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How A Tree That Killed My Friend Changed My Life Forever

October 21, 2005 on 5:35 am | In Abundance | 1 Comment

I have a good friend who’s name is Allan.

If you were to meet Allan, you’d probably think he was different, or a lot more “odd” than most people. I certainly did when I first met him… I didn’t know exactly why…sometimes you just meet someone and right away you get different vibes from them, and you know in that very moment this person doesn’t quite fit the social norm of what people are used to.

Imagine meeting a guy with a big muscular build, piercing dark brown eyes, and long brown hair down to his shoulders…to add to it…his face resembles that of a native indian war-chief contemplating the next moves of some far away battle, or perhaps thinking nothing at all, just being there completely thoughtless in stillness.

In any case, there is always a fierce but gentle look in Allan’s dark eyes, and he doesn’t really talk much.

When I first met him, I found communicating with him extremely difficult…Because he used a lot of different words than normal people do, and really didn’t talk about the things that people usually do to cover up the deeper insanity in their lives that they don’t want you to see…

Instead of talking about the weather, making distant future plans, or talking about some random things, the conversations were always a lot more real and deep – without all the filler talk.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who, even though he or she looks like they’re listening to you…you know they’re actually gone? Completely not there? As if you were talking to a wall or an empty shell.

Most people hear, but they don’t really listen.

Talking with Allan is always the complete opposite of that. He was always completely there. Always present. He also made sure that you were present.

One day when I was just getting to know him he asked me “How are you feeling?”

My initial reaction was. “Oh, I’m doing good.”

At this he tapped me on the shoulder and asked… “No… I asked… how are you feeling… not doing.”

I was puzzled at first… Then realized the truth of that later. Most of us are so busy doing and making a living that we don’t stop and actually make a life…we don’t stop to be and feel for a change instead of the constant ‘doingness’ of what we’ve made of day to day living.
Those were the kinds of lessons I learned from Allan…

Since I’ve met him, I’ve learned a lot of things from Allan. All of them indirectly. He never made it a point that he was teaching anyone something, it always usually happened “matter of factly”, all through different kinds of experiences.

One of these lessons profoundly affected me and my life, and I want to share it with you today.

It’s really quite a funny story. Let me begin…

At one point, Allan and I talked a lot about exploring the “inner child” – The part of you that wants to play, explore, and be creative. For most people, this part of them becomes very dim and repressed usually not long after they enter their teens.

We made the commitment of meeting once a week, to simply have fun – and do what we would do if we were 6 or 9 years old …. Not the boring adult crap that most of us do, like making money, worrying about taxes, bills, the latest story on CNN or “what’s going to happen tomorrow”

(By the way – if you want to add a lot more color into your life, I strongly recommend you try this for at least 3 weeks, you won’t believe what will happen when you let your ‘inner-child’ come out and play)

… One “inner-child” hobby we took up, was climbing trees. Because that’s what we both did when we were kids.

Not just ordinary trees…we would find the tallest, largest, most challenging tree to climb. Some up to 50 or 60 feet high.

I live in Vancouver, Canada, an area which was once a rain-forest hundreds of years ago, so there’s a lot of nice tall trees here.

I remember when we climbed our first huge tree together… It was a thrilling experience.

There I was, climbing up this tree, that a 9 year old would tackle in 3 minutes… Yet, I was terrified… my adult mind was going off the deep end…

“YOU’RE GOING TO DIE!”

“What are you doing, you’re married, you have responsibilities, dying isn’t an option for you right now!”

“You can’t DIE today…die tomorrow, now’s not the time. Tomorrow will be more convenient for you.”

Anyhow, by using my will power, I got to the top, to the thinnest branches that were cracking under my feet, moments from breaking as the tree top swung from side to side in the wind.

When I looked down, the feeling of fear and vertigo combined was such a thrill I could only compare it now to the feeling of having sex for the first time… It’s very exciting, you really have no idea what you’re doing all the way to the end, and when it’s over you don’t know if you’re dead or alive. 

I didn’t die that day. As you can imagine.

Allan and I soon became very adverse tree climbers.

Every week, we’d get together just to look for the tallest tree we could possibly find, and climb it. Sometimes, when we’d get to the top we’d stay up there for hours…sometimes we talked about life, people, reality…other times we’d just stay up there and stay silent. The world looks a lot different from above, especially from a tree.

Then one day… Allan and I had an experience with a tree that profoundly changed me forever.

(I’m giggling as I write this…it sounds so awkward to the thinking mind…’experience with a tree’)

We found a really tall tree about 60 feet high…Imagine two buses stacked on top of each other vertically…that’s how high it was.

There was something different about this tree.

First, it was a pine tree.

Now, if you’ve ever been around pine trees, they have a couple qualities to them when you climb them.

1. They smell like air-refresher spray.

2. They have many, many, branches. If there is a human being climbing one of these trees you can’t see them from outside the tree through all the branches and all the needles.

3. They have sharp needles(ouch)

4. A lot of times, they have large residue of tree sap that comes out of the tree. This stuff is extremely sticky and you get it all over your body by the time you get to the top

5. They have many bugs and creepy crawlers living inside of them….

This tree was even more interesting than that…why?

Because it wasn’t ONE tree, the tree split into two parts, like a fork…so much so, that from afar, it looked like two different trees. Both tree tops came to an end almost precisely at the same height, and were about 12 feet away from each other.

I want you to really imagine how far apart these two tree tops were – because it’s really important.

Find an average sized room in your house… like a small bedroom preferably…not the living room. Stand in one corner of the room, and look to the other corner. That’s where the other tree top would be.

Now, if you don’t want to do that right now, just see it in your head.

… We began climbing the tree, Allan went first.

Right away, we noticed a swarm of red ants crawling all over the base of the tree. At first this was a little turn off to me, as I’m not too fond of getting bitten by ants. Before I had a chance to protest, Allan was already making his way up the first few branches.

So I followed…

Mind you, by now we were pretty good tree climbers… I even brought along a 20 foot climbing rope with me(which was actually a dog leash left over from a dog my Wife insisted we took foster care of for a week a month ago) I really didn’t need the rope, but it made me feel more like Indiana Jones…so I brought it with me…

We decided to take the tree to the right of the fork where this tree split… Allan above me a few branches, and I below him, we began to climb through the thick, sticky, and extremely sharp branches.

A couple of times a few spiders fell on my head – I shook them off with my hand being careful not to react in a spasm of disgust as I might have lost grip on the branch I was hanging onto and fallen to my death.

It took about 5 minutes to get half way up the tree… when something happened to me, for the first time ever in my tree climbing expeditions…

I was trying to lift myself onto the next branch, when the branch I was stepping on cracked…and broke.

I instantly lost my footing, adrenaline shot into my veins as I felt my body began to fall…

“Focus on what you want!”, I heard the voice of one of my spiritual teachers in my head.

Somewhere in that split second I remember smiling and grabbing onto something…

There I was a moment later, completely safe, hanging onto another branch slightly below.

I stayed there for a few moments to catch my breath… and continued to climb. By now, Allan was way ahead of me and I couldn’t even see him through the branches, the only way I could tell he was still on the same tree I was, were the little particles of branches and needles that occasionally fell on my head from the collateral damage his 180 pound body was doing to the branches he was using for support…

Normally when I climb a tree – It’s extremely exciting and fun… This time, because of my little mishap at that branch, my mind was beginning to cloud with fearful thoughts and images. I could vividly see my body falling through the branches rapidly as all my limbs were being cut up by the sharp branches…blood spewing everywhere…

And then…

7 minutes later,…we were at the top…and my mind stopped.

The view was breath-taking.

We could see the whole park…and miles and miles of trees and homes, all the way out into the setting sun in the west…where the sun usually meets the mountain horizon on Victoria island.

We could even see the Vancouver international airport all the way out in Richmond.

We sat there on that tree….Allan, a few branches above me, and I below him. We were completely in peace, in silence…

Then, we noticed the tree trop of the other tree 15 feet away.

“Hey… wouldn’t it be cool if we could hop over to the other tree from this one? We’d be like flying squirrels…,” I said, rather jokingly.

Now - I had no intention of jumping from one tree to another 60 feet off the ground, when the tree is farther away than I could jump on the ground without at least running first to get some momentum…

…That would be insanity.

…In fact, I knew anyone who would try that would probably be totally ‘out of their mind’.

… Just imagine looking straight down 60 feet, with nothing between you and the ground but thin sharp branches and needles all the way to your death…

The thing about Allan is… he usually takes things quite seriously…

“Okay!” he replied.

Quickly he began to shake the tree we were on from side to side, until the tree top was bending almost until the point of snapping like a toothpick under too much pressure.

“Oh my lord… I guess this is one of those rare moments where I get to experience someone kill themselves right in-front of my eyes” I thought to myself.

The tree was shaking so much, that I began to hang on for dear life as I watched this man try to jump to the next tree…

As the tree swung from side to side… Allan let go of the tree we were on. (Keep in mind this is still 60 feet of the ground, and we’re standing on branches that are as thin as a fire-poker or the handle of a wooden cooking spoon. (I don’t know where I get these types of visual analogies…)

He literally let go of the tree we were on with both of his hands… the only thing keeping him on this tree was the tip of his toes which were rested on a little tiny branch which was surely about to crack and send his body plummeting down the ground.

As the tree swung closer to the other tree top, Allan extended his body and leaned over to the other tree top…and grabbed one of the branches on the other tree.

This looked totally, completely insane.

He was now stuck in mid air, 60 feet above the ground, his hands holding a thin branch on the other tree…He rotated his foot that was on the other tree, so that it would hook around the tree top…

His body was being stretched in mid air…between two giant trees.

Clearly from the look of it, he couldn’t get on the other tree… In fact, he couldn’t even get back on the tree I was on…It was just physically impossible. He had to either remain in this position until I called a fire truck, or fall to his death.

I looked down and almost had a heart attack.

I remember saying something like… “Come on, let me give you my hand, maybe you can get back on,” my voice trembling in fear for his life.

Then it happened.

In one split second, the tree which I was on snapped away from Allan’s body leaving him with nothing to support himself with. I closed my eyes.

I heard branches cracking…rustling… all that I feared.

After a few moments… I opened my eyes and looked down in search for Allan’s body.

Allan was dead.

“That’s a stupid way to die” I thought…

Then…

I thought my eyes were deceiving me for a moment….

Nope…In fact…there he was…right across from me on the other tree top… perfectly at peace, smiling at me.

I must have been looking in the wrong direction, because I was sure he was dead.

My heart was beating quite fast…but I was overjoyed with relief.

An odd thing happened, it was almost as if I witnessed a miracle. There was a long, quiet moment of peace where we didn’t say anything at all. Allan just looked out towards the air-port and the setting sun…then he said…

“The view is nicer from here…not as many branches in the way…”

Even though Allan didn’t challenge me to do what he just did… for some reason, I felt I had to do it too. My first thought was “No way am I going to do this…”

The funny thing about boys and men is that when they see another guy do a stupid thing they usually want to do it too. 

I thought to myself… “Okay, no sweat Kacper…You’ve walked on fire with Tony Robbins, you’ve done all kinds of ‘breaking through fear’ exercises… you can do this… Let’s go!”

My head was already filled with images of me falling to my death earlier. I climbed a few branches higher to get to the same height Allan was at when he performed this deadly maneuver.

“Okay… how did you do it?” I asked.

“Well… I just kind of swung from side to side… and when I was close enough, I jumped over.”

Simpler said than done.

I looked down… all I saw again was a 60 foot drop full of needles and thin branches.
That’s when the REAL fear began to kick into my body. For a couple minutes, I stayed there paralyzed as the tree gently swung a little in the wind… I still had my ‘Indiana Jones rope’ tied around my shoulder.

“Okay… Let’s ‘try’ it” I mumbled.

I knew all I had to do was swing the tree hard enough with the weight of my body so that the tree top I was on was close enough to the other one, then I could just hop across…and…presto.

…that’s if, the branches underneath me don’t snap…

I began to move my body from side to side, swinging the tree top. Instantly the feeling of vertigo sent a rush of fear and adrenaline through my body… my arms and legs began to tremble as I saw the ground 60 feet underneath me…

“What in the @#$@ am I doing?” I asked myself.

I stopped.

Again, I stayed there paralyzed in fear for about 5 minutes.

I looked at Allan and he was just sitting there, as peaceful as ever…not worried about a thing. Almost as if he expected me to just walk over through mid air to the other tree.

Deepak Chopra’s Indian accent voice came into my head…. “The Universe won’t help you in anything unless you are fully committed to it…”

“Right Deepak… Okay….” I thought.

I realized if I was getting over to the other side through mid air, I had to commit every cell of my body to do it.

So I decided to be committed the next time.

I took a deep breath, and began to swing the tree top again.

Left… right….left….right… closer, closer,… even closer.

It got to the point where I couldn’t swing the tree any closer to the other tree top. Every time I moved towards the other tree top, I was still a good 8 feet away.

Suddenly, I had an idea… what if I grab on to the other branch on the other tree and try to pull the other tree towards me? The next time I got a little closer, I grabbed the other branch.

The tree I was on suddenly stopped swinging… I was now stuck in mid air, with one arm hanging onto one tree’s branch, the other parts of my body hanging on to the tree top I was on.

I looked down, and there was the incredible fear again, I felt a heat rush through my entire body.

I tried pulling the other tree towards me…but it wasn’t very effective… I managed to pull it maybe only a couple inches more towards me. There was still a very large space between, and a 60 foot drop right below me now.

I couldn’t “walk out” on the branch I was standing on… it was only as thick as one of my fingers, and the only reason why it wasn’t breaking was because I was standing right on the joint that connected it to the tree…that’s where branches are the strongest.

“Okay, you can do it! Just JUMP! LET’S GO!” I suddenly had a jolt of energy.

Yes! Yes!

I looked down..

No… no.. no… no… no… no…

…

This went on, I kid you not, for at least half an hour.

I would get close to the tree, grab the other branch, and try to jump across, then my body would literally freeze up, and I’d be paralyzed with fear. This really felt deliberating because I’ve done far crazier things in the past… and this was just a small 15 foot gap…. Why couldn’t I do it?

I tried maybe a dozen different mental tricks to get myself psyched up to jump across… I even tried using my rope to create a bridge between the trees and climb across it like Sylvester Stallone in the movie “Cliff Hanger”…. (as you can imagine, that idea wasn’t the least more comforting than the first one – especially if you remember what happened to his partner on that rope…)

The whole time, Allan was just there, observing, not saying a thing.

Suddenly I said… “I just can’t do it, you’re bigger than me, you have longer arms… That’s why you could do it…”

With one last breath… I extended my arm in a feeble attempt to get closer to the other tree… almost to “prove” that my arms were shorter than his… again, there was a frightening distance between me and the other tree, and the 60 foot drop of doom.

Then, Allan said something.

He said something so simple, and so profound, it is still with me to this day. It not only changed that day, it changed me completely… or maybe removed a part of me that wasn’t ‘me’ at all…

After this moment I was never the same.

He said…

“How can you get over here… if… you’re hanging on so tightly to over there?”

“What?”

Then I realized it.

It was the feeling of an epiphany… the feeling of seeing something you were blind to before… or didn’t want to see.

I realized that my entire body was not only “on” the tree I was on. I was HUGGING the tree so tightly, if it was a person he would be screaming in pain.

I was clinging on to the tree so much so that my entire chest was pressed against it. My right arm was wrapped around it. I was clinging on with fear for my life. How could I expect to ever reach the other tree?

No wonder my body was paralyzed with fear… it was tense, it was “clinging”

“Why don’t you let go a little?” he asked.

What happened next was incredible.

I didn’t get psyched up… I didn’t tell myself anything… I just relaxed my body. Slowly…I extended myself… I moved away from the tree I was on so that I was only hanging on to the tree with my hand and nothing else.

I swung the tree closer to the other one, and grabbed on to the branch.

I was now only about 3 feet from the other tree.

…”Jump” I said.

Again, my body became paralyzed with fear.

I stayed there for about a minute, paralyzed… Then remembered that profound message I received from the Universe just minutes ago…

“How can you get over here if you are so set on hanging on to over there?”

Now, instead of trying to jump, I simply let go, even more, of the tree I was standing on … I was now only hanging onto it by the tips of my fingers.

Suddenly, I had the other tree top in my other hand.

I let go of the other tree completely. There was a slight shot of fear and anxiety in my body as I briefly hung in mid air. I felt a falling sensation as I pulled myself to the other tree.

There I was, on the other tree

My heart was pounding, all the muscles in my body shacking. I remember thinking and saying out loud “Wow! I have done many crazy things in my life… but none of them compared to this.”

Allan and I stood on that tree for about an hour, talking until it began to get dark…we decided to come back to my house for a hot meal.

I knew my wife would probably kill me if I told her what I had done  But I felt like I was already dead….

Lessons Learned…

You may ask why I called this story “How A Tree That Killed My Friend Changed My Life” when my friend didn’t actually die. Well, I did it for two reasons:

1. The lesson here is extremely powerful, and I needed it to grab your attention from all the other things you could be doing today…

2. If you think about it… My friend really did die for a second… and that’s the powerful lesson… Let me explain…

The point of writing this short story wasn’t to give you a very cool strategy for jumping across trees. You’re free to go climb a tree and do it, but please do not hold me accountable for any injuries you may sustain. 

What I wanted to share with you was the profound and powerful truth which I realized at this point in my life. You see, after this day, my life changed forever. Why?

Because I realized, that a lot of the time when we’re trying to get somewhere and we fail over and over again, it’s not because we’re doing the wrong things…it’s because you’re holding onto your old way of being, thinking, and living. This may sound irrational to the thinking mind… But ponder on it for a long while…

How can you get over here if you’re holding on so tightly over there?

For me, at this time, I was really struggling with wanting to increase my income. I had a business and it was making money, but not real money.

What I realized that day was that I was actually HANGING on to my old income. My mind was actually addicted to my old problems and it found them comfortable, safe. I wanted things to be better, but deep inside I was so afraid of jumping across that I kept on hanging on.

Sometimes all you have to do is let go…

When I did, everything began to change.

There is an old Zen saying that says “How you do one thing, is how you do everything.”

This is true for all areas of your life… In this particular case, the thing holding me back from jumping to the other tree was the same thing holding the progress in my business back.

So what are you “hanging” on to in fear or comfort? It could be a number of things… certain people…certain friends…a certain social status…certain problems which give you a sense of self and importance so you re-create them over and over again… a certain “story” that you use as an excuse for things… What is it?

Take a deep look.

Did my friend really die?

No.

But, for a couple seconds… I was dead sure he had, because the mind made it real. Which is why I want to leave you with something…

I’ve had quite a few adventures like this with Allan…always learning some profound lesson.

Every single time, when he was about to do something ‘crazy’, I would tell myself…

“He’s got to be out of his mind!”

In all cases… it was true… He really was.

Most of the things your mind tells you are complete non-sense anyway. Why listen or believe in it?

When you step out of your mind, the miracle of life unfolds right in front of your eyes.

Sometimes… it takes climbing a tree to realize that. But it’s really not that hard at all.
You have the power to do it right now, right this moment, just decide to.

About the author…

Kacper Postawski is a spiritual teacher who follows no specific religion. Only sharing what arises out of the things that you already know are true deep inside of you, but have temporarily forgotten. His work has helped many find the true un-touchable joy and peace of life that is always there which we don’t always see.

You have rights to re-print and copy this article as long as it is kept in-tact entirely in-tact.