Light it up to Live

Last weekend my friends Barry, Rob and I were running the first course in The Science and Art of Natural Awareness for the UK with a group of people from a London rehab.

The weekend was designed around the Hero's Journey and involved various Natural Awareness activities and Martial Arts skills, one of the activities Meet a Tree was so powerful for one of the participants that we ended up crying with her, my God was that Powerful.

One of the themes that ran through the weekend was singing a song we were given at the Art of Mentoring UK by Mark Morey from the USA this was completely unplanned. The song is called Light it up to Live, what was interesting for me was several things.

Firstly: I found myself singing it all weekend and I do not sing and cannot sing (but I gave it a go).
Secondly: Was how relevant the song is to addiction as it also refers to the internal landscape.

Anyway, to the reason for posting this. We came to the end of the workshop and we decided it would be nice to leave the camp by getting a fire going while everyone sang the song. It was proving difficult to get the fire going by bow drill, but we sang and sang, then someone had the idea that we had already had our fire the one we light on day one so it was decided to transfer the embers from that to the farewell fire.

We carried on singing and then something quite wonderful happened.

There was no wind, the day was cold and still and suddenly the tree that reached over our heads started to shed its leaves and they drifted down on us like confetti and everyone responded to this with a Big WOW...

I felt that this was the tree responding to our joy in the moment and the singing and it felt like our Higher Power was very present.

The song:

Light it up to Live
Tend it well and it will always be there
It's inside me
It sets me free

Repeated until you get fire.

Hello Geoffrey I just wanted to chat about my tree...

Geoffrey: Hi. How are things?

Friend: Hi Geoffrey, Things are really good thanks! I miss my tree though!

Geoffrey: That’s true for everyone who really makes that connection between themselves and nature. I take it you are not going to a tree then?

Friend: I thought people might find me quite weird blindfolding myself in the local park and going on a wander. So I have yet to do it!

Geoffrey: You do not need to blindfold yourself. Also I find that when people call me weird I tend to thank them, because it means you are unique, you are being who you are and you are not conforming to how they see their world.

Friend: So how do I find my tree if I am not blindfolded? I thought the whole point was that you were spiritually drawn to it and not to find it by looking with your eyes?

Geoffrey: Well the idea with the blindfold is to show you that you can connect on a deeper level; you can still be drawn by your feelings when you connect with your heart. The blindfold helps me to show you how powerful you really are, by taking you away from your thoughts that tell you what to do every day and to help you see how you behave when they they manifest into the physical world and from this experience and the way you connect with your feelings in nature often comes that spiritual awakening if you like.

Friend: Oh right. Man I miss those sessions we used to do, but I guess the idea is that I can do that anywhere, whenever.

Geoffrey: Yes that is true, it is up to you if you want to move with it, I am powerless over your outcome, you can connect to your spirit and the spirit of the tree anywhere you choose. And it is not always about finding the tree it is about the journey of self discovery.

Friend: I may just try and do that this Sunday then!

Geoffrey: Sweet, you will be surprised at how well you do, remember it is about being in the heart and trusting. Do you remember how it affected you back then?

Friend: Yeah, it was weird but pretty amazing.

Geoffrey: Yes it is amazing, what was amazing about it for you?

Friend: I don’t know. I was ignoring all the logic and just letting go like it wasn't me, remembering that I went a certain way, because that actually didn't help, just connecting.

Geoffrey: Yep you got it

Friend: And you just knew there's something cool about it, being 'beyond all logical thought' and just trusting and feeling I quite like that I guess.

Geoffrey: Nice, good luck with your journey.