Chapter ten: the fallacy of separateness.

   At times I feel as if l am spread out over the landscape and inside
   things, and am myself living in every tree, in the splashing of the
   waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the
   procession of the seasons. (31)

Despite my dogged determination, or perhaps because of it, I found myself in a curious period of time that seemed timeless but was actually about two weeks. Mysterious interludes of reverie would occur in the midst of my everyday activities. Standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, I slipped away to an experience in a forest clearing much like the one I maintained for our sweat lodge. There were several animals there that were at first oblivious to my presence. Then, taking notice of me, they moved toward me with curiosity and a sense that I might be helpful to them. There was a mouse, a turtle, and an antelope. The mouse offered its advice to me: I touch everything with my whiskers in order to know it. See what is up close; pay attention to the seemingly insignificant. And what he wanted from me was to raise him up so he could see the Sacred Mountain in the distance. The turtle suggested: You carry a shield to protect you, like my shell. What others think of you is none of your business; go inside yourself and honor your own experience. What turtle wanted from me was to be mindful of the cycle of give and take, to give back to the earth as she has given to me. The antelope told me: I live fully aware of the ever-present possibility of death. Be aware of your mortality, and truly live. Take decisive action now. Antelope wanted from me to take no more than needed. And I suddenly returned to the grocery store when the clerk asked me, "Paper or plastic?"

The juxtaposition of that forest meadow and the grocery store was so great that I shook my head in disbelief and dismissed the encounter with Mouse, Turtle, and Antelope. I felt intimately connected with the meadow and the animals, yet I felt isolated and separate in the store, and in many of my everyday experiences. The momentary reverie was disconcerting to my normal sense of myself, and I eagerly embraced that familiar identity as soon as I returned home.

The next day I had another challenging confrontation with my complacency in life. These momentary reveries seemed to just come over me, unbidden. This time it happened while I was waiting at a stoplight while driving to meet my son and his wife for lunch. My car idling behind several other cars, I was absently staring at the red light, anticipating it turning to green. With no warning or transition, I found myself in a grove of redwood trees in Northern California. I was unaware of any animals or people, but I was really tuned in to the giant sequoias. Each one of these massive, powerful trees was a unique personality, and seemingly expressed itself in silent grandeur. We thrive by joining our root systems, sending water out from the source river to distant brothers and sisters.

These magnificent beings, each one a striking individual from the ground up, were intricately connected below ground, like a well-engineered irrigation system. The grove I stood in contained about ten trees, and I felt embraced by them. At the same time I felt connected with each one individually, as if each was resonating at a slightly different frequency. And I experienced myself joining with the community, as if I had been initiated into sequoiahood. Above ground I, too, appeared unconnected and separate; yet below ground I felt my rootedness intertwined with the others.

I realized that the light had changed to green when the car behind me gave a short friendly beep. The sequoia grove faded away quickly as I reentered my everyday world and continued the drive to lunch. But the image of my below ground connection stayed with me vividly.

It was hard to believe that such a profound experience, that seemed so real, could intrude into my life with no preparation and in only a matter of moments. These fragments of experience brought me back to the question I had been asking myself, and had recently forgotten to ask. "Is my experience in this moment a dream, or is this real?" The question was beginning to take on a more imminent significance. And the reveries continued.

One night several days later I was feeling quite spent after a full day of work cutting, splitting and stacking cedar wood for the coming winter's sweat lodges. I was in bed early and, too tired to read, I easily drifted off. It turned out that I worked harder all night long than I had during the day. I was awakened by little people tapping on my bedroom window, demanding that I adjudicate the disputes between them. They impatiently explained that they needed someone outside their species to provide objective judgments, and that they all agreed to abide by my decisions about which party was wronged, and what the compensation should be. Hopelessly awake, I got out of bed and walked to the open window. What I saw outside almost knocked the air from my lungs like a punch to the solar plexus. There were hundreds of gnomes and elves and fairies and leprechauns. They all seemed to be agitated, arguing vehemently with each other, and clamoring for my attention. My heart sank as I realized that there was no refuge for me until I had dealt with every demand.

All night long I listened to grievance after grievance, and made arbitrary judgments. I begged to be left in peace, but that only intensified the din of the crowded meadow outside. It had the same feel to it as the multitudes I dealt with each night of my vision quest years before, except then I got the sense of being in an alternate reality when I occasionally rolled over to get more comfortable physically. This night, standing at the window of my bedroom, there was no rolling over in bed, no interlude of intermission in the dreamlike experience. And this time I asked the question is my experience a dream, or is it real, not as an abstract exercise but as a fundamental reality test. The fact that I could not answer the question sent a shiver down my spine, reminiscent of the first encounter with Owl on my vision quest. This had ceased to be a playful adventure. I was genuinely afraid that I might be going mad. Had I actually fallen down the rabbit hole into an unpredictable and mysterious Under World?

The next morning I awoke on the floor, in front of the open window in my bedroom. I immediately remembered in vivid detail the whole night's work, and I was exhausted. I cancelled several obligations scheduled for the day and went back to bed, falling into a long, deep dreamless sleep.

One more reminder would pierce my complacency in the comfort of a familiar consensus reality. I would soon discover in a shattering blow that 'I' am not separate from 'others', that we are connected to each other and to creation just as surely, if invisibly, as the redwood trees are to each other. (32)