Hi Reader,
Welcome to this edition of the Maps of the Mind newsletter.
π Presence (and trees)
In one of the first weeks after my mum died, on a night when sleep wouldn't come, I found myself sitting at my bedroom window watching a tree.
Not doing anything with it. Not journaling about it or thinking it through. Just watching the leaves move.
I don't know how long I sat there. But somehow it helped.
I remember trees coming up in a trip-sitting workshop I attended a decade ago. The facilitator put a slide up β just a photograph of a tree β and said something about presence. That a tree is maybe the best example of it. It doesn't need to intervene. It doesn't need to make things better. It just remains.
It stayed with me.
But I think my understanding of it has deepened since.
Trees have shown up in some of the most intense moments of my life.
In the Sacred Valley in Peru, I once took San Pedro alone β out in nature, lying in the woods beside a river. I watched a tree for hours. I went through a lot looking at that tree. I saw it shift and change and morph into things. At one point I thought it was going to show me my life!
What I remember most is that it was steady. Gently moving, but steady. Something my whole experience could organise itself around.
Years later, on a 2C-B session in Berlin, something similar happened. I spent what felt like hours watching a tree move in the wind. My attention just dissolved into the branches and stayed there. It was one of the most peaceful things I can remember.
There's a study from 1984 by a researcher called Roger Ulrich. He looked at patients recovering from surgery in hospital. The ones with a window view of trees recovered faster and needed less pain medication than the ones whose window faced a brick wall.
Not walking in a forest. Not a nature retreat. Just a window. Just trees.
The Japanese have a whole practice built on this β shinrin-yoku, forest bathing β and there's now a decent body of research behind it. Time near trees lowers cortisol, reduces blood pressure, activates the parasympathetic nervous system. The part of you that can rest.
None of this surprises me anymore.
I keep coming back to trees.
In a quiet, persistent way where they keep proving a point I can't quite shake.
They don't fix anything. They don't try to soothe you out of your feelings. They don't offer advice or interpretation or meaning.
They just stand there.
Often even the people who love you most want to fix it, or say the right thing, or make it better. A tree doesn't. It just stands there. And sometimes that's enough.
They've been a quiet source of comfort to me in this period. Not because they've done anything. Exactly because they haven't.
That's not to say people haven't shown up for me β they have. But there's something trees offer that most people can't.
This is actually what the best psychedelic guides often do. They hold without imposing. They don't tell you what to feel or where to go. They just create conditions for something to surface.
I wrote a few weeks ago about being a loving rock β present, stable, not trying to fix. The tree is another version of that. Something that simply remains while everything moves around it.
Maybe you can be that for someone else. And when you can't β when you're the one who needs it β sometimes an actual tree might help.
Trees are free, they're everywhere, and you don't need to book anything. Funny how they've become my most reliable therapists. No invoice. No group circle. Just standing there doing absolutely nothing useful and somehow being better at it than most of us.
If you've had an experience recently and you're trying to integrate it, try finding a tree, sit near it, and don't try to figure anything out. Let it be unresolved for a bit. Sometimes slowing down is the integration.
A reflection for you today:
Where do you go, or what do you do, when your mind needs to stop solving?
What did this bring up for you? I hope you'll reply and tell me about it.
π Microdoses of Wisdom
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"In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks."β
β John Muir
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"Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being."β
β Eckhart Tolle
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π΅Psychedelic Supplements
K playlist built with Beautiful Chorus tracks...
Song for tough times, including grief, shared via Wendy
βSoft beauty via Valentina
βFinally, I'm going to see Ty Segall at the Edinburgh Psych Fest on Sunday. Based on recent setlists online, it should be stellar.
Here's an awesome drive-garage-rock tune from his new album with weirdly psych/ego-death lyrics: "When I died, I was alive...."
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β€οΈ Love and mettΔ to you all,
John
John Robertsonβ
βPsychedelic Facilitator & Educator
Webdelics' Top 100 Psychedelic Thought Leaders and Content Creatorsβ 2025β
βMaps of the Mindβ
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