By Elisa Novick
Coming back into the United States after six weeks in Europe, the first leg of the Thriving Planet World Tour, I find myself living for a time in comparisons while I recover from the rigors of travel, go through an internal upgrade, and happily check in with my tree friends.
First, I notice that compared to the stout brick and stone buildings of Europe, homes and castles and cathedrals that have been there more than 1,000 years, as well as more modern ones, the houses where I live, mostly built of wood, look flimsy, the churches small and plain. Many of the places I see driving through New England and New York State look so run down. I remember having a Slovakian friend tell me that the houses here look like summer homes — not built to last. My response at that time was of surprise. After all, the house I live in is about 200 years old! Now I understand.
On the other hand, I have an appreciation that at least in the area in which I am driving, the land is less developed than the land I saw in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Trees grow unaided, not every inch of arable land is farmed. There is even some wildlife left. I’ve often thought — and had some past-life memories — about what this area looked like before people or before there were too many people, and been saddened by the loss of teaming wildlife.
Yet having been in so many places where I didn’t see a squirrel or a chipmunk or a deer or a fox, I appreciate those who have managed to survive. I miss the birdsong of Europe, especially the blackbirds, but hear many more types of birds here. And though I know this is not true everywhere in the United States, I was especially happy that I live in a town that has two well-stocked health food stores. Those were hard to find in Europe.
Once ensconced in the Hermitage at the Omega Institute, with eager students and a loving masseuse with hands of liquid gold, I am ready to visit the forest I’ve been in loving relationship with for 11 years, located close by. To see these trees I’ve so lovingly communed with growing wild, with so little intervention over the last decades, was a relief. As I walked down the path toward them, I felt them gather around joyously to greet me (though we’d never been out of spiritual contact). With them there to meet me also were the trees I had introduced them to and sent to them for healing from all the countries I’d visited in Europe!
Once in the forest I began to ask for feedback about my travels. Here is one talk I had with the Maple:
Be kind now to yourself. You have grown tired in your travels and are in need of nourishment, touch, a clear space. We are helping.
“I’ve missed being here and tried to come in Spirit many times, with varying success.”
We knew it was hard on you and gave our best to support these various ventures/adventures you had. We are welcoming the new contacts you made with other trees. They have made a difference, bringing forth new information, support, understanding.
“These cultures were quite different and the land and trees in general are highly managed, rarely wild or diverse. I was glad they had the opportunity to make contact with trees growing in a somewhat wild forest and hope it wasn’t hard for you to sense their realities.”
They come from a different source, a world of possibilities that includes greater constraint, intervention in their growth, and sometimes support.
“The pollarded trees; is there anything to be done for them?”
They are craven, undernourished, sorry miserable creatures, and have no chance for advancement and so they are shut down and barely alive. But they can receive some love, not enough to take them out of their misery.
“Is it better not to wake them? Would it be too painful?”
It would. But they will receive nourishment that will make it easier to be deadened and they will come back to their full glory someday in another dimension. Give them your love, but do not insist on them knowing about themselves.
“Can I get stronger and more ready so that travel is easier?”
Give it a chance, dear one, and know yourself better. Your strength and stamina far exceeded your own expectation and have now been stretched. You survived and are actually stronger in many ways. There were connections made that will last a lifetime. You wanted to be more involved at the planetary level and those experiences happened. Now there is a bigger network and all are pulling their weight, those you contacted and many more who are cognizant of your work.
“I am connecting into it now. This is great! I feel better instead of worse. I thought I might be too tired, but it energizes me.”
The draining comes when you’ve had no support to do your work and even had to hold the line against resistant forces. Here there are no resistant forces because we are “under the radar.” We just “do our thing.”
“It feels wonderful.”
Get with it, my dear. You are worth every minute of being charged by our forces while you are part of this grand network taking place on this planet and elsewhere/when.
Addendum
Here are a few more thoughts about managed trees. As a result of my articles, I am receiving quite a few questions about various trees and plants and whether we can help them. One asked about the trees outside Auschwitz. Another friend wrote me this week: “The trees in Tel Aviv felt to me as if holding a great deal of sadness for that land.” I wrote back:
“I hear you about the trees in Israel. I remember the remarkable sensation I felt when I was there [in 1990] that all the plants I was seeing had been planted by human hands, rather than just growing wild in profusion as they do here.”
In that vein, I received an enquiry last week from someone asking me to tune into the trees in the embattled Taksim Gezi Park in Turkey. Here is my reply:
“I’ve looked at the photos and sent them the Light. Some of these trees are working at a pretty high level for relatively young managed trees and they are very loving. I am not able to get information from them, but here is what I received about them:
They are self-aware and carry the Light. They broadcast a signal to the stars that there is life here worth saving and protecting and are working hard to become their own Light force. In this dispensation, trees that have been planted in places like this have much they see and they want to fully inhabit their spaces but cannot do so. These non-wild trees nevertheless have consciousness and want to be serving humanity in gratitude for this life experience. Being of service makes the hardship of being in a large city bearable, sometimes even enjoyable. They know that they serve a function, one that might have not existed otherwise.
–The Inner Master
This reminded me of a gorgeous tree I met by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, where thousands of tourists stand on line to go up into the tower each day and the noisy, smelly, buses park. The part of the tree facing the Tower felt horrible and the part facing away felt deeply peaceful. I sat in awe as I realized the this great tree was absorbing the chaos and negativity and transmuting it into a vibration of great peace, day after day, no vacations or recognition, just a continuous loving action. And I was grateful.
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.
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.
Dear Elisa you are such a brave Beacon of Light. Many of us feel lots of pain at Gaia’s pain and we love her and her creations so much. It is so warming to hear of the Maple interceding for us with the Council. It is my dream that 1 day soon we will wake up and get back to our original purpose of co-operating with Gaia to care for all.
Your comments display so much compassion and thoughtful care. They warm me. I honor all you go through, process, survive and thrive. Your appreciation of the trees, plants, animals, is felt, registered, and acted upon by those beings and others in the realms of Light. Nothing we do is unseen by them. My tree friends have commented on what I’ve said at breakfast miles away, shows I’ve seen. Dolphins told me they were concerned for me and sent healing when I hit my head on a low tree branch (out of sight of the water in Mexico). The Maple has intervened with “The Council,” whoever they are, to give us more time and not destroy the earth. And God/Christ/Light call me and you, “Beloved.”
yeti- It is true that the book religions came from the deserts, and the 3 big ones are but death cults. Yet in Cascadia, where you are sleeping among the roots, and here on the edge of the great plains, there grew from the Mother Earth spiritual ways of great wisdom, insight and compassion. Your kinship lies with the ancestors who roamed this land since before the Mammoth left, your roots go deeper than the tilled soil, your words reflect the truth embedded in your heart. Just as your words here, and no doubt elsewhere, have helped others, I offer you this reflection so that you may see your own wisdom and resilience with clarity.
Thank you Elisa for your intimate sharings and special insights. I, and we, are all richer in reading your words and feeling the energies behind them. Bless you.
Here in Cascadia we have some of the last old growth in the world. In Portland there’s a wide diversity of trees from the relatively happy ones in places like Oak’s Bottom to the ones living next to freeways. I’m pretty sure the trees are a primary reason I can put up with living here. The noise of machines is sometimes overwhelming. Sleeping in a tent since I can’t pay the rent…well, the roots under my bed maybe help me sleep better. Still, the ever present sound of the freeway’s roaring exhale, the airport rumble, cars, cars, cars everywhere…I can hear the planet burning.
The thoughts coming to me when I’m with trees include awareness that human-plant is a relationship human must remember. We know so much war and sorrow essentially because the dominators forgot, living in their deserts, that the plants are part of us. Or we’re all the same life form, partile vision aside. What I mean is humans without plants go crazy. I see topiary here and there around here and I don’t like it. The trees feel sad, like a cat with a buzz cut. It’s not a consensual relationship. People don’t ask a tree how it wants to relate before hacking it up into a bunny shape or whatever. Ask a tree? Yeah, most people think that’s a crazy idea to begin with. Desert warriors came to the forests and freaked out at all the spiders and snakes I guess. Cut it, control it, burn it. We’ll have deserts everywhere…
All the major religions came out of deserts. Without plants we look for the divine anywhere but here. Plants aren’t an optional piece, an external thing we can leave behind. We ARE the plants. Even if you eat meat all the energy made available to your cells was put into an assimilable form by photosynthesis in a plant. There is no such thing as a fully independent human. Any human who thinks so doesn’t think very deeply about where all the support for its existence comes from.
Thank-you Elisa for telling us about your travels. I really feel for the poor trees on the continent and the lost animals. I am so lucky to live on a place with many beautiful, happy straight, big trees. Luckily for them I am their staunch protector and love them dearly.
I also do my best to protect all the wildlife around here. Most mornings the kookaburras carol dawn’s first rays and the last 2 mornings I have had a noisy flock of white cockatoos enjoying some tree food. My possums live in them and even the goannas use them. I have enough firewood lying around to last me lifetimes.