Druid Tree Workings: Communicating and Connecting with Trees on the Inner Planes

This post is the third of a series of posts on Druid Tree Workings–ways of connecting, communicating, and working with trees. In my first post on the series, I described finding the face of the tree. In the second post, I explained some “outer” techniques to working with the trees by using your five senses. In this third post, I’ll describe some “inner planes” techniques–that is, using intuition, knowing, meditation, and senses beyond our physical ones to communicate. These are the techniques of the spirit and the soul, the deep inner knowing, and allow us to go deeper into the Mysteries.

On Inner “Listening”

One of my blog readers asked me in the comments of my first post on the face of the tree about how you know that the tree is speaking or trying to send a message on the inner planes. I’m going to start here, because this isn’t as straightforward as it may seem to people new to this kind of work.

Many who work within a druid tradition (or other kinds of nature-based spirituality or esoteric studies) engage in practices that can help one be more open to the messages of the world–and these practices come in many forms. The absolute best and most necessary of these is regular meditation (and by regular, I mean daily or as close to daily as you can get). The reason that this forms the cornerstone of the work is that most of us don’t spend enough time managing our thoughts, directing them, or being in stillness.  We have continual internal monologues that make it difficult to gain messages from anything out in the world. But daily meditation, especially in an outdoor setting, over time can allow us to be in a receptive state. I primarily practice discursive meditation, a western-style of meditation taught by the AODA that focuses on directing one’s mind rather than clearing it. John Michael Greer describes this in more detail in his Druidry Handbook, which I highly recommend. I also practice various mind-clearing techniques such as counting one’s breath, mindfulness, and empty mind–all are useful for inner tree workings. Meditation allows you to clear your mind and remain focused in such a way that external messages can come forth.

After you’ve practiced meditation for long enough that you have some control over the inner monologue and can quiet your mind even for brief amounts of time, go outside, and ask a tree if you can work with it (or go to a tree that you already have established a relationship with). Sit near the tree and simply quiet your mind enough to attune to the tree. Don’t go in with any expectations–the tree may not be interested in communicating, or you may not be ready to hear. This practice may take weeks, months, or even years before you get results–but with regular meditation, you WILL get results.  Practice, openness, and patience are the keys to all good mysteries.

When you do receive a message, the message can come in different forms. You may hear words, you may get a feeling, you may have a strong “knowing”, or you may see something in your “inner eye.” I have found that in training others to do this work each person has one kind of inner sense that comes easier than the others, sort of a default setting that we start with.  Here’s what I mean–one friend has an empathic gift, so she feels everything–she goes into the forest and feels the energy of that forest strongly. Sometimes she sees lights and colors with her inner eye that blend harmonious patterns when the energies of a forest are pleasant. But for years, this friend has never been able to hear verbal messages of any kind. Another friend is a strong verbal communicator–she often receives messages in her outdoor meditations and prayers; they are usually one short word or phrase. Yet another friend can have long chats with trees easily, especially when the spirit of the tree reveals itself to her on the inner planes (see below). So, this “default” way of communicating or sensing doesn’t mean the other forms of communication aren’t open to you, but it does mean that this method comes easiest and the other forms might take some work in order to use. These ways of communicating that come easy should be honed with meditation–like anything else, regular practice creates improvements.

Outer Plane Checks for Inner Work

The challenge with inner messages is that they are just that–inner messages. The question is: how do we know an inner message we’ve received isn’t just in our imaginations, isn’t just our own minds playing tricks on us, isn’t just us talking to ourselves? I think its wise to always question what we are getting in any form. My mentors have taught this to me as an “outer plane check”; that is, we can and should see external confirmation of something sensed or interpreted internally.

Here’s one such example: The face of the tree technique is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. After a series of meditations and observations, the concept continued to solidify in my mind. But was it just in my mind? A few months ago, while walking with two good friends in the forest, we came across a tree with an unmistakable face–a very human-looking face–and my friends both pointed it out –I didn’t have my camera with me that day, or I would have photographed it for this post! And we all commented on it and spent some time with the tree. I told my friends afterward about the face of the tree theory and they were in complete agreement. So this experience served as one kind of “outer plane check” to my inner understanding.

Here’s a second such example of an outer plane check, this one is related to a body of water and a large rock.  A friend and I went to a rock called “White Rock” which used to be a very sacred site for Native Americans; it is located north of Port Huron in one of the great lakes, Lake Huron. She told me she had intuition about the place and that we should go there, but told me little else. We arrived and both sat for a bit and simply listened.  After sharing, we both had the same message–that we were to do a protective working there (we did AODA’s Sphere of Protection, an experience that I wrote about in the first issue of Trilithon: The Journal of the Ancient Order of Druids in America).  The key here is that we sensed and experienced first, and then shared, and found strong commonality in our sharing.

Outer plane checks don’t always happen so quickly, however–sometimes it takes months or years to confirm messages received–but they do come.

What Kinds of Communication Can I expect? 

I think one should be open for whatever messages come and go into a tree working without expectation. Most of the time, if a tree is willing to communicate with you, its for a reason–they aren’t much for small talk, I’ve found. In my experience, many trees have stories to share, stories they want humans to know. I’ve shared a few such stories on this blog. They may have a request, and it might sound odd (like taking a bowl of earth somewhere else, giving some water to a nearby tree, or spreading their seeds) but a request should be honored.

Once you have spent some time establishing relationships, you will find that the trees can provide you with insights and advice; they are quite wise and will guide you as only an elder can. I recently had a very difficult decision about my future and life to make about whether or not I was selling my homestead, packing up my life, and moving to a new state (more on this soon)–and one of the things that were critical in helping me make the right decision were three conversations with trees on my property and woods. The trees helped me understand the decision in the context of some of my broader calling and work with the trees in the world, and they told me where my energies were most needed. They also gave me a sense of what was to come for my current home and land, and the gifts that I’ve shared. These conversations helped lift the burden of such a difficult decision.

Trees also have ways of communicating with each other, sometimes over great distances. This is another important thing to understand–conversations with one may lead the way to conversations with others as you establish relationships with them. When you are building a relationship with trees in one place, in some sense, you are building it with many of that species, that region, and so on.

Connecting to the Spirit of the Tree

Some of the deep tree work done through mediation and working on the inner planes can be done by connecting with the spirit of a tree (and yes, they do have spirits).  Go, sit a the base of a tree or hold a piece of the tree in your hand (if possible), work on connecting with it. If neither of these are possible, focus on connecting with the tree at a distance.  You might be able to connect with the tree spirit–the soul that resides within a tree.  I have found that species have a representative spirit, but you can also connect with individual tree spirits.  In other words, there is a chief oak spirit, but also, each oak has its own spirit.  Working with these spirits can be extremely rewarding and fruitful–many traditional western herbalists also talk about working with the spirit of the plant (or their plant ally). You can learn much from the tree by taking this approach.

Trees and Ritual Work

Another way to build relationships with trees is by honoring them through rituals and ceremonies. There are numerous traditional ceremonies, such as apple orchard wassailing, that honor trees in various ways. But within the druid tradition, you can also dedicate portions of seasonal celebrations to tree workings (or honor a different tree at each of the eight holidays).  Some traditions (like OBOD) do build various trees into their ritual workings (for example, the battle between the Oak King and Holly King at the Winter Solstice).  In addition to seasonal celebrations, I also like to do ritual work honoring my trees regularly–I use the Gnostic Celtic Church‘s communion ceremony as a land blessing fairly frequently. I also have a small ceremony that I do to bless new trees when I plant them.  These small ways of honoring the trees in a sacred manner do much for inner relationships with trees.

Inner and Outer Work as Reflections

I’ll end this post with a statement on the relationship between inner and outer work. If you want the trees and spirits of the forest to take you seriously, you must take the work seriously. This means dedicating time and energy to the work, of course, such as honing your skills through regular meditation. But there is another piece to this, and it is best expressed through the old Hermetic adage, “As above, so below. As within, so without.” While this adage applies to any magical work or transformation work, it most certainly applies to tree workings. In the case of tree work–if you want to cultivate positive relationships with trees, really deep relationships, you must look at your other behavior and living in the world and what energies you are cultivating and allowing into your life. If one is heavily into consumerism, greed, materialism, and other things that damage and destroy nature, the trees know it. We carry that energy with us….it pervades everything that we do; it works its way into our auras, and any advanced spiritual worker or nature spirit can sense it. By making shifts in our outer world, we open ourselves up in the inner worlds for deeper connections…this point cannot be stressed strongly enough.  But this work goes the other way too–as we transform ourselves with the help of the trees, the outer consumerism and materialism become less and less important.