In Conversation With Trees

As I wander through the woods, a mysterious shadow passes over me.
Something bad is here, I think, stopping to stare at the bark of a Scots Pine. There is evil in this tree.
But then the tree says back to me: “there is neither good nor evil in trees.”
And the next adds: “besides, whether something is good or bad rather depends on what you are trying to do.”

The conversation continues from tree to tree as I walk on. I can’t be sure the words are not merely imagined, but I am willing to hear them out all the same.
You mean what’s good for me could be bad for you, right?
“If you like.”
“You pull up a colossal energy wave with your willpower; I stand the ground with mine. Neither choice is good or bad for the thing we are together.”
The thing we are together?
“We are integrated. Underneath it all there is no you, and there is no I.”
Is that is why I can hear you in my head?
“Precisely. The thing we are together is at your root whenever you care to listen.”
“Some call it the wind of consciousness.”
“And we are simply differently shaped instruments through which it blows. It plays upon us all at once: we are part of the same song.”
“And our forms are moulded from one and the same.”
Moulded from song? Remarkable…

I begin to wonder what will come of me being in conversation with the trees, out here on my own. I feel as though I am fading; as though I am becoming a tree. It is probably time to leave.
“You cannot know what it is to be a tree, only what it is to hear the consciousness we share.”
“Humanity is for when consciousness wants to experience a particular kind of culture; to sound a particular note. Trees are for when it wants to form a different kind of relationship with other parts of itself.”
And I suppose, when we die, we all become one with it?
“Death means only that consciousness has stopped whistling through that instance of an instrument.”
“The illusion of the human breaks down – and with it, that thing you call ‘I’ – that’s when you become free. But, in being free, you will never again be human.”

I become aware that I am trembling and my head is spinning, but I make efforts to appear outwardly calm. Who for?
Thank you for your wisdom, brothers. I have to get out of here now.
“Goodbye traveller.”
“Goodbye traveller.”
“Goodbye traveller.”

I leave the woods immediately to scribble down these bizarre interactions, and to contemplate whether the trees have really spoken or whether I experienced spontaneous hallucination. Perhaps, for all intents and purposes, there really is no distinction.

*****

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