The Significance of Trees

Continued from yesterday…

Many years after my youthful experience with a tree, I learned how trees throughout history have had a mysterious and at times symbolic connection with the ego.

Buddhism, for example, finds its origin in the Buddha who spent 49 days of meditation under a fig tree. Later, that tree became known as the tree of enlightenment because it symbolized the place where Buddha experienced freedom from the sufferings of the egoic mind.

Trees also play a central role in the Bible, where they are woven throughout a narrative about humanity and its relationship with God. The tale of trees begins at the beginning of the first library of books that make up the Bible and sets the tone for everything that follows until the final text’s culmination.

So central are trees that without understanding their symbolism, the Bible gets distorted and misrepresented. As we have seen throughout history, the Bible can be used as a weapon of intolerance, inequality, bigotry, misogyny, racism, xenophobia and even war. Join me tomorrow as we begin to look more deeply at: what is the Bible?

To be continued tomorrow…

Adapted from Section 2 of Awakening To I Am Love by David Youngren