The Ceiba Tree
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Belize for some photography work and took advantage of the excuse to go down a week early and do a little exploring in the western part of the country.
While munching tacos from the market in San Ignacio (remember that story?), I got into a conversation with a local man after he’d noticed me admiring the incredible tree I was sitting beneath.
It was enormous, its trunk branchless until it exploded into a wide canopy far above where I was sitting.
Its buttress roots rippled in waves from the ground to the trunk and were what I was leaning against while enjoying my lunch.
The man, who introduced himself as Julio, had white hair and a deeply creviced face and a wide and welcoming smile.
He planted himself on the edge of the buttress root across from me and told me the lore of the ceiba tree.
He explained that to the Mayan people, his people, the canopy of the great ceiba rested in the heavens, while the roots reached deep into the underworld.
He told me that the trunk connected the two and that the tree connected all things as one.
Julio’s story of the ceiba tree has stuck with me over the years.
It can be easy for me to get “heady,” lost in esoteric ideas and lofty philosophy.
I read books by spiritual teachers and behavioral psychologists and neuroscientists and I relish the feelings of having my mind blown by some secret working of the human mind and spirit getting unlocked for me.
But those ideas get slippery and hard to hang onto.
And I start to lose my grip when I stay there too long.
Ultimately, I have to ride those ideas down the trunk, follow them into the messy soil of my real life, my daily challenges and faux pas and hiccups.
I have to go down, down, down into those experiences.
Follow their invitation to reach into my own shadowed underworld, to bring those abstract ideas into real life, to ground them.
To root them into this soil we all share.
It’s in the mundane moments, our day-to-day, hour-by-hour interactions and choices and feelings and experiences where we connect the theories and beliefs we hold dear to our actual, messy, real lives.
These roots are essential.
A tree can only grow as tall as the roots that hold it are strong.
Pulling the light and airy down into the grounding of our days and using it to feed our growth.
Sending the real experiences of our lives back up the trunk and into the abstract to give it meaning and shape.
It’s in this back-and-forth flow, this mutual connection that feeds both, where our most beautiful, richest life exists.
This is what we crave.
This is what we’re always searching for.
It’s not some big answer to a big question…
The meaning of our lives is to find meaning IN our lives.
Not just our life as a whole, in some backwards-looking legacy.
But in our life— our days, our hours, our moments that add up to make the life we actually lead.
This is what it all comes back to over and over, it seems.
We can steep ourselves in esoteric philosophy and learned ideas and there is value in that.
But it’s when we let those ideas crack open our curiosity, our openness, our awareness, that they really reveal their true power in our lives.
When we allow them to create an ever-widening portal, an ever-sharpening microscope, that unveils more and more clearly the tremendous beauty of the moment we are in, right now.
Right in this moment.
Even when this moment is hard or imperfect or far messier than we’d like.
Maybe especially then.
How can you connect your exploding canopy in the heavens to your deep roots in the soil of your rich, beautiful life?
Look around you right now.
What do you see?
Is there something to be grateful for?
Is there something that can give you purpose?
Is there some small joy or wonder or interest or beauty?
Is there someone you can connect to?
A smile to offer or a word of encouragement or a moment of understanding?
Leave me a comment below and tell me how you became the mighty ceiba tree today.
Stay curious out there, my friend.
P.S. Did you know that I offer single one-on-one Say The Word® sessions? Let me take you through a guided journaling session to get some clarity around where you are right now and what the next step forward looks like. I can't wait-- get more info HERE.