The gusty breeze whips through the trees around me. I brush my hand over the hardy herbs who’ve managed to weather the winter and I take in the pungent aroma of the rosemary and sage. It feels good to breathe in and smell them after a week away exploring the southern Cape coast.

Overhead a small folk of mouse birds dart across the quiet afternoon sky. Somewhere around me I hear wild whispers.

 “Breathe deep and proud breaths,” they say. “You have a right to be here.”

It must have been the cedar. Perhaps I am getting better at listening to the wisdom soaked wild whispers that he offers.

For several months now, the cedar’s essence has drifted in and out of my awareness.  On the surface, he appears young and short. But something tells me that beneath the soil, his old and wise roots grow deeper than he lets on. If you look closely, you’ll see that he must have been cut down at some stage. Yet, resilient as ever, still he grows. Most trees carry their stories in their wooded trunks, their rings scribed like pages in a memoir. This cedar’s wisdom and stories are buried beneath the earth’s soils in its knotty roots.

Sitting near the cedar makes me think about how we can be at times. We play small. We feel inferior and unworthy, yet beneath the surface lies a wealth of spirit, love and wisdom. The cedar’s essence reminds me look at myself through my spiritual eyes because they see the true nature and magnitude of who I am, who each of us are.  The cedar reminds me to reach into the space beyond fear and illusion to touch the real essence of life – the love, truth and magic that the small-minded ego often disguises in a cloak of negativity, harshness or limitation. When he was cut down (I assume this was probably when my place was being built) I doubt he ever felt  that he’d no right to exist in this space the way I do when I feel cut or rejected sometimes. No, he just continued to breathe and grow. So, I take this cedar wisdom into my heart, mindfully, because it teaches me how to own my space a bit more and let myself breathe in life and spirit fully, remembering that I have a place in this world.

These are the small moments in my day that patch the broken pieces of my being back together, the moments that direct me back to wholeness so that I learn to see that I was never really broken at all. The mysterious force that lies within remains whole even when one has been wounded by life.

Sometimes I just need little nudges and wild whispers to remember that.

What reminds you of your own wholeness? What teaches you to breathe deeper and reminds you of your place in the world? What helps you feel that you have a right to be here?

Lean into that for it will guide you back to wholeness.