© David Staume 2006

An example of Green Language

A young man by the name of Mataeula once lived on a small island a few miles off the Tongan mainland. There were two family groups on the island, each living in a number of traditional homes made of wood and thatch. They ate fruit and coconuts, the root crops they cultivated, and what they caught from the sea.

Mataeula had been taught that if he wanted to know something he should approach nature with humility, reveal what was on his mind, and then listen and observe. If he was receptive enough, his answer would come. He was taught that the answer would be triggered from without, but it would be heard from within.

One evening, as he lay on the beach, he looked up at the night sky and said, ‘I know that sexual energy is powerful, and I know that it is part of your plan, but I don’t want to be its slave. I want to understand it so that I can master it. Please, teach me its mysteries, and I pray that I will hear you when you speak.’

In the morning, as he walked from his hut along a path that he had walked nearly every day of his life, he saw a penis hanging from a tree. He stood for a moment, somewhat in shock, and rooted to the spot. The significance of being ‘rooted’ did not entirely pass him by, because every other time he had passed by this pandanus tree, the penis had simply been one of its roots. But today, it was strikingly and unmistakably – a penis!

The magnitude of the impressions that dawned within him filled him with awe. He felt unsteady, and as he slowly fell to his knees he began to laugh. He laughed so hard that he had tears in his eyes. Pure joy welled up inside him, and his laughter reverberated deeply throughout nature. This was the most magnificent joke he had ever seen or heard, and he had an immediate and overwhelming love for the source of this humor.

When he regained his composure he started to sort through the things that he had just been told.

As is the custom with pandanus trees, the root emerged from a few feet up the trunk and arched toward the ground. It yearned for immersion in the dark and the moist. It desired penetration into Mother Nature. The sexual imagery was unmistakable. He saw that the root represented the tree’s downward desire for the pleasure promised by intercourse with the elements of earth and water - the dark and the moist. He saw that this desire grounded the tree in the world of matter, and stabilized it against shifting sands, high tides and high winds. This thrust into Mother Nature was important and necessary – and an enormous pleasure.

But just as the tree sent its roots down into the elements of earth and water, it also sent its shoots up into the elements of air and fire – the light from the sun. And here, it seemed, was the answer to his question. The combination of earth and water – the downward desire – promised pleasure, but the combination of air and fire – the upward desire – promised purpose. Only by reaching for the air and fire could the tree fulfill its purpose – the production of its flowers and fruit. This striving toward the sun was also important and necessary – and a source of enormous joy.

Mataeula realized that if the tree sent all its energy down into pleasure there would be no energy left to produce its leaves, flowers and fruit, and it would therefore fail to achieve its purpose. And if it sent all its energy up into purpose, without being grounded in matter, it would shrivel and die, and the outcome would be the same. With the wise use of its energy, however, by sending it up as well as down, with balance and care, the tree could have both pleasure and purpose, and live a life of abundance.

The young man saw in the tree a philosophy that would enable him to do the same. He saw a principle that was just as applicable to him, and he was filled with gratitude. He felt his feet connected to the earth; he raised his right hand in the air and gave thanks to the sun; and he knew that from this moment he would never be the same.

This is an example of Green Language. It is this language that we have to know and hear if we want to learn from nature. It is a language that speaks directly to our intuition, and in the moment it is infallible. It is the language of principles. It is the ability to see the simple and obvious things that are usually invisible. The answer was always there, on the path Mataeula walked every day – all it took was for him to be able to see it. As he had been taught, Green Language was triggered from without, but heard from within. He hoped he would hear it many times more, because the experience was pure joy.

The story has a postscript.

The next day, Mataeula pricked his foot on something sharp while he was running on the beach. He turned around and hopped back to where it happened to find out what he had trodden on, and there in the sand he saw a tooth – a human tooth. When he examined its crown he saw that it was a molar. He felt its root, which was made up of three sharp points, and then he laughed, because finding the ‘tooth’ was such a bad pun for finding the ‘truth’.

As he turned the tooth over in his fingers, he understood that while the purpose of the tooth is achieved by the crown, without being rooted in the jaw it was merely something to prick your foot on. Nature had been kind enough to make her point again, literally, maybe for emphasis, but maybe because she just couldn’t resist a bad pun.

How could he not be overfilled with joy – living in a world like this, where he was never alone, and joy and instruction were all around him?

These kinds of experiences are often called 'mystic'. They are relatively common and have a profound affect on the people who experience them. Experiences such as the above can be illuminating, but they are easy to misinterpret and often give birth to religions or cults. I consider them to be in the realm of intuition, and consider intuition as a faculty that could be possessed by all living things. See Intuition for further details.

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