Meditation for January 2nd
The Tree of Life
There are many similarities between all the world’s religions and myths. The Tree of Life is mentioned in almost all of them. The idea of a tree that branches out in the heavens and spreads its roots in the underworld permeates Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Baha’i, Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Persia, China, and even the Mormons.
We live in the trunk. There is the root system where our myths fester and are nurtured. Spread across the Universe are the branches. The branches spread farther than we can imagine.
In the heavens is where our divine will lives. It’s where we seek purpose in the vastness of life.
Below the highest branches lives wisdom. This is what we know, and our thirst for more knowledge.
In the lowest branches is understanding. This is understanding how wisdom and divine will connect us all.
Where the trunk splits into branches is what we know. These are the gifts we were born with—Talent.
Below that is the oldest part of the trunk. This is where kindness, severity, beauty, victory, and splendor live. This is where we are.
Below that is the trunk, and that is the foundation. This is where you place your feet. This is what some call the force, or the God in everything.
Under the earth, where the roots branch out, is where the kingship is. This is our original mother and father. This is the vessel that carried us. This is how we become nourished and watered.
The Tree is diseased. Right in the trunk. Where we are, the kindness, severity, beauty, victory, and splendor are sick. We scoff at knowledge and wisdom. The bark is cracking and falling off.
This threatens the branches above us. This is our purpose in life. We’re losing that because our innocence, severity, beauty, victory, and splendor are sick. We thought that foregoing kindness, severity, beauty, victory, and splendor would help us find purpose, but it made it impossible.
The roots are drying up in the dying soil, and our kingdom and foundation are now critical.
We are killing our own Tree of Life.
With the end of the Tree of Life is the end of us. We put our selfish needs for an unimportant ego and self-centeredness over the very nourishment our Tree gives us: we allowed disease and famine to eat our very Universe.
Prayer
Tree of Life,
Yggdrasil,
I want the power of seeing into the future,
You are saying I have to lose an eye,
And hang myself from the Tree,
And be in excruciating pain,
For nine long nights,
And the sacrifice needs to be me to myself?
Do all of this, and I will be able to foresee the future?
Do I really want to live knowing?
The future?
To see every branch,
To know every root?
To see every leaf,
And where do they fall?
To see all Time all at once?
Maybe I should want only today.
Thanks anyway,
Amen
Craft
You don’t have to poke an eye out, hang from a tree for nine days, and suffer to be able to see in the future.
You can use math!
All you need to know is the number of possible outcomes and the number of ways they can occur. You divide by that to get the probability of the event happening.
An easy way to explain this is with a six-sided die. You have six total outcomes, but only one way it can happen, that number facing up. So the probability is 1/6.
In more complicated events, you will need a wild imagination to know all possible outcomes and all possible ways that can happen.
Knowing this will make gambling easier and more fun. Also, profitable!
Goal