Anna lives in the Cotswolds in England and since the pandemic has found herself actively involved in local community projects – with the community café and community vegetable growing, joyfully trying to integrate everything experienced and learnt through Heartfulness into community living.

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Anna Pearse.jpg

Anna Pearse

<h4>ANNA PEARSE tells a beautiful story about the healing properties of trees, and encourages us all to find our relationships with the natural world that will bring us back to being in tune with Nature.</h4>
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” 
a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, 
his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest 
– a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. 
The delusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our 
personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. 
Our task is to free ourselves from this prison 
by widening our circle of compassion to embrace 
all living creatures and the whole Nature in its beauty.
– Albert Einstein
Sometimes it requires our extreme vulnerability to feel our oneness with the universe. Desperation can serve to open the doors of perception. Nature is always there, all around us, but our normal way is to isolate ourselves within our individuality rather than feeling that we are part of something much greater, beyond our understanding, which we can only wonder at. But she is always there – as this simple story about a human being, imprisoned by their thoughts, shows.
She had been signed off work with stress, and now here she was on this dismal autumn day walking through the park, unable to see her way forward. Her thinking was circular, repetitive, bringing her back each time to that same feeling of hopelessness and weakness. She felt she was being exploited at her work, but that no one in her work place wanted to know. They just wanted her to get on with it. And maybe it was true what her manager had said to her – that she just wasn’t up to it. And she couldn’t face that judgment. Who could she talk to? There was no one who understood, no one who had the patience to listen.
Her pace slowed as she walked off the path and onto the grass, already feeling some comfort there from the softness of the earth and the smell of damp earth. Here was a tree and she was walking towards it. Slowing right down, she noticed a large bump in the trunk around which the bark had grown, and it was just the right height to sit on. She sat and leaned her back against the rough bark. It felt right and natural to sit like that, with the back of her head also in contact with the bark.
After a while she realized that time was passing, and she felt no need to move on. Her thoughts seemed to have lost their weight and heaviness in the presence of this simple comfort. She could feel within her back the life force of the tree and something within her back was answering it. She was rooted, too, and taking her strength from the Earth, which was always there, sustaining all life. There was an energy within her flowing upwards like there was at the core of the tree. It was bringing nutrients and knowledge up from the dark Earth into the sky. The strength of this resonance calmed her at a deep level where there were no words.
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<h5 style="text-align: center;">There is a seed of wisdom 
planted within her that 
this is a general lesson about all of 
Nature and our part within it.</h5>
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After some time (who knows how long), she got up. She walked away from the tree feeling like a living being. Everything had changed! The colors around her had resumed their brightness. She had the strength to go on. A door had been opened within her that would be opened again and again. And eventually would stay open. She would always remember this day with reverence.
Years have passed. From time to time she goes back to visit the tree, takes others with her and tells them the story. They stroll around it, touch it, take photos, picnic around it. One time she went with love in her heart, and was shocked to the core at what she saw. All the branches had been cut back to the trunk and were lying round it. She felt pain for the tree, and then this was immediately followed by the thought that it meant she also would die soon.
But the tree was not dead. It had received drastic intervention to save its life by those who care for this park and the trees in it. There was a big lesson for her in that too. And the following spring she saw it with all its bright green leaves growing close to its bark.
She has formed a strong bond with this particular tree, which over the years has taught her so much. Although she focuses her affection on this specific tree, there is a seed of wisdom planted within her that this is a general lesson about all of Nature and our part within it.
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by ANNA PEARSE</h4>
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The tree

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 <h4>
 ANNA PEARSE not only learns to deal
 with anger but also discovers the art of using it as a tool for
 self-development.
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 Integration has been an important word to me lately. How to use what we
 gain through meditation to affect the changes that are needed for us to
 become fully human? I would like to share what seems like a very
 elementary step in my evolution as a human being, but very real and
 radical to me nonetheless.
 
 
 I had been experiencing a wonderful stillness in meditation and had been
 giving myself the time after meditation to really savor this feeling and
 integrate it into my body and mind, using writing as an aid in this
 process. I carried this stillness into my days. It was the darkest time of
 the year and the stillness within seemed to be in tune with the stillness
 of nature.
 
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 <img
 alt="simply_elemental2"
 class="has-img-center lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/simply_elemental2_0661cb28bb.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-03T04:02:25.235Z"
 />
 
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 One evening, however, I was on the phone with a member of my family and I
 suddenly found myself in the grips of anger. It was triggered by a message
 she passed on to me from another member of my family. First of all
 disappointment rose to the surface, and then anger. It felt as though
 anger had taken possession of my body and mind and there was no room for
 anything else.
 
 
 I started to express my anger on the phone and slowly realized that this
 wasn’t the way to deal with it. I had to use it to move myself on without
 entangling anybody else in it.
 
 
 What followed was 12 hours of fire raging through me. I recognized early
 on my habitual reactions: “I shouldn’t be feeling like this after so many
 years of meditation …” followed by lengthy selfjustification. And still
 the fire raged.
 
 
 At some stage in the process there was an understanding that this is fire,
 and then a linking of this to the Heartfulness teaching – only recently
 grasped – that the elements of earth, ether, fire, water and air are all
 contained within the Heart Region. As part of our inner journey in
 this&nbsp; life we need to experience them and work with them in order to
 master them and move on in our development. I remembered also that anger
 can be a pure emotion showing us what needs to change and that it can play
 a purifying role in our development when it is not be directed towards
 another person.
 
 
 Somehow these simple tools allowed me to work through this patiently,
 giving it time. Feeling the elemental nature of the process was a
 wonderful thing. Fire! It was a natural force within that could be
 utilized! So I felt it, saw it and observed it, without judgment.
 
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 <h4 style="text-align: center">
 Somehow these simple tools allowed me to work 
 
 through this patiently, giving it time. Feeling the 
 
 elemental nature of the process was a wonderful 
 
 thing. Fire! It was a natural force within that 
 
 could be utilized! So I felt it, saw it and observed 
 it, without judgment.
 </h4>
 
 <hr />
 
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 I recognized that in the past anger had triggered a circular process that
 led nowhere. “I shouldn’t be feeling this way” unleashed all sorts of
 complexities including self-justification, sorrows from the past,
 resentment. And then it would arrive back at, “But I shouldn’t be feeling
 this way. …” I was also aware when the cold and distancing emotion of
 resentment tried to assert itself that it was healthier to stay in the
 heat of the fire. Before sleep I tried to clean myself using the
 Heartfulness method, but it wasn’t finished yet. I fell asleep finally and
 woke after a few hours. It was still there so I continued to allow it to
 run its course, using writing as a tool to express it and to help it keep
 moving on. A part of the anger was that I felt I had never been allowed to
 express myself fully. So writing was a good tool.
 
 
 Slowly I realized that the fire was passing; it had run its course. And
 what was left? Love. Love for myself and for my sister – the two
 protagonists in this human drama. And love for those who&nbsp; have given
 me these tools to clean, soften and nourish the heart and then to apply
 the understanding with love to affect real and lasting change, which will
 enable me eventually to be all that I can be.
 
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 <hr />
 
 <h4 style="text-align: center">Article by ANNA PEARSE</h4>
 
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