Diana Beresford-Kroeger: La Crida Dels Arbres

Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a world-recognized botanist, medical biochemist and author (and now filmmaker). She is known for her extraordinary ability to translate scientific complexities of nature for the general public with both precision and poetry. "If you speak for the trees, you speak for all of nature", says Beresford-Kroeger, one of the world's leading expert on trees. She has studied the environmental, medicinal, and even spiritual aspects of trees, has written about them in leading books, and maintains gardens on her property that burst with flora. From a very young age, she understood she was the last voice to bring Celtic knowledge to the New World. Orphaned at age 11 in Ireland, she lived with elders who taught her the ways of the Celtic triad of mind, body and soul, all rooted in a vision of nature that saw trees and forests as fundamental to human survival and spirituality. What follows is a tender harvest of wisdom nuggets from an Awakin Call with Diana Beresford-Kroeger. You can access the recording of the call and the full-length transcript here.

On beginning to acquire traditional Celtic wisdom: After Diana was orphaned at age 12, twenty-two men and women who lived in her area got together and decided she would be taught the ancient laws of Celtic wisdom. "These laws are the laws of wisdom, the laws of telepathy, the laws of meditation, education ... about the medicines of the natural world, and the laws of the trees."

On the shamrock: This was something that St. Patrick picked up, in the centuries after Christ, to bring the ancient Celtic world into the Christian world. It is symbolic of the Triad: the sacred number of three-- the body, mind and soul. “The body we look after, the mind we are careless of, and the soul seems to have walked away. We will have to call the mind and the soul back for each person. When the triad is at work, then you can go into nature, into the silence and everything will come to your door.”

What did you learn as an orphan under the care of the community and the Brehon laws, that allowed you to go from a place of questioning your worth and feeling insignificant, to a place where your love just kind of bursts out of you? “When you have great sorrow and suffering in your life, you become a victim. It's the child inside of you that has been hurt; even in animals, you see this. There is a kind of a shame about this, because you're the black hen in the white flock of chickens. That feeling of shame opens the wounds like PTSD in your life and you don't know what to do about it. Well, down in the Valley of Lisheens, I started to understand that it is only knowledge and it is only wisdom that can heal those great wounds of the soul and of the mind."

She was taken by the 80- and 90-year olds who didn't speak English and took all of that old wisdom and put it into her lap. They put it all into the “aprons” in her life and she chose the things that would help her. “And what helped me was their love… what helped me was that look of love in their eyes. Suffering's not a disease and not catching…A lack of money is not catching. I saw the look of love and they loved children. Children are called little people. I was treated with great warmth.”

La van portar a les seves cases. «I no eren mansions. Em van portar a la cuina i agafaven una ala de plomes i fregaven el foc, em preparaven una tassa de te, em miraven, em posaven una mà a sobre i em somreien... somriures i somriures, i l'amor són una gran curació de la ment».

“Then they realized I was like a stick and…they had to have some good medicine in me. The first was oatmeal and the second was buttermilk. I was asked to drink that. It is an old Irish cure. There are electrolytes in them and they would go into your system and you would feel better and it allows you to fight diseases.”

«Aleshores, pujar a la vall i aprendre tot el que sabia de la gent em va fer sentir com una persona. Vaig començar a tenir la impressió de mi mateix que tenia valor, que tenia valor a la vida, i ells m'ho van impressionar.»

“They took me to all the healing areas where the ancient people had their homes. They were never broken by plows for thousands of years. I would go around and they would pick the wild strawberries (Fragaria) and say they were good for the gums. That was my introduction to the aerosols.”

“I was brought to the sea and taught all types of things. The sea is not the sea. It is a great healing site. Chondrus crispus (Irish moss) found in the sea is prickly and I was taught that the mucilage was a great healing of tuberculosis.”

“I was taught about the great ancient hospitals. They did surgeries, c-sections, and treatments for the mind.”

“I was taught all these things, week after week, until I thought I'd burst. What they said was repetition, repetition, repetition makes the (strength) of the mind.”

On one of the principles passed on to her, that all wisdom is equal; every bit, whether it's a song, or a poem, or an altar, or a deep spiritual insight: “The poetry of their song is equivalent to the best Porsche or a flouncing huge house. The value of a word is a temple word. Temple thinking. The passage of imagination. There is nothing that can equal the passage of imagination. They gave a gift of their poetry, the gift of the song (in reference to the gift of song by Owen and Michael Ó Súilleabháin at the start of the call)"

“These are all ancient things and very important. What the plumber does is as good as what the surgeon does. We are all the same. All of us. All of us contribute to the great renaissance of the human family and we are sorry people, if we don't listen to that.”

On her grand aunt Nellie who would fall regularly into a listening meditation, under a tree in her yard, and the special word for the recognition of sentience that exists in the Irish language:

“The sentience is in the concert harp. The tree is the oak. And (it's made) from the oak, from the tracheid of the oak, and it's the purest song of old.”

«A casa meva (de l'àvia), ella sortia de casa, per la porta de la cuina, passava l'esglaó de pedra, per l'estable, per la quadra de les vaques, una quadra llarga, i totes les vaques estaven ensumant, i hi havia un arbre gegant i enorme que és... Fraxinus excelsior (freixe europeu). Aquell arbre enorme projectava la seva ombra sobre la quadra de les vaques. Era enorme i estava il·luminat amb ocells, papallones i tot. La meva tieta em deixava caure la mà i s'acostava a l'arbre. Portava roba teixida i un imperdible al pit. S'acostava a l'arbre i ho feia com feia amb les gallines. Tractes tots els ocells amb grans moviments lents, per no espantar-los. Pujava a l'arbre lentament i un gran silenci queia entre ella i l'arbre i la meditació portava la seva ànima, la seva ment, a l'arbre i hi havia una comunió entre ells, i viatjava pel seu cos.»

“She became like a statue. And like a dog to its owner, the tree was coming to her. I can't do it very well. It was like a trance. And the cows chewing cud and the horses would all just fade away into this silence. It was like a consciousness shared. The consciousness held her to me, me to her and her to the tree. After a while she would come out of it. She would rub her hands on her apron, and she would turn to me and say…little girl, we have to go back to work. And that was a holiday to her. It was a holiday for her body, and she was always happy after that, cheerful. We would go make a cup of tea and that was the softest day.”

Com vas abordar l'estudi del món natural, preparat com estaves per la teva experiència a Lisheens? "Vaig estirar els fils de la simplicitat. La vida senzilla de la gent senzilla. Jo era un d'ells. Vaig entendre el significat de la simplicitat. Ets ric en allò que no vols, quan ets senzill. Ets molt ric..."

“And then, I turned and looked at science. My uncle, who was Ward of the Court, had a house of 10,000 books. We read to each other at night. That started me thinking. Everything has vast simplicity to it.”

"The elegance of science is extraordinary, almost miraculous."

“Then I went into science and it's almost miraculous. That you could bend your body and sit on a chair is an extraordinary act of biochemistry. It is in you, and in the same pattern, in the tree (she is speaking of DNA). There's a little difference, but not a whole lot.”

“The act of sitting there, drinking, thinking means that there's quantum mechanics working.”

«Surts al sol, aixeques la cara cap al sol i el que passa és que la forma oxi, la forma de dos enllaços de la vitamina D, està asseguda a la teva pell, esperant el sol. I el sol aterra sobre aquesta molècula, a la teva pell, i la transforma en la forma pura de vitamina D. Aleshores estàs sa, el teu cos l'ingereix d'un cop, d'un gran glop, entra al teu cos i es segresta en tots els òrgans principals. Estàs sa! Déu meu, d'on ha sortit aquest disseny? Com ​​ha passat això?!»

“There are miracles around you, in your children, dogs, cats. You look on the expression on their faces and you know everything. There's a communion going on between you and me, and you and humanity, and you and the world around you.”

“And consciousness. There is a shared consciousness among us, but we haven't gotten there yet. These things are extraordinary to me. So, I've studied everything I could.”

“You name the chemistry and I've studied it, but I put it on the road of simplicity. Don't let anybody fool you when they say it's complicated because it is not.”

On the philanthropy of knowledge. As fast as Diana gained it, she was giving it away, in different ways, to people who could not necessarily grasp with the ease that she did: “I do it today. (After an academic asked her to explain something to him), “I gathered my pots and pans and did a demonstration. You start with simplicity and you go on to simplicity.”

Sobre els arbres: «Per entendre alguna cosa, has de conèixer la teva història. Per entendre un bosc, has de conèixer la seva història... El bosc va començar fa 400 milions d'anys, quan hi havia massa diòxid de carboni. Si ho activessis avui, tots estaríem morts, però els arbres van cobrar vida. Els arbres van començar a entendre el llenguatge dels patrons de l'ADN.»

“What happened is that the design of the tree is unique, it has a canopy. Have you ever asked yourself why is there a set of leaves on trees? The canopy moves toward the sun, by means of an attachment, like a little elastic band, the petiole, of the branch that moves with the sun…Why is this leaf moving towards and with the sun? There's an extraordinary thing that happens in the tree. The tree has tissues (palisade tissue) like your kidneys, great big sacs, and the green of the tree is called chlorophyll. The chlorophyll is exactly like your hemoglobin with one metallic difference - magnesium instead of iron."

"Ara entrem en la mecànica quàntica! En aquesta clorofil·la, teniu la mecànica quàntica de l'àtom de magnesi, al centre, com un diamant en un anell. I aquest diamant és capaç de donar vida a dues formes. Al mateix temps. Una, rep la llum del sol i fa clic, com un rellotge de clic, pren aquesta energia del sol i la mou més endins de la fulla. I la mou cap a la clorofil·la. I a la clorofil·la, el que passa és que les molècules al voltant del nervi central, el centre metàl·lic, entren en un estat més excitat. Igual que l'electricitat dels cables que us envolten, ara mateix. Així que absorbeix l'energia del sol. Aquest és un estat quàntic en què es troba la fulla."

"That's how a tree grows. That is is how a tree produces food. That is how a tree feeds all mammals. That is how a tree does something really extraordinary, in my opinion; the carbon dioxide goes into the molecular area, and it gets cut in two by the energy of the sun, and also into carbon and oxygen. The carbon goes into the main muscles of the tree. The main body. The wood of the tree. And the oxygen - two atoms joined together in a little marriage called the molecule of oxygen, flows out into the atmosphere. That oxygen is being used and reused and reused for 400 million years. It is now in your lungs. That is the thing that keeps you alive."

“ If we cut down the forests, we cut down our source of oxygen. If we cut down our source of oxygen, there will not be life on the planet. ”

“ That's the importance of the trees, the community of the trees. The mantel of the planet, Earth has to have that. If you take that off, you take off 60% of the oxygen of the atmosphere away.”

“That's the importance of the great forests. Down there in California, you have probably the best of the best and you have been cutting them down!”

“All we have to do is pull carbon out of the atmosphere and we can use a tree to do it.”

Sobre la connexió entre els oceans i els boscos: "Mira un arbre i veuràs fulles, i les fulles cauen a la tardor, cauen a terra. T'has preguntat mai per què? Hi ha una substància química que entra a l'arbre. La mateixa química que tens a la cara, que et dóna color a la cara, la mateixa química que hi ha a l'arbre, la mateixa estructura".

“The leaf lands on the earth. The earth is brown, different colors, same as our faces. A compound in the leaf is humic acid and it's a big molecule. Part of that is fulvic acid and it can do an extraordinary thing. It can pick up iron from the ground, it's a chelating agent.”

En termes generals, la terra és rica en ferro i el mar és pobre en ferro. I l'aigua flueix des de la terra cap a rierols, llacs, rius, oceans, i porta el ferro soluble en aigua al mar. Hi ha boscos de tota mena d'algues al mar. A Califòrnia, teniu un sistema extraordinari. El ferro va al mar i així és com s'obtenen algues al mar, boscos al mar; són els microelements que són les bases de l'alimentació fora de la vostra porta, on les grans balenes vénen a menjar. El ferro entra i tot és a l'aigua, però quan arriba la nit, hi ha un interruptor a l'oceà. La nit significa que no hi ha llum a l'oceà, i la foscor inicia un enzim que absorbeix l'àcid fúlvic i el ferro, i comença a formar proteïnes. Quan teniu molta proteïna, totes les ordres que rebeu (divisió, reproducció, multiplicació, i aquesta és la base de l'alimentació de l'oceà), la base dels peixos, mamífers, ocells, tot a l'oceà. I prové de la terra! Quan teniu pobresa, sequera, manca de terra, aleshores teniu pobresa als mars. There are the threads of simplicity I'm pulling for you right in front of your own eyes.”

On her books, the bioplan and a WHO-sponsored publication on trees and forest therapy: “My books are peer reviewed and that's my way of getting my work into the public hands. Those books are important for you to have in your hands.”

“In California, you have the best trees there. One tree gets planted -- one native tree per person in a household, for the next 6 years and we'll run the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere from 400 ppm to down into the 300s. And that buys us time. (It) stops all the anxiety over the weather patterns, re-glues the ice, makes potable waters. It will recheck the planet back into reality.”

«Sortiu al bosc i feu banys de bosc. Això està demostrat amb la sang (estudis amb mostres de sang) i us dóna protecció durant un mes (contra el càncer). No sabíem que fos així. Ho han demostrat estudis de núvols, estudis de cambres de núvols i sota els auspicis de l'Organització Mundial de la Salut. Jo mateix he fet molta recerca sobre el càncer i estic realment interessat en això, i si puc evitar que una persona tingui càncer, aquest llibre hauria valgut la pena.»

Diana's suggestion is for reading her books, listening to her lectures or attending her classes, and watching her documentary, 'Call of the Forest'. She says, "It's like listening to Mendelssohn or Liszt. Take it in slow doses!"