Barking up the right tree

In the last of this series of 12 explorations on finding home base in our minds, I'll explore those proverbial two trees in paradise. The wrong tree puts us to sleep and the right tree awakens us to what is real. We're coming from home base in our minds when we bark up the Tree of Life and turn away from the Tree of Knowledge.

The Tree of Knowledge is very tempting to us. When we eat of it's fruit, we believe what we see with our eyes and know with our other four senses. We take physical evidence literally. We assume the only illusions are in our minds, not in the observable world. Our brains are hard wired to survive in this objective world, as if there is no paradise to be found. We live in fear of every imaginable danger, including death. We know with certainty that there's no connection between what appears in our world and our devotion to toxic thinking and feeling. The portion of our neurological apparatus which handles our survival sits on top of our spinal cord. It's been called our reptile brain, which gets symbolized as the snake in Garden of Eden which tempted Adam to chomp on that infamous apple.

The Tree of Life becomes very elusive to us once we bark up the Tree of Knowledge. We may seek it but cannot find the right tree by looking on the outside. We fail to get anything else we want to show up. Our prayers go unanswered and many of our ambitious endeavors backfire. We presume we have to look out for ourselves because nobody has got our back. We've got unresolved abandonment issues from mistakenly barking up this wrong tree. We act out those issues by becoming extremely materialistic, antagonistic, needy or gloomy. There's no way to experience that unexplainable peace of mind which accompanies our finding home base.

When we bark up the Tree of Life, time stands still. We're living an endless moment amidst the illusion of passing time. We feel very eternal while experiencing a mortal construct that will turn to dust as we live on. We feel connected to every other conscious thing which excludes nothing in our experience. We are an expression of life among every other show of living and celebrating life. We are successfully creating experiences with the thoughts and feelings we entertain. We are free to let go of all those mistaken impressions that came to mind as we barked up the Tree of Knowledge. We see the error of our delusional ways and turn toward the right tree in paradise. The "Tree of Life" seems like a really good name for that right tree, since it gives us the motivation to live fully. We can become innocent of our excessive knowledge, trusting we will receive what we need to know to live serenely right now. We're free to be as we choose how to be a blessing to others.