THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL

I BEGIN MY TREE JOURNAL IN JULY because that is where I was, in that particular year when I felt ready to write some sort of a memoir; some sort of a creative retelling of my story, in stories, rather than in a single chronological narrative. I had already done that in my autobiography DAWNING… But I knew there was more I could write, and in another vein altogether. I was discovering that the outer form of things could be dropped. What was happening on the outside being surpassed by the ever expanding insides of those things. I was also discovering, to my delight that one’s inside life was more readily expressed, in short bursts, in picture language and visions, in parallels and allegory, and that this could ‘go further,’ shed more light, and gain more for the writer and reader of insight and wisdom than could be found in continuous straight-forward describings, such as one finds in normal autobiographies.

  But this book doesn’t fit too easily into any category which could be classified as ‘normal.’

  It is not a real journal; yet it is. It is not a book of short stories; and yet it is. It is not strictly autobiographical; but it is. Neither is it a work of fiction; but it is; and it isn’t. It is curious, but somehow inner truth is more versatile than its outer variety and can move across all boundaries known to man or woman; for as I am sure you have experienced yourself, or have heard before: insides is bigger than outsides.

  Over time I have come to see that the dividing line between Art and Life becomes indistinct at the interface of abandon. Out of inner surrender, light is creatively diffused through truth upon another plane where the revelation of the self is expressed in spirit alone. All my stories are true by perception in a heavenly realm. They happened as they were happening inside me, invisibly, as I wrote; or, they were happening in the outside world all around – about me – and this piercing but joyous insight I recorded later, when I got home; (recording even to the very centre of that word home: for I had been found in and through the pages of my light tree journal  . . .    . . .

                             Continued/