Sacred Grove a meditation experince

I am not new to meditation, as I have stated in my introduction, I have been a practicing pagan for a little over six years now.  Even before I joined OBOD, I based my practice and path on that of being a druid being one with nature connecting with the life and growth of spiritual experience shaped around me by the environment of the earth and tree with roots planted in the soil beneath my feet. It has often been my habit when able to enter into a grove behind my house, of pine and hickory trees.  There is a chief tree among the others a large pine that I have always felt a close connection too.  Normally I sit under this pine snuggled up against it, my back pushed against his trunk it is my favorite place to meditate, and sometimes I just sit there and watch nature flow around me, sometimes I meditate on some issue or mystery I am currently pondering.  He is a large fellow with about a four foot diameter at the base level, sometimes we are alone just he and I with the surrounding trees his friends and neighbors, others we are visited by a member of the local squirrel population, who will leap among his upper branches tossing pine needles down it; as light rain falling about me as I sit amused at its antics.  As of late our visitors have changed to a number of crows who now seem to make my meditation and rituals part of their daily routine of criticism or praise it is hard to tell with a crow if he is approving or not. Even my walks through the woods on my way to his place in the rich soil has come under their inspection and scrutiny, they have become part of my meditation an expected source of sound like a mediation aid played from a personal selection of nature for my benefit.  It is my want when sitting at his base to normally start by working on my breathing exercises, calming my inner self and once this has been accomplished I start to visualize small tendrils or roots growing from me to the ground and coming from the tree to me reaching around me from head to toe, not completely enclosing me but just reaching out like a cradling type touch.  This has been part of my meditation ritual for over six years, connected to the tree, I seek answers, peace, healing, joy or just being whichever way it leads me that day.  Even when I am miles away with work, I have always returned to this space rather in otherworld or physical life when I meditate, no matter where I am I visualize my friend the pine tree and his glade he watches over, me sitting at his trunk snuggle up against him until comfort and peace take me over.  This has gone on for over six years, but tonight it was profoundly different, I have adapted my normal meditation routine to the lesson in our bardic course work, there was not much to change really since what it was teaching me to visualize and or do I have already been doing more or less.  While I have always visualized myself in the meditation when I was not there in person, to be there sitting at the base of the tree just like when I was there, I am changed that visualization to me being, “that druid” that the lessons say I am now and should see in my meditations.  What does he look like, what is he thinking, does he notices things about his surrounding that I never did?  Mainly he wears a hooded cloak or robe, something I never did in real life looking the mysterious sage in deep thought, pondering the heavy issues of the world or the wonder of the magick of the world about him.  This has become my normal routine, as I was saying except perhaps the change in wardrobe, but tonight focusing on the lessons something profoundly different happen.  It started out like normal the complete picture I have told you, then the unexpected happen, my friend the tree slowly faded and became ethereal and ghost like until it disappeared, for a moment it existed behind me and did not at the same time. At this exact moment I became the tree, we were no longer an individual entity, we were not joined but had become something new, a new life form.  I became conscious of my roots as they delved into the rich soil, I could literally taste the soil in my mouth it is then that a thought entered my mind at some level that I should reach for the water in the soil, then a sensation both supposed and real happen my mouth filled with liquid my mouth was watering like when I am anticipating wonderful smelling food on the table. I wondered at this sensation for a time, then almost like a suggestion, it entered my mind the same way like a slow elemental thought that I should focus above as well as below, it was then that the sensation of the wind on my branches and needles hit me gently at first, my head tingled and with a numbing sensation type tickle hard to explain.  I could feel the hairs on my head in the material world stir on my head sway back and forth these also being branches and needles a crown and headdress of green, then a new sensation hit.  The sun light fell upon my pine needles warmth, nurturing life giving a sensation like and yet unlike the water from below.  This has never happen before in the entire six years I have meditated by my friend in the woods or as it was tonight in my room visualizing the whole thing before the shrine I have erected there.  I believe I have connected with my friend over the distance, or he reached out to me hearing and sensing my need, I have been having to work away now for over a year and a half and am profoundly missing my grove at home. Either that or I have reached another level of meditation perhaps both?  It was the most profound thing I have ever felt, and I would like to say thanks, to all of you, to my friend slumbering in his spot in the deep soil of my back yard many miles away and to OBOD for this lesson. 

Piping Druid