine sinuously and the vines contort between the branches creating living and pulsating sculptures, the moss inhabits the stones that adopt surreal forms and the very sound of the wind inspires us. Wherever the intricate paths end, we discover that our soul is like a mirror that awakens and comes to life in the thicket.

Along these lines, Henry David Thoreau would write: “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, face alone the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what she had to teach me, lest when I was about to die I understood that I had not lived.

It is not necessary to become a hermit and retreat to an inaccessible mountain, but it is necessary to withdraw from time to time, change the perspective with which we look at the world and ourselves, lose for a moment the gaze in the foliage of a great tree and feed the spirit , forgetting chores and worries, as well as the rhythm of civic life that prevents us from living in a healthy and peaceful way.

If you regularly enter the world of trees, you may not find what you expect or what you want, but you will always discover something you need or you will have shed something unnecessary. The forest, and even the nearby park where the song of the blackbird is still heard, renew us at all levels, act on the seven directions, regenerating the world outside and inside, ecologically and spiritually. the physical and emotional world, the intellect and the spirit … All the dimensions of the human being find resonances capable of teaching us to be and to be.

We see the litter accumulate and we understand that the tree is the mother of humus and the grandmother of springs from which we drink as part of the same cycle, of a common substance. The observation thus becomes an experience, which is a visceral, poetic and coherent way of contemplating and understanding … To regain one’s integrity to integrate into that jungle that more than a set of beings seems an entity. It attracts us and traps us, breathes us and devours us, misleads us, welcomes us and sets us free.

“I stopped like a tree and heard the trees speak”, Juan Ramón Jiménez tells us, and in the same sense, the bard Taliesin would declare in his verses: “I have been a tree in the mysterious forest”, as a sign of an authentic communion that transforms him, like Merlin or Viviana, into a green man or woman.

It is the awakening of that wild spirit that we all carry inside, domesticated under layers and layers of self-control and conventions, but which continues latent, always struggling to take off its shoes and run through the litter, to regain the brightness of the gaze and the feeling of freedom. .

The trees were the first sanctuaries of the human tribe and still, in the middle of French Brittany, in that initiatory forest of Broceliande in which the mythical Barenton spring continues to flow, we find the Tréhorenteuc chapel. If you look at the inscription, on the arch of the door, you will be able to read: La porte est en dedans . The door is inside. Inside the temple, inside your heart, inside the forest, in the center of the block … as it always has been.

The secret is to go deeper and deeper, not to abandon the search, to reconnect in a deep symbiosis. Become aware …

The adventure of looking for yourself in the forest

And in the style of the wise Merlin, this time we will entrust you with a mission for your soul. It is a unique, personal and non-transferable adventure: you will have to cross the thorny thicket that grows on the edges, closing the way to the forest. Immediately go deep into the beech forest, where the smiling and “sleepy” trees drink so much light that they produce the thickest shade. learn to lose yourself. It wanders alone and in silence, only guided by chance.

Among the litter of the largest beech trees is a humble flower that at this time begins to open. It is the little woodruff, also called the queen of the woods. If you persevere, you will find it at last and wonder how such a discreet herb gets such a great name. Pick up a bouquet and bring it back home where you will let it dry in the shade in a well-ventilated place. After a couple of days of picking the woodruff, you will discover that this herb, practically odorless when green, has an intense and wild fragrance that immediately transports you to where it came from as a spell.

Store it in a tin can and every time you uncover it you will feel that you have opened the doors of the forest, you can make one of the most delicious and aromatic teas, without any exciting substance, or fill a scent pillow, perfume your closet or perfume yourself. Putting it in a pocket and every time the fragrance fills your pituitary, you will have the feeling of having regained the freshness and liveliness of your true home, the forest. The woodruff can be, like the Grail, an excuse to leave your world and enter yourself along the forest path.

You can use other excuses, but in any case it is necessary to return to the land of trees where everything begins again and everything can happen. You will return perhaps more relaxed, wise or inspired, but above all you will remember where we came from and what we should never forget. the forest is the temple of life and in one way or another we are destined to return.

It does not seem by chance that, in the Buddha legend, enlightenment descends like a blessing from a tree-forest, but, in any case, we have the conviction that all paths with a heart cross at some point that shady and mysterious forest that makes you more beautiful and mindful.