The Tree of Life Experiment
At our latest ‘Headless Way’ gathering at Gurukula, the discussion leader, Sam, invited the ten friends present to try out what he called “the Tree of Life Experiment.”
We all lay on our backs on the carpet of the dojo, an equal distance apart, with our feet almost touching in the center. Looking from above, we would have made a kind of star formation.
We were then asked to raise ourselves up on our elbows and, looking toward the others, imagine that our bodies together made up the trunk and branches of the Tree of Life.
The question was then asked, “In your overall picture of this Tree, where do you perceive the trunk to be?”
Of course, we all agreed that we saw our own body as the trunk, and all the other bodies like branches fanning out from the top of the trunk at our feet.
We were then asked to notice, on the basis of our own direct experience, what was at the bottom of our ‘trunk’, where the roots would normally be.
On the evidence, we each acknowledged that our ‘trunk’ mysteriously extended from the chest to our feet out of an alive, aware, spaciousness that took in the ‘Tree branches’ made up of our friends.
We were asked to note that, according to our own direct experience, everything ‘out there’ had color, shape, density and other qualities, whereas, what was witnessing all this, the very roots of this Tree of Life, had no color, no shape, was completely transparent and had no discernable qualities at all!
We also noted with some awe that while each ‘branch’ of this Tree ended with a head and had limitations or boundaries, the ‘root’ area at the bottom of each ‘trunk’ had no length, breadth or boundaries of any kind. Our roots were apparently vast and infinite!
Although we each had our own unique perspective of the trunk and branches of our Tree of Life at that moment, it seemed that, as friends, we were bound together into a unity by a common ’seeing’ or insight that transcended the purely personal … it was a kind of unitive vision as if Life was suddenly conscious of Itself, both as formless and as the many forms.
When I got to my feet with the others, it was with a heightened sense not only of my rootedness in or as limitless Spirit, but that I had some role to play in bringing this unitive vision to the branches and leaves that made up ‘my’ Tree of Life.
