1A path through the woods winds along a stream that flows into the ocean.I look up at new leaves on a branch overhead and follow it back through a thicket of laurels to a very old ash tree.Another world of tree spirit interweaves our path, emerging through fluid energies like sunlight.Portals can be found near such a tree on our land and also in one’s own interior.Expand your inner space towards the subjectivity of native plants by envisioning shared land.Earth encompasses physical nature and an ineffable vastness of intention, telluric impulse, vivacity.You are part of that consciousness now; you relate to inner space as a direct perception of this consciousness.For example, the ash tree is a receptive organ for the consciousness of Earth, capturing and transmitting light frequencies.The observer within, growth, Gaia, translates these frequencies into coherence, a matrix where every being connects to our sun, so the fractal, the whole, is more like a conduit.Perception of the ash tree drops into my awareness as gnosis, species memory, prediction.Then light manifests as a mandala of all the living things; I did not know how beautiful we are!2Now, growing turns the plant, let’s say dandelion, out toward her surroundings, toward the other, light, with no return to her body from before.She becomes a physical expression of sun, rain, minerals around her, disclosing environment in the form of her being.Imagine a kind of discernment where thoughts circulate on plant surfaces, not in consciousness, and stay close to appearance.The telos of a stem is toward sunlight and its materialization in a yellow flower, in which beauty is how she communicates to us.This way of conjoining with her milieu, forming a rhizome with it, a passage, is a matter of aptness, adjustment and becoming in a dandelion.So, plants exemplify subjective being as constitutive relations with others.There’s an intimate plasticity with place, which some call environment, but I call the beloved.3Many spring flowers draw their yellow from the sun.The sacred geometry of dandelion expresses a celestial space of multidimensions like possibilities.When you extend in alignment with their pattern, your future becomes myriad, where the fractal, the intention (like plant thought) is nonconscious, dispersed, immanent, embodied.Thousands across the grass describe a matrix of energy we call imaginal cells; between exhale and inhale, I receive downloads from this field of plenty where growth begins.Growing, the future in the present, occurs face-to-face with their environment.Everything connects through cause-and-effect or evolvement; then evolvement is a dispersion like feathery seeds into air, connecting time and place.So, I continue to dream forward; with each new seed, leaf, bract repeating along a stem, the futural dimension pushes ajar.There’s a somatic openness to others, to rain, sunlight, a kind of responsibility.The plant’s telos is contingent on this alterity, its sprouting, flourishing, flowering, dehiscence, withering away and so forth.Humans conversely approach death with hectic strategies for living longer, if we are unfulfilled; higher than our last moment stands possibility.4When I first saw Richard’s garden, I was surprised it was unkempt; weeds flourished beside roses and herbs with no apparent order.New intentions thrive in an overgrown garden; planning Eden in imagination connects intuition to the wild.So, if your intention is to learn from plant spirits, offer them beautiful questions; they’ll show you change beyond what you imagine.You wake into universal consciousness alongside dandelions, nettles, red clover in their collective unconscious of flux and growth.This “tree of life” symbolizes our agreement to be here as consciousness streaming into an individual ash tree and its species oversoul, the green woman on our path at dusk.We become a channel for plants to bring the impulse of spirit into healing; then the way a wild rose overtakes his garden, the relation, is medicine.Who we are unfolds through this experience of her essential goodness.I exchange defense for tenderness, because plants give without reserve to every being.The rain I wish for, whether or not my prayer is acknowledged, begins to shapeshift my wish, and world is re-invented.The plant is no longer a simple object, mute and passive, but an enigmatic, fertile instance of the universal warp, wherein each prayer reflects his garden.May my prayer reflect with grace, the bestowal of love unearned.