Beyond the energies we see and touch and can activate in our “real” world there is always an ever more subtle and powerful shakti ... the more subtle, the more powerful. Human bodies are a tool for learning whereas the other life forms are for resting in the pure nature of being--more “evolved” in their simplicity and perfect alignment with life.
Little blue trillium jumpers cover the tiny bodies of the unseen as they leave the forest and reveal themselves one by one, only for a moment skipping in yellow ladyslippers among the madly waving bear grass that is taller than the tallest small being. Out in the grass in the circle in the forest, there is a small clearing where sunlight shines. Now is the gathering of love, the harvest.
The nearly black depths of glistening green forest, a primordial expanse that is narrow in path and wide in canopy, releases a sigh of joy to witness the celebration. The trunks lean closer to the center of the circle, arching their spines so slightly that one can only feel the lean rather than see it, and their leaves or needles shuffle noisily as a zephyr soars through. Dew falls onto stems and moss, drip-drip-drop, in a rhythm older than the songs of the flowering indian paintbrush nodding and bobbing, glinting their inner essence among the tall grasses imitating the pin points of light in an ebony sky still hours away.
Going home, I am nestled into a tiny plot of verdant forest so rich that my eyes are soothed in an instant of gazing outward. Clouds drift by one after the other so that the sky would seem covered if one wasn’t watching for the perfect gaps of blue and pale yellow light peeking through branches as if to check on all we do and wink at us quickly before the clouds close their eyelids for long blissful pauses that are the full presence of existence. There, the pause is the sunlight; here, the pause is the shade.
Walking along the narrow rainforest path, the ground is spongy, the air is moist, and the more-than-human voices are slightly muffled as if with a light cotton that allows the sound to emerge in the softness of a deep reverential prayer that sinks into soil and bark and skin. Large knobby knees of ancient trees make sure to say hello and catch me when I fall while looking into the forest beside me knowing I am being watched yet feeling completely safe. All around me are the sentinels of my soul and when I embrace one I feel them all respond with a pulsating flow of graceful compassion and I can cry into the bark that is softened already from the continual tears that Gaia sheds for the world. Here we are sheltered and can spread ourselves thin until I disappear cell by molecule by atom and am swept into the vast heart of misty oneness.
I could become one of the little people, the unseen who aren’t really people at all, of course, for they are part of the elements more than the ego, their identity is reflected in the plants and animals of the penumbral glades and forest nooks where they shapeshift and live except on the occasional celebrations when they weave tiny bodies that confuse the senses and elude the mind. For I don’t see them with my eyes but with my soul and realize we are all the same.
I do become one of them and disappear into the play of waving grasses and bobbing blossoms, for a time forgetting that I was once a human. I don’t want to go back to the other form, and I have the choice. Do I take it? Do I choose to dance and play and disappear into soil and rock and acorn and pinecone and mossy carpets and mushroom caps? Do I choose to run as deer or hop as rabbit or toddle along as the turtle in and out of puddles and ponds? Hug a tree or become a tree? Leave the human world behind and merge into the enchanted realm of deep, moist, luxurious, nourishing womb? Do I reverse the process of living as I am born into the real world instead of dying daily in this one from toxins and ego and fear of over-culture indoctrination?
Imagine the bliss... I can feel it now when I close my eyes and release this human body and become the universe that is older than time, greater than space, more wise and compassionate than imagined possible ... and in that moment I reach out to the suffering of the poor ignorant humans who are just beginning their journey to Truth, they struggle so, and I lift up that one by revealing a flower, and to that one I offer a branch to lean on, and to another I open my arms to embrace the tears that become the droplets glistening in the emerald forest.
