Spine Back Tree of Life

The Spine represents the whole spectrum of life, like a tree, the Tree of Life. It covers every aspect of our life from movement, sexuality, digestion, emotions, speech, thinking and touching the invisible. See

A tree – the tree of Life – is an expression of the power of growth, but like all trees it starts from a seed. A seed is a wonder of potential. In a tiny form, given the right environment it can grow into a huge tree, a dog, a flea, an elephant or a human form. The seed holds in it a directing force that leads to it becoming a plant, an animal or a human body. Its potential is unlimited, but the directing force of the seed and the past it inherits conditions what the seed expresses. But it is open ended and this is visible in the what occurs in evolutionary change.

Some Life forms do not have a spine, but the human spine is an extraordinary expression of Life’s potential. One of the first thing any seed does is to root into its source of nourishment and also to push to grow. It does this in mammals by developing roots into the the mother’s body through the placenta. Humans have interiorised their roots and appear as thousands of tiny ‘roots’ which feed from the earth/food we take in. The illustration is of these tiny villi/roots in the intestine.

The first phase is to reproduce (reproduction) its form and functions in an infant form. This unfoldment takes it through its whole evolutionary past – first cellular  division by mitosis to produce a multicellular organism. The result of this process is an embryo. The backbone also appears as one of the earliest structures laid out in all vertebrate embryos.

We grow from a seed in your mother’s womb, and as it did so it took you through the whole process of evolution, through the vegetative phase as cell division, then into the reptilian phase  where you had gills like a fish, and up to the mammalian. But we are leading up to the stages of the Tree of Life in the Spine.

At the base of it all is the urge to reproduce, but unfortunately people take that to simply mean sex. But we are actually seeking the reproduction of our whole potential; namely a healthy physical body – the ability to relate in a caring loving manner to each other, which starts with the relationship between father and mother and child. But from that it expands to a relationship with the culture and society of the time, with the great learning we have been left, and then a relationship with Life/God itself. I use the word IT because you cannot call the amazing emergence of our universe and ourselves and He – for it is all inclusive and is still a mystery we are still exploring. See Opening to Life

Example: I don’t know quite how to make that clear, because the basis of being was, I felt, eternally unknowable, yet eternally experienced. One could go mad trying to know what it was; yet at the same time one always was it, and thus experienced it. All form, all relationships, animal variety, sexual variety, longing, waiting, caring for offspring, was an expression and exploration, a bubbling up, tumbling, playing, at buzzing – the AUM. Everything wanted to zzzzzzzz –  vibrate. The sexual longing I felt was this fundamental buzz as expressed by me. It was like a slight out of phase current, feedback, or disharmony in basic being, like in an amplifier causing a hum. I don’t have the necessary concepts to explain in any other turns what I experienced. But I did feel that basic being, not a basic being, had learned to do this, and liked it so much it continued. I felt that this basic situation had once been a totality, but had learned to separate itself into polarities. These polarities created a sort of tension that was released when the polarities came together, as in sexual relationship. The universe so liked this it does it over and over again.

I read once that linseed oil molecules actually learned. They respond to light quicker at a second and third exposure, or something of that nature. Perhaps that is purely chemical/biological – isn’t the brain – and what is the learning process? Anyway, the universe liked buzzing/sexuality after it discovered how to do it, and thus living creatures, form, sex, etc, arose out of its continuance. This buzzing penetrates all matter like an all-pervading hum, buzz or AUM. I was feeling it now in my being. I could see how all creatures, all tumbling, sweating, loving, laughing, born and dying humanity are an expression of this fundamental zzzzzz. I had a vision of life always reaching ever onwards through change from the tiny molecule to the wonder of awareness. It was an amazing cavalcade of creativity going beyond anything I had ever witnessed. I saw how all conscious life was unknowingly living out this great buzz, like the iron filings moving into position, or sand dancing in the vibration of music. Yet each man or woman usually fails to acknowledge deeply how they are a fragment tossed up on the great buzz. Whether they like it or not they zzzzz, or are involving buzzing/vibrating for we are all unique for Life is ever creative as with fingerprints and snowflakes. They rationalise it, claim it as there own personally, deny it, channel it, forbid it, symbolise it religiously, fear it, murder it, chase it, or attempt to forget it – but it is all buzz, the AUM. What seems to the individuality as choice are usually magic lantern shows, shadows.

Then I came to the highest level – the highest I knew of anyway. I demonstrated this by starting to sound the AUM chant. I held the sound on and on, and gradually my ego melted into being all things. But I knew this as the Great Emptiness.

Our whole being reaches on to the action of digestion – food, ideas experience and life itself as a huge digestive process. Onwards to the heart, forever expanding and contracting. ever taking in lood and expelling. It is the seat of knowing through feeling, caring, loving. It is often a place where we bury our love, or go through agonies because we cannot tolerate a burning heart, an open heart.

The the throat – another world of experience, another part our wholeness to claim. Often our expression may come from below rather from the head. When we reach this door and open it we may feel we are being inspired to express deep things spontaneously. We can speak from our head, but it opens the possibility of speaking form the deeps of our body, with it huge history and know its wonder. See Using the Voice

The brow-forehead is a centre for thought, intuition and great insight.and brings a new form of seeing into people’s hidden life and workings. But when our accepting our wholeness has worked its way up through the body to the top of the head, we go through a transformation in which we are no longer lost in ones personality with its fear of death and its self centred interests. We face death and see through it into a vision of beauty. We experience enlightenment. We know the fullness and the Great Emptiness.

Example: I had a vision of looking at a green wall and seeing a huge moving mandala. At the centre of it was emptiness. Out of this nothingness poured forms of living creatures, trees, animals, humans,all moving and dancing out from the centre in time with each other – though making different movements. These emerging, dancing forms went out to a periphery – the edge of the circle – then they danced back to the centre and merged back into the nothingness.

See Energy Sex and Dreams; Kundalini

The Back

Mostly the back indicates your strength, particularly moral fibre; physical confidence; decisiveness, ability to stand in face of opposition; power to endure without being overcome. A problem with the back might suggest inability to deal with everyday life.

Behind: Repressed urges, one’s past and memories, or what is ‘behind’ one in the sense of having left it behind, like a relationship. It might therefore refer to something in the past, but may be influencing you again. The position can also depict your inner feelings, something that is inferior, or something we have pushed out of sight.

Being pushed back: Feeling restrained or restricted; feeling others are, or a situation is, holding you back.

Carrying something on your back: The influences and burdens you carry from your past. This can be useful or difficult depending upon what you carry. This also suggests your karma, or the results you face in the present of all past events and actions – cause and effect.

Returning or going back: Being influenced by, or re-establishing something from ones past, or meeting similar life situation as met in the past.

 Sitting on the back of an animal: Being supported by your inner and instinctive strength, wisdom and animal self. See: animals.

Somebody on one’s back: Feeling dominated by someone else; feeling the ‘weight’ of one’s parent’s, or someone else’s wants and decisions instead of your own. Carrying an influence from the past.

 Useful questions:

Is this indicating strength? If so what strength does it help me become aware of?

Is this an injury or weakness – if so what vulnerability or weakness does it help me become aware of?

What does the theme of the dream tell me about myself?