“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” – John Muir
An old man is sitting on a small plane, not flying too high, gently gliding over a vast forest landscape. As he peacefully looks out the window he takes in all the details of the green vegetative ocean plane below him.
All he hears is the roaring of the plane’s engine. The forest seems like a mute impressionist painting. He is close enough to recognize individual tree crowns but not far enough to see the forest in its entirety. He has the perspective of a bird trying to decide where to enter the lush greenery.
Eventually, there is a big opening, a spot where he can land the plane. So he skillfully steers the metal bird towards the ground, landing it and in the process being roughened around a little. The plane stops, and the man gets out to look around.
The forest is right in front of him, glooming, filled with shadows and vague movement. He is still a good bit distant from the trees but they already seem intimidating in their height and presence. A shiver runs down his spine as if some unspeakable evil is lurking in between the woods.
Nonetheless, he starts walking towards the forest. As he gets closer to the majestic-looking tree line marking the entry into this ecosystem, his uneasiness gives way to curiosity and a sense of adventure. He feels like he is about the enter a magical place full of possibility and mystical delights.
The deep wise carving in the bark of the first individual tree marks the point of entry. He looks around and can see and hear the rustling of the leaves as the wind gently caresses them.
The man enters the forest and is immediately embraced by the paternal and maternal presence of the trees. The increased darkness with the occasional streaks of sunlight is intimidating yet fascinating. He continues walking and a sense of mystery fills him.
All around he can hear the rustling of leaves, the songs of birds, the buzzing of insects, and the soft cracking of branches. Everywhere he looks, elusive movement fills his vision. He feels like a curious scientist as he observes all the small details.
He stops and looks skyward. He now sees the tree crowns he has previously seen from far above, from below. The branches artfully grow around each other like veins in a human body, not touching and perfectly filling the space, each branch giving every other branch enough space.
He looks to the ground and sees the brown and warmish forest ground covered with leaves. An ant trail is making its way toward one of the trees. Emerging from the ground, tree roots look like the tentacles of some great sea creature.
The man continues his submerge ever deeper into the forest. The streaks of light disappear and malicious darkness fills the space all around him. The mysterious sounds get louder. Alien animals howl, everywhere the rustle and bustle intensify, and the wind starts conjuring a cryptic spell. Strange shadows appear behind trees and dance mockingly all around him.
The man is gripped by fear and anxiety. Has he gone too far? Is it safe to be here?
As he ponders turning back, he realizes he is lost. The darkness has reshaped the forest and turned it into an impenetrable maze. He doesn’t know how to get back, so all that is left is to continue walking.
He walks and walks and walks, and his previous sense of intrigue and adventure has turned into fright and panic. Rationally, he knows he should not be afraid but rationality is as useless here as scuba gear on land.
The forest has turned into an amorphic endless void. And no amount of rationality can keep the terror from arising in the face of this eternal nothingness.
His pace and breath quicken. He feels the paralyzing hands of irrational emotion all around his body manifesting in the form of cold sweat. All he wants is out as he is trying to ignore the creepy forms and shadows that impose themselves on his awareness. All the while his thoughts intensify the terror by spinning worst-case scenarios.
Nothing is left of the man’s previous sense of intrigue, adventure, and exploration.
By now he is desperate. He wants to run but where to? And besides, running might be a bad idea as there are many obstacles he could run into and hurt himself unnecessarily.
The man realizes the helplessness of his situation and in his helplessness, he surrenders. He surrenders to the fear, the terror, the void, the eternal nothingness.
Suddenly, a weight is lifted off his shoulders. A sense of inner peace and freedom spreads throughout his awareness. He slows down and eventually, stops. He takes a deep breath and the darkness loses its oppressiveness.
The man no longer feels in danger but quite the contrary. He feels as if he is back inside his mother’s womb—safe, secure, and cared for. Whatever happens, he is okay with it.
As he is standing in the darkness and looking around, he can see a light glowing on the non-existent horizon, like an open door.
Now with a renewed sense of curiosity and adventure, he walks towards the light. The light gets bigger as he walks towards it but it’s so bright that he can’t see what’s behind the door of light. Despite his uncertainty, he passes through the light into a brightly illuminated clearing.
He looks towards the sky and instead of the sky, he sees ten lights aligned in a circle hovering noiselessly above him.
As he’s wondering what exactly he’s looking at, a beam of light emerges from the center of the ten lights and starts pulling him up. Now, fear has once again gripped him tightly and he has completely forgotten the forest.
In the blink of an eye, the man finds himself inside a flying ship. He has seen enough movies to know what he has gotten himself into—an alien abduction.
He’s standing in the middle of an empty circular room surrounded by window walls expecting aliens to barge at any moment to probe his anus or whatever aliens like to do to humans.
But instead, the ship starts to slowly ascend into the sky. He walks towards the window and looks out as the ship is accelerating upwards in a weirdly gentle way, not at all like his old plane.
He’s watching the forest as it gets further and further away, losing all details, all structure, and resemblance of ever having been a forest. Just a farther and farther receding green plane, until all the man can see from the forest is a green dot. And he’s not even sure if this is the forest he’s just been to or perhaps another one.
He hears a futuristic door-opening sound from behind and as he turns around…he wakes up.
He’s still lying in his hammock—the old reliable hammock he’s been securing between two trees for decades now.
As he contemplates the dream, the man looks up towards the treetops, but what he sees is neither treetops nor not treetops. He’s seeing without a ‘him’ to see, just pure looking without making sense of the looking. No distinction between him, looking, and the treetops. Looking is the man’s nature.
The dream reminded him of something. It reminded him of how he was a frequent visitor to the forest ever since he can remember. It reminded him of how has seen and experienced all kinds of things in the forest, how he has turned the forest into a million different things.
But those things were not the forest. It was he who brought them into the forest. Even the forest was never the forest.
Only after having left himself behind, did the old man see the forest for the first time.
Luka
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