Chelsea, you helped me remember an experience I had with a mystical tree. It appeared in a dream. When I woke up, I didn't remember all the dream details, but the image of this massive leafy tree remained clear. This happened right before I made my first trip across the country to the East Coast. I was heading to North Carolina to research some family history.
I'd forgotten all about the dream tree until it suddenly appeared before me, rising like a sheltering grandmotherly spirit behind the slave quarters of a former plantation. The leaves of this towering Black walnut glowed in the sunlight. I recognized the quality of the light first, then I noticed the graceful arches of the dark branches which created a canopy big enough for a hundred people to gather under. Where slavery had once defined this place, now the presence of this tree defined it. I felt its power.
While I didn't have any ancestors from this place, I felt certain this particular tree had drawn me here to be a witness. Just as it had been a witness to a period of our human history from which we are still struggling to emerge and heal.
This morning, the dawn is gray and cold but Iām lingering in the exquisite light of that tree. There's a chance that the Black walnut hasn't survived the severe storms since our encounter, but the light survives. I think that's the definition of sacredness to me. It's that glow that connects our limited experience with the unlimited reality of Life ā and helps us recognize that we aren't as limited as we think.
Thank you so much for this utterly beautiful sharing. That we can meet axis mundi in our dreams (yes!) and that the sacred is the "glow that connects our limited experience with the unlimited reality of Life" (wow!!). This has given me so much to reflect on. Thank you.
If something is important, even forgetting to ask is irrelevant. Here I was struggling with the birth of a new writing workshop, one I've spent years slowly listening for and to. Her personality is unexpectedly - Shinto. To this I have learned about Kami, the spirit of place, reverence. My journey, my listenership, has been heartward to the spirit of words (kotodama, I discovered). And this past week your humble voice from those workshops you facilitated for spiritual ecology at Emergence, that voice, and the memory, was pushing me to write to you, so that you might remind me. I was looking at Genius Loci. Look. Here you have answered, and your gentle teaching was Axis Mundi. Where I live - Australia - it is clear that elders are a significant spirit of place, literally woven with the fabric of Country, those layers of places we walk through like mist in Autumn. What these places teach of language is equally layered, interconnected, so I have learned that language equally deepens in layers, is the same inseperable cloth, and so language too has elders. Maybe words have their own Axis Mundis, a scent they return to like a flower from which they were birthed.
Thankyou for your attention in the world, and for answering the world - all of us - with the grace of your words.
Thank you so much Peter. I love what you say here about "listenership" -- what a beautiful and necessary practice! -- and that words can have their own sacred centers, their own world-beginning places that we can begin to trace back to as we deepen our understanding of their layers, and that language can lead us on a path to the ineffable, even as the words themselves may eventually disappear into that mystery. Thank you.
I hold in my memory a handful of places where I have suddenly felt an intense awareness of being in a sacred space. Some of these places I could pinpoint on a map, the exact location of others has faded but the sacred feeling remains. The commonality of each place is that they reside within an old-growth forest. I sense that the trees around me have observed generations of various living beings come and go from under their canopy, and now, here am I, under that same canopy, joining the energies of those that have come before, and adding my energy for those that will come after. Axis Mundi is a new concept for me, but Iām happy to now know the term for such places.
Chelsea, I loved your book and always look forward to your posts!
Thank you, thank you, Carole. I resonate so much with your reflection here. That sudden arrival of intense awareness, as if some part of us we didn't even know was there responds spontaneously to a call from the trees, to that merging of energies as you so beautifully put it. I also love the sense that even when the exact location of such an experience fades, the sacredness is its own landmark and guidepost. Thank you!
Thanks for your beautiful and thoughtful post; and thank you so much for your book which for me reads like a meditation that is grounding, centering, and always leaves me with a feeling that I have a little more of myself. In the course of my adult life, I have had many axis mundi experiences of which three in particular stand out. I will share my first one which occurred at 20 years of age and changed the course of my life. I was hiking over dunes toward a remote area of Lake Michigan where I was intending to camp out and spend the night on the beach. As I neared the lake, there was an especially large dune to climb. I was getting tired but was looking forward to spending the night on the lake. When I reached the top of the dune, there was the lake below with the waves lapping at the shore and the vastness of the lake extending to the horizon. The sun was setting with a burst of colors and with rays of light streaming through the clouds. At that moment, and in an instant, my senses awakened to something I had never experienced before yet also seemed like a coming home to something that had always been. I felt like I was one with everything and everything was one with me. It seemed that the universe was humming and pulsing with an energy that was timeless and forever. In my mind's eye, I could see the vibrations of this pulsing energy. It felt like this moment was the embodiment of every preceding moment and of every moment to come. I stood on that dune transfixed and transformed by what I was experiencing knowing that my life would never again be the same.
Such gratitude to get to hear about this immersive experience into the sacred, Ron, thank you. I think you capture so well that sense of an utterly new experience that is at the some time an utter homecoming, a deep familiarity, a resonance that has always been there waiting to be called forth. I also had an axis mundi experience around the same age, also near water, and also which changed the course of my life. What you write here helps me find words for my own experience, which I've always struggled to articulate. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Chelsea, you helped me remember an experience I had with a mystical tree. It appeared in a dream. When I woke up, I didn't remember all the dream details, but the image of this massive leafy tree remained clear. This happened right before I made my first trip across the country to the East Coast. I was heading to North Carolina to research some family history.
I'd forgotten all about the dream tree until it suddenly appeared before me, rising like a sheltering grandmotherly spirit behind the slave quarters of a former plantation. The leaves of this towering Black walnut glowed in the sunlight. I recognized the quality of the light first, then I noticed the graceful arches of the dark branches which created a canopy big enough for a hundred people to gather under. Where slavery had once defined this place, now the presence of this tree defined it. I felt its power.
While I didn't have any ancestors from this place, I felt certain this particular tree had drawn me here to be a witness. Just as it had been a witness to a period of our human history from which we are still struggling to emerge and heal.
This morning, the dawn is gray and cold but Iām lingering in the exquisite light of that tree. There's a chance that the Black walnut hasn't survived the severe storms since our encounter, but the light survives. I think that's the definition of sacredness to me. It's that glow that connects our limited experience with the unlimited reality of Life ā and helps us recognize that we aren't as limited as we think.
Thank you so much for this utterly beautiful sharing. That we can meet axis mundi in our dreams (yes!) and that the sacred is the "glow that connects our limited experience with the unlimited reality of Life" (wow!!). This has given me so much to reflect on. Thank you.
If something is important, even forgetting to ask is irrelevant. Here I was struggling with the birth of a new writing workshop, one I've spent years slowly listening for and to. Her personality is unexpectedly - Shinto. To this I have learned about Kami, the spirit of place, reverence. My journey, my listenership, has been heartward to the spirit of words (kotodama, I discovered). And this past week your humble voice from those workshops you facilitated for spiritual ecology at Emergence, that voice, and the memory, was pushing me to write to you, so that you might remind me. I was looking at Genius Loci. Look. Here you have answered, and your gentle teaching was Axis Mundi. Where I live - Australia - it is clear that elders are a significant spirit of place, literally woven with the fabric of Country, those layers of places we walk through like mist in Autumn. What these places teach of language is equally layered, interconnected, so I have learned that language equally deepens in layers, is the same inseperable cloth, and so language too has elders. Maybe words have their own Axis Mundis, a scent they return to like a flower from which they were birthed.
Thankyou for your attention in the world, and for answering the world - all of us - with the grace of your words.
Thank you so much Peter. I love what you say here about "listenership" -- what a beautiful and necessary practice! -- and that words can have their own sacred centers, their own world-beginning places that we can begin to trace back to as we deepen our understanding of their layers, and that language can lead us on a path to the ineffable, even as the words themselves may eventually disappear into that mystery. Thank you.
I hold in my memory a handful of places where I have suddenly felt an intense awareness of being in a sacred space. Some of these places I could pinpoint on a map, the exact location of others has faded but the sacred feeling remains. The commonality of each place is that they reside within an old-growth forest. I sense that the trees around me have observed generations of various living beings come and go from under their canopy, and now, here am I, under that same canopy, joining the energies of those that have come before, and adding my energy for those that will come after. Axis Mundi is a new concept for me, but Iām happy to now know the term for such places.
Chelsea, I loved your book and always look forward to your posts!
Carole Miles
Thank you, thank you, Carole. I resonate so much with your reflection here. That sudden arrival of intense awareness, as if some part of us we didn't even know was there responds spontaneously to a call from the trees, to that merging of energies as you so beautifully put it. I also love the sense that even when the exact location of such an experience fades, the sacredness is its own landmark and guidepost. Thank you!
Breathtaking, Chelsea. Thank you.
Thank you, dear Jenny!!
Thanks for your beautiful and thoughtful post; and thank you so much for your book which for me reads like a meditation that is grounding, centering, and always leaves me with a feeling that I have a little more of myself. In the course of my adult life, I have had many axis mundi experiences of which three in particular stand out. I will share my first one which occurred at 20 years of age and changed the course of my life. I was hiking over dunes toward a remote area of Lake Michigan where I was intending to camp out and spend the night on the beach. As I neared the lake, there was an especially large dune to climb. I was getting tired but was looking forward to spending the night on the lake. When I reached the top of the dune, there was the lake below with the waves lapping at the shore and the vastness of the lake extending to the horizon. The sun was setting with a burst of colors and with rays of light streaming through the clouds. At that moment, and in an instant, my senses awakened to something I had never experienced before yet also seemed like a coming home to something that had always been. I felt like I was one with everything and everything was one with me. It seemed that the universe was humming and pulsing with an energy that was timeless and forever. In my mind's eye, I could see the vibrations of this pulsing energy. It felt like this moment was the embodiment of every preceding moment and of every moment to come. I stood on that dune transfixed and transformed by what I was experiencing knowing that my life would never again be the same.
Such gratitude to get to hear about this immersive experience into the sacred, Ron, thank you. I think you capture so well that sense of an utterly new experience that is at the some time an utter homecoming, a deep familiarity, a resonance that has always been there waiting to be called forth. I also had an axis mundi experience around the same age, also near water, and also which changed the course of my life. What you write here helps me find words for my own experience, which I've always struggled to articulate. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Reading , so many interesting interconnections in the web of life.
Thank you, Barbara! Yes!! There truly are -- what a gift!
Oh my what a treat to see this in my mail.