The following is an excerpt from my book “Centerpath Mandalas”. It’s got some pretty cool insights on the nature of being but also how your life fits into nature’s grand mosaic of being. I invite you to check it out.

It’s little surprise Buddha gained his awareness under the Bodi tree. For residing in their the sprawling geometry lie all the necessary clues toward understanding the various mysteries of the universe.

In fact Nature utilizes the wisdom of branching systems having fully capitalized on the robust and efficient form of arterial branching systems in her many natural, biological, and manmade creations. Trees, leaves, lungs, veins, arteries, skeletal systems, roots, rivers, family trees, organizational  charts, parking lots, computer ‘folder based’ directory systems, roads and highways, all fall within the definition of branching arterial systems as the following Merriam Webster Dictionary definition attests “a natural subdivision of a plant stem; especially a secondary shoot or stem (as a bough) arising from a main or center axis”.

Also readily apparent in the form of branching is their dualistic nature –a characteristic dear to the universe. For across the tree’s center reside the dualistic upper branches and the lower. Forming a mirror image across the earth’s surface, these equal opposite counterparts complement one another with roots providing the anchor from which the upper portion can expand into space. The lower half providing the water and raw ingredients necessary for the upper half’s leaves to produce the necessary glucose (sugar) to grow the tree further upward and downward.

Finally through a tree’s seedling we can instantly recognize where all things begin –i.e. centers –and also see how beginning and ends are so intimately tied together. For from the seedling that began at the base of its main trunk, to the end point of its smallest branches where it flowers to produce the next generation seed that again falls to the ground, the cycle of life is perpetuated in the most splendid of ways.

You a Great Tree

See yourself rooted in the ground. Strongly anchored, deeply grounded, and in touch with the world and reality.

Through your veins stream water and nutrients –rivers as great and mighty as the mightiest delivering and distributing the stuff necessary to sustain life to all corners of your body. The various arterial branching systems of bone, nerves, muscle, vein, and artery working together to harmonize your body into a much greater whole that is you.

Now turn heavenward and feel the air and sunlight streaming though and into you. In touch with what is divine and magical you are a sentinel being as light as the ether and as free and free-spirited as the air and heaven above.