By Elisa Novick
I left Bali for Singapore still quite ill, coughing and fatigued, having been ill and cleansing for a few weeks. The schedule my hostesses had planned for me would have been a bit grueling at the best of times. I reached out to my spiritual community to “send me the Light” and worked with my young apprentice-colleague to get as clear and strong as possible. As a result (hallelujah), except for taking one afternoon off to rest, I got through my packed five days pretty well. I was scheduled to give a talk-workshop for a relatively large group and had scary visions of having to run out of the room in an uncontrollable coughing fit, but my fear never materialized. So I felt relieved and blessed.
I grew up in New York City and couldn’t wait to get out of the city and live in the country, so I was quite surprised to feel that the city of Singapore was healing me, which has led to a major breakthrough in my personal process in Asia. After four months in Bali with short visits to Malaysia and Java, I felt like Singapore provided a form of what I called, “civilization therapy.” It was modern, clean, well organized, relatively wealthy, safe. The people I met were highly intelligent, aware, and spoke English well.
What amazed me most was that this city, planned as a garden city, was filled with large trees, many of them conscious and functioning at a high level spiritually. For me to find so many of what I call “soul-level” trees lining many of the highways and populating the parks was unprecedented in my experience. What I didn’t know until I asked spiritually, was that much of what I was noticing was due to my presence. (More on this later in this article.)
There were a number of loving people who hosted me in Singapore. I felt honored and well-received and much mutual appreciation was shared, warm connections made that will continue. (You can see my personal stories and photos on my Facebook page.)
There were a few remarkable things I learned about this small city-state. The Singaporeans I met, though ethnically diverse, were deeply identified with their country and cared very much for how it was progressing. They were proud of it, worried about it, angry at its flaws, deeply philosophical about it, and eager to share it with me. It is relatively new, being fully independent only since 1959. The population is about 75% Chinese, the rest comprising Malay, Indian and Eurasians (not sure what that means).
Energetically, the quality that I most felt from many of the people I met I describe as “straining toward perfection.” There was a strong, ambitious longing for perfection, whether in the public life or the religious or spiritual life. I found myself quoting my spiritual way-shower who has said something like, “The doors of heaven open outward so you can’t bang on the doors, you have to go up to them and step back to allow them to open.” These people were banging on the doors!
In many of them, in addition to the loving care and wonderful support I received, I felt a somewhat fanatical quality about what they felt was the right way to do things, and in a few, a highly critical and/or aggressive quality. For me as a facilitator, the good news was that with that came an eagerness to learn and a great respect for what I had to offer. The not always comfortable news was that there was a lot of forceful energy around me, some of it coming my way.
Here is what I got from Spirit about Singapore. (I highly recommend, if this interests you, reading about the history of Singapore as well as the fascinating ways in which they have forced and enforced their ideas of an ideal or utopian society upon the nation.)
Singapore has come through a series of difficult periods that have strained the populace, which is acutely aware of itself as a populace despite differing heritage and racial characteristics. This has forced changes that were beyond belief — literally — beyond the beliefs of those who could not fathom the changes. They came into alignment by giving in to the force of their leaders’ intentions with no small amount of resistance popping up in the psyche, which then got subsumed in the general fracas of governments and their peoples.
There are forces beyond the physical level that became aware that there was something going on here that was an experiment they could corrupt and decay to their advantage. The tectonic forces that created Singapore as a nation, small and independent, keep swallowing waves of immigrants, new peoples who don’t necessarily subscribe to what they see, but who want to fit in to benefit from the resources available. This creates a fragile form, one that cracks and then has to be plastered over, over and over again.
Yet the population heaves and thrives and is in the throes of a rebirth. The outcome is not clear, but it will form the basis for a new union and also a beast of great savagery.
Is there a way for them to grow through that?
By forming new patterns [in the Laboratory of Life workshops] you can guide the process into a new catechism of strength though boldness of ideas and vision while taking care of the populations with great love. This will be a fragile balance, but can be strengthened by repeated attention to its success(es).
And what about the soul level trees here? I’m amazed there are so many.
They’ve decided that there is something that can be done here. Through force of will this country has been made, bound, declared, but there is an underlying optimism that can be served by the trees to bring a new level of consciousness to the planet.
This decision [to make Singapore what it is] was made at the level of a higher force in the universe [a consciousness], one that can declare and deploy the positive and negative forces out of an area or into one. It is not evil, but kindly and declarative. It has too much force but also bravery as well. So see this force not as brethren, but as a counterbalancing of the greater forces of evil that run the country, that have done some great harm here as well as some good.
On the other hand, there are trees that have tuned into this worldwide movement that you’ve created — of fixing this astonishing planet, moving it into a wholeness, a sentient mass that resonates love. The word came out to Singapore before your arrival and all reached out into their highest and best levels of awareness to come forth to be utilized.
So they were not working at soul level before I came?
Only a few were, but the others were nascent and ready to be called forth. This was done by the maple, the oak, and others in your essential group [in the forest in New York that I’ve been working with for 11 years].
The day before I left Singapore, my hostesses Anne and Julia took me to the Singapore Botanic Garden to meet Oribel, a lovely woman who has been taking workshops to meet the trees there. She introduced me to a magnificent kapok tree that she communes with. I could feel its energy field from a very long way down the path. I felt energy expanding out from it in pulses.
Here is the discussion I had with the tree:
May I talk with you?
You are already. You have been talking for a while and we have been listening.
[A little embarrassed] I want to listen to you. May I?
Yes. This is a dispensation, a new era in which the people of this place have been awakening to the loveliness of the forest, though it is a forest in the imagination. One that has pixies or fairies (your words) or little beings that take hold of the imagination and then they form fantasies around themselves.
In the awakening that is needed, reality must form a basis, in truth, without “trimmings.” Taking off this layer/mask of projected fantasy takes some work. I have been asking this Oribel, lovely woman, to have her students tune into reality, without extra fanciful imagery. In the way that this can happen, there can be a true awakening. In this forest of cityscape, of buildings, happenstance is limited. Chortling and laughing freely have been practically unknown. This seriousness that infects this populace is being asked to be lifted, so see the underneath, the flowing nature, the enlightening traffic of people leaning forward to receive their humanity.
You are now here, your trials and tribulations being asked to leave, moving out of the aura, their aura, while there is a receiving of that Light that you carry and bring forth.
I feel a softening, a clearing being here. The soft warm air helps me to clarify, to release the traumas I’ve absorbed on many levels, to be as fragrant in Spirit as what I feel here.
Thank you and the others you bring forth with you.
Do you mean my other tree friends and others I am working with?
They are around and they are lovely. They form an enclave, a holding place for new thought to come through, a new way of being.
Can I be of assistance?
You already are. Your grace, issuing forth, is enough.
I am coming forth to you now, with my forest, my connections.
That is soothing to my soul, too.
[What I saw.] They are connecting. The energy is getting much stronger through the communion of this tree with “my” trees. A new being is formed.
[To the tree.] What are you doing?
I am connecting. Their liveliness and willing enthusiastic response is a happy thing. We can work together from this time forward — re-energizing the atmosphere, the vibrational pattern that is Singapore and its environs. The waters are coming alive, the animals in the seas responding. A light is going out to all, expanding out. Flashes.
I felt pulses of energy going out from you as I walked up to you.
They are bigger now, more energetic, awakening, reminding, calling forth life, conscious awareness, awakening.
When I returned to Bali, I found that I was renewed in spirit, and once again in awe at all of the new experiences and opportunities this world provides. Somehow, in a way I cannot define, I am more ready and willing to engage than I have felt since I arrived in Asia. Next stop Australia.
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To listen to and read past conversations with Elisa Novick on Planet Waves, plus her articles, please use this link. You’re invited to visit her website and Facebook page to view more photos of Bali and leave comments.
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. You may email her directly at elisanovick [at] thrivingplanet [dot] org.
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