The forest breathes, it lives, as one. Primordial, intricate, wild. Wild in it's impossible terrain, teeming with life; buzzing, dancing, swaying, humming, dazzling, curling, calling, purring along: like a spell.
A dangerous place, untamed, unspoken, non conceptual, hidden, mysterious in a way that has nothing to do with stories or fairy tales. This isn’t a place for old gods or the new gods, not for Allah or Jesus, or Odin or even Krishna. This is a place before even Pan or Orpheus, before Zeus or Demeter, before Horus or LLud , the sun god.
This is a verdant place of life and death forever mingled in an endless cacophony of music, of white tailed eagles and howling monkeys, of sun bears and tigers, of a billion insects and ants that will eat your soul and think nothing of it. Here your offerings are meagre scraps on the dance floor of creation, your prayers are mere rustles on the giant palms, ferns in the palm of a monkeys hand, ready to be dropped from a high cliff, to be lost amongst that ancient song, that has no beginning or end.
Here, they say, this place is older than all the forests, 250 million years old, they say this place holds 5% of the whole earths biodiversity, but really it is beyond and before time, it is that which spews us out, reminds us of our insignificance as we hopelessly try and take pictures with our tiny specks of technology, which is a meagre gesture compared to the in and out pulsating breath of this place!
This is truly, a place of wonder, for if you can’t feel, be lost and fall in love with wonder here, them my friend, you are destined to a thousand lifetimes of mediocrity and the hell of complaining and moaning about this vital gift of an ecstatic life that pours forth through this passing form. Here there is no rushing from one place to the next, no paying mortgages or Brexit, no politics or arguing about who thinks what, why, how or when.
Here there is no right or wrong. There is nothing but this, alive, calling you towards her, like the most exquisite lover, like all gods rolled into one. In Fact, if you want to call anything god, this is her, beaming, staring, singing right at you. If you are prepared she is daring you to stop, listen, look, see, hear her, let her be you, let her whispers curl up inside the most ancient part of you, the one that knows her intimately, like you have always known her.
This place, this ancient being, cares not for the tiny petty games that are played by humans and their ever so important points of view. The views that could and should and will, if given the chance, destroy this wildness, because it can not understand it, it can not control it, only by destroying that which is beyond both control and the intellect will humans create a world devoid of all organic life, of all sentience, of all beauty, a pastiche world of monotony and shopping, of endless consuming like some ogre that has no end to its sloth and ignorance. Yet she will be here, long after the games of man have fallen to ashes.
Here breathing into the dark soul of your being, your divine longing, that which is most ancient inside you, will recognise her instantly, if you really want to.
Yes here, it is dangerous, it is enchanting and inviting, simply because of its wonder, its ferocious beauty. Its bewildering fragrances and its infinite songs, and possibilities. It is alive, so very alive, this earth, wilder and more beautiful than anything we could ever imagine. Yet it is not separate, it is not an other, it is the reflection of our true nature and that is wonder!
To not see it, is to forever search high and low in the desert of our longing, looking for water, to quench the thirst of our deepest dreaming. Yet here is an elixir, a balm for the heart, a reminder of what we came from and where we will ultimately return, our roots, our bark, our damp mossy births, our earth laden death.
This is the great circle forever turning, enchanting and haunting us with her ecstatic beauty. Can you hear her?
If you listen very quietly on a dark moonless night, you may just hear her breathe...