Winter Solstice: Return to the Way

Winter Solstice: Return to the Way

Dec 21, 2022 | all, creativity, dreams, Home, myth, paradox, symbols | 4 comments

Historically, the winter Solstice was always a time for homecoming. In cosmic terms, it is when the Earth begins to tilt back towards the Sun, gradually returning more light to our days. But like the celestial bodies, people from many cultures would also return to their heart’s home for the holy days ahead. In ancient China, they would close the passes at Solstice. No merchants could travel, not even royalty would visit other regions. Instead, they returned to “where they should be” both in the literal sense of going home, and figuratively to one’s spiritual well.  In Taoism, the wisdom of the Solstice is contained in the I-Ching hexagram fu(Chinese: 复, “Returning”). In fu, there is only one Yang line, nestled under five open Yin lines. With Yin at its absolute peak, many feel the weight of that cold, still, darkness and with it, a feeling of drained vitality, or the disorientation of having lost your way. But down below the exhaustion and confusion, the earliest rebirth of Yang is also taking place. This is the nascent energy fomenting in restoration that will carry us into the next season. If we move too quickly now, or push ourselves into action, we could...
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Eros: Archetype of Connection

Eros: Archetype of Connection

Oct 19, 2022 | all, ambiguity, creativity, death, dreams, myth, paradox, relationship | 0 comments

One of the most fascinating images in the Myth of Persephone is the pomegranate. Widely considered to be a sacred fruit in cultures around the world, it is often associated with fertility because of how packed with seeds it is. Curiously, eating a few pomegranate seeds in Hades realm is also what seals Persephone’s fate. Once she tastes this “food of the dead,” she is tied to the darkness (for six months of every year) forever.  It is this act of following eros that leads to inescapable consequences, but also seeds a powerful destiny. Though we instantly associate the word erotic with sexuality, eros has a much broader symbolic range. In Greek mythology, Eros was the God of passionate desire, who launched his arrow into the hearts of unsuspecting targets, causing them to become suddenly weak in the knees (and mind), struck with irrepressible longing. As an archetype, eros is that which generates our fundamental need for connection, both within the psyche and the world. We can think of eros as the universe’s impulse to create kinship, inspiring life-giving reciprocity between organisms. But eros also works in the psyche to string our dream images together into...
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Giving Up on Timelines

Giving Up on Timelines

Jul 23, 2021 | all, consciousness, dreams, Home, Instinct | 4 comments

Though it is beyond anything that can be expressed in words, there is a nature that flows through and gives life to all things. In Taoism, this changing stream is referred to as Tao – or the way. Living in harmony with the Tao is referred to as wu wei. A person who practices wu wei is in a constant conversation with the elemental forces of nature that move within us and in the world. Like water seeks to move with life’s changes rather than forcing its will against events, we too can learn to move with the Tao. Nature in Blue by Melonie Miller Following the Tao is especially hard when we are anchored to timelines. Though often necessary to keep pace with the culture we live in, when events or goals are expected to materialise within an arbitrary timeframe, we may find them out of sync with the Tao. Circumstances seem to toy with us by putting obstacles in our way, or otherwise putting the dream out of reach, making us feel unsupported, impatient, or anxious. This is when it’s tempting to believe that your goals or dreams will never happen. You may think about settling for something more attainable or practical. But the truth is, being out of sync is also part of the growth...
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Belonging as an Ecosystem

Belonging as an Ecosystem

Jun 30, 2020 | all, beauty, belonging, consciousness, Home, relationship | 2 comments

I believe a huge part of our collective feeling of emptiness comes from living in a self-centred phase of our evolution as a species, where everything begins with I. I want this object, I want to succeed. I want to improve myself. Even: I want to belong. Artwork by Max Reed But true belonging depends upon our reciprocity with the environment in which we are embedded, and unto which we are indebted. In the same way that mitochondria work to break down nutrients and turn it into energy for our bodies, we too are but a single component of a greater biosphere that sees no hierarchy between ferns and redwoods, worms and eagles. If we imagine an invisible mycelial network under the visible surface of things, of which we are but fruiting bodies, then we see how our lives should be in service to feeding the whole forest together. Our negligence of that reciprocity is, more than any other factor, what fosters unbelonging. It is at the root of loneliness, because without the greater intelligence of the mission coursing through our veins, making our purpose meaningful, we are but isolated bodies going through empty motions. This is why people who experience tremendous success can still feel...
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Clearing the Fog

May 7, 2020 | all, ambiguity, creativity, Home, inspiration, Uncategorized | 8 comments

So much of the creative process is about uncertainty. Like a fog we must pass through, there’s a length of confusion that precedes originality. I think of this fog as initiatory in nature, turning back those who can’t withstand the uneasiness of not being able to see the horizon. But anyone who has passed through bewilderment enough times knows that the fog is really a sacred shroud, giving us refuge from the outside world so we can finally turn towards ourselves. Artwork by Timur Akhriev Shifting our allegiances from the outer to the inner life begins with a kind of clearing work. In order to discern our own voice from the collective (or what I like to call Other People’s Information), we need to have a clear container. Like draining a pool and discovering sediment and debris, our psyches can get cluttered with outer influences, and it takes patience and dedication to render it ready for new ideas. So much of the creative process is clearing this pool so we can discern what values, ideas, and instincts are native to our own experience. We are so used to swimming in the collective pool of groupthink that we don’t even realise how much of the psychic debris...
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Rushing the Redemption

Rushing the Redemption

Apr 25, 2020 | all, death, grief, Home, inspiration, paradox | 13 comments

Llewellyn’s Classic Tarot by Barbara Moore Of all the cards in the tarot, the Tower is the one you least want to get. Even less than Death, which often hints at renewal, the Tower is about the fateful hand of destruction. In most depictions, a massive bolt of lightning comes from above and destroys the Tower. Fire bursts from its windows, and everyone within it is now falling to the ground. Try as we might to avoid these “tower ordeals,” nobody is immune to facing crisis at some (often several) pivotal moments in a lifetime. But because crisis of this scale can be excruciatingly long and complex to navigate, the urge to make meaning of it all, to turn it into something productive, is tempting.  In grappling with degenerative autoimmune disease, I often wished for a speedy redemption, for something meaningful to come out of my pain and suffering. But every time I tried, I’d be humbled by exhaustion and confusion. One day, I received the following tower-esque dream: I dream that a tree of great significance is struck down by lightning. A bolt from above splays the giant tree in a star-like pattern. It is a numinous event which stops me in my tracks....
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Equinox, will you answer?

Equinox, will you answer?

Mar 18, 2020 | all, consciousness, Home | 3 comments

  I recently watched a wonderful-difficult film called Honeyland, about Hatidže Muratova, a woman practicing ancient beekeeping traditions to cultivate honey in the mountains of North Macedonia.  Artwork by Daniel Mackie The film follows Muratova in her long treks across the desert landscape, up a harrowing cliffside, where she pulls back heavy slate slabs, behind which the hives are hidden. Only ever harvesting half of the honeycombs to sustain her and her ailing mother, she lives in a quiet and humble harmony with the bees. Until one day, a raucous, nomadic family moves in next door.  Despite Muratova’s many kind gestures, like looking after the wild children, sharing her traditional wisdom, the patriarch of the family has his eye on profit. Before anyone knows what’s happening, he’s bought a huge number of commercial hives to produce honey. Ignoring Muratova’s warnings, he over-harvests the hives, forcing the bees to attack his neighbours honey to survive. This fateful act of greed causes the hives to collapse, leaving both families without resources for the bitter winter ahead. While the film intended to be a documentary of life in that region, it ended up being a...
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Your Vibratory Signature

Your Vibratory Signature

Mar 5, 2020 | all, art, beauty, belonging, creativity, Home, inspiration | 4 comments

There is an energetic stamp or vibratory signature behind every act of creation. Though difficult to perceive, it is like the wind blowing through a valley, touching everything we do. Although we create in a multitude of ways, it is what’s felt first by others. Artwork by Emily Howard My partner Craig is a master flute maker, and though his creations are incredibly beautiful to listen to and behold, people often receive one of his flutes and are struck by the instrument’s kindness. Because of the man he is, committed to a life of heart, every simple thing he creates and attends to carries this signature of warmth. Inasmuch as we are searching for our purpose and occupation in the world, the more salient pursuit is in the who we are becoming. It is the vibratory signature behind our enterprise that has the most impact. So the real art form is a kind of open question to the needs of the larger Self: How can I serve you? Do you feel understood? Where is your rapture? What are the conditions necessary for your expression and well-being? Though we may think of questions like this as self-absorbed, they are actually what lead us to our greater nature that is in service to the broader...
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Bearing the Pleasure

Bearing the Pleasure

Feb 11, 2020 | all, belonging, grief, Home, relationship | 5 comments

Our capacity for embodied pleasure depends on our ability to receive, which is like a muscle that can atrophy if it’s been habitually contracted. A learned sense of unworthiness can act as a barrier against our well-being, keeping us from opening to the beauty that’s all around us. Whether it’s our ability to receive positive feedback and support, or to expect things to work out in our favour, we may be distrustful of goodness even when it stands on our doorstep. But this doesn’t have to be a permanent condition. With practice, we can learn how to welcome beauty and receive pleasure wholeheartedly. Yellow Matisse Cut-out Nude With the expanded capacity to receive comes the awareness of how long one has lived constricted. How long one has felt unseen. How long one has hidden their tender parts away from hostility and invalidation. Imagine the enormity of grief and gratitude that flow in simultaneously, stretching the receiving muscle. As the poet Nikki Giovanni says, “We must learn to bear the pleasures as we have borne the pains.” Bearing the pleasure means beginning to invite a gentle exploration of love into those jumpy places that anticipate pain, expect abandonment, and...
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The Holy in Loss

The Holy in Loss

Dec 20, 2019 | all, ambiguity, dreams, grief, Home, paradox | 11 comments

At this time of year, there is a great deal of emphasis placed on birth and the coming of the light. But the Solstice is really Nature’s season of rebalancing between life and death, and new life is never possible without a darkening, a sloughing off. Artwork by Evelyn Maria Lorenz What makes this season holy is the act of casting off that which, with little to no guarantee, will set us on a new course. Like winter, Nature’s death field closes in on us with its cold and dark promise to claim all that isn’t thriving. It isn’t unusual to resist this process. We may find ourselves trying to prop up the old way, lifeless as it may be, in an attempt to reanimate the ill-fitting, limp, and even destructive, because at least it was familiar.  But as reluctant as we may be, the holy act of this season is trust. Even as the old things are being cast off, torn away, or leaving of their own accord. Even as disappointment, heartbreak, and fear are rearing up on all sides. Something better for our well-being is marshalling itself below the cold ground. And the sooner we can conclude our old attachments, the sooner the new way will...
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The Knower in You

The Knower in You

Dec 13, 2019 | all, beauty, Home, Instinct | 7 comments

In times of confusion and ambiguity, it’s helpful to remember that there is a numinous power that emerges from a coherent, divine source, and it knows which way to go. We can call this the “power from below,” because it is elemental, and quite physical. It is that organising intelligence that animates all life. It is the pattern-maker that stitches together our dreams, manifests in synchronicity, and arises in our longing or desire in the body. And if we can learn to follow and embody that power, it will lead the way out of the patriarchy. Artwork from Aurora Consurgens, Thomas Aquinas This “power from below” is Sophia, an ancient Greek word which loosely translates into wisdom. You can find it in the root of the word philosophy, which is the “love of wisdom,” but perhaps more accurately described as Knowing. Sophia is the inner knowing that gets clearer and stronger as we dismantle the old power structures, but she is also the outer knowing that appears in the waking dream, in synchronicity and symbolic events in our lives. Sophia is that which knows about fate and time, and the life/death/life cycle. As my friend and Jungian analyst J....
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Belonging to Your Place

Oct 23, 2019 | all, ancestral, belonging, Home | 2 comments

Artwork by Cathy McClelland To belong to a place is to be embedded in it. Its struggles are your contentions, its harvests your wealth, its needs your purpose. Your place’s history is the story of your own becoming. If the cloud gods move in, your own mood is grey. If the year suffers with drought, you feel the desperation of thirst in your own skin. There is no separation from the place where we live, except for the one made by our own forgetting. It’s said that after arriving in a new place, we will have replaced the entirety of the water in our bodies with that of the local watershed in just a few days. Though these adaptations happen at a biological level, we are vastly unconscious of the implications a place has on our psyche. Just as humans carry an energetic signature, so too do geographies. However, like fish swimming in water, we are rarely aware of what energy a place holds until we leave it, or return to it after time away. I remember a number of years ago travelling from the city where I’d been living for fifteen years to spend time with friends in the country. It was a very heart-opening visit, which must have contributed to my porousness upon returning, because I...
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2019 Women’s Retreat in Photos

2019 Women’s Retreat in Photos

Oct 21, 2019 | all, dreaming, gallery, Home, women | 0 comments

2019 Embodying the Dream Retreat Now in our 6th year, the Embodying the Dream retreat has always been a place of reunion for those who want to weave in deeper with others committed to the soul’s call.  Many of those original women have returned year after year, laying the foundations for this vibrant community. And because we practice at belonging with our selves in their glorious entirety, the new ones feel instantly as if they’ve always belonged. Every year we circle around a central theme to guide our dreamwork practice – and this year it was the Power of Sophia. We were staggered by the number of synchronicities and dreams that constellated around this devotion. 35 exquisite women showed up in every way imaginable for our special blend of dreamwork mingled with ritual, practiced with embodiment, song, and communion with the land. Thanks to the generous donations of our community and Stowel Lake Farm, this year we were able to create 3 scholarship positions for some who might otherwise not be able to attend. To learn more about that, click here. I can not say what a privilege it is to witness our evolution over a handful of years, as we step more confidently...
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Shadow Figures in Dreams

Shadow Figures in Dreams

Aug 20, 2019 | all, dream interpretation, dreaming, dreams, Home, paradox, shadow | 24 comments

Illustration by Keith Negley One of the central tenets of dreamwork is to learn how to become curious about, and eventually hospitable towards, the scary, repulsive, ambiguous figures that appear in our dreams. These “dark guests” are what Jung called the Shadow. Whether through personal, cultural, or ancestral forms of exile, we all become distanced from the parts of ourselves that are devalued, discouraged, or disregarded. Eventually, those rejected parts become strangers, even to us. I call these the refugee aspects of the self because they are marginalised, disenfranchised, and exiled from belonging. They are, in a sense, living on the fringes of our consciousness. They seek to re-belong themselves with us our whole lives, and the first place they show up is in violent, disturbing, or sad dreams. When something is avoided, rejected or pushed away, it doesn’t actually disappear but goes underground, into the unconscious, where it gains in strength and power. It can begin to eat us from the inside out. If they can’t reach us through our dreams, these dark visitors begin to manifest in anxiety, depression, angry outbursts, and even physical crises, like...
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Pain: The Unwelcome Guest

Pain: The Unwelcome Guest

Aug 13, 2019 | all, belonging, consciousness, Home, Pain | 4 comments

Artwork by Edel Rodriguez The great Sufi poet Rumi teaches, “This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes As an unexpected visitor.” But of all the visitors who arrive unbidden on our doorstep, pain is perhaps the least welcome. It can show up suddenly, debilitating us physically as well as energetically, sapping our ability to attend to anything else—and it can be dogged in its determination to never leave. For the person in pain, there is nothing more immediate. Pain can feel malevolent as it holds you hostage. In extreme cases, like the biblical suffering of Job, a person can even feel tortured by some punishing upper hand. Many will counsel you that there is a reason for your pain and that if you could only heal your underlying emotional wounds, pain would leave you alone. But the body is not an abstraction, and pain laughs at the over-simplicity of this way of thinking. The body is the first gate of belonging. And though so many people struggle to feel at home in their own bodies, I am amazed at how rarely it is mentioned in the many conversations I have on belonging with others....
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The Black Sheep Gospel

The Black Sheep Gospel

Aug 9, 2019 | all, belonging, creativity, Home, Instinct | 8 comments

1. Give up your vows of silence which only serve to protect the old and the stale. 2. Unwind your vigilance, soften your belly, open your jaw and speak the truth you long to hear. 3. Be the champion of your right to be here. 4. Know that it is you who must first accept your rejected qualities, adopting them with the totality of your love and commitment. Aspire to let them never feel outside of love again. 5. Venerate your too-muchness with an ever-renewing vow to become increasingly weird and eccentric. 6. Send out your signals of originality with frequency and constancy, honouring whatever small trickle of response you may get until it becomes a momentum. 7. Notice your helpers and not your unbelievers. 8. Remember that your offering needs no explanation. It is its own explanation. 9. Go it alone until you are alone with others. Support each other without hesitation. 10. Become a crack in the network that undermines the great towers of Establishment. 11. Make your life a wayfinding, proof that we can live outside the usual grooves. 12. Brag about your escape. 13. Send your missives into the network to be reproduced. Let your symbols be adopted and adapted and transmitted broadly...
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Courting our Dreams

Courting our Dreams

Aug 7, 2019 | all, dreaming, dreams | 1 comment

Artwork by Catrin Welz-Stein The first time I heard the word courtship in a context other than old-timey dating rituals, was sitting in ceremony with Martín Prechtel. He was explaining to a group of us how to approach the Holy. He said, “Courtship is to sit next to someone and discover what they love.” As sometimes happens with great teachers, Martín’s definition of the word shifted my perception into a new configuration. Suddenly I could see that approaching the holy in our dreams wasn’t at all about getting what we want, but about discovering how we can be of service to that which we love. Though we don’t value courtship in modernity, it was originally a circling process that people who were admirers of each other would undergo. Struck with an affection for someone, you didn’t just march up to your beloved and demand that they love you in return. Instead, you would slowly circle the other, approaching them from a respectful distance, to learn about them. To understand what it is that they want, what it is that they love, perhaps one day to give it to them. The great hope of courtship is marriage: a reciprocal and...
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Crone at the Crossroads

Crone at the Crossroads

Aug 1, 2019 | all, death, grief, Home, ritual, shadow, women | 22 comments

Guardian by David Wyatt When a cherished part of us is dying, either by way of our own discernment or by the hands of fate, we find ourselves at a crossroads between the past and a dubious future. I call these Crawling on the Belly times because it’s as if our legs are knocked out from under us, and we’re forced down by the elemental gravity of loss. Though others may surround us, we exist alone in exile from what we loved, and the only way forward is through the dirt. We’ve all heard that there is a cycle, how rebirth comes from death, but rarely do we acknowledged the treacherous valley between them. At the Clava Cairns in Inverness, there are ancient burial chambers used for over a thousand years by the Celts to honour death and ritualise the cycle of seasons. Some believe the labyrinthine construction of these chambers was meant to symbolise the spiral of life. It is believed that you had to crawl on your belly through a dark tunnel to reach the dead. Carved there in the stones are mysterious ring and cup marks that historians link to the Triple-Goddess, Maiden-Mother-Crone. Though she exists in many cultures under different names, the Crone is the embodiment of...
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Grief is Healing in Motion

Grief is Healing in Motion

Jul 24, 2019 | all, belonging, depression, grief, Home | 48 comments

Grief is the response to a broken bond of belonging. Whether through the loss of a loved one, a way of life, or a cherished community, grief is the reaction to being torn from what you love. As Martín Prechtel teaches, the words for grief and praise are the same in the Tz’utujil language because you can only grieve what you have dearly loved. We grieve the loves we’ve lost. We grieve our abilities vanishing through illness or age. We grieve the loss of faith in our religion. We grieve our children leaving home. We grieve the paths we didn’t walk. We grieve the family we never had. We grieve the suffering of the planet. But while grief may look like an expression of pain that serves no purpose, it is actually the soul’s acknowledgment of what we value. Grief is the honour we pay to that which is dear to us. And it is only through the connection to what we cherish that we can know how to move forward. In this way, grief is motion. Artwork by Inhyuk Jo Yet in our culture, we are deeply unskilled with grief. We hold it at a distance as best we can, both in ourselves and in each other, treating it as, Joanna Macy says, like “an enemy of cheerfulness.” There is unspoken shame...
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An Invitational Presence

An Invitational Presence

Jul 11, 2019 | all, belonging, consciousness, Home, relationship | 4 comments

We spend so much time worrying about how to approach our future that we rarely consider how approachable we might be. We armour ourselves with savvy, strength, and certification so that when our moment arrives we feel sufficiently prepared. But with our shoulder always to the wheel of life, we can miss the very encounter we’ve been preparing for.  To be approachable to life, to each other, and to mystery, we have to cultivate an inner hospitality. Like the host who prepares an extra helping of food, a fire in the hearth, and a seat at the table even when guests aren’t expected, belonging always begins with an invitation. Artwork by Brunna Mancuso When a person extends an invitation to us, we immediately feel welcomed into their world. In fact, much of the loneliness people feel is the result of not being invited. It seems our culture has lost the skillfulness of hospitality.  Whether we are looking to create closeness with others, with nature, or with the living mystery, an invitational presence is the prerequisite to any form of intimacy. Like the physical flinging open of our doors to guests, we can cultivate a quality of hospitality in our presence which signals to...
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