A Lesson in Listening: Wisdom from a Willow Tree

A few days ago I went on a walk near my home. There is a cemetery a few blocks behind my house, and sometimes I will go and walk around it because it is peaceful and quiet. Last night I took a normal route that I usually take, and when I got to the other end of the cemetery, I found a bench to sit on for a moment and rest.

I am still recovering from a brain injury and concussion, and I am trying to be more gentle with myself and give myself permission to take life more slowly. In a strange way, slowing down has also caused me to notice things I may have walked right past before.

As I sat on the bench, I found myself allowing myself to become one with everything around me. I noticed the sounds, the very faint breeze moving through the humid hot air, the dark clouds that appeared to be coming over the horizon, and the willow tree that sat directly to my left.

Something in me was drawn to this tree.

I've attempted to talk to trees before, but I will admit, I'm not sure I ever truly talked to them like I did in this moment. For the first time, instead of trying to hear the voice of nature around me, I listened.

Really listened.

And a beautiful thing happened.

I asked the willow tree what its name was. She came through as feminine, and I found myself going through names in my head, attempting to figure out which name she was telling me. Then suddenly I realized I was once again going into that forceful energy of attempting to control the reality around me.

So I stopped.

I apologized for not really listening and asked again, What is your name?

This time I asked more gently and remained open to listening instead of trying so hard to hear.

In a loving, kind energy, I heard telepathically, My name is Rebecca.

She shared with me that she had been named after a lovely human as a memorial, but they had never gotten around to putting up the plaque in remembrance of this person. Rebecca didn't seem upset about that. She still held the joy and honor of carrying the energetic memory of this human's name.

I said to the willow tree, Nice to meet you, Rebecca. I am Angie.

I then asked Rebecca how old she was and how long she had been at this location. She said to me, I've been here between two and three years, and I am about six years old.

I told Rebecca how beautiful she was with her long, flowing branches and leaves, and she thanked me. Then I asked her to share something about herself with me.

A very small breeze came through right when I said this. I took notice of it, and she did too.

She said, I love the breeze coming through my limbs. It brings me comfort, and I like the feeling of it flowing through my long flowing branches. 

I agreed with her and told her that I enjoyed the breeze too as I closed my eyes and imaged being a willow tree with the breeze flowing through my long beautiful branches and leaves. 

Then she said to me, But sometimes when the wind is really harsh, it hurts. I don't like that too much.

I told her I could imagine it was hard, and she then said to me; all trees feel this way. We don't mind the wind so much, but we have to hold on more tightly to our roots when storms come with winds that can cause us damage.

As she told me this, I got a visual in my head of the tree's roots gripping more tightly into the earth during a storm in order to stay grounded.

I remember thinking, what beautiful teachers trees are.

There was something about that message that felt particularly meaningful to me in this season of my life. The tree didn't tell me that storms weren't difficult. She didn't tell me that the wind couldn't hurt her. She simply showed me that when the storm becomes stronger, her response is to hold more tightly to what keeps her grounded.

I then mentioned to Rebecca that she lived in a cemetery and that I bet she saw a lot of interesting things.

She said yes, but there wasn't really any emotional attachment to it like a human might have. She simply told me, There are a lot of people who come and go from here. Lots of cars come in and out. Sometimes there are funerals, and sometimes there is just a single car with one human.

I told her, Yes, I can see that you would see a lot that happening from here.

Then she said something I wasn't expecting.

I also see a lot of spirits.

With that, my ears perked up a bit more.

So I asked her to tell me more!! 

Rebecca began to give me visuals in my mind. I saw cars coming and going, people getting out and standing beside graves, and funerals with people gathered around crying or watching from a distance. I could feel the mixed emotions within these scenes—grief, sometimes thankfulness and gratitude, and other times deep sadness. As I watched these visions unfolding in my mind, I began to hear Rebecca share what it was like from her perspective to witness all of this.

She said to me:

Sometimes spirits come and watch their own funeral, and after they leave, they go back to what we call the light, or Source. Sometimes you call this God. You humans call this Heaven. These spirits simply move on and watch their loved ones from a higher dimension and form. They are free.

But there are other spirits that linger or stay. Sometimes I see them upset that they are not in their body anymore, and they want to get back into it. Some of them are upset that they are no longer alive, and some don't even know they aren't in a body anymore or are dead. They may attempt to get the attention of their loved ones or friends, and when they notice that their family or friends can't hear them, they can attach their energy to one of them in an attempt to get their attention and go home with them.

I think this is what you humans might call a haunting.

She continued:

It is not a scary thing. It is simply a spirit that wasn't ready to leave. Maybe they had something they wanted to say. Maybe they felt their life wasn't complete, or maybe they are scared to move into the light because they were taught there was something harsh or a judgment waiting for them, so they want to avoid it.

Really, there is no judgment for that spirit, but they don't know that because they are still thinking as their human self. So those spirits who go home with their friends or family may stick around for a while until someone helps them pass into the light, or until a guide or loved one in the spirit realm comes and helps them.

Then Rebecca said, Other times, a spirit will linger around the cemetery for a while. Sometimes many years.

I asked her what she meant by linger.

She explained:

These spirits don't like that they are dead, or they don't know that they are dead, so they stay in the cemetery. Instead of attaching to a family member or friend and going home with them, they keep trying to get back into their body. When they realize they can't get back into their body, they may look around the cemetery for another body they can get into. Once they realize they can't do that either, they begin looking for something that can take them back to their lives prior to their death.

They may see a person come into the cemetery, such as yourself, she said, referring to me walking around the cemetery, or someone who has come to visit another loved one's gravesite, and they may go home with them.

She then shared something I thought was important:

About 99% of the time, these are not scary spirits that want to cause harm. They are simply lost, confused, or unsure what to do. They do have guides and support from the light attempting to help them, but if they feel particularly attached to their human life and experience, they won't listen to them. Just like a human can block out the voice of Spirit, so can spirits. Free will doesn't end when you leave the body.

As I listened to Rebecca, I realized that I already knew many of these things about spirits through my own experiences. In the years I have worked with spirits, I've had many share things with me about staying here and wanting help getting back to the light. Some of the spirits I have worked with have been young children who didn't want to leave their parents. Others have been elderly people who carried regrets or things they wanted to make right before they left. There are even some spirits who are afraid of judgment because they were taught, through religious beliefs, that a harsh God is waiting to judge them and possibly send them to a place of torment. Because they still carry those beliefs with them, they may become afraid of what is waiting on the other side and attempt to avoid going into the light altogether.

I can usually talk to these spirits and help them understand that they can actually help their loved ones and communicate with them more clearly once they transition into the light. I explain that people like me are here on Earth who can help their loved ones receive those messages. Once they understand that they aren't abandoning the people they love by moving on, they will usually go into the light with ease and peace.

What I had never really understood was how some of this happened in the first place.

I knew that a spirit might remain around a hospital or the location where their death occurred, especially if they were confused about what had happened. But hearing it from Rebecca's perspective made me realize why a cemetery could be another place where this happens. If a spirit is still attached to its body, still thinking from the perspective of its human self, or still trying to understand what has happened, it made complete sense to me that it might follow its body to its final resting place and remain there for some time.

Sitting there with that willow tree, listening to all of this unfold, something clicked into place for me. Rebecca wasn't necessarily telling me things that were completely outside of what I had experienced in my years of working with Spirit. Instead, she was showing me another piece of it, a perspective I had never considered before.

It gave me more clarity around what a soul may experience during that transition and helped me understand something I had witnessed many times without fully understanding how it began. It also helps me understand my purpose and work more clearly. 

I then asked Rebecca how many souls, from her perspective, seem to linger in the cemetery or go home with their family members rather than moving into the light.

She shared with me, Only about 6–10% of the souls I see in this cemetery do that. So maybe once or twice a year at the most. But really, it can happen to any soul if they choose.

Hearing these things from Rebecca gave me a deeper understanding and more clarity about how we interact with one another, both while we are in the human body and after we leave it. There was something about hearing it from the perspective of a tree who simply stands and observes these experiences that helped me understand things I had already experienced in my own work with Spirit in a completely different way.

I got so excited about the messages she had shared with me that I immediately wanted to go home and share them with others. Without even thinking, I got up from the bench and started walking home.

I had made it about twenty feet away when I suddenly realized, Wait. I didn't even say goodbye or thank her.

So I sent a message back to her telepathically, thanking her for everything she had shared with me and telling her I would be back.

She laughed and simply said, Of course.

There was compassion in her response, almost as if she understood my excitement and wasn't the least bit offended that I had gotten up and walked away without saying goodbye. In that moment, I knew this was probably only the beginning of my friendship with Rebecca and that she would likely have many more things to teach me.

But something amazing happened as I continued walking home.

As I walked beneath all of the trees lining the road, I began to commune with them too. I started noticing them in a way I hadn't when I first walked into the cemetery, and as I noticed them, I began talking to them. I could feel their love and their excitement at simply being noticed.

What I understood from them was that many trees don't ever have a conversation with a human, and they love those moments when a human stops long enough to actually notice them.

So as I continued walking, I asked the trees around me if they had a lesson I could carry with me on my way home.

By this point I was hot and sweaty, and in my opinion, I wasn't looking particularly pleasant or put together. I had already started thinking about sharing my experience with Rebecca in a video, but then another thought came into my mind: I'll share this story in a video, but I want to look better when I do it because I don't necessarily like how I look right now.

Almost as soon as I had the thought, I heard a tree beside me ask:

What makes something beautiful?

That question stopped me.

The tree began to explain to me how harsh the human mind can become toward life and toward ourselves. We begin judging everything according to standards we have been taught since childhood, what is good and what is bad, what is beautiful and what is ugly, what has value and what doesn't.

The trees began reminding me of something about myself that I hadn't really thought about before. I love the trees that seem to have a little more "experience" to them. I'm drawn to the ones with missing limbs, maybe a few sores or scars on their trunks, the ones that grew in unusual ways, and the ones that look different and unique.

I don't look at those trees and think there is something wrong with them. If anything, those are often the trees I find the most interesting and beautiful.

Just as I was thinking this, I walked past a tree that you might consider to be a "perfect" tree. It stood straight, with a beautiful rounded top, almost as though it represented the standard of what a tree is supposed to look like.

And I heard that tree say to me:

See, you see me as perfect, but you also see the beauty in the trees that don't look like me.

Then it continued:

If you stopped looking at the things around you as beautiful or not beautiful, you would see more of God's frequency around you. You would become less judgmental of yourself and less judgmental of the world around you.

That is the love you are seeking to find.

That is the love that is already within you.

As I continued walking home, I realized how quickly the lesson had turned back toward me. Only moments earlier, I had been thinking that I needed to change something about myself before I was worthy of getting in front of a camera and sharing what I had experienced. I needed to look better. I needed to be more put together. I needed to fit some standard I had learned somewhere along the way about what was acceptable or beautiful enough to be seen.

Yet I would never walk through the forest and ask a tree to hide because one of its limbs was missing. I wouldn't look at the scars in its bark and think it should wait until they disappeared before allowing someone to photograph it. I wouldn't ask the crooked tree to straighten itself or tell the old tree that the evidence of everything it had survived made it less beautiful.

I would simply see the tree.

Maybe there is something for us to learn in that.

Maybe seeing God in everything requires us to loosen our attachment to the labels we have placed on everything. Beautiful. Ugly. Good. Bad. Perfect. Imperfect. Valuable. Worthless.

Maybe when we stop trying so hard to decide what everything should be, we finally become quiet enough to experience what it already is.

And maybe that is part of what the trees had been trying to show me all along.