Movement IV ·all thirty-three

The Three Trees

The room you just walked is one tree. There are two more, and they grow the other ways.

A TuesdayThe afternoon you realise that letting something go was also a way of growing.

↓ Three trees, three directions

There are two more, and they grow the other ways.

Three trees, three directions

Rising, radiating, dissolving — and a fourth, the Tree of Life, holding all three.

Three directions, and a fourth

Consciousness moves, and every movement has a direction. Three directions have names here, and each one, walked, is a tree: up is the Soul Tree, rising through stillness; out is the Bindu Tree, radiating through movement; in is the Maya Tree, dissolving through recognition. A fourth holds them — the Tree of Life. It isn't a fourth direction; it's the dimension the three sit in. None of it was drawn first and filled in after: the trees were noticed one at a time, as the field showed them.

The Soul Tree · rising

directionUp — ascending.
reached throughStillness: not an absence of movement, but the quiet in which fine movement becomes visible.
what it doesInner development.
its chakrasThe seven energy chakras, vertebrae 2 to 8: the centres the Sanskrit and Tantric tradition mapped along the spine, root to crown.
its teachingThe ground was always holding you. The crown opens because the walker gets quiet enough to notice it was never closed.
complete in itselfMany traditions stop at the crown, and that isn't failure: it's this tree being whole.
what it leaves unvisitedThe body, the relations, the constructions, the game. Shadow, at vertebra 9, is where an honest Soul Tree opens past itself.

Its seven, root to crown

The Bindu Tree · radiating

directionOut — radiating from the point.
reached throughMovement: not exercise but activation, each surface waking when the body moves in its own way.
what it doesCreating reality — embodying.
its chakrasThe ten body chakras, vertebrae 10 to 19, each at a surface of the body rather than a point on the spine.
its teachingEvery surface was already here. The body was never a vessel holding consciousness; it is consciousness at the radiating register.
why “Bindu”The bindu is the point at the centre of the Sri Yantra, in the Sri Vidya tradition — the point every enclosure radiates from. The body chakras are its expressions in the body; the Bindu has no body chakra of its own. It is what they radiate from.

Its ten

The Maya Tree · dissolving

directionIn — dissolving.
reached throughRecognition: visualising, then seeing, then dissolving — the mind's own register, the one that works behind closed eyes.
what it doesReleasing illusion.
its chakrasThe nine mind chakras, vertebrae 21 to 29, in three triads: Creation generates, Recognition sees what was generated, and Emergence is what survives the dissolving.
its teachingThe knowing was there before the seeing. Each mind chakra dissolves a belief about what needs effort, permission or evidence.
why “Maya”In the Sanskrit tradition māyā is illusion — here, the illusion that the constructions are real. Maya isn't removed. It's seen through: the board turns transparent, and what looked solid shows itself as carefully built.
its thresholdMaya, at vertebra 30, closes the tree: “There was never anything to fear. There was only the Bindu, playing.”

Its nine, in three triads

The Tree of Life · holding

directionIt has none. It is: not a direction but a dimension that holds directions.
reached throughRecognition.
what it doesHolds the other three in relation: the ground that makes walking them possible.
its chakrasThe seven structural chakras — vertebrae 1, 9, 20, 30, 31, 32 and 33.

Its seven

One chakra in two places

The Axis is a body chakra — the blink, at vertebra 18 in the Bindu Tree — and it is also the gateway between the trees, threaded through the whole walk. It's the one chakra that is both located and structural.

Why four, not three

The three trees are what is walked; the Tree of Life is what holds the walking. Without its structural chakras there would be no thresholds between the trees, no gateway holding the space for a crossing, no place where the three are seen as one walk, and no last recognition that all of it is play. The three grow out of the Tree of Life, and it holds the seed of all three.

In any order

The trees don't compete, and each needs the others: the Soul Tree alone ascends alone, the Bindu Tree alone radiates alone, the Maya Tree alone dissolves alone. The Practice Book walks them in one order, made for a first walk — one honest route, not the only one. Meeting the Maya Tree before the Bindu Tree isn't walking it wrong; it's the order that walk needed.

Whose map this is

The seven centres of the Soul Tree are inherited: they are the Sanskrit and Tantric tradition's own. The Bindu Tree, the Maya Tree and the fourth are this site's own rendering. Other traditions draw related but different maps — Kabbalah's single Tree of Life with ten sefirot, the Norse Yggdrasil holding nine worlds on one tree, the Sanskrit seven with no trees at all. Those are resonances, not the same map.

The Sri Yantra, read two ways

The Sri Yantra's nine enclosures are read two ways here, and both are kept: the tradition's, as the Bindu Mandala tells it from Sri Vidya — one enclosure for each of the seven centres, root to crown, counted from the outside in, the reading the Tree of Life's nine cloth panels follow — and this site's own, by register: the energy chakras across the outer three enclosures, the body chakras across the next three, and the mind chakras together in the eight triangles.

this world stands atall thirty-three
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one of 48 worlds in a i strange game