Author's Note:
[Written 14-15 February to 11 March 2002;
published 3/11/02; revised 13-14 June 2002]

In his book, Secrets from the Lives of Trees (Planetary Publications, 1991), American nature mystic, former athlete, and business executive, Jeffrey Goelitz, speaks with a two thousand year old Pacific Northwest redwood tree called the Mother of the Forest and listens as she tells him:

...I am an essence spirit that is very old.  I hold the standing wave for the entire surrounding forest. Trees are gravity centers for light and water.  We pull in with tremendous force energies that influence the entire earth.  Great forests of the world are linked by networks of energy that help sustain and balance the earth's ecosphere.  Forests have a special rhythm of existence.... There are powerful energies that pour through me as I am a conduit for heavenly light.  Its flow varies with climatic and environmental conditions"  [Goelitz:71;72].

The nearby Father of the Forest tells him:

...The purest essence comes from the oldest trees who have peaked developmentally in their beingness.  Older trees communicate to younger trees a vibrancy which supports and encourages their growth....There is an intelligence on the other side from which life springs.  A tree is a form created by that intelligence.  The form arose out of a design which gave purpose to a tree's existence.  The form embodies a tree and is one of the many multifaceted manifestations of creation.  Within the form is a foundational energy with an inherent design that makes a tree what it is.  The energy body is sustained by light-giving properties coming from the other side....The force of gravity helps us to live.  Through gravity we receive light from the sky....Gravity is the bridge to the other world where earth connects to the sky.  Trees act like magnetic funnels.  Through their centers they draw heavily on the light.  As a result trees cushion the light's entrance into the planet and make light more accessible   [Goelitz:75-76].

As spring 2002 approaches, like many of us, I am often overwhelmed with rage and sadness over the shortsighted policies of the West's male leaders, especially those in the United States.  To indulge in the fantasy that we are the bold, shining, altruistic ones, struggling against an "axis of evil," is to fracture the collective psyche and drag us all into nightmares.   Marion Zimmer Bradley (author of The Mists of Avalon) warns:

... And, I think, there is no one more dangerous than a man with power who does not realize he is capable of real evil.
[From The Shadow Matrix:326]

The danger, of course, is that such leaders will fool people into approving their tunnel-vision, their twisted nationalism.  Such leaders are "young souls" in the grim bodies of wrinkled puers. They don't see that other ways exist.  New York Times writer, Robert F. Worth, cites Attorney General John Ashcroft, for example, who insists that "A calculated, malignant, devastating evil has arisen in our world.  Civilization cannot afford to ignore the wrongs that have been done" [from "A Nation Defines Itself By Its Evil Enemies" by Robert F. Worth, The New York Times "Week in Review," Sunday, February 24, 2002]. While not denying the tragic magnitude of worldwide terrorism, Worth points out that:

...when the nation's enemies are used as highly emotional political symbols, it becomes easy to lose touch with the reality of their acts and motives -- and thus fail to better understand how to defeat or influence them.... And to the extent that those enemies are seen as evil, America can regard itself as good, a desire rooted in the Puritan vision of establishing a new Eden in a fallen world....

After exploring the dark history of how Americans have, over time, reduced Catholics, the French, immigrants in general, and Communists in particular to "moral monsters," Worth concludes:

Ultimately, of course, terrorism does present a real threat, just as cold-blooded killing presents a moral outrage.  But the history of American crusading, even against unmistakable evil, suggests that it can be more effective to start from a position of humility.  Righteousness easily becomes self-righteousness, and it can be hard for crusaders to distinguish between the two.

This focus on starting from a position of humility also resonates with the insights of Simone Weil, writing in France during World War II, who looked at the continual escalation of violence and argued that the only way out of the endless feedback loop was to "learn not to admire force, not to hate the enemy, nor to scorn the unfortunate" [from The Illiad, or the Poem of Force; see my Kosovo e-mails for more quotes from this out-of-print work].

Today's self-righteous leaders are strangers to humility, revere force and high tech weapons, have little regard for their unfortunate victims, and clearly hate the enemy.  They are quick to dehumanize their enemies as "moral monsters" while at the same time seeing themselves as shining knights of freedom.  Many of them claim to be Christian, which reminds me poignantly of words from Jungian analysts, Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson:

...It became fashionable in the post-War years to say that we were living in a post-Christian era.  However, it could equally be argued that we are living in a pre-Christian era, in that the revolutionary message of Christ, though preserved over the years among a few, has never been widely put into practice under the power-as-strength mindset of the patriarchal paradigm.  The basic principles of Christianity -- compassion, forgiveness, repentance, love for one's enemies, tolerance, meekness -- are a leap beyond what patriarchy stands for.... [Dancing in the Flames, Shambhala, 1997, pp.208-209]

I am further reminded of the words of Jewish theologian and philosopher, Martin Buber:

War has always had an adversary who almost never comes forward as such, but does his work in the stillness.  This adversary is speech, fulfilled speech, the speech of genuine conversation in which men understand one another and come to a mutual understanding.
[From a 1953 address, "Genuine Dialogue and the Possibilities of Speech," in Buber's 1957 collection, Pointing the Way.]

Today's leaders have forgotten what "fulfilled speech" and "genuine conversation" mean.  They are too busy with their agendas, power-plays, strategies, and rhetoric of brinkmanship.  There's no room for the "stillness" in which "mutual understanding" ripens.  When you're hellbent on vengeance, stillness is taken as a sign of weakness.  Despite their grey hair and wrinkles, these are, as I have said, "young souls."  They do not know any better and those multitudes of us who do know better, and yet feel confused, diminished and powerless before their arrogance, probably yearn, as I do, to bash together a few heads here and there out of sheer exasperation.  But, of course, that would be to play their game.  When I feel such desires, I then have to look within myself and recognize that I too, like them, have a patriarchal-bred predisposition to use head-bashing or bomb-dropping as a first response to a complex, intricately layered situation.

I tend to look at the world through the lenses of mythology and depth psychology.  Often, the insights of astrologers are also rich and fruitful.  Astrologer, Melissa Stratton, for example, cautions us to be aware of our own inner "terrorists" when she writes about Chiron's astrological role in this spring of 2002 [Note: Melissa Stratton's copyrighted work comes from her on-line e-list: Heavenly Messages for March 2002.  Click on the link if you wish to contact her directly]:

....Chiron represents old, festering wounds that need healing and attention. Capricorn, the sign in which Chiron is traveling, rules authority structures and specifically indicates, in our era, the patriarchy and all rigid bureaucratic institutions - governments, and large corporations for example. So on the outer world's screen, we see the Taliban and Enron gutted and toppling.  In our own internal lives, we all have hidden Taliban sentiments - "I am right, everyone else is wrong," and secret Enron desires - "I can be selfish and greedy, as long as no one else notices."  So even as we applaud the exposure of those outward wrongs, let us not be in denial about our own inner hypocrisy, least it expand outward to explode on us!

Melissa also takes a sobering look at dark, eerie, secretive patterns being launched by those in power and affecting us between now and late August:

The Spring Equinox occurs on March 20th this year. The chart for  the Equinox (cast for 2:20 p.m. in New York City) has a mixture of both the lion and the lamb. Leo, the lion, is the rising sign, which works beautifully with Sun just entering fiery Aries, Venus in Aries, and Pluto in Sagittarius. Together they create a pyramid of fire power.  Mercury, Jupiter and Mars are in water and earth signs of soft, lamb-like energy. Should be a nice balanced combination.

The rub is that Pluto, a few short hours before the Equinox, goes retrograde where it will remain through August 26. Pluto, god of the underworld, represents deeply hidden (karmic) patterns. It also rules the eighth house in the zodiac wheel, which is the house of unexposed secrets. When Pluto goes retrograde, old devils come back to leer in our faces! In the Equinox chart, both the Sun and Mercury appear in the eighth house.  Mercury the messenger squares off with Pluto on one end, and Moon on the other end in Gemini, the sign of the common people.  This is a classic indicator of covert powers hiding and manipulating information to fool the masses, in very creative ways! Structured Saturn, also in Gemini, and warrior Mars, in the steadfast sign of Taurus, both appear in the tenth house of worldly power. All this points to a recipe of outward optimism - about the economy for example, while behind-the-scenes forces are mobilizing for their own ends.

I am increasingly distressed by my country's political greed, lies, whitewashes, rampant power-mongering, massive pollution, widespread denial of our criminally wasteful use of global resources to which we have no ethical right, perverse governmental educational policies (test-coaching is not education), and the ruthless, cynical manipulation of a huge, deliberately uneducated populace.

America the beautiful?  Yes, she still shimmers in isolated pockets as yet undiscovered by land-developers or exploiters of mineral and water rights; many of us still hold her dear in our sorrowing psyches.   But her wealthy and irresponsible "young soul" leaders have left her a wasteland, gutted environmentally, spiritually, and psychologically.  To conceal the damage, she has been tightly wrapped in the bandages of patriotism but the reality is that she is a wounded Grail Maiden, broken, her vitality in shreds, her honor for sale to the highest oil-baron bidder, homegrown, or foreign-born.

Carl Jung writes about neti...neti, Sanskrit for "neither this...nor that."  He argues that if we can hold the tension long enough between two unacceptable alternatives (the neti...neti), a third direction will eventually emerge -- something totally unexpected and fresh.  The difficulty, of course, is in having the patience to contain the two opposites long enough for this painful alchemy to occur.

On the one hand, I feel a fine Irish rage over the shortsighted idiocy I see in our leaders and media -- this is my head-bashing side; on the other hand, I waver between exhaustion, depression, sorrow, despair, powerlessness -- sometimes all I can do is to light candles, grieve, and pray that we do no more harm to the world than we already have, until the nightly news reports again push me over the edge into more fury.

Then the first week of March, in working with Sandra Stanton's amazing new "Mother of the Forest" painting for another web-project, I was unexpectedly, forcefully reminded of the words of Goelitz' Mother of the Forest about the "standing-wave": I hold the standing wave for the entire surrounding forest.... We pull in with tremendous force energies that influence the entire earth....

And to this the Father of the Forest adds: ...The purest essence comes from the oldest trees who have peaked developmentally in their beingness.  Older trees communicate to younger trees a vibrancy which supports and encourages their growth....There is an intelligence on the other side from which life springs.... Trees act like magnetic funnels.  Through their centers they draw heavily on the light.  As a result trees cushion the light's entrance into the planet and make light more accessible....

......Jeffrey Goelitz doesn't define "standing wave" -- it's more a "felt-sense" of the forest-elders safely holding immense waves of energy, of life-force, of electro-magnetic leylines (i.e., dragon-paths, as some cultures know them), of protecting the saplings from an inrush of forces that might prove dangerous, even malignant.  It's a towering, calm presence that allows the young ones to know that life can be trusted, that elders are watchful and caring and won't let things get too far out-of-phase, if it can help it (humans notwithstanding).  Scientists might object to Goelitz' use of scientific terms like gravity, ecosphere, climatic and environmental conditions, energy, magnetic funnels -- but mystics have always used cutting-edge scientific metaphors to express their own insights (see, for example, the 12th century Hildegard of Bingen's "contagion" model for Eve's fall; or the 16th century Teresa of Avila on watering hilltop gardens; or the 16th-17th century John Donne writing on "The Flea"; or George Herbert's 17th century poem, "The Pulley").

For humans, like the trees, to join in holding the standing-wave is similar to holding it in the forest but, for us, it's holding the standing-wave of humanity's highest potential.  That's what we hold: the human-forest, not the tree-forest.  The two seem to occupy contiguous planes however, invisible but real.  When we're in that place, it means not to get angry with malignant young souls, but to try to direct calming, ancient, steadying energy their way in an attempt to help them mature.  Thus, when I see Bush spouting off on TV, I curb my desire to berate Barbara Bush for raising such a pompous son -- and instead I "see" him as a stunted little bush, his roots trying to strangle life around him, and then I "feel" the standing-wave trying to calm him, to isolate the toxicity, to clear new paths through the windblown pines so that more sunlight can reach that thorny bush and draw out the poisons and stuntedness.  This means that I can finally wish him well, which I (and we) must do, for the sake of us all.

To hold the standing wave: this has now become my "third thing," my third direction, my third place, lying beyond Jung's neti...neti of rage and despair, of critical thinking and New Age "Pollyannaism."  To join the forest's Grandmothers and Grandfathers in holding the standing wave is something I can do -- and I can also invite countless others to become such serenely active holders-of-energy as well.  If we are indeed "old souls," or, at least, "older souls," then continued anger against those younger souls is self-indulgent and counterproductive.

To think of holding a standing wave of hope allows me to pull away from the emotional storms and quietly shift to that forest realm.  I "feel" this forest as a multidimensional physical place in my own cells, in my mind, in my soul's magic, but simultaneously, it is also a very real place out there, physically, as well as in what some of my colleagues at Pacifica Graduate Institute call "the intersubjective imaginal field."

This spring, therefore, I am making a conscious decision to set aside my own desire to do some head-bashing.  My body, multi-dimensional though she is, just as all our bodies are, is too tired to keep this up.  She needs to pull away, enter the ancient forests, and hold the energies from a quieter perspective.  I want to join the Mother of the Forest in holding the standing wave for all of us.  My wish is that many others will do this too, helping to seed a new and more caring civilization.  Now, whenever I feel myself starting to waver, to feel despairing and angry, I find myself remembering the serene Crone-Mother in Sandra's painting, holding young, little trees in her hands, standing there, strong, confident, gentle.  That steadies me -- and I'm there once more, with her, holding the wave.

May we become wiser and more humane than we ever thought we could be. May we stand for what is sane, wise, and healthy for our young ones, for our elders, for ourselves.

May springtide bring you and your kith and kin abundantly kind blessings.

Warmly,

__________________________________________________________

My complete Site Map will be found on the Home Page --
also my e-mail address (near the bottom of the page).

***New page for 2002 designed & text written 14-15 February 2002, 12:40am;
revisions wee hours of 17-18 February 2002;
discarded, re-thought, & re-written 1& 8-10 March 2002.
Published: 4:51pm, 11 March 2002, six months after 9/11.
Updates: 12-13 March 2002 (small tweekings + annotated 3 new links + deleted music -- too distracting for long essay).
13-14 June 2002: upgraded Sandra's opening images & made clarifying additions to opening essay (prompted by Keith H's comments back in March); needed to make these revisions prior to excerpting the essay for my new "Crone Papers" section.
14 June 2002, 2:30am: essay added to Crone Papers.