Oppression, Genocide, and Bigotry in the Eyes of the Tree

Tonight, I continue my response to Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse of Morning.”
In this last personification that Maya employs, twenty different groups of people hear the “speaking of the tree,” people who experienced prejudice, bigotry, racism, and other forms of ostracism, oppression, and marginalization. These people have experienced varying degrees of enslavement around this globe. Mindless, needless, Ego-fueled fears, jealousies, misunderstandings, and disrespect prompt hate-filled legislation and prejudiced practices. The gradual erosion of dignity leaves the oppressed with the worst enslavement of all: self-abnegation, a feeling and acceptance of inferiority and hopelessness and worthlessness. Nature says abdication of our true nature is unnatural.
The transition into the voice of the tree is seamless. Our Heart-energy resonates with Spirit that is infused in the voices of Nature, testifying to and reinforcing the messages of blessing, wisdom, kindness, compassion, and love — a clear contrast to the primary Ego-energy in which much of humanity too often lives.
The tree invites each of us to “plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.” Before the tree gives the reason, however, a significant and long parenthesis is added: “Each of you, descendant of some passed on / Traveller, has been paid for.” The implication here takes the form of a debt that required settlement, a debt incurred by Ego, which we allowed to defy the laws of Nature that illustrate how we can relate to the Universe. Awakening to Heart pays the debt.
Nature gives examples of Spirit in all things, the same Spirit that is Heart in each of us. We hold within us the higher frequencies of life, those that tend to peace, love, creativity, innovation, purpose, and happiness, and Nature knows this and seeks to evoke these from us.
The tree continues as she calls on Indigenous People who named all the trees but were driven from their lands by Ego-controllers, by the same sort who claim that the almighty quest for wealth and power trumps everything. The tree calls on the People: “You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, / You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, / Then forced on bloody feet…” We should be aware: if we force anyone, any group away from their spiritual and natural heritage, we act in Ego. However, if we have in the past, we may remember and toggle to Heart-energy, for all of us have been paid for. We have Heart within by which we can now operate.

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