By Elisa Novick
I hope you will take a little while to see my photos on Facebook of the places I’ve been traveling to in Europe. I am not a photographer and my camera doesn’t have much of a zoom or an optimal viewfinder, but I do like to record my experiences and the photos illustrate some of what I will say here.
My time in Amsterdam may have been unusual. My first day in Amsterdam was Queen’s Day. On that day Queen Beatrix abdicated and her son Willem-Alexander was crowned King. They call it an inauguration and they never actually placed a crown on his head, but Queen’s Day is now King’s Day. A few days later, the Netherlands celebrated Independence Day (liberation from the Nazis) and Amsterdam won a soccer championship. So for several days that week, the streets and bars were filled with singing, cheering people.
As a result, what I saw was a city where people were out in the streets partying, wearing orange, crowding the canals with creatively decorated boats of every size and condition, walking along the streets in happy groups, some carrying various shaped containers of beer (illegal to do in the U.S.), singing and dancing with loud ‘house’ music blaring from speakers everywhere.
I have never been in Washington, D.C., for an inauguration and only have seen English royal events on television, so I have no basis for comparison between countries, but I have to say that I’ve never experienced a city in which it seemed the entire populace was out in the streets in celebration.
I have never identified myself as a proud citizen of the United States, though I’ve counted my blessings that I have not experienced the worst of what the U.S. has on offer nowadays nor of dire conditions anywhere else in the world. Having never experienced the thrill of patriotic sentiment, and knowing what I know about those who run the planet, what I saw in Amsterdam was astounding.
On the other hand, I did, as a child, have fantasies of being a princess and wished I had a beautiful pink and white dress that looked like a birthday cake — Cinderella at the Ball. I felt myself caught between curiosity and judgment at the pomp and pageantry this class puts on for itself, and the split personalities they display, and a strange admiration for the fairy-tale like innocence of the “royal subjects” crowding the streets and strolling through the lovely parks dressed in orange.
What I didn’t see, in comparison with Paris, was a lot of police — none in the parks, nor anyone expressing anger; no homeless people or beggars I could discern; and possibly only one of the Roma trying to scam the tourists for money. That doesn’t mean they weren’t there, I just didn’t see it. The streets were messy and the canals were dirty after the celebration, but overall, everything I saw was clean and well-kept and even the less well off, mostly immigrants, had “social housing.”
In common with Paris as everywhere in France, The Netherlands and Belgium, was pollarded trees, even in the parks. I had to work hard not to be taken down by the sight of these trees, cut down to the nub, despite my guidance (see my previous article for my discussion about this). But something remarkable gave me much hope that the Light and love can make a difference.
Two days before our workshop in The Rose, a beautiful healing center located just inside the gates of Vondel Park, Adriana (my hostess in Amsterdam who helped me organize the workshop) and I went into the park to locate the trees we might work with as part of workshop. I generally look for the largest, oldest trees working at a high level spiritually, with discernible awakened consciousness.
We found quite a few trees like that, though there was also some difficult energy, so I asked for canopies of Light in many places. We came upon one tree on the edge of the park, enormous at the base of the trunk, but in poor shape spiritually, almost deadened and certainly traumatized by having its branches cut off and street paving over half of its roots. We gave it our loving attention and I sent it to the “infirmary” set up by my tree partners in a grove in the forest I work with back home.
Then we found an ancient tree by a pond, hollowed out by age or something else, including evidence of fire or lightning, that had been severely cut back to the trunk and had only small branches forming a halo around its foreshortened crown. When I tuned in, it felt like a doddering, confused old man, unable to process what had been going on around it “since Napoleon’s time,” with all of its sense organs amputated. (Vondel Park was built in 1865, but photos of that time show that there were already some trees there.) Once again, Adriana and I prayed for Light and healing and brought our love, and I sent it, too, to the infirmary.
To our delight, when we brought the workshop out into the park just two days later, the tree by the edge of the park had made quite a lot of recovery and the tree by the water was magnificent. It was blazing with Light, present, joyful, connecting, communicating. One of the members of the group was drawn to it from afar, as I had been, even before we had said anything about it.
The greatest delight I’ve had from all of the workshops here in Europe has been from having groups of great diversity in origin and levels of experience coming together in a marvelous way, willing to go into deep healing spaces, to learn new ways of being and relating and especially, to participate in the upliftment of the planet. In Amsterdam, we had only one woman who had grown up in the Netherlands — the others were of Romanian, English and Serbian origin — and some were holding very heavy burdens, yet every person left sparkling and we made a beautiful team. One woman commented toward the end of the day:
“You know, we couldn’t have done this this morning; we have evolved during the day.”
That was said just after we had worked with one magnificent tree. Here were some of the comments about this tree from some of the participants in the workshop, with their newfound attunement skills:
“It does deeper and larger work than others here, for the park, city and the planet, through many levels. It doesn’t miss the trees that have been cut out for they are one in spirit, and that makes room for new life.”
“This tree is a little bit more close to itself. I saw energy running through it and underneath, circling in the roots, but it is not really healthy, which is why I couldn’t get it to talk to me in the beginning.”
“It is busy.”
“It has to do with being examples for other people, not by interacting with them; just to find ways of being examples.”
The tree asked us as a group, to step into a formation representing what it does — what I call its cosmic function. We allowed the tree to place us. Once we stood in the formation we intuited, I saw it pour out its substance — love and its accumulated wisdom — into the ground in the center of our group, like a pitcher pouring out rich warm milk and honey, and then radiating out, first to us and then through the earth to all. What was fun was that I was not the only one seeing it!
You are welcomed to participate in the Thriving Planet World Tour. 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.
Thanks to Lizzy and Amanda for your comments. It is nice, especially when traveling, to make contact. As for pruning, Amanda, I learned how to prune apple trees years ago from a local man who did that for a living. We held a little workshop at the Center of the Light when I was managing the property, as it had a large apple orchard. I noticed that when he was working on the trees, mostly cutting suckers, those branches that form in the notches between branches and never make apples, that the trees were fine. But at one moment, he said something like, “and then there are times, you have to get aggressive and whack away,” the tree got upset and I asked him to stop. The intention and consciousness we bring to these things makes such a difference.
anytime i see trees with this sort of “pruning,” i want to give them a hug. even without “talking” to trees the way elisa and her workshop participants do, this kind of chopping (or any pruning by people who don’t seem to know what they are doing, or do it out of season, or use those awful hedge-trimmers so everything is “even”) has always made me sad to see.
thank you, elisa, for this little peek into your travels!
As always, an absolute joy to read. Thank you Elisa!