Deva (Nature Spirit) Sighting

AC 272: May 30, 2007 (Boston)

[AC stands for adventure in consciousness. I began numbering these adventures, which include astral projection and other altered states experiences, in 1984.]

I had lunch over at Jay’s place this afternoon. I rode my bike there. Afterwards, I took a spin along a bike path in the woods. I wondered if there were any nature spirits there and tried to turn on my inner senses to become aware of them. But I was too focused on the bike path, which is paved, but narrow, littered with forest debris, and full of sudden steep descents.

Returning home, I went through the Arboretum--and there was Jay, sitting on a bench. I joined him and we chatted a bit. Apparently, my inner senses were still on. Now that I wasn’t riding my bike, I could focus on what they were picking up.

My attention was continually drawn to a large tree opposite us. It’s a dawn sequoia from China. The tree is unusual for it’s light yellowish red bark (possibly the reason for the word dawn in it’s name), and for the way it bulges out toward the bottom, tapering gracefully as it rises. It’s almost conical in shape, the trunk looking like a tightly corded muscle, whose cords thicken as they reach the ground, turning into the roots.

I said to Jay, “There’s a being in that tree.” I could feel something watching us. I tried to open my inner senses wider to see what I could pick up.

“When you feel like you’re starting to get something,” I told him, “start moving your focus around to other things in the area to get some other impressions and compare them.

I pointed out a small tree, a large bush. The small tree felt alive and had a presence, but didn’t feel like it had a being in it. The bush also felt like a presence without a being.

By now, Jay’s inner senses were also active. He could feel that the being in the sequoia had noticed our attention and was intrigued.

I was puzzled by the way it appeared to my inner vision. When I saw the tree deva in the big beech by Jamaica Pond years ago, its face had a female cast and its body looked like a pulsating green flame with flecks of yellow and red. It was very tall--ten feet high or more--and lithe.

The being in the dawn sequoia felt male. It was very solid and compact, stocky, only about six feet high, and gray like granite. Its body parts seemed somehow blocky, as if its arms had no elbows, its legs no knees. Its torso and limbs were like solid gray masses of stone.

It felt ancient, and its time scale seemed to be very much slower than ours. As I picked up these qualities, I repeated them to Jay.

“People come and go, walking, running, riding by on bicycles, pushing baby carriages, and maybe someone notices the tree and looks at the label to see what it is,” I said. “But to this being, they all seem asleep. No one notices it.”

I inwardly asked the being if it had a message for me. To my surprise, I got a response. “Man-child,” it said back to me, as if stating a fact. There was something more, but I didn’t get it.

I was so amazed it had responded to me that I laughed. Also, I was surprised at what it called me, which reminded me of a couple of books about fairies I’d read years ago, in which they call any human being Man-child. The expression was just there in my head, not at all sought after or thought about, or even imagined.

The being’s voice was deep, clear, solid somehow, a little slow or leisurely about communicating. There was something else, but I didn’t get it because of my laughter.

I asked Jay if he was picking anything up. But he said he was getting energies and couldn’t sort them out.

I turned my attention back to the being. Now it was laughing too, making a gesture like heavily slapping it’s blocky thigh with a thick hand, the whole arm moving slowly, without articulation. Strangely, the gesture did not seem to take place in slow motion, but as if in a different time frame than ours. The being was hugely entertained by the fact that it had communicated something to me and I’d gotten it.

The being settled down again and I started to relay to Jay various things that it was either communicating to me or that I was picking up about it. I learned that it was a deep stone being.

Apparently, the roots of the dawn sequoia go deep, seeking water. This tree's roots were touching bedrock, which is the creature’s true home. The creature used the roots to gain access to the tree and come up to the surface to look around.

I looked at the other nearby trees--tall pines, hemlocks--and could feel how much more their roots ran along the surface of the ground. But if the dawn sequoia encountered a deeply buried boulder, it would wrap roots around it for greater anchoring and support.

I guess the closest thing in folklore to what I saw would be a troll. But I’ll just call the creature a deep stone being.

After I learned of its origins, the being slowly began to turn away. It withdrew its attention, was no longer willing to communicate. Jay felt its withdrawal too.

I said, “It’s apparently not excruciatingly interested in what we humans are up to.” There’s was something ironic in that thought, because we’re so used to thinking of ourselves as the only intelligent beings around, and we’re so endlessly fascinated by what’s happening within and between us. Meanwhile, here’s a stone being coming up from the depths through the roots of a tree to look around at what’s going on on the surface of the planet, and no one has a clue.

Not long after the stone being withdrew, I said goodbye to Jay and headed home on my bike for a nap.

Reconnecting to My Inner Spiritual Teacher

AC 271: May 29, 2007 (Boston)


I haven’t felt my inner spiritual teacher around for a while. I’m not surprised. I’ve been caught up in trying to figure out my housing situation (should I stay, live alone, get a new house mate, move, look for another place with a friend?). There hasn’t been much room in my head for anything else.

I went to bed early, about 10 PM. As I made myself comfortable in bed, I tried to open myself up to my teacher. I was surprised by how quickly I connected. It was as if someone had thrown a switch. My inner senses came on. My head felt huge and expansive, full of light. The sudden clarity was like the sounding of a gong. And there was my teacher--not a visible presence, but an energetic one. I felt totally seen, held, loved.

I also knew that the connection between us had never been broken. I’d just fallen out of it, as it were, due to concerns about my housing situation. Now I was back.

The early twentieth century theosophist C. W. Leadbeater speaks of this intimate connection between student and spiritual teacher (which he calls pupil and Master or Adept), saying:

if there is any serious disturbance in the lower bodies [physical, emotional, mental] of the pupil it will affect those of the Master; and, as such vibration would interfere with the Adept’s work on higher planes, when this unfortunately happens he has to drop a veil that shuts the pupil off from himself until such time as the storm settles down.” [The Masters and the Path, 2nd abridged edition, 1983, 94.]

I’m not sure that entirely agree with this statement. My experience has been that I fall into and out of awareness of my connection with my teacher, but the teacher is always there. Some level of my being remains aware of this connection. But I don’t always have conscious access to that level. The veil is entirely of my own making.

Also, Leadbeater’s view of the Master in this passage seems strangely limited. I doubt that anything I might go through emotionally while present in physical reality has any effect at all on my teacher. He seems beyond having his own reactions to whatever is going on in my life. The part of me that is also beyond such reactions--what Leadbeater would call the Ego or causal body--is constantly in touch with him. If there’s any separation between us, I seem to create it myself, inadvertently, at the level of my personality in the present lifetime.

Leadbeater goes on to say:

It is of course sad for the pupil when he has to be cut off in this manner; but it is absolutely his own doing, and he can end the separation at once as soon as he can control his thoughts and feelings. [Ibid.]

I agree with this statement. It accords with my experience. My only issue with Leadbeater is whether the separation is initiated from my side or my teacher’s.

I suppose it could be both. Also, the problem may be one of semantics: from which level of the self are we speaking? To human beings incarnated in physical reality, the connection to an inner spiritual teacher is infinitely precious. When it disappears, we’re chagrined. We feel like we’re being punished. Also, we project blame for our descent from bliss onto the teacher: he or she has withdrawn from us. But how could our teacher be so mean? So we must be responsible. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

My experience is simply that I got distracted by personal issues and lost the connection. I noticed that my confusion was compounded by not feeling the support of my teacher. When that connection was reestablished, my relief was enormous. But there was no sense of guilt or punishment, only that I liked the bliss that comes with this connection so much I would prefer to experience it more rather than less often.

I suppose that could be an incentive not to let myself get so confused by personal matters that I lose my connection with my teacher. So I’ve learned something. As the I Ching says, “No blame.”