I do love Robert Lanza’s article on the consciousness of a tree. Ever since “The Secret Life of Plants”, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, came out in 1973, I was almost as concerned about eating plants as l was animals! Plants actually know they are being eaten?
Since I prefer to stay alive, and no one has invented the pill for perfect nourishment, I have defaulted to the fact that we all have to eat other living things to survive. So, I suppress my concerns and numbly, eat my spinach.
But, don’t most kinds of self-suppression leave us less conscious? If so, perhaps, I am … in that moment of crunching … less conscious than the spinach I am eating and perhaps even less conscious than the Queen Sago tree that Lanza shared the sunlight with. If I am unconscious, I am unconscious.
With each Live Conscious Retreat, I become more fully conscious. So much so, that by the end of each retreat, I am feeling more alive, and so crisply conscious of all I do and say, see and feel, that I find myself living a different and remarkable kind of life.
I am so vividly aware of the emotional footprint I am leaving behind myself and aware of my connection with fellow humans, my environment, the palm trees, the flowers, the critters, and all other living things around me, that I find myself doing most everything I do with intention. I slow down and sensitively (with my senses) become aware and reconnect with my surroundings.
And so, at least when I eat the spinach on my plate (with my fingers, no less), I am conscious that I am eating the spinach. I connect with what I am eating and am gratefully aware that I am contributing to my health and the quality of my life by eating the spinach. I aware myself of the sacrifice the spinach has made and hope perhaps it has served its life purpose…so that I can go out and serve mine. Unlike the spinach, I am not likely to get eaten, but I will try to use myself up in fruitful ways.
Robert Lanza says: “As I sat in the kitchen that day, the early-morning sun slanted down through the skylights, throwing the entire room into gleaming brightness. The Queen Sago tree and I were both ‘happy’ the sun was out.”
With this kind of conscious connection available to us, why do we ever need to feel alone? Yes, the spinach and I can become one.
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