Hoop and the Tree: A Compass for Finding a Deeper Relationship with All Life - Softcover

Hoffman, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 157178098X ISBN 13: 9781571780980

Publisher: Council Oak Books, 2000

Synopsis

The “tree” is the vertical dimension of aspiration, individual growth, and intellectual and spiritual development. The “hoop” is the circular representation of our relationship with humanity and the earth. Using examples from Native American and other ancient traditions, Chris Hoffman shows readers how to develop both parts of the whole to help people lead a more contented, complete existence.

About this title

About the Author

Chris Hoffman leads workshops in business, educational, and therapeutic settings, including The Naropa Institute, The C. G. Jung Society of Colorado, and MENSA. He uses the Hoop and the Tree model to teach courses in the ethics of ecopsychology and on personal development to the business community. Hoffman holds a B. A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the University of Colorado. He is an ecopsychologist, licensed professional counselor, and published poet, whose poetry has appeared widely, alongside Robert Bly and Matthew Fox in The Soul Unearthed.

From the Back Cover

Imagine a vertical axis running through the center of your being, from your deepest roots up to your highest aspirations. This is the Tree, which anchors and centers you. Now imagine this Tree encircled by concentric rings of family, friends, all of humanity, and the encompassing beauty of nature. This is the Hoop of relationship. This simple yet life-changing volume fully explains for the first time the power of these two ubiquitous symbols to bring us a whole new understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. Through explorations of their deep meaning in psychology, Native American and other spiritual traditions, myth and fairy tale, and questions, suggestions, and real-life examples, Chris Hoffman shows how we can use the Hoop and the Tree to be happier in our relationships; increase our connection with nature; release and build our inner strengths; and live lives of joy and satisfaction.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

We human beings are story-telling animals. We venture into the world - the outer world of science and facts and data and ineffable mysteries, or the inner world of feelings and thoughts and dreams and ineffable mysteries - and return to tell each other about it. None of our stories is "The Truth." There is an old Zuni Indian saying that there are no truths, only stories. The truth is beyond stories. But stories teach us and help us to live this precious life we have been given. We tell each other what we have learned about planting corn, about the best way to program a computer, bake bread, or handle a wrench. We also tell each other about ways to navigate the emotional and spiritual rapids of life: birth, initiation, marriage, fruitfulness, loss, success, death. These are the stories we live by. They come from science, history, literature, and the great spiritual traditions of the world. The stories we live by have the power to shape our destiny.

This book is about a robust story, one that has been told in many versions and tongues over the years. It is a story about what we all desire: to lead lives of balance and fulfillment. It offers an image of the deep structure of health and wholeness, both in the universe and in the human psyche and soul, an image of the beauty at the heart of everything.

I first encountered this image many years ago. I didn't pay a lot of attention to it then, but it lodged in me like a seed in the ground. Over the years, as I've tried to help my counseling and consulting clients and to make sense of my own life, the seed has sprouted and grown to the extent that it helps me enormously in my efforts to be a useful and loving human being.

The image first revealed itself to me in a story of the Oglala Lakota.

In the summer of 1873, a band of Lakota was slowly making its way across the high plains of North America toward the Rocky Mountains. One evening in camp, a nine-year-old boy was eating with a friend, an older man, when the boy suddenly heard a voice saying to him, "It is time; now they are calling you." So loud and so real was this voice that the boy stood up and followed it out of the tepee. As he went out, both of his thighs began hurting him, and as he tells it, "it was like waking from a dream, and there wasn't any voice." The older man was amazed and concerned by the boy's behavior, for the man had heard nothing.

The next day the boy went riding with some other boys. When he got off his horse to get a drink from a creek, his legs suddenly crumpled under him. He couldn't walk. The other boys had to help him back to camp. The following day the boy had to travel in a pony drag; his arms, legs, and face were so swollen he couldn't move.

That evening as he was lying in his family tepee, he saw through the doorway two men coming down from the clouds, headfirst like arrows slanting down. When they landed they called to him, "Hurry! Come! Your Grandfathers are calling you!" Then they turned and shot back up into the sky.

When the boy got up to follow them, his legs no longer hurt. He went outside the tepee where a little cloud came down and carried him up into the sky. There the spirit beings filled him with an extraordinary series of experiences. When he returned to human consciousness he found he had been gone twelve days. Although his body was still swollen, he felt healed and joyful. Soon his body too was well.

It took the boy many years to accept his vision. He spoke not a word of it to anyone until he was seventeen. When he finally confided in a respected medicine man, the elder told him he must enact his vision for the whole tribe. The ceremony was a great pageant, involving many people and sixteen horses - four each for the colors of the four directions: black, white, sorrels, and buckskins.

After this ceremony the boy lost the fear that had been troubling him for so many years, everyone in the community felt happy, and many people who had been sick were now well again. Even the horses seemed to have become healthier and happier.

The boy's name was Black Elk...

Black Elk was touched and healed by what might be called the deep structure of wholeness in the universe. It appeared to him through the image or visual metaphor of the Hoop and the Tree. This image of the Hoop and the Tree is not accidental. In the years since reading about Black Elk, I have discovered that the image appears not only in Lakota mythology but also throughout the great wisdom traditions of the world - and indeed in modern psychology and systems science - as an image of the deep structure of wholeness and health, both in the universe and in the human psyche and soul.

Moreover, the wisdom traditions teach that this pattern of wholeness lies latent within each of us, waiting as a seed waits underground ready to bring forth flowers and fruit.

The Hoop and the Tree could be said to represent two "dimensions of the soul" that must be fully developed and in balance with each other for the soul to be whole. The Hoop-and-Tree image also acts as a skeleton key that can open the door to the great variety of spiritual and mythological ways of the world without depreciating or diminishing our magnificent human diversity.

Edition details

• Publisher: Council Oak Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 157178098X
• ISBN 13: 9781571780980
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240