Navigating the territory

Getting lost is admirable. Feeling lost is uncomfortable. Banging into and up against unknown forces can be painful. I pick myself up shaken and bruised and retreat to care for myself and my words. 'What happened there?', I ask myself. 'Who knows and yet stay true and follow your own star home, not someone else's.'

Navigating the tracks requires diligence, discipline and dedication.

The cycle between violence and beauty, happiness and suffering, between grief and praise is going strong. The call for another story is ringing loud in my ears. Tears, many tears are being shed. Blood is flowing. Explosions, bombs, violence continues to rain. Unintended consequences are being felt and reverberating through the ether. Is this the way it will be ... Que Sera Sera? When misplaced nationalism soars will our stadiums, schools and churches resound to the words of William Blake, 'I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep'.

I feel fog descending around me
Clouding the scene
I'm lost
No longer knowing anything
Am I alone?
Is anyone out there?

A good friend tells me this is a neptune moment.
Enter the transcendent 'bird' third.

I feel the potential of a fresh breeze sweep through me offering a break in the fog and an opening to follow. I stand at the meeting point. The place where paradox dwells. The tension of holding opposites can be unbearable and yet if I hold the polarities long enough can there be a breakthrough? The bird third that transcends us from the tension towards something new.

The planet neptune was discovered in 1846. Let's be clear here, Neptune has always been there. The difference to those shaped by modernity is that something does not appear and exist until it is seen and named. So it was for Neptune in 1846. And now our astrologers incorporating this planet into our consciousness say Neptune, my gift du jour, represents 'dreams, illusion, abstract thought and the mysterious. Spirituality is important to this planet, and how we harness that energy for our personal betterment. Neptune invites us to let its energy wash over us and to use a meditative state to gain insights and heightened awareness. Poetry, music and dance are among the trance-like activities which this planet favours.'

As I am bounced and battered by events and forces Neptune visits me inn the guise of a William Stafford poem and the healing balm of a peace Mantra - Sarvesham Svastir Bhavatu.

I am grateful to Robert Bly for bringing the words of William Stafford to my door. I feel the energy and presence of raven; the darkness around us is deep my friend.

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

 William Staffords poem it titled 'A Ritual To Read To Each Other'. It could be these words are intended to be read between two or more people. Or it could mean to be read to the different parts of oneself, or even between you and a more than human being. It's in the in between places that differences can be most felt and the thread that connects all things can be seen. This connection is spoken about by many of the mystical poets. It's the invisible relational line that flows between everything ultimately rendering us inseparable, lest we forget, it's important that awake people be awake.

Bringing Health Down to Earth

(Notes from a short course at Schumacher College 19 - 23 October 2015 with Bayo Akomalafe and EJ Clement-Akomalafe)

Many of us have lost touch with our bodies. Our physical bodies have become distant to us. There was a time when I was like this, when I was a head disconnected from the intelligence of my body. My mind can lie to me, my body never lies. If only I can listen.

What happens when we choose to open ourselves up again to all that our bodies offer and say to us? What happens when we choose to open ourselves up to the aliveness of the universe?

These questions invite us to rethink our relationship to sickness and health. We have always had access to the indigenous knowledge our physical bodies and our relationship to the bigger body (life) has to offer, but for too long we have been ignoring it. Now we have to find our way back. Counter intuitively in this moment the more we get lost the more we find our way.

Eco-metaphysically we need to re-energise what health means to us.

Unlike how socially we are cultured to behave, grief and suffering are not a private matter. They are a public event. Grief is not the enemy to be repressed. Pain is not to be stamped out or medicated away as is the mode of much of allopathic medicine. Wherever you are is the most sacred place you can be.

There is no outside.
There is no sacred mountain you have to climb.
How can we reimagine and come back into relationship with the multiple?
Life is an entire ecosystem of which we are a part.
It is all intra-active.
By slowing down, deeply listening and observing we can reconfigure our gaze.
It is not about solutions.
There is only an openness and awareness.
In the noticing we are losing our 'I' ness.
The universe is much more playful that we believe.
In a world that is entangled there is no outside.
Everything is connected to everything else.
Everything is dancing with everything else.
Let's throw a better party.
Let's reveal our own innate wisdom.
And come up with our own meanings of health.
Thus we lose the story that we are singular.
A full picture is not possible.
We lose ourselves into groundlessness.
There is beauty in incompleteness.
Where we reach a point of unsayability we reach the point of vulnerability.
We meet our bodies at the inaudible gasp.
Move away from predetermined grace.
AWKWARD IS BEAUTIFUL
At our height of confusion is when we have it all together.

Quilting is the shared collective of everyones listening.

Quilting Prompt 1: What is the living story of your body?

The unsayable wants to be known, it was to be seen and heard.
Our lives are becoming entangled with one another.
We are being provoked to make space for something else.
What wants to happen cannot be represented in words in the first instance.
Our bodies are speaking for us at this moment.

The Bones of Ritual

(Notes from a short course taught by Colin Campbell and Lucy Hinton at Schumacher College from 28 September - 2 October 2015)

Kabir said at the core of every human is a yearning to return to divine grace within ourselves. This homecoming it at the heart of ritual, ceremonial practices and cosmologies. There are techniques that are designed to open up a portal for us to make this journey to to return to our hearts. A vigil - going into the wilderness in a vulnerable way is one such practice. Strength is found in vulnerability.

Martin Shaw refers to the ecstatic moment when the wild begins to infuse us as wild land dreaming. When we enter the woods we enter the dream tangle. Stay there long enough, some say at least 3 days is needed without food and shelter,and we can drop the conditions of modern life and allow ourselves to be reordered internally. We may at this point get dreamt by the land. Elders remind us how important it is to commune with the wild. If we try to avoid, deny or overcoming nature we are in big trouble.

A vigil is an opportunity to call back and remember the exiled parts of ourselves. From the moment of severance when we are smudged out each of us steps into a threshold moment. Intent is essential as it sets us up for a conscious act with symbolism behind it. Ritual is a conscious act which contains the intention to form a bridge between the visible and invisible. In so doing we are enacting an ancient and sacred reciprocity.

Indigenous people place life at the centre. They say all life has it's own special consciousness. In this way the divine, the universe, knows itself through each form of consciousness coming into being. In Southern Africa during traditional times if you wanted to understand the psyche of a human you had to wander out into the wilderness. Everything contained in the wild is incorporated in the cosmology. Human behaviour is a mimic of the wild.   

On vigil we offer our lives to be eaten. To be eaten by the cold, the dark, the midges, our fears and our discomforts. The reward is the belonging. The commitment of offering ourselves up to everything brings it's own reward. A vigil is not a place to prove anything to anyone including ourselves. On vigil we place ourselves in a state of deep prayer or communion. There is no need to go far. No one is being asked to go beyond the bounds of their own capacities. Each person goes out in a state of giving. Give up all your comforts and distractions. The key to vigil is our stance. 

• Take a clear intention - deep presence and authenticity - state your intent or question.
• Find a threshold - to cross into sacred space place two sticks, stones or make a circle. Be smudged as a cleansing and as a blessing - and then step out.
• Observe the three taboos - no food, no shelter and no company.
• Experiment with suspending disbelief. Remarkable things can happen, follow what needs to be followed, listen to your intuition.
• Return back across the threshold.
• Tell your story and have it mirrored back to you.

Final Bones Reading by Colin Campbell (3 October 2015)

     

1. Chaos - wait - things are brewing. 

Dynamic waiting

Like Vigil

Be present

We feel all over the place

Discombobulated

Things are happenings

Wait

Watch

Seeds are being planted

How long?

Be n a stance f receptive presence

We don't know how long

We have activated a lot

Let it be

Let it settle

For at least the next week avoid making any major decisions

Nurture yourself

Take time out if you can

Focus on being rather than doing

What is really important?

Don't put an action plan together.

Ask - I Where is meaning?

How can orientate myself to that?

How can I orientate myself to who I am?

      2. Blue Crane - crane with 2 tics

Warning - be careful of careless action

Inaction is better than action

Waiting and stillness is better than moving

Stance of stillness and presence

REST

You have already found what you seek

TRUST

Between times

Liminal and chaotic

It doesn't seem to have form and yet the imaginal cells exist

2 = conflict

3 = resolution

Transcendent moment

A third element is needed for the trinity