I had thought that the Two Powers meditation would be a difficult concept to work with until I realized just how similar this meditation was to the kind of gentle meditation I learned as a teenager.  I was taught what my mentor referred to as, “Breathing with the Trees.”  I can only describe the meditation and show how similar they are.

I sit underneath a tree, preferably something soft like the willow or young poplar that sways easily in the wind.  I listen to the wind whistling through the branches.  It is believed by some that this is a form of communication between trees.

I imagine my feet as the roots of the tree and I delve deep into the earth, past the dirt and the mud, deep into the recesses of the earth where the water flows freely.  I bring the water up through my feet, into my legs, my chest, and into my head.   In my mind’s eye I reach out with my “branches” towards the sun, further and further up and out.  I feel the sun shine down on me.  The radiance of the sun fills me from my topmost branches to the roots below.  My breathing is calm and deep.  For a brief moment… my mind is clear.  I can feel Mother Earth all around me.  Also, I can sense the Sky Father.  I realize that too often that influence is forgotten by the modern pagan.  Our reluctance to embrace the patriarchal keeps us from being whole.  This meditation… balances the two.  It is not about black or white, good or evil, but a balance of the forces both around us and within us.  It is because of this that I feel the Two Powers meditation is so important.  I know that it is only a moment, but for that brief moment I can feel everything around me and within me.

It is my mentor’s meditation that allows me to understand the Two Powers.  When in ritual we stand together, guided in the Two Powers, we are tuning in to the same image.  Our minds are hopefully, for a brief moment, as one, balanced.  It is then that we are able to enter into a different mindset that allows us to complete what tasks we have set before us, whether it is a High Holiday, or even something as simple as a Blessing Rite. 

I suppose one could say that at the moment we are able to connect both with the Water, the Source of Life, and the Flame, the Spark of Life. 

I realize that in the text of our liturgy, the guided meditation asks us to lay aside our worries, troubles and woes of the mundane world.  I know that I have dealt with many unsettling issues in the past and for the few moments in time while I am in ritual I can let them go, but I realize that to an extent, we don’t really leave them completely behind.  Instead, during this point of “balance” we are better able to look at those problems in another light.  We realize the resources we have around us and within us to solve those problems.  Perhaps we will set those problems at the feet of our Kindred, but we contain the power to help ourselves and we are allowed to see it.  Perhaps that is how the Kindred assist us best.  But as usual I digress…

It was our dear nutcase, Aleister Crowley that made famous the phrase, “As Above, So Below.”  We can pull from the energies above in the ethereal, to create such beauty in this, the physical realm.

There are so many things that I want to say and to do, and so…. I sit under the tree and breathe…