google image Siberian taiga
At Real Toads, for her Transforming Friday prompt, Hannah has issued one of her intriguing challenges, to explore a landscape foreign to us, this time the taiga. I immediately thought of a series of books I own, one of which is titled The Ringing Cedars of Russia, about trees in the Siberian taiga who have been storing up energies for many hundreds of years and, after a time, begin to ring. The author, Vladimir Megre, was told of this by a Russian elder, went to investigate, met an amazing young woman named Anastasia in the forest, who was utterly in tune with nature, and his life was forever changed. He wrote a series of books through the 1990's on all he learned from her about living in harmony with nature, and about communicating with it.
These books caught on, and are transforming the culture of Russia. Now eco-villages abound all across Russia. Take a trip with me to the Siberian taiga, to listen to the ringing cedars of Russia.
I travel through time and space
to a Paradise-like glade
in the Siberian taiga.
She meets me there,
on the edge of the forest,
beckons me to follow.
All is silence.
Putting her finger to her lips,
she motions me to stand still
before the ancient trees,
and listen.
photo Sherry Blue Sky
At first I cannot hear it,
but then my ears attune:
there is a ringing.
I arch my brows, she nods.
It is coming from the trees.
"These ancient beings
are filled with cosmic energy
from many hundreds of years,"
she tells me.
"They are trying to teach us
how to live with
all life on earth,
how to attune our energies,
how to align ourselves
with the natural world,
learn from it,
speak to it."
www.siberianhuskies.com
As I watch and learn,
I see wild animals -
wolves and foxes,
bear and mountain lion-
all in her domain
approach her humbly,
without fear,
seemingly tamed.
Moscowtopnews.com
"The trees, the animals,
--all of Mother Earth--
is inviting us
to step into a world
of Love,
where all beings
live in harmony
with the earth."
Yes.
This is
the only truth
that makes sense,
and I am learning it
from a tree
and a forest sprite.
In listening to
the song of
this old tree,
I have stepped through the veil
of transformation,
and my vision is
forever changed.
The tree
sang its song of love to me,
and I must answer.
With hope.
With healing.
With joy.
With love.
anastasiasgarden.com
In researching further for this poem, I came across this house, which I SO TOTALLY want to live in. When I lived in Tofino, some of my friends actually did live in trees, or in dwellings such as this, or in yurts high above the forest looking out to sea. Tofino then became Whistlerized and they were evicted by district council. But they lived in heaven for those years.
I read that there are now 150 Anastasia communities, with 100 residents in each of them, spread across Russia. There is also an Anastasia community forming on 100 acres in the Shasta Valley in Oregon. They are looking for pioneers. My idea of heaven - intentional communities of aware humans, living in harmony with Mother Earth, and joyously.
I also discovered, while reading, that "Trees are like bioelectric condensers of cosmic energy." (Anastasiasgarden.com) And the cedars in the Siberian taiga, when they are 500 plus years old, begin to ring to ask us to use their stored up energy for the benefit of the earth. If their call is not answered in three years, they begin to burn up from within, a process that takes 27 years.
Amazing stuff. This world has so much in it we aren't aware of. We have so much to learn - and fast.
