Sequoia

 Amongst flowers of ravishing colours and proportions she kneeled to feel the ground’s moistness and verify the soil’s consistency. She should be wearing gloves but had never managed to get used to them. What was the point of feeling the soil if one had to cover up the main sensory organ of the body?

 Ah it felt good! So so good to be in such honourable company! The flowers were excellent creativity enhancers and their language was so simple and yet so intricate at the same time. 

All her life Sequoia had been fascinated by plants - especially the ones that produced blooms. It was a mystery of creation that never ceased to amaze her and no matter how much she studied these exquisite creatures, she never tired of discovering new details that revealed just how wise nature was.

Early on, she had decided to become a botanist, specialising in the artful development of blossoming species so it had been an effortless stepping stone to go through the necessary schooling towards this effect. Nevertheless, Sequoia had always found the best classrooms in the gardens and parks she visited each day, her curiosity an endless adventure producing new avenues of exploration that lead her into a closeness with the plants she adored that it was as if they were definitely her best and only real friends. 

Many were the conversations they maintained and never had her beloved flowers failed to offer her support and loving care - in the same way she offered them hers. 

Such was the depth of this communication, that it sometimes seemed hard for Sequoia to understand humans and be understood by them. She was human, though. Of course. But less so than many others around her.

Then again, Sequoia wondered whether everyone else felt just like she did. After all, each individual was unique and had specific skills that could not be exactly reproduced. What if everyone had this same strangeness towards other humans as she did but they were all simply trying to keep it a secret and pretend it was all normal and they did not really feel strange?

What was it with humans anyway? This thing of never feeling understood, of having trouble fitting in, yet needing to be accepted? This permanent questioning of one’s appropriateness, “enoughness”, knowingness…? 

There was something that did not make sense. If her herself and all other humans were human, then what was the point of being in conflict with this condition?

Maybe it was in the questioning, in the sense of inadequacy that one found oneself on the other side of separation. She wondered.

And the dissatisfaction. It seemed to be transversal to everyone, no matter where they lived, what social condition they had. A kind of unshakable dissatisfaction. But Sequoia was certain that there must be the possibility of fulfilment.

This is what the Masters of all ages spoke about. A state of bliss. Permanent oneness. Compassionate acceptance. The Observer of all tides that was unshaken by any storms. Placid like the morning after. 

If some could achieve this, then it was attainable. And if it was attainable and there were so few in this state, then it was definitely what everyone was looking for but running from simultaneously.

It’s like they were all - herself included - walking on the edge of fulfilment but never falling completely into it, in order to keep on feigning the need to seek something. Anything. Just to seek for the sake of seeking. To feel incomplete for the sake of hiding from the evident Truth that no one was less than the wholeness of their complete selves. 

Many a mountain had she climbed in search of the Morning Glory - the plant and the inner sense of it. In the heights Sequoia felt more in charge, more in control. Her vision became wider and the perception that from above all obstacles below were revealed gave her a bit of comfort. It was as if up there she was safer - further away from everyone else’s confusing insecurities and closer to the intangible lightness she knew herself to be but did not feel quite as strongly when she was down there, immersed in the masses.

Physical exertion made her feel connected. Alive. More human and more grateful to be so. The flowers’ delicateness, on the other hand, made her feel divine. An ethereal being that could see beyond solid matter and discern multidimensionally.

The flowers she adored contradicted the common belief that all intelligence lies in the brain. They had none and yet they were her teachers. And though the brain had been the subject of extensive studies, she knew full well that intelligence lied in every single cell and was as multifaceted as the multitudes of climates, regions, races and beliefs. There was no “one size fits all”. Nowhere. Neither amongst humans. Neither amongst nature - be it minerals, flora or fauna. 

No flower desired to be something else. Why did humans, then? Were they more intelligent for it? Or just eternally dissatisfied?

Did this dissatisfaction promote evolution? Or was it merely a distraction from the essential realisation that there was no need to seek oneself, as there was nothing to be found?

Sequoia’s constant scientific explorations of plants were a quest. But not for something that was not already there. It was all there. The quest resided merely in understanding. In the awareness of what was there. In allowing oneself to know what nature already knew. 

Such was the nature of the human quest as well. It was not about seeking something that needed to be found. But to discover what was already there. Rather to uncover. To remove the veil of distorted perceptions about oneself - about humanness. To stop. To take a deep breath. To let go of using common beliefs as the general truth and to go beyond what everyone did not know but pretended to, in order to discover what was already there.

Sequoia smiled. She was happy to have been given this name. It gave her an advantage when it came to finding her inner peaceful space for reflexion. Like the tree sap that runs in its wooden veins, the silence void of judgement, stable and serene, resilient and ancient. Majestic. So was it in her human veins. She felt honoured to be named after such a monumental tree and easily found herself in a state of void. Sometimes. Others it was harder to connect.

It was a mystery she could not fathom, how humans get caught up in doubt and confusion so easily - herself included. Like a torrent of debris it just took over. And then there seemed to be nothing else but the turmoil. Until the static of disconnection settled onto the soil of eternity and then clarity was inevitable. It pierced through the curtain of discontent so very familiar to the human condition and shined a light over what seemed to be amiss but was only a very minute fraction of the greater picture. Then it became evident that in fact there was no problem. All there was were distraction from the very essential Truth that humans are already whole, never missing any single part of themselves, merely playing hide and seek with the permanent underlying state of conscious beingness that resides before and after any apocalipse. 

It did make a difference though. The turmoil. The inner revolutions. The apparent problems and their resolutions. The fictitious state of being stuck only to find oneself free on the other side of these illusions. Each illusion unraveled added more to the whole bouquet of existence and it could not be less than what it constantly birthed itself into. So the lack was in fact abundance, as it is impossible for infinity to be less than everything. This was the permanent discovery that became ever more creative with each obstacle surmounted. 

This, Sequoia supposed, was what made it so exciting to climb every single mountain and experience the victory of the summit as if it were the first time, no matter how often it had already happened. Because it was, indeed the first time as no other moment is the same as each new now.

Flowers taught her that on a daily basis. They were never the same. Each time she approached a bloom it was different. Dynamic beauty in constant mutation. And when it withered and let itself collapse to the ground again, what remained was the sweet memory of its delicate presence.

Some flowers bloomed for many days, others were ephemeral, but no matter how long they had stayed, the mark they left was invariably impactful in the most positive, nourishing and uplifting way. And this way maybe why Sequoia definitely favoured their company over that of humans.

Humans were too complex for her to figure out. Plants were so much simpler.

So every day Sequoia had longed to be a flower until she realised that what she was could not be separated from the flowers she so lovingly admired and could not be compared, judged or formatted.

What she was was a richly woven garden of infinite possibilities, discoveries and evolving metamorphosis that was all the more magnificent as a result of the discrepancies deliberately created in this world of duality for the ultimate sake of evolution. Like an infinite ocean discovering itself as it played with the very waves that it produced.

To feel, to hear, to see, to taste, to smell…. Hmmm it felt good to be human! And to know herself divine. And to realise herself neither one nor the other. To actually not need to understand who or what she was but just allow herself to enjoy being whatever was here in the moment of her breath.

The sweet scent rising from the flower bed she was working on, reminded Sequoia of the task that had brought her to feel the soil and measure its moistness. 

And so she went on, collecting her elements to take to the lab, no thoughts clouding her mind. Just a sense of inner fulfilment. Complete satisfaction. There was nothing to seek. To reject. To add. Perfection was this. This now moment.