Attempting to Understand the Secret of Trees

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Today is one of those days where I'm still sitting around in pajamas. I've blogged previously about how busy my Samhain has been, and I'm taking today to recharge and just be creative. One of the things that I keep thinking of was how high-energy the ritual was. I didn't get much sleep between ritual on Thursday and class on Friday. I took in a lot of that emotional energy and couldn't find a way to be rid of it before trying to sleep. That's when it occured to me --

It's really not about getting rid of the energy, per se. It's actually about grounding it. I figure it is kind of one of the secrets of the trees, isn't it? They're rooted in the ground. They never seem to have a problem about all the negative energy out in the world. They are as much the earth as the actual soil is. They represent that everything that once was, still is -- without the trees, would there be soil?

Energy seems to fly around in any given space. Of course there has to be other ways to describe it, but imagine it for a second. Who hasn't been in a space where someone upset or angry made the room seem darker, colder or unbearable? That is negative energy, in my book. In the same way, who hasn't been in a space where someone's laughter or smile lit the entire room and suddenly your whole crappy day was made better? Positive energy.

In the space of a circle, which is blocked off from the rest of the mundane world, the energy doesn't have as much room to bounce around and ground itself out. For example, sometimes during an Esbat, energy will be raised for a specific reason. People figure out really quick how to balance how much of their energy they raise and release or charge an item with. (Too much gives me headaches, which I'll note about in a moment, and too much makes them really tired. We need our own energy to live, too.) I've been in circles with new witches before, and watched some of them figure out their own balance. Some are capable of expending all of their energy, while some aren't capable of raising much at all. It's all fine. The excess that an item, for example, can't or won't absorb -- that is what gives headaches or keeps me awake for more hours than an energy drink could ever. Emotional energies are always the hardest to cope with for me. This is a daily thing. I don't know how to block them all out always. As I grew in my studies, I found a way to block some of them sometimes with shielding -- which I barely understand to date.

Back to grounding energies. I've heard so many ways that grounding can be achieved. A bowl of salt. A bowl of dirt. Direct those extra energies  to a specific crystal, and bury it. Lay on the ground. Eat some food. Water or wine should absorb the energy and then you pour it outside. The possibilites are endless. But all of the above has you rope in a lot of excess energy and direct it through you, which is the hardest part for me. So I want to understand exactly what the trees do. In a perfect world, they have a system of roots that bring them only nutrients that they need and the rest stays in the ground. If I close my eyes and begin to tune the world out, my spirit is rooted, too. Though I walk and move on both planes, below my feet in a moment of rest is an extensive system of spirit-roots that reach far into the earth. What if we had a way to keep hold of our own excess energies? What if we could imagine for a moment that when we release them, we can catch them again and recycle them through our own roots and back into the ground?

Is it ever so simple? It is what you make it, I suppose. I wonder sometimes if understanding energy like this is really a pagan thing, or just how life is. I don't believe it is religious, really. I know it can be, but at the same time...I feel as though some people naturally can do all of this without needing to think about it. Some people are like the trees. They are those around us who are good at letting things go and not being too stressed or too hyperactive. Without even realizing it (or, maybe some do!) they understand the secret of trees  -- the secret to being rooted in the ground at all times. While I envy them, it is only more of push for me to find a way to really understand where to go from here.