Today, when I walked my dog through one of my favorite nearby parks in SF, I saw a man in the distance gazing up at one of the many beautiful trees. He was looking at the tree in total awe, a soft smile playing across his lips. As I respectfully approached him I realized I was witnessing a man witnessing God. The moment felt holy, hushed, magical. He broke his darsan with the tree momentarily, when my dog sat on his feet, and the shaman-like man said:
“Can you believe how incredible this tree is? How it twists and turns? The bark? Just look at it. Beautiful, beautiful. I talk to this tree. I love this tree. I am in love with this tree. I moved to an apartment a few blocks away so I could be closer to this tree, to all the trees in this park.”
I smiled deeply and told him, “these trees appreciate your appreciation, and believe me, they are talking right back”. He looked me in the eyes, smiled, and walked past me a few feet till his eye caught the next glorious branch of another exquisite tree, and he stopped and gasped and fell In Love, again.
I felt blessed for having seen him. Reminded. Walking through this park daily I almost always admire its beauty, but this man reminded me to do more - to go ahead and open my spiritual thighs to this park, to allow myself to fall in passionate love with the trees and the birds and pine cones and even the dog poop and random cruddy human litter.
But back to the trees. Last summer when I was teaching a workshop at Omega, I was asked to try and describe something that happens when you turn “red”. I blanked, but said something utterly wacky like this:
Some people, when they walk by a beautiful tree, they don’t even notice it. Some people walk by a beautiful tree and nod in appreciation. Some people walk by a beautiful tree and stop to hug it compassionately (what people would normally refer to as “tree huggers” and “green” peeps). A Red One will walk by a tree and not just nod or hug, but, well, hump it… passionately. That’s right, Redvolutionaries are “tree humpers”. I’ve already designed the t-shirts.
When you allow yourself to turn red (not to be confused with this past election) you can’t help but want to make crazy wild naughty love to All of Existence because at some point, no matter how brief, you’ve been fist fucked by mother nature. You’ve been spread open by the stars. You’ve been tickled, teased, and turned by every atom in the Universe and all you can think about doing is returning the favor. Again and again and again.
Now, obviously we Red Ones are not dripping in this pumpin’ red-hearted state every minute, but this direct infusion of orgasmic cosmic love juice is our raison d’etre, and we continuously look for ways we can allow it to fuel our days, our sweaty nights, our over all consciousness, and the planet.
That’s right, in case you may be thinking right about now that this all sounds pretty and nice, but also like an inebriating distraction from reality and the troubles of the world, and by the way won’t it scare the children? - let me say that this sort of seduction of and from the Sac(red) is incredibly, remarkably, deliciously healing for the planet (and for the children who get to grow up in a love-saturated world). I mean really, what could be more important, especially at this chaotic yet hopeful time, than to “make love” as much as possible with as many things, people, places as possible? I’m talking energetic love here folks, but physical touch is always beautiful when done with respect and authenticity.
So, we Red Ones have jacked up “spiritual activism” to “ecstatic activism”. Naturally.
As Lalita says in Daniel Odier’s book, Tantric Quest “Ecstasy, the continuous experience of the divine through knowledge of our own nature, is our natural state.” You get it? Ecstasy is you at your mostest (red dictionary), it’s your spirit taking naked pictures of you, it’s the divine doing you till you come undone.
And all it takes is the willingness to make a tree blush.
