The One-ness Tree

Lesson: We are all One. 

Mother Nature is one of my most ancient teachers. Sit still, open your mind, watch, listen and learn. She has so much to say. 

On one such occasion as I strolled through the park on a warm Autumn day, the dusk sunlight hit an ancient red gum tree in such a way it illuminated each delicate green leaf, each supple branch grown in spring, each hardened broad supportive branch that all came together to merge into the one powerful life channelling trunk, which travelled deep into the rich Australian earth, reaching its vast root system into Mother Earth for nutrients, for stability, for Life. 

The Tree in turn, gave life, by turning carbon dioxide into Oxygen, by providing shelter and food to the countless animals and insects that dwell in and around it, and even long after its Death, it continues to nurture and feed countless more vegetation and critters as it breaks down and returns to Mother Earth where it grew Life from. 

As I stood there staring up in awe, it dawned on such a profound realisation. So simple and so glaringly obvious it is literally all around us, every day.  The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts - Aristotle. 

The individual elements

My focus narrowed on a particularly beautiful red blossom on the immense tree. The blossom was attached to and nestled into a lovely arrangement of young gum leaves. My focus followed along the leaves until it connected to the young, thin branch. Following along the branch, it connected to a more mature, stronger branch, and on it connected from branch to branch until it merged into the tree’s immense trunk. Which I followed intensely along its broad trunk until it connected to the Earth and imagined how deep its vast root system much reach. 

Each ‘part’ of the tree from the blossom to the roots, all had an individual ‘name label’, each had unique attributes, each had a function, each had a ‘separateness’ to it. But when I zoomed my focus outwards to admire the entirety of the tree, it was a rich tapestry of colours, of textures, of ‘single entities’ that made a whole entire network. Although it could be perceived at a individual component, it was undoubtedly a whole tree. Interconnected and inter-supported. Each ‘element’ as important as the other. And it worked together as one for the overall health and vitality of the whole tree unit. What a wonder to behold!

The Whole

It didn’t stop there! The Tree itself was not a separate entity, in a vacuum of itself. It didn’t consume the resources around it for its own survival regardless of the consequence to all other life. It existed in harmony, as one with everything around it. The leaves breathed in the carbon from the atmosphere around it, and returned life nurturing oxygen. Each leaf absolved the sunlight that have travelled across the vacuum of space to touch each leaf, in order for photosynthesis to occur and create energy and power the tree to grow and survive. 

The branch and root network acts as ‘veins’ that absorbed the rich nutrients and water from the earth around it. If the earth nutrients was poor, or there was a lack of water, the tree would be affected. If sunlight was scarce, or the air quality as poor, the tree would affected greatly. There would be no tree, if the surrounding environment didn’t nurture it. And the tree in turn provided life for all the animals and critters. Fruit and leaves for larger animals and birds, nectar for our precious bees and ants. Cleaning our air of carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen which sustains all life on earth. It was a huge interconnected, interdependent network that could be perceived from a microscopic, a molecule level and as far reaching as the entire world. A ripple in the pond that contributed to the tidal wave. David Attenborough’s Planet Earth captures the essence of this much better than I can – a must watch. 

I am One

And then I happened to glance down at my hands. And I was the same as the Tree. I was an interconnected, interdependent network that could be perceived on a micro, molecule level, to a far reaching world-wide level. The tree may or may not understand its contribution to the health and life of the entire planet. It didn’t need to. Its existence alone positively contributed to the planet. I may or may not understand my contribution to the health and life of the entire planet. I didn’t need to. But, does my existence positively contribute to the planet? 

We are all interconnected, interdependent. We are all One ‘tree’. For the health of our planet and all life, I want to make a conscious choice to be a positive contribution that much I was certain. It would be madness not to! To be a negative, a disease to ‘other’ parts of the ‘tree’, to see myself as a separate component and only invest in my own survival, I was unconsciously damaging myself for a temporary gain. Cutting myself from the life-giving flow of everything else. This is truly reflected in our society today, how we treat each other as Us vs Them. How we treat animals and Mother Nature and our planet. We perceive ourselves as ‘separate’ parts from the whole. 

Meditation, looking inwards and practising stillness, living in the Now, is connecting back to the whole, the One-ness Tree.