Trees, Trolls and Transformation

Chicago Intensive

June 5th - 12th, 2025

Week One of our Pre-study Time together - Gardens

Dear Retreatants,

It has long been my desire to visit the most beautiful gardens in the world, to spend time in deep contemplation of the symbolism of the garden, trees, plants and birds. The garden is first mentioned in the book of Genesis and is a symbol in all the major spiritual traditions of the beauty and peace, of the eternal state of our consciousness - in other words, of the enlightened state.

It represents the cultivation of the wilderness, the forest, i.e. the natural animal instincts of our human state. It is the ordering of the inner chaos, the taming of the wild and the befriending of the beasts and trolls that inhabit the untamed and unaware psyche until all aspects of self can live in harmony and peace within. it represents the final process of the long gardening exercise of our own personal lives. We plant and nurture, prune and cut back, transplant and re-pot, rearrange and create paths, sanctuaries, places of inner beauty, calm and repose until we have the garden of our consciousness free of dis-ease, bearing fruit and flowers, flowing with streams of tinkling water and fountains of sparkling beauty, deep lakes and green trees that offer sanctuary to every aspect of our created selves.

Consider the picture of the Christian idea of the lion and the lamb - the symbol of God living together with the innocence/ignorance of humans. In other words, our own consciousness living in harmony with even the youngest most innocent part of ourselves. This is really just the same symbolism as the troll living under the bridge of transformation in the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, in the beautiful countryside of Norway, where the fairy tale originated. Each age must be in relationship with the troll of shame and fear that lurks beneath every transformation, change and move we make in life. When we think about symbols and metaphors, it is not the image or object but the meaning and principle behind them that is trying to be conveyed, in the every day experiences of human beings.

It is no mistake that the Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree - one of the most beautiful trees, in my mind in the world. We will be exploring the metaphor of the garden and trees for the next three months in our preparation to implementing many practices of meditation when we visit specific art masterpieces in the Chicago Institute of Art and then follow it up with visits to the beautiful Botanical garden and arboretum. You will be given specific and detailed instruction both on self guided explorations at the various sites as well as in the deep shadow work of group time together. We will also have some delightful time of just enjoying the pleasures of the world - good food, theatre, laughter and shared delights.

In preparation, I will be posting teachings every week from March - June for your study. I invite you to immerse yourselves in these teachings, to ask questions, to share insights with one another and to join in our group times together ahead of the experience. We highly encourage you to form informal times to discuss the teachings, the recommended books and the issues that arise, inevitably around travel and group process. An intensive like this requires effort in stretching and opening, to really contemplate metaphor and symbol as reflections of your own inner states of consciousness and stages of development, and with that effort, you will expand your own vision and awareness of how the universe operates - and you will be constantly reminded that the universe operates within your own consciousness. All manifestation lives within your own consciousness - this is a gradual realization and revelation as you gradually come to know a little more of how amazing you actually are! It is our great joy to be able to spend this deep and meaningful time with those of you that live within our own consciousness with so much love.

Contemplate the three images on the side, and truly imagine yourself in each of the situations … what temptations distract you from the ongoing knowing of your own Self as consciousness? How would you depict them? Can you befriend the distractions so that they stop pestering you? Can you slowly learn to live in harmony with all that arises within your own consciousness? This is the starting practice for the next three months.

Gardens are not made by singing, “Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting in the shade. ~Rudyard Kipling

Suggested Exercises:

Draw a plan of a garden you would create if you had unlimited resources. What are the elements you would include?

Collect pictures of gardens that appeal to you and study them - create a collage cutting out pictures from magazines.

How is the world the garden that Consciousness itself created? Contemplate this idea and see where you feel immense sorrow, remorse, regret, joy, awe, wonder, protectiveness.…

"When a garden is used as a place to pause for thought, that is when a Zen garden comes to life. When you contemplate a garden like this it will form as lasting impression on your heart."
~ Muso Soseki in The Temple in the House by Anthony Lawlor

Week Two - Trees

How do trees deal with injustice? They grow a branch wherever they are cut. And how do sparrows deal with grief? They open their tiny wings and swoop at anything that glistens. So, why am I all cut and hungry? Because I do not know the tree that is my soul and refuse the sparrow in my heart. ~unknown

Dear Retreatants,

Today Charisse and I took a hike, hmmm… more like a leisurely walk, through the “Pledge Nature Reserve,” right here in downtown Knysna. You walk from the bustling holiday town here in the Western Cape Province into a silent sanctuary of peace - a Cathedral whose structure is made up of the trees. The great Yellow woods (a relative of the redwoods), the wild figs, the mahogany and Keurbooms, overshadow the small paths weaving their way through babbling brooks and ponds, up the mountain to give you a magnificent view of the lagoon. The minute you enter this reserve you feel like whispering. It is silent other than the gurgling of water, the song of birds and the faint rustle of leaves. We spent a lovely morning, not only in nature but speaking with the volunteers that are developing this spot into a 30 acre botanical garden that will be the soul of the town of 80 000 people. Already it is a place, where once a week artists, sculptors, musicians and poets gather as a group to support each other in contemplation, sinking deep within themselves and the world soul, for inspiration and restoration. Look it up and meet Maggie, the lovely woman who volunteers there for nothing, to create this for everyone. What a beautiful vision!

https://www.pledgenaturereserve.org

And so this brings us to a contemplation of the tree - the symbol of our own life and our own death. Trees are the living symbol of our own life and death. This is a deep meditation. Please read more on the spiritual teachings here - The Tree of Life and the Tree of Death - The Cross

This teaching will include exercises, meditations and a lovely video on trees to watch with Judi Densch

Suggestion

Download the free app called Seek - this not only creates a data base and furthers research of the worlds plants, insects, birds, reptiles and trees, but it provides endless fun in knowing what you are looking at and coming to know it more intimately. It is one of the most fun treasure hunts I have ever embarked on.

Week Three - The Garden in Art

“…have a kink as solid and full of habit as the ones in the hose. Slowly I pull out the full length of the hose and lay it where it needs to be before I turn on the water. Inside, too, I must unroll my full attention. Old habits of thought twist themselves into kinks and knots. We will be forced to acknowledge this again and again.”
~Gunilla Norris, A Mystic Garden: Working with Soil, Attending to Soul

Dear Retreatants,

It has been so much fun for me to get your initial questions, comments and suggestions for our time together and to hear your insights as you see the teachings as applicable to your lived experiences of life. Thank you for your enthusiastic participation!

Our first outing together in Chicago, will be the Chicago Institute of Art and I have chosen a selection of art works related to gardens and nature, that I would suggest you research and then find in the art gallery, using each image, whether a painting, sculpure, ceramic or stained glass as a projective. This means to contemplate and explore what it reflects back to you about yourself. What does it make you think, feel, remember in your experience and inner dynamics and processes? How does it reflect something back to you that you know about within? Explore your reactions of attraction or revulsion or plain disinterest…. the question is why? What does it mean about you? The more we know about a piece of art and the artist, the more it will “speak” to you in a meaningful way, so in preparation for the experience of the actual art. As you scroll through the images, you might be puzzled as to why it is included, you might immediately like some and dislike others - each inner response is telling you something about yourself, not the art. What is this reaction telling you. Remember that art is symbolic - everything painted is symbolic of an inner meaning. For instance, the first painting in the list, is of a magnolia. This beautiful flower is imbued with meaning - if you don’t know it, research it. It might mean purity - if this is the meaning that sticks out to you, then what does purity have to do with your inner work, your inner experience? What is the opposite of purity and what does this evoke in you in terms of experience and trauma? Just that one word could give you enough work for the whole year!

To experience the art works, click here

Of course, although I will ask you to look for these paintings specifically, they will take you to parts of the gallery where you will experience way more than this small selection, so I hope it will be a rich and meaningful meditation for you all.

Week Four - The Lotus Garden

Dear Retreatants,

This story I wrote many years ago, is a metaphor for the cross. Read it carefully and see if you can understand the stages of growth and states of consciousness that are described. Read it Here. When you have read it, there is an exercise below, that would be very helpful for group discussion with one another and for self-observation in your own life or for journaling. The lotus is the flower of enlightenment in the East and the Rose in the West. Consider all the stages of growth and how one cannot exist without the other and nothing is every discarded in the growth to flowering.

Exercise:

In the Sutra in the story, what is being described is that when dark and light come from the heart it is all good. When the dark and the light come from the unaware shadow of unawareness in shame and fear, then good and bad are both “bad” and yet even this is included in the Light of Consciousness (Love). This is a high teaching on the cross - contemplate this in your own life and see if you can see the intersection of good and bad in a heart pierced open to be able to love. Out of a heart of compassion and wisdom, even what is seen by the world as “bad” actions, is truly good, and “good” actions are aligned with love. When the heart is closed to the feelings of fear and shame and there is unawareness and lack of compassion for these feelings,” good” and “bad” actions are reactive and socially bound and therefore, neither what is socially unacceptable, or acceptable, is loving or truly good and yet, it is still held within the Great Consciousness of Truth and Wisdom.

Draw a cross and explore the dualities of acceptable/unacceptable, good/bad, right/wrong - or any other duality you struggle with. How are you nailed to the heart of suffering - a heart encased by defense and filled with shame and fear? How are you on the cross of duality, but your heart has been pierced and you see with compassion and wisdom all your past actions and choices of “good” and “bad.” How have you died to the dualities and are off the cross living a life of connection, unity rooted in the compassion and wisdom born from your dark unaware suffering? Where in your journey of the cross are you as related to the growth of the lotus lily in the garden of heaven and of existence?

What actions in your life came from conformity out of fear of rejection and that you learned were “good” behaviors. How did you rebel out of anger and need to assert your ego identity that were considered “bad behaviors.” How do you still do the same things, but from a different state of consciousness. What part of the growth do the lotus do your behaviors represent?

“The great physicist Niels Bohr said, “There are two types of truth. In the shallow type, the opposite of a true statement is false. In the deeper kind, the opposite of a true statement is equally true.”
~Gunilla Norris, A Mystic Garden: Working with Soil, Attending to Soul

Week Five - Trolls

Dear Retreatants,

On our pilgrimage to Iceland in 2024, we had a lot of fun looking for trolls in the craggy volcanic mountains, waterfalls and rugged landscape - it seemed they were everywhere. They very much still dominate the psyche and mythology of the Icelandic people. Every culture has its pantheon of nearly human creatures - goblins, witches, trolls, zombies, gnomes, vampires and so on. And they all have malevolent intents some of the time and sometimes they are sent to help. So a symbol of the duality of human life, and a projection of the dualistic nature of your own ego. When we are in unaware ego consciousness we are all truly trolls - we do “good” things to serve our own sense of identity and we do “bad” things that are reactions to unaware fear and shame we all feel in this state. We do not yet know ourselves as fully divine beings in human form and so we act like trolls.

When you contemplate these beings, do you feel dread and horror, fear and revulsion or do you feel warmth, affection and amusement. Do you seek them out or do you avoid them? Do they seem big, or small and inconsequential? Consider what your relationship is to the inner trolls of your psyche. Remember the external representations are only symbols of an inner dynamic within you. Unfortunately the troll exhibit at the Morton Arboretum was dismantled in 2021, but I encourage you to seek for your own trolls as you stroll through the trees.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

I am sure all of you know the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. If you are not acquainted with it I highly recommend your read this Norwegian folktale and deeply contemplate the meaning of it in your own life. Remember in any good story or myth, every player, dynamic and symbol is representing some aspect of you and your own inner relationship to the different aspects. I read this story so often to my children when they were little that it worked on my psyche for years until I found the troll under the bridge in every experience of my own life.

Trolls of hidden shame and nastiness are most often found at points of transition and stress represented in the story by the bridge. If we are not aware of our feelings, they threaten to emerge from under the bridge of transition and change, threatening to gobble us up in their fear, anger, shame and frustration. We are seeing a lot of troll behavior right now in the uncertainty of the massive changes occurring in our society. And it doesn’t matter how old you are, the Troll always shows up. When we are very young we rush to get to the other side of the bridge because we cannot yet deal with the huge deep, hidden feelings of shame that lurk in the river of consciousness beneath our waking life. Even as teenagers and young adults, we cannot face the feelings and past experiences that gave rise to them. It is only when we have the wisdom of age, represented by the great horns and long beard of the last billy goat Gruff, that we can face the feelings, the past emotions and experiences head on and bring compassion, wisdom and limit to the acting out trolls of our hidden emotions. We need to be in relationship with our trolls with warmth, limit, kindness and understanding. We need to tame them - not get rid of them. Then they become aspects of self that we relate to with humor, affection and most certainly limit. If we are big enough in knowing ourselves in consciousness, then they pop up as small and rather insignificant aspects of living in the world.

Exercise

In the next week, notice every time an inner troll rears his ugly head up from the unconscious in terrifying shame, fear and anger. Notice if you ignore, suppress, rush on, allow it to act out, or face it square on. If you can catch one and face it head on, see how would you represent it. Draw a picture, create a collage, journal, write a poem, take a picture and share with the group your experience and representation of it. What was the transition? What feelings arose? How did you relate to the feelings? How did you befriend the troll?

Trees, Trolls and Transformation

Suggested Exercises:

Recommended Reading

Week Two - Trees

Suggestion

Week Three - The Garden in Art

Recommended Reading - Thank you, Karen

Week Four - The Lotus Garden

Exercise:

Recommended Reading - Thank You, Catherine

Week Five - Trolls

Exercise

Therapy Notes - Digging Deep

Hours

Follow