Today I forgave a tree. I know that sounds silly, but for me it was a bit of grace.

Back in January as I was coming up the steep hill out of the woods where I walk my heart went into v-tach, one of the worst episodes I experienced throughout my 11 months of my latest class in heart-opening spirit school. I nearly fell over and had to brace myself against a tree.

I had never almost passed out. The doctors were amazed and mystified. My heart would go from 60 to 250 in an instant and yet I remained conscious and upright. That time nearly shattered the record. It scared me and I didn’t scare or at least I didn’t realize that I still had the energy of fear residing within. It took the next six months to literally strip fear’s tentacles from my body and mind.

It was six months before I did the hike back up that grade again. Once I completed this course of my training, what the ordinary world calls healing, and was able to walk the entire loop, I often took an alternate trail — one a bit steeper to avoid that tree. I didn’t look in its direction as I passed it from one trail up. I was in reaction, sometimes with a hint of awareness, repelled by the energy I had left behind months ago. I was in an avoid dance with my past.

Today I saw it clearly and realized, by grace, that it was time to forgive myself and to forgive the tree. I stopped at the top of the trail before I reached it, looking down the path, feeling the energy that hung in the air. I laughed when I realized that I didn’t want to be out of breath when I laid my hands on that tree. As I touched it I heard it breathe. I thanked that glorious tree for being there in the precise moment I needed it and asked forgiveness for the energy I had unwittingly wrapped it in. I felt the giant cedar smile and the energy within me and it release.

If forgiving a tree seems silly to you it is simply because that particular fear is not one of yours. Fear often seem silly to those not caught in its grip.

If fear was real it could not dissolve and it always does in the light of conscious awareness, in meeting it fully, in feeling into it deeply. Once met it loses its power. Even the reference points for it disintegrate. Everything is energy and energy’s natural state is movement. When we no longer hold on to it, holding it in place, it moves along on its own.