I’m in a light meditation, reaching out for other consciousnesses. There’s a magnolia tree outside the window. It’s the nearest large consciousness. I wonder how it feels about me pruning it.

I feel a physical sensation at the top of my skull, which is… If it were stronger I’d call it pain. A tightness which causes me to focus my attention there.

Through the point of that tightness, a channel of communication opens. The magnolia tree says, “Why are you wondering, asking me, how I feel? I am, and that is enough. You are employing your attention and energy in a way that is not fruitful when you become apologetic for thoughts about pruning my branches.

“Love me when you do so. That’s enough.

“Love the plants in your garden. You know how to do many things with energy, bringing it up from the earth into the plants. Continue to do this. That energy is sweet to them.

“When you mow your lawn, or pull weeds, or do other things that are – destructive, the word that comes into your mind, Is not the right word. It is absolutely not the right word. You are transmuting them, you are taking their life force and turning it into new soil, new compost. Your motivation is positive, and they appreciate your grief/compassion/reluctance – whatever words describe the ways your love for them manifests when you do this.

“It is egocentric of you humans to put your pain onto us with your feelings of guilt as you work with our bodies. You need to know that we do not feel things as you do. We respond to your emotions. We cannot help but do this because we have fundamentally, as part of we who we are, already surrendered to what is.

“When you cut us or eat us, prune us or remove us from the ground, you are not giving us pain. All we need is your love.“

I ask the tree, “What can you tell me about telepathy?“

The tree declines to answer in a fashion that my ego mind is looking for. This is outside the domain within which the tree and I communicate. It knows that I am speaking specifically of telepathy among human beings.

“This is your task. This is your pain. This is your [‘loss’ is the word that comes to my mind] and it is up to you to remedy that.

“You and I are experiencing that. I point out to you that finding your way through the barriers that separate human beings from each other is your task.

“Be open to other humans the way you are open to us, specifically in this moment, to me.“

It shows a picture to me of itself outside the window and me lying on the bed just a few feet away inside the house.

It asks me now to remove my consciousness from its consciousness, and allow it to get on with its day.

I love that idea: a tree getting on with its day.

I turn my attention back inside myself and return to ordinary consciousness. The lesson from the magnolia stays with me.

June 2023