Post by wren on Nov 30, 2006 0:36:59 GMT -5
Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been waiting to see.
~ Jala-us-din Rumi
up to where you're bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been waiting to see.
~ Jala-us-din Rumi
The call to adventure is the first omen that your life isn’t working in the way it did before. Now you have a choice: will you descend purposely in the underworld like Inanna or Beowulf, or will you wait to be abducted like Persephone? Or find a way to avoid the journey altogether?
If and when you descend, you could use some assistance. The value of teachers, mentors and elders cannot be overstated. But inner, spiritual help is available and invaluable as well. An archetype waiting inside you – The Wanderer – can be of greatest support, comfort and inspiration.
Upon embarking on the downward journey, the Wanderer enters a peculiar and demanding stage of social and spiritual existence. Imagine this stage as a cocoon during which the individual undergoes a radical metamorphosis – from a life centered in society to a life centered in soul.
Previous to this one, the only transformation so extensive occurs in early childhood. Think of those first four or five years of life as the first cocoon, the time when we make that great sea crossing from the pre-birth realm of spirit to the realm of culture and human consciousness within which we play out in our lives. No one really knows how a drooling, babbling infant can morph into a story-telling, trick-playing preschooler.
In the second cocoon of life of life, the transformation we seek is as mysterious and as momentous – from an individual whose goal is to improve his social and/or economic standing to one whose primary motivation is to turn his soul’s vision into reality. The Wanderer requires a much larger space, as big as the world. There can be no predetermined limits to his or her wandering. The whole world – the wild earth, in particular – forms the boundaries of his cocoon. When he finally emerges, it will be the earth herself who gives birth to him this second time.
But the wild earth is not the only substance with which the Wanderer weaves his cocoon. Other strands might include his solitude, his deepest wounds, karma from previous lifetimes, his dreams, his mortality, ceremonies, the dark and his own shadow – all woven together to form an alchemical cauldron of change.
When the caterpillar weaves his silk cocoon, he dies to his previous life and enters a liminal time of being neither earth-crawling worm nor winged flier. Likewise, the Wanderer is neither adolescent nor mature adult but betwixt and between. Within their respective cocoons, the caterpillar pupa (the chrysalis) does not feed and the Wanderer does not draw further sustenance from society. Upon emerging from his cocoon, the Wanderer is reborn – as butterfly, as initiated adult.
This can be such a difficult and often lengthy life passage that the second cocoon can be viewed as a long middle phase of an extended rite of passage with a separation at the beginning (at the time of the call) and a return at the end (at the time of soul initiation). For some people, or in some cultures, the second cocoon might be divided into two stages. The first is a period of preparation in which the individual continues to live in the general community. The second is a period in which he withdraws from all regular contact with everyday society. In nature-based cultures, the period of exile might last anywhere from a month to several years and may include components of both solitude and periods of instructions from elders. In the West, this exile may be experienced as a psychosocial banishment, an inability to fit in anywhere, and may last decades or have no definitive ending.
For me, this period lasted twenty years. As I wrote in my ‘initiation revisited’ essay, my illness and its effects on my life caused me to withdraw from life. The last seven years, however, were spent in a darkness unlike any I have ever experienced. For me, it was the ‘psychic dismembering’ often spoken of by the shaman, coupled with the physical pain and deterioration caused by my illness. My cocoon was invisible to the world and, yet, the transformation was no less miraculous and complete than it is for the delicate butterfly. I entered the darkness a weighted and earth-bound body. I emerged bound for the sky. I can never go back again.
As her time in the second cocoon gets underway, the Wanderer must move beyond her psychological dependence upon others and upon her social roles. She will no longer adopt, in whole or part, other people’s identities or ways of belonging to the world. She will no longer sacrifice her one true life in order to make herself and others comfortable. She knows what she has to do. She must leave her old home and step into the wild night of her life.
The Wanderer seeks to discover her unique and authentic place in life. Not just any place will do. Her authentic place is not simply one that someone will pay her to occupy (like a job), nor a task she happens to have the talent to perform (like an art or craft), nor a career a vocational counselor recommends for her (like banking or social work), not a social role (like caregiver) in which other people accept her. It’s got to be her place, one in keeping with her vital core. It is a place defined not by deeds she performs but by the qualities of the soul she embodies; not by her physical, social or economic achievements but by the true character she manifests; neither by her capacity to conform to the masses nor by her ability to creatively rebel against the mainstream, but by the unique way she performs her giveaway for her community. The Wanderer must go off in search of the one life she can call her own.
The wandering time is neither easy nor painless. It tests what you are made of, in a way you will never anticipate. It reveals you to yourself, down to your very marrow. The second cocoon will result from the disintegration of almost everything you know about yourself and the world. The butterfly, of course, understands this.
Inside the second cocoon, you come to understand what the butterfly already knows: upon forming your cocoon, you prepare to die in order for something new to be born – and to take flight. You will enter the dark night of the soul to re-emerge into the light… transformed. Once wrapped inside the cocoon, you have abandoned your previous life. Only empty branches and sky remain, as in winter when the creative life of the land has gone underground. Relative to the busy surface life of society, this is a fallow time, a time of waiting for spring. It is a time to be modest and at rest, until you are prepared to directly encounter your soul at that moment when the Other reaches for you.
The Landscape as Mirror
(adapted from ‘The Mist-Filled Path’ by Frank MacEowen)
The landscape is a mirror and there is power in the mirror. It is a splendid revealer of things not often seen with the eyes of everyday life. When walking out on the land, it is good to invite the ‘eyes of the seer’ and the ‘eyes of the poet’ to be present. These are eyes that see the true shape of things. Poets and seers see things differently. When we relax the literal-thinking mind and enter a landscape with more fluid perceptions (a soft gaze), we soon find that we become changed. We are then able to connect with our primal, preliterate selves. This preliterate, or perhaps post-literate, state of consciousness opens us to the Great Mirror of Nature.
The Celtic tradition of divination and seership is rooted in an understanding that clarity of thought and vision can be found in nature. It is no accident, for instance, that so many Celtic seers, ancient and modern, have been shepherds, drovers and crofters. These individuals are often out on the land hillwalking. Their souls are customarily deep in the consciousness required to receive vision, spiritual insight, and prophecy. This thread of the Celtic tradition understands well William Butler Yeats notion of ‘the condition of quiet that is the condition of vision.’
These shepherds and seers are not some elite caste of human beings. With practice and refinement, these skills of vision and seership are accessible to everyone. The difference is that modern life fosters an atrophy of the senses, while the natural, rustic and rural spirit facilitates a healing of the senses. Family bloodlines genetically predisposed to seership, or living the entirety of our lives in a rural setting, are not requirements for cultivating these abilities. Removing ourselves, with some frequency, from an urban setting and community with the Great Mirror of Nature is.
The Great Mirror is that striking feature of Creation that soulfully reflects back to us our own soul when we slow our rhythm and our daily pace down long enough to be recipients of its wisdom. Through the Celtic practice of merging the human soul with the soul of nature and the soul of place, a deep healing occurs. A profoundly sacred education awaits us. As the Quaker educator and philosopher Parker Palmer stated, “Education isn’t necessarily learning but very often an unlearning of false perceptions or a remembering of what we’ve forgotten.”
The Celtic path of working with the beauty of Creation is one of dialogue. It is not a one-way conversation. This work is about allowing ourselves to become one-third of the sacred dialogue. We open ourselves to the inherent intelligence of the earth, the earth leans toward us in response, and a third thing is created: a true human being.
Those who follow the Celtic mystical paths have always perceived nature as sacred. There is an unspoken understanding that nature acts as a reflective mirror, shining back our own soul’s essence and sometimes even prophetic information. The Great Mirror reminds us of our truest self. For this reason any spiritual work with the natural world, whether prayer, pilgrimage, hillwalking, fasting, or purification (steps we will review later), is an invitation to return to the primal (meaning ‘original’) essence of who we really are.
Hillwalking is an ancient practice among Celtic peoples. You might say that the spirit of pilgrimage is what drives us but hillwalking is what truly gets us there. In the Scottish and Irish sensibility, walking is never just a form of exercise. It is a poetic and sensual experience. It is a spiritual act. Walking is an art form, a dynamic communion with the landscape where one dwells. It is also a special time to connect with another person, should the walk involve a companion.
In some circles the term ‘hillwalking’ denotes technical climbing or mountaineering. Yet hillwalking, in the truest sense of the word, does not require technical know-how. Celtic hillwalking requires nothing but our two feet and a willingness to engage the natural world with fresh senses. Hillwalking is neutral. It is just what it sounds like: walking the hills, in the forest, along a stream. Yet hillwalking often serves a deeper purpose for the person undertaking a jaunt. It may be a way to visit with a friend who lives in town or a solitary act to clear one’s head of thoughts. Hillwalking may also be an important facet of working with the soul, as in a kind of walking purification or walking meditation.
Take time to become familiar with the exercise that follows. It is one to try regularly. On your journey, the Wanderer in you will need ‘soft eyes’ and the ability to connect with the natural world around you. When I first read of this technique, I was wheelchair-bound and unable to hillwalk. Now, I wander the hills of this land on a regular basis. The act itself is a gift.
Exercise - The Scottish Omen Hunt
The primal Celtic tradition experiences the soul as existing outside the body, hence the ability to send the soul energy out on a soul flight, as is often done in shamanist ritual and shamanic practice. When we work with the Great Mirror of Nature, it is important to approach this realm with a sense of dynamic openness in our soul energy, so that we can pick up information from the soul of a place. We cannot gain anything from the spirit of nature, including an appreciation of her, if we enter in a closed or rigid state.
All too often people go into nature for a hike or to camp and in a short time they return home untouched by the power of the natural world because they did not open themselves to it. We must have humility to surrender long enough to let the sacred into us, but all too often the humility required never appears.
It is probably best to perform the practice of working with the mirror during the daytime so that you can truly see the signs and omens in nature. As you deepen this practice, you will also find that sunny days and gray days will have a different bearing on your results. A completely different experience is to be had if you attempt this exercise at night.
To begin one must first ‘loosen the soul’ by going into nature, closing your eyes, taking some deep breaths and allowing your soul energy to expand outward from the body. With this energetic state of openness achieved, one is truly in the correct mind-set to receive the guiding wisdom of the natural world as it is reflected back to us.
The second step is to attune oneself to a deeper question you are grappling with or to some situation in life with which you need guidance. Perhaps you have some hard decisions to make. You may have talked to a few people about it, yet you still feel profoundly unclear about what to do. Perhaps as you have struggled with this decision you have found that you are falling prey to a variety of self-deprecating messages you inherited from your younger years or, perhaps, your ego is interfering with your soul work. With particularly important questions or decisions, many people find that they get ensnared in the trappings of self-doubt. The solution to this habitual pattern is to ‘get out of the head’, ‘get into the heart’, and ‘get out onto the land’.
The third step is to pose one’s question to the Great Mirror of Nature. See or feel the situation or decision that you are working with as dwelling in your chest, specifically around the area of your heart. It may appear to you as an object or a symbol, or it may simply be felt as a sensation. If you are visually-oriented, the question or situation may appear to you in your visioning eye. Once you have really anchored yourself in the feeling of the situation, question or decision you must make, beseech the Great Mirror of Nature, asking that its healing and guiding powers reflect back to your heart the deep knowing needed to address the situation. You might choose to crystallize everything you are holding into a ‘seed question’ (a very simple and brief question that captures what you’re working with). Pose the seed question from your heart to the spirits of nature three times.
Your task from this moment is simply to maintain your soul’s energy in a state of energetic openness while walking through nature. This also means allowing your vision to remain relaxed. If your vision becomes extremely focused on an object, stop, take a few deep breaths, return your ‘seeing’ to a relaxed state and proceed walking.
In many ways, the success of an omen hunt depends on your ability to surrender to a shifting consciousness that may move around quite a bit. Your attention may be brought back to something. You focus on it for a moment, making a mental note, and then return to a soft gaze. Remember that analytical, focused thinking is not what is required here. A flowing intuitive way of sensing that is rather slow in rhythm is best for working with the Great Mirror. After all, the Great Mirror of Nature is… nature. To access the wisdom and healing of nature, you must slow down to match the soul energy of the spirit of nature.
Be open to images that may present themselves to you in the clouds, in the intersecting branches or roots of trees, the bark or fungus on a tree, in shadows of stones, and in the land. Be open to sounds and smells. Try to see the natural world around you as one field of vision, rather than as hundreds of distinct objects. Allow yourself to take in the landscape in such a way that the edge of a stone might blend with a tree root that may also be blended with a pool of water. Rather than seeing a stone, a tree root and a pool, see these things blended as a perfect whole.
It is unlikely that every miniscule detail you encounter is of importance, yet while you are engaged in this practice, do not dismiss anything, for it may have meaning once you have contemplated it further. Usually people encounter signs and omens that are directly related to their situation, a powerful surge of recognition and understanding washes over them.
The soul energy of the person encountering the sacred signs of the Great Mirror will often react viscerally and powerfully the first time he perceives a sacred reflection from the spirit of nature. The feelings of numinous recognition never go away. It is a powerful ‘ah-ha’ experience any time our soul is reflected back to us by the Great Mirror of Nature. Imagine seeing the reflection of your face in a pool of water, for the first time ever as an adult. That is the same way you will feel when you come face to face with your soul’s reflection in nature.
Each time you hillwalk, keep records in your journal of all you encountered and saw with your ‘soft gaze’. You will slowly discover that you will begin to see with your own unique symbol system for decoding the Great Mirror of Nature. Trust in your visions. Trust in your soul...
And, begin your journey with a few steps…
