Inspiration: Dorothy Maclean

I just finished reading Call of the Trees by Dorothy Maclean and I feel compelled to share my love for her with you.

Dorothy is one of the founders of Findhorn, an amazing intentional community, ecovillage, and center for holistic education located in southeast Scotland. Along with Peter and Eileen Caddy, Dorothy started Findhorn in 1962. Through her spiritual path, she started communicating with the devas and nature spirits in the area in order to help her and her housemates create a garden on a dusty, sandy strip of land that no one dreamed would support a flourishing vegetable garden.

But, since Dorothy, Peter, and Eileen were open to working with the devas (what Dorothy calls the "overlighting spirit of the plants") the garden provided a cornucopia, including a 40-pound cabbage.

Dorothy eventually moved on from Findhorn, but continued to work with devas and communicate with plants and trees. She has published several books, including The Call of the Trees. In it, the trees have several messages to share, many of them urgent. One of the most repeated and important is the message that it is imperative at to save old-growth forests. These forests contain trees full of wisdom, trees that are vital to sustaining life on our planet. Trees like the redwoods, the bristlecone, the sequoia.

The trees also urged us to live in joy and to believe in our immense capacity to do good for the planet. I found the book uplifting and inspiring.

Can just anyone communicate with trees the way Dorothy does? I say yes. I communicate with trees and plants, and I believe if you are open to it, and you have the desire to truly hear what the plants and trees have to say, you will hear their messages.

Try it one afternoon. Pick a favorite tree, maybe one in your back yard, at a park you frequent, or even one down the street. Sit by the tree. Say hello to it. Then get quiet. I like to close my eyes because it helps me focus, but this may not be necessary for you. Ask the tree if it has anything to share. And listen. You may hear sentence fragments, or just get an impression. You may feel something in your body that is meaningful to you. You may see pictures in your mind. The messages can come in many ways. All of them are valid -- there is no one right way to do this.

It may take a few times, especially if you are new to it and your inner critic gets in the way, telling you that you're not really hearing the tree. Ignore that voice and strive to hear the voice of the tree. Eventually, you will hear something. And when that happens, you've started on an amazing adventure.