Excerpt
As the sun was going down I turned to face the Tree, closed my eyes, and kept the image of the Tree in my mind as I pleaded out loud, “I can’t get centered, please help me!” What happened next was amazing. A big ball of yellow energy with a blue outline appeared in the limbs. It pulsed as if it were breathing and then started to move slowly down the trunk. When it got to the same level as me, it shot right at me. I could feel it completely fill my body; immediately I was in the deepest meditation that I had been into up to that point.
While in the meditation, I asked the Tree if I was to be a priest. Suddenly, I found myself hurtling down something like a tunnel at breakneck speed. I was going headfirst and when I finally got over the shock of it, I noticed that the tunnel was like beautiful finely polished wood. I knew that I was inside a root in the Tree. I kept going deeper and deeper and saw a warm light ahead of me. It was as if there was a big room up ahead of me with a big warm fire in a hearth. I felt its warmth and wanted badly to get there and see what it was, but as I approached, I was quickly knocked out of the experience. I found myself, once again, standing in the cold snow by the Tree. I felt disoriented, but I had this warm feeling that I was to be involved with more than just trees. I once again had that feeling that I am linked to everything in the world.
I started to walk away, got past the Tree, and then turned to it once more. It was beautiful as the bright orange of the setting sun illuminated it. With ease, I went back into the tree, into its roots and Being, and asked again, “Am I to be a priest?” When I came out of the meditation, I heard, as clear as a bell, the word “freast”. I had never heard this word before. Yet again, I went back and asked for clarification. In my minds eye I could see the letters F-R-E-A-S-T spelled out with a colored border around them as if they formed the beginning word of a chapter in a fine leather-bound book. I asked “freast?” out loud, and when I did, I heard that owl hoot again, giving me confidence without clarification in this unfolding mystery.
I left the woods pumped up with excitement. While heading home, I was trying not to think about my experience too much, but that seemed impossible. I have learned that mysteries can’t be solved by what you know; that’s why they’re called mysteries. Mysteries are un-known, and if something is unknown, you’ve not been there before. All you can do is form a relationship with it and allow it to reveal itself to you, but I was so used to reacting and trying to force any information into a com-fortable little package that makes sense to me, that by the time I got home, I felt churned up again. I could not make sense of it so I began an exploration. I looked in the dictionary and didn’t find freast. I called a few friends but they had never heard the word either. Finally, I jumped on the internet and searched for it.
When the search results came up there were a few sites with someone’s last name as Freast, but that didn’t seem right. Then, I came across a page of ancient holidays with some text saying “Freast of Imbolc”. I clicked on it and as the page began to load the hair on the back of my neck stood right up. The first thing I saw was a graphic of a circle with a Ying and Yang symbol representing the Earth and the sky. There was a tree standing with its trunk and branches against the sky and its roots showing through the Earth and it had an owl flying out of the branches. This blew me away. I had just been there. Then I started reading the text and it blew me away even more.
It was about the Celtic holiday of Imbolc, which takes place on February 2nd at Sunset. That’s exactly when I was at the Tree. I read further and it said that this holiday honors the time when ewes start giving milk. In ancient Ireland, by this time of the year, food stores had pretty much been depleted. When the sheep began to give milk, they gave the people a much needed food source. The holiday is associated with the ancient God-dess Brighid, also known as Saint Brigit by the Catholic Church. She is the Goddess of healing, poets, artisans and sustenance. As the Saint, she is a great healer, and in other Christian legends, she is reputed to have been the midwife present at the birth of Jesus.
This was all amazing and exciting, but I still didn’t know what it could mean. I felt I had an association with Brighid both as a poet and in waiting to be reborn. Some-thing that I found amazing was that the word “freast” was a typo in the text of the website and should have been the word “feast”. I would have never found that particular website if the word had not been misspelled. My spirit had found a way for me to find it. A few days later, after a meditation in art class, I wrote the poem…
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