The Mesa World Retreat: Conversations with The Jupiter Tree

The author engages in a profound dialogue with the "Jupiter Tree," exploring themes of life, suffering, growth, & the relationship between humanity & the divine.

TL;DR

• The author visits the Grampians for emotional decluttering and reflects on a profound encounter with a dead tree, which he names the "Jupiter Tree," leading to an imaginative dialogue about life, death, and existence.

• The Jupiter Tree personifies the experience of suffering and loss, recounting its demise due to a campfire accident, prompting a philosophical discussion on human actions and the nature of existence.

• Through their conversations, the tree teaches the author about the inevitability of growth and the constraints of existence, paralleling the experiences of humans with those of trees, emphasizing the pursuit of light and meaning.

• The dialogue evolves to explore the connection between humans and a divine force, likening it to the sun's nurturing yet potentially destructive nature, ultimately highlighting the complexities of existence and spiritual awareness.

  
  

The impetus for going to the beguiling Grampians in Victoria, Australia, for the Mesa World Retreat was to emotionally declutter and decompress, and perhaps enter a time capsule where we could dis-identify from the mundane routine of vocational life. One evening, my cousin Harry and I caught sight of the planet Jupiter ascending to the pinnacle of the cerulean heavens. As we scampered along the sandy track, I noticed that it was rising behind the arachnoid branches of a wraithlike tree. I halted for a second or so, imagining that Jupiter looked like one of its celestial fruits. In an outer image comprised of disparate natural elements woven into a meaningful whole by an intellect in search of meaningful connections, I perceived a scintillating diamond sprouting from a decomposing carcass still rooted to Gaia, the Earth Mother.

Intuition or not, I felt that there was an inexplicable connection between the lifeless tree and myself. Jupiter, that great wonderer of supernal brilliance, had led us to a tree whose last will and testament had been to impart autobiographical details of its horrendous demise to the first being willing and able to comprehend its nonverbal language. If first impressions are anything to go by, the dramatic interface between the necrotic trunk and the celestial blue hinted at sharp vicissitudes of fortune; it had experienced the angelic flight to heaven but also the demonic descent into the fires of purgatory. It knew both good and evil, delight and desolation.

The following day we revisited the same spot and I noted some of the tree’s finer details and subtler undertones. For one it had grown diagonally, following the path of available sunlight. This meant both sacrifice and plasticity in the context of continued survival. Furthermore, it adhered to a tricolor scheme — black, white, and variant shades of gray. This feature denoted complexity and obscurity. When a hand was traced athwart its trunk there was no detectable energy or life force; the only thing remaining in the corporeal world was its corruptible body. Last but not least, a colony of bees had established itself inside a fissure at the base and were using the natural sanctuary for their munificent operations. In retrospect the tree’s carcass, whilst outwardly lifeless and barren, was continuing to serve a purpose in the natural world.

In light of the available evidence, it struck me that this tree had always been an altruistic noble, no doubt. It had to have been, otherwise it would not have attracted the prolific weaver of an incorruptible divine substance, the Elixir of Life we humans recognize as corporeal honey and the Olympian gods as an idealized ambrosia. I spent ample time connecting with the tree and absconding to an imaginal plane where it and I could ruminate as One. Then, having tuned into its individual vibrations, I committed to the bold, shameless act of naming it:

P: I think I’ll call you Jupiter Tree.

T: Ugh… you wretched humans and your will to exert power and control over things by naming them!

P: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.

T: No offense taken.

P: What would you like me to call you?

T: It does not really matter. You are not addressing the actual tree because it is dead and all that is left is the lifeless trunk. You are addressing its ghost.

P: So, you’re the ghost of the tree, right?

T: The ghost of the Jupiter Tree, yes.

P: My name is Paul.

T: You are human.

P: I am.

T: Wretched creatures, those humans.

P: Why do you say this?

T: I used to like human beings until one lit a campfire around here that spread and raged out of control. The fire incinerated me whole. It was awful. Oh, wretched human! I can still feel the agonizing pain as I burned to death like a convicted witch from Salem!

P: I’m sorry that this happened to you, however in all fairness it was probably an accident.

T: It is what it is!

P: Please, don’t be quick to judge. And don’t tar all with the same brush in light of actions enacted by the one.  

T: My experience of humans was not auspicious, I am afraid.

P: I’m sorry this was your experience of us. I think you’re beautiful.

T: How so?

P: You are a unique bundle of black, white, and gray in a uniform bed of brown trunks and branches dressed in green. I believe the word I was looking for is ‘unique’.

T: I am unique.

P: Unique is beautiful.

T: That is an interesting perspective. 

P: I am just being honest.

T: Or diplomatic.

P: It’s what I feel, honestly.

T: Do you want to know what my honest feelings are?

P: Yes.

T: That I was unjustly and cruelly burned.

P: You need to find the silver lining in things, Jupiter Tree. 

T: What might the silver lining be in this case, Paul?

P: That you have burned once so there’s no fear of burning a second time. You’ve already died, so the chances of suffering a second death are nonexistent. Purgatory will be no more!

T: I don’t get it.

P: Most of us continue to burn in the cauldron of our worst fears. We suffer purgatory before it even happens, if it does. You’re obviously above that now.

T: Perhaps so, Paul, but in all honesty, I see nothing worse than being a ghost, a passive observer of the natural world with no power to interject or act as intercessor and change anything. What fate is worse than this?

P: To die without having lived; to suffer the feeling of burning and being calcined, over and over, with no hope of rest or liberation maybe? As Plato says, death is not the worst that can happen to men.

T: Or trees.

P: Right. And don’t forget that you can always impel change indirectly.

T: How?

P: Become a teacher.

T: Who would I teach? What would I teach?

P: You can teach me, Jupiter Tree. Teach me about the consciousness of trees, the cosmos as you used to see it.  

T: [Silence]

P: I feel that you’re smiling Jupiter Tree.

T: I am actually.

P: That’s good!

T: You know what, you’re not so bad after all. I think I might even grow to like you in time, Paul.

I returned to the Jupiter Tree the following morning to continue the philosophical discourse:

P: Tell me something.

T: How might I tickle your curious intellect, Paul?

P: Teach me something about the world. It can be anything you want.

T: Look at me.

P: I’m looking at you now.

T: What do you see?

P: A dead tree with naked branches that taper up towards the sky.

T: No, not just in literal terms silly. Think of me in symbolic terms.

P: [Pause] Um, I sort of get what you mean. A dead tree can symbolize one’s life journey from inception to end; the naked branches might be the roads traveled, choices that contributed to the becoming of the individual.

T: You are right. Listen, there are individual trees just as there are individual humans. We all begin growing in one circumscribed area. These are the circumstances of your birth and cannot be changed; one may take root in a rainforest, a mountain, a desert oasis, a metropolitan area, and so forth. It is not a choice.

P: Right.

T: There are other things that cannot be attributed to choice either. We need to grow towards the sunlight, much in the same way that humans need to satisfy their  primal needs  like  hunger and sleep. Further, we cannot choose the kind of tree we are, just as  humans cannot choose their skin color, the sociocultural milieu they are born into, the religion imposed upon them early in their lifespan development, and their sexuality.

P: Right.

T: However, I do have some volition when it comes to the utilization of space afforded to me. I can elect to grow a little to the left, right, or middle, providing that the trajectory of available sunlight allows for it.

P: Just as a human born into a family of wealthy nobles has a bevy of options when it comes to education, pastimes, work, group affiliation, and community.

T: That is correct. When all is said and done though we are all united in the fact that we follow the path of the majestic sun. Humans follow such collective paths, too — they all want to be loved and validated for their choices, and they all seek meaning and internal coherence… an integrated sense of self that can move backwards and forwards in time. 

P: They all seek unity.

T: We are all growing towards the sunlight, Paul; we all adhere to the laws of the solar vicissitudes — the trajectory, availability, and affordability of light. We all must make the most of what we have.

P: Well, that’s been a valuable lesson for me during this trip. We’ve had to make do with what we have, and when we don’t have what we need, we improvise! Having said that, I’m not sure if I would have been able to survive mortification without that fly spray here in the countryside!

T: Indeed. Of course, most of these processes that we are speaking about are unconscious and only bubble up from the depths and break into conscious awareness during certain times.

P: I’ll vouch for that, Jupiter Tree. As you know, most of us are content to live our lives in a state of semi-hypnosis, a prolonged trance, adhering to the same onerous and monotonous routines and patterns like preprogrammed automatons. We are rarely, if ever, awake.

T: True.

P: If we were, the world wouldn’t have spawned this nightmare of a world we are immured in today.

T: When I was alive, I did not know the vital force behind my growth; I did not know that there was a massive ball of helium and hydrogen at the center of our Milky Way galaxy that controlled the natural cycle, the growth rates, and the seasonal rotation. I was not able to grasp its exact nature intellectually; I mean, I could feel its numinous pull, but I had a distorted impression of what it actually was. When I was alive, I used to think it was a magnet of some kind.

P: Hmmm… like Mesmer’s magnets?

T: That might shed some light on some of the existential questions you have been pondering lately.

P: How do you mean?

T: Would it be fair to say that a lot of you feel some kind of pull towards a union with something that you loosely term ‘the divine’?

P: Yes.

T: Each day you move closer towards something far greater and majestic than you can possibly imagine. It is just beyond the boundaries of your cognitive closure, your intellectual grasp; you cannot experience it directly because your only experience of the world is through a neurological world-simulator called the psyche-soma. You are an embodied intellect. Nonetheless, you know this other primordial force, power, or whatever you want to call it is there; it exists, you feel it on an intuitive level that transcends sensory perception. And when I say ‘you’, I am referring to the aggregates. It is a bit like being a nocturnal creature that has never seen the light of day. You know that a light source exists because it is reflected by the moon at night. We get an inkling that this light is not engendered by the moon because the moon waxes and wanes; hence, the light must be reflected from another source.

P: There are things created in the universe standing outside the limits of our perception — they’re there but our senses are lamentably unable to detect them.

T: And probably don’t need to for your survival. This is why a mechanism or faculty never evolved to detect and interpret these white and pink noises. When I was an embodied tree, my interaction with the cosmos occurred through the osmotic vessel of my wood, my roots, my branches, and my leaves. I can tell you from experience that the information tendered was not very much. The things I knew then were for survival purposes only, nothing more. Everything that came to me as an emphatic and enlightening whoosh, Eureka moment, and epiphany had been a complete mystery to me when I was alive.

P: To be honest, too many of us feel the pull of this other ethereal force for it to be sheer gobbledegook, a shard of our lurid and vivid imaginations. Right?

T: Yes, it is collective in the way that all vegetable growth shares and competes for breathing space before the splendid majesty of the sun. Most plants feel the pull towards the sun, but they are entirely uncertain of where they are being pulled to and by what.

P: What would you say about the magnetic force that draws humans towards it?

T: You’re definitely moving towards a… um…  spiritual sun. You can feel its heat, its warmth, its vibrations beckoning you to unfold according to biorhythms and laws intrinsic to its being.

P: It’s true. Is this God that we’re moving towards?

T: Yes, you could call it that though that word comes replete with a lot of dogmatic baggage. Just be weary of one thing Paul.

P: What’s that?

T: It mimics its physical counterpart, the sun.

P: And?

T: It is wholly benevolent and nurturing until you get too close and peer behind the veil of appearances; then its light turns malignant and incinerates you.

P: How do you know?

T: I burned, didn’t I?

P: [Gasps]