Editor’s Note: To listen to and read past conversations with Elisa Novick on Planet Waves, please use this link. We’ll be publishing an article by Elisa each Sunday evening. You’re invited to visit her website and Facebook page. — Amanda
P.S. Elisa writes this week, “I believe I lost e-mails from some of you with inquiries about sessions, workshops or being on my mailing when my e-mail database went down. If you haven’t heard back from me, kindly re-send your letters. I look forward to hearing from you.”
Last week I introduced you to my experiences with a group of trees, and had hoped to ease into sharing more about how our collaboration has evolved. But because so many have written to me with concern about the trees that have been damaged or killed by the hurricane, I decided I’d just jump in and share with you this talk I had with the Maple in my forest before and after the big hurricane in 2011, and then about what the trees are doing this week to assist in the rescue efforts at a level only they can.
August 2011
I have stopped by the Maple/Secretary Tree and to my great surprise, felt something like hysteria.
Is something wrong? Are you hysterical? Or am I picking that up from elsewhere or myself?
You know me too well, my dear. This is not the way in which I wish to greet you.
That is all right. I’ve greeted you in all kinds of emotional states and you’ve always stood lovingly with me. You are usually so calm and joyous.
That’s true, but there is a new, interesting thing happening here. In our past(s) we were able to fly freely away from an area that was about to be inundated with rain or unwise weather. We can’t rise up out of this soil. Though we are not secure, we don’t worry about things that haven’t happened. But everyone is on alert now.
Is this because of the hurricane coming through on Sunday?
It is a storm like we’ve never seen and it is not improbable that it will be coming into this area. The preparations are not unlike yours. “Battening down the hatches” is something we do as well, in different ways.
If lightning strikes, we may be killed and that is not usually a problem, except that we are now wondering how you will do if that happens.
Oh my God, does our connection extend to this? That you would be afraid to upset me?
We are bound together, yes; to get a mission completed that might be available to others for information, guidance, etc. We are all working together on this, and this unfortunate incidence of storms arising from man’s carelessness and not controlling these things…
Can we control these weather patterns? I have seen prayer seem to move hurricanes out to the ocean.
That is possible and we are grateful for such an idea. Let’s pray together.
Thank you. I am honored.
[I ranged to find what it meant to join in prayer with the trees and found a broad and high encompassing awareness. I am a bit bowled over that she was worried about dying because of what it might do to me and the work, the book. She feels calm and strong to me now.]
Sweet friend, are you OK now?
I am well, thank you. We aren’t usually allowed to move past our own bailiwicks in terms of area we cover. But in this forest we cross all boundaries to enable this fantastic task to continue.
Have I stretched you as you have stretched me?
You are fantastically overbearing my dear, bringing us to new places and forcing us to our highest statement of being, acting as a conduit for planetary resources and challenges to be handled and faced and addressed. This is a United Nations-like nexus point on the highest level. The meetings that you’ve attended in the other realms come through and anchor in this glen and the group of trees you call the Senate meet regularly and are involved with your “Light work.” All are in harness together and we love that. It is exciting and activating and reassuring in that we can safely assume that we are being used well in a fashion that will not impede anyone’s progression.
Satellite dishes send signals out into space and receive them. We do not have a receiver as powerful as we would like. It has come about for all of us to get together to create this broadcaster/receiver to your specifications.
I wasn’t aware of giving any specifications.
You don’t know it. We aren’t tall for no reason; we give our song and dance to others and they dance back in another rhythm. This behavior has continued forever. Now we continue to dance out these rhythms into the earth and into the stars rather consistently.
Is this tiring?
We aren’t given to fatigue; only a rhythm that comes to a halt can be shocking to our systems. That is why we are given to being solemn when one of us falls down for any reason. It means the sound/song/rhythm is no longer there and we have to accommodate newly. We have lost rhythms in large numbers and now we join ours to yours and they get stronger and more precise and more humble and graceful. This constant broadcast gives us the shivers in a way; makes the breathing/transpiring process more intense and uses great stores of CO2 and other gasses to function properly.
You are telling me you are huffing and puffing like a human doing strenuous activity.
Yes, I guess I am.
But there is strain?
No. Just more strident colors produced in ways that match and sing out in a new pattern. Quite beautiful, like new artists are we.
Wow, that is great. I am still worried if you are straining or hurting at all.
Not really. We are excited and enjoy being utilized and this is great fun!
Oh good; I wish I could see your artwork and hear your rhythms.
You will, my dear. Just open your thinking to our song cycling around in this mirror of your being.
I’d like to provide a little commentary on this exchange for extra context. In this conversation, what was remarkable to me was:
• That her stress before the hurricane was not normal for her, but that the trees were concerned about not being able to continue the work with me if something happened to them.
• They take seriously the planetary, spiritual and publishing work that we’ve been collaborating on. (If you don’t know what I am referring to, please read last week’s article, An Oak Tree Changes My Life).
• The trees are making new formations in order to try to save humanity and it seems some level of me or beyond me, unbeknown to me, is capable of offering specifications for those formations. Also note their description that the formations are made of sound and dances of light.
• Humans are really supposed to be able to control these weather patterns.
• That it helps the trees to partner with humans because they’ve lost so many of their own. We are all capable of cooperation like this if we learn to attune and then present ourselves in service. For me there is nothing more gratifying.
Now, reading back, I don’t understand what she meant in saying they used to be able to fly away; I’ll have to ask her someday.
November 2011
Dear Maple,
Are you hurting, having lost branches in the hurricane?
It is not hard to suffer my dear, but why bother? I am happy, joyful and real. I exist everywhere and every when. No matter about a few little branches. They do not suffer either. Just a shedding.
And if it all were to die?
Then we would betake ourselves elsewhere. Or do something else. We are flexible.
You are. Despite brittle branches. Anything else?
We are glad to be in your presence.
November 1, 2012: I have not been to visit this forest since this week’s hurricane, but here is what the group of trees just told me:
Dear sweet one,
We are all right. No real damage, only a release of those parts that were ready to let go anyway. Our love was heightened when you were praying for us.
We are aware of the devastation felt by many and are helping to mitigate the disaster by reaching out to the trees who have fallen to lift them into other realms. We are watching over all and assisting those in spirit [angels and masters of Light, including many people around the planet] who are coming to the aid of all who have survived and all who have been taken to the shores of another realm. This is easy, as we have become more able to assist by your loving heart reaching out to others on both sides of the veils.
As they tell me this, I am consciously bridging the veils, acting as a conduit for those in distress to be soothed and uplifted, seeing the angels and the trees working separately in different realms, divided by only a thin transparent veil, but in awareness of each other. So the rescue efforts are taking place on the ground as we assist in the other realms.
Dear friends, I was feeling something akin to survivor guilt, having had so little damage here, but that is fully mitigated now. Thank you for including me in your service in the way that I am able. I have a feeling that some of those reading this will join us too!
Elisa Novick, MSS does profound work as a healer, teacher, counselor, coach, minister, and facilitator of workshops and trainings in personal, professional, and spiritual development. She can assist you to clear personal, karmic and genetic patterns that have limited you and teach you exquisite attunement skills so you can become the magnificent master of life and Light that all of us are destined to be. Elisa has been assisting people in their growth since 1982 through her counseling practice and in facilitating over 1,000 workshops in holistic health, human development, family constellation, systemic constellation, organizational dynamics, planetary healing and spiritual awareness. Read her other Planet Waves articles here.
Elisa I cannot tell you how much I’ve appreciated your contributions here. So many of my friends are trees and I am blessed to live deep in the forest of the Adirondacks. When Irene paid us a visit last year there was extensive damage and it was heartbreaking to see the raw destruction…still is, because where I live most of it still lingers and will for years to come since it is “wild” land. In the areas where the human world is active the landscape has been tided up but out in the forest, raw roots and toppled trees are very much in evidence.
My distress about these sights is always met with a calming, soothing voice from the trees that tries to tell me that they have not “gone” anywhere…. they see themselves as part of a living system and thus, whether vertical and full of life, or horizontal and ebbing life or prone on the ground and dissolving back into the forest floor they are still very much present and giving of themselves in ways that feel good and normal to them. (though the trees with the roots laid bare do sometimes say that it is one of their biggest challenges to process, at least that is what they told me at the time)
Once, while camping alone in Scotland in the presence of the Ancient Grandmother trees left over from the original Caledonian forest, I heard them urging me to get up well before dawn… “Wake UP!” they insisted….”You’ll miss it”….so I got up, bundled up and rolled out of the tent to see what the fuss was all about. It was a slow and clear dawn….and when the sun finally peeked over the shoulder of the great glen, I heard all the trees sigh and sing in a quiet unison as the first rays of the sun tipped their crowns with gold…it was nothing like a human chorus but the emotional experience was something between pure joy, delight and glee with a deep undertone of reverence …but on very quiet and subtle notes. It brought tears to my eyes and I sent a prayer of gratitude out to the Grandmothers that they woke me up to be able to be present to it all.
Before the recession there was a new tourist experience developing in the glen… experienced tree climbers were taking people up into the Grandmother trees and giving tours of the unique micro-environments that were being discovered held aloft by these ancient beings. They were making some amazing discoveries…. whole microcosms of previously unknown plants and animals were occupying the horizontal spaces held within the branches of the trees. Great care is taken not to harm the trees for these explorations and the human crews move their scaffolding and ropes set up every so often to make sure no individual tree is too stressed by all the visitors… but it was a very big attraction for those who were seeking a more intimate adventure with the landscape. I hope I get back there some day and get to take one of these tours…I’ve heard from another Tree-lover who talks to the Grandmothers that they are thrilled with this new exchange…and especially love it when the children come and visit them.
Thank you so much for your articles….they are the highlight of my week! And thank you Eric for sharing Elisa with us!!
trees, truth and trust! a friend just sent me this…
“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte
“No real damage, only a release of those parts that were ready to let go anyway.”
Oh, there it is. That’s what I was needing to read. Thank you.
“I have a feeling that some of those reading this will join us too!” You bet, Elisa. Thank you.
Thank you so much for the work you do and thank you for validating a part of my own personal experience on this planet. My escape from my own dysfunctional family, as several others have written about, we’re the five acres of land our house sat on, surrounded by Pikes Peak National forest. I had the luxury as a small child to take off hiking through the woods when the world of adults, or juggles, just became too much to bear. I had my paths that I followed, mostly deer runs through the woods. And along those paths stood many of my best friends- large, stately Ponderosa pines, some straight and tall reaching to the heavens like a rocket, others crooked and bent, but providing great ledges and seats to rest upon. Some wore the permanent scars of lightening strikes. Among them, on the north facing slopes, stood the blue spruces, wearing there long skirts of soft tender branches that I loved the feel of against my cheeks. Spread through out in small groves were the aspens and cottonwoods, their leaves like gold coins. I spoke to them and told them of my travails. I shed my tears on their roots and felt their branches wrap around me in gigantic hugs. To me they were as much individuals as the people walking down the street. And they were all my friends. An hour or so amongst their presence and the world was a better place, with my batteries recharged. Three months ago I was guided to my new rental house, and it is surrounded by a group of large trees, deciduous and fruit trees. I feel cradled in their presence as I grieve the loss of my father and let go of those brittle branches of the family karma that I no longer need to carry.