The cedar grove is very quiet. Not silent – there are birds singing their songs, there is wind playing in the branches, little furry creatures scurrying through dry pine needles and pieces of bark, but all those sounds do not disturb the quiet stillness. Old trees, trees that stood there for hundreds of years, with their massive trunks scarred by burns and cuts – they are quiet, they communicate, they relate in the quiet, still space. They hold it and create it. This is how they are.

And when you sit under those trees the quiet sips into you and enfolds you, and you become part of it. You become the holder of the quiet space, though not a silent space. There are sounds, but there is no noise anymore, not inside. Trees speak to you, and you become like trees. Quiet.

I sat in this grove, and then walked away, through the meadows, wading in grasses reaching up to my hip. I sat with my back against a trunk of a fallen tree, washed into white smoothness by years of rains and snowfalls. I was hidden in the grass, hidden from the mountain peaks looming over the valley, from the watchful pine trees covering their slopes.

Then I wandered away again and found a young tree that fell across a river, a rushing mountain river, freezing cold but not frozen because of the rapidity of it’s movement. I climbed up the tree, over the river, and went back to my own spot. To my chair, with a cup of tea next to it, on a high bank with the river at my feet.

I sat there for three days, when I didn’t roam through the forest and the meadows. I sat there and felt good, calm, quiet, like the cedar trees. Life was good, simple, clear, like it used to be. “It had to be this way once”, I thought, “long time ago, before we started making noise, before we forgot how to be quiet”.

I sat at the river bank and felt strong, healthy, vibrant. Like an animal, like a young wolf or a mountain goat. And I was hungry! When the time came to eat I ate with no consideration for organic, or locally grown, or fat and sugar content. I ate trouts baked over the fire, and potatoes cooked in the embers, and bread kept in flames far too long, blackened and charred, and dripping with butter. A lot of unhealthy butter. But It was healthy there, because I was hungry, because in this quiet, simple space everything was healthy.

I came home yesterday, after only three days spent up in the mountains, and it felt like I was gone for months.

I talked to a friend who just came back from his vacation, he told me about all the things he did, all the places he went. There was so much fun, so much doing, so much movement in his story. “I haven’t done anything”, I thought, “I just sat by the river, and in the cedar grove, and in the meadows”.

I haven’t gone places, seen places, done things, but I sat, like the cedar trees taught me, quietly, and there was an entire lifetime in my three days spent in the mountain Forrest, in a little cabin at the bank of a rushing river. There was a lifetime in every moment, and nothing more was needed.

“Had this cool dream about God. I was having a conversation with her, “her” was a pretty, Hindu like, twenty something, covered in those brown body paint tatoos, with corn row hair. I asked her if she ever made mistakes, she laughed “Me? No way!” Then the phone rang.”

To understand wonderland we first have to enter it. To understand who we are we first have to be who we are, to understand God we first have to experience God, to understand nature we first have to be nature. And when we fully are, fully experience, fully open, fully being – then the need to understand becomes obsolete.

Once upon a time, when I was young, I used to wear big, heavy army boots. They kept my feet on the ground.
Without them I might have floated away and become lost forever among the wooly, milky clouds.

And then I grew up.

Now I fly in the sky, in my little red slippers.

There is such beauty in old age.

It comes with the awareness of what is trivial in life, and the freedom of not having to pretend anymore, that the trivialities are of great importance.

” … To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon…”

To point at God a religion is needed, but woe to those who take the religion for God.

Are religions wrong, limited, narrow-minded, controlling and manipulative? Is it because they fall short of being God.

Would we criticize a religion because it fails to provide us an experience of God? Would we criticize the finger because it fails to instantly transport us to what it’s pointing at?

A finger points to the moon, it brings the moon to our attention, it provides directions for our journey to the moon. The finger is not the moon.

Fingers, Religions, Spirituality, do not have God hidden inside of them, ready to be presented to those who obey and follow the rules. God is not religions’ grand prize, given away to the most devoted subjects.

We criticize religions because they fail to reveal God to us simply, clearly and undisputedly.

Would we criticize driving directions because they fail to describe our destination?

Why can we not see God? Is it because He doesn’t exist? Is it because religions fail to hand her over to us?

Or is it because God is in the only place no one ever looks for him – INSIDE.