Published: Monday 22nd of July 2024
The Sapling
Sometimes it is only one small detail from a dream that we remember when waking. Yet, using the language of dream symbols, that detail can convey a point that is relevant and important to our spiritual progress. A few nights ago I brought back the following snippet from a longer dream.
I was standing next to a thicket, an impenetrable tangle of shrubs and small, stunted trees. I reached into the thicket and pulled out a healthy-looking sapling, a young tree perhaps half a metre high with a clump of earth around its roots. I gave it to someone next to me for them to take and to plant elsewhere.
The dream puts me in mind of how easily our brain is choked with the cares and worries of modern life. Yet from what appears to be a hopeless tangle we can find something new, something good from within ourselves if only it is allowed to grow. That something is the soul, which is not to do with a man-made religion, but is the true life force within each one of us.
We are given the idea that everything relies upon the brain, that advances in technology and science will lead to a soon-to-be-realised future where all ills are banished and everyone is happy. Sadly, if we look at the world objectively, we see this is not a true picture.
Saturating the brain with knowledge makes it over-active. Our capacity to respond to the soul and its wider intelligence is reduced. Like a hothouse plant our brain can be rapidly developed for the demands of the modern age, but be vulnerable to disaster if we do not learn how to guard against the emotional pitfalls of life. The single, most effective way of gaining protection is to allow ourselves time to quieten the brain, stepping aside from the roundabout of hopes, wants and desires, if no more than a minute to begin with.
Those of Spirit refer to the earth as a school, not because of the knowledge that our brain can accumulate, but because every day we can learn something that will help us to be happy and peaceful. Lessons are often contained in the small details of life, teaching us – if we are open to seeing the lesson – to be considerate in what we do and say, and to be especially wise in the feelings we hold on to.
This then is the sapling, which grows little by little until it becomes a tree – strong, and capable of giving shade and shelter to many. It is merely a symbol, but a powerful one, of how the soul can grow. Jesus, the Master Teacher, spoke similarly when he likened the kingdom of God (the soul) to a grain of mustard seed, which a man sowed in his garden. This grew into a tree in which the birds of the air could nest, meaning that many vulnerable people (symbolised as birds) could be blessed by it.
I cannot finish without passing on another of the Master's sayings, that should we have faith even like the grain of a mustard seed, with it we could move mountains.
There is no greater mountain than the cluttered thoughts and feelings of our subconscious mind before we begin to learn. Yet though we start with just a seed of faith, not in God but in the power of our sincere desire to know the truth of life, we will grow in understanding, in grace, and in light, a blessing to ourselves and to others.
Author: Colin