Spiraling Earthen Forces
So especially as the sun was setting six evenings ago, when I felt the still subtle but more obvious 'contractions' begin, I whispered a direct incantation to the creative forces to let them know that I was listening. I had created space. I was ready. This Musing is what has emerged from the process.
Into Soul
A Wild Spiraling Journey through the 4 cardinal directions
* 4 cardinal directions (East, South, West & North), plus the universal spiritual dimensions of the skies above, the unique and specific soulful dimensions of earth below, and us humans at the centre of our experience - 7 directions in total
Waking up before first light this morning, my senses come online by registering a slight coolness in the air and the mighty pulsing thrum of crickets through my open windows. They always have much to communicate at this time of year.
I begin to rise.
I make my way outside into the freshness of the morning to greet the first rays. This immediately fires up my blood, my skin a wild creature; a re-membering of body and earth just as orange light begins to filter through the trees. The cricket song calling the day into being.
The Mystery
I am deeply interested in the workings that mysterious, wild, life processes have on us humans; especially the forces that seemingly want to bring things together but in new, powerfully unique, ever-more intelligent, diverse, and wise ways, and usually after or as they are changing them, or pulling or breaking them apart one way or another.
This is obviously an abstract oversimplification of any of the wondrous things life has on offer. But I think it at least nods or winks at an essence of some of the wild things at play, that despite our best efforts, fortunately seem to escape our full human capture or mastery.
Spiraling Forces and Soul Midwifery
I find it useful, personally and in my practice, to remain in touch with, but sometimes also to highlight to others, what I consistently experience in the fierce aliveness of my body and lived story as a wild intricate spiraling force (spiritual and soulful) at work throughout life's journeys.
I sense this animating force reflected (very loosely) through archetypal stages of birth process (which among other things includes but is not exclusive to gendered experience), mapped additionally by the unique 4-cardinal-directions work of Animas Valley Institute:
Conception - East
Gestation - South
Contractions - (first stage labour - phase 1&2) - West
Transition (a death and grieving of old forms - phase 3) and Pushing (Second stage labour) - North
Birth (and third stage labour) - Returning to East
Can you sense that this is not just a circle, but actually a spiral?
I find that despite never having personally given birth to an actual child, and perhaps because I haven't, this approach, continually being cultivated through the years of my own practice and life, offers a useful understanding and invitation to work with some of life's hard stuff in more generative ways at this particular time on this planet. And it forms the bone structure of my practice and work, which at its heart, is energy medicine and a healing art. More on the bone structure, heart, and also the soul of my work
Eastward - Full-presence Sensing - Sensory Experience
I listen to these little chirruping beings through the soles of my feet and invite the remote possibility that they might be in-forming my creative process... weighing in on it, that they have something specific they might want to offer it, and to share with me uniquely this season, in this place, at this particular time on earth.
I notice the egoic/anthropomorphizing shades here, but still this thought reaches through the morning haze, and its generosity touches me. I feel the gentle pull earthward of emotional forces in my body responding.
These very subtle sensations wash over me. A light heat. Something tightens through the front of my head. My eyes moisten.
Conception - The 'Portal'
The more obvious opening passage of this mysterious, sacred, spiraling pattern is something I sometimes refer to as a 'portal' (which at least indicates some kind of potential doorway that might lead somewhere interesting, even if it is not immediately apparent).
A portal appears in the east, the place of the rising sun, at the conception stage of something. The spiraling pattern, following the laws of the Mystery and the cosmos, pulls what it needs (including us) into and through the 4-directional process in a clockwise movement, but beginning here at the portal.
These portals can be an entry into something as small as an emotional tug in a briefly passing moment, or into something much larger like a powerful experience that takes days or weeks or months (and valuable resources) to integrate, or even into a passage of life that lasts years. And anything between and beyond. You know what I'm talking about here - these portals - if you can recall the vulnerable (and sometimes terrifying) collapsing feeling of finding yourself pulled into the grip of a powerful emotional experience, which might have felt at the time like you were being pulled apart...or that things were falling apart.
One of the Into Soul-ers in the previous workshop likened the uncomfortable portal-appearing moments in his life to what it might feel to be unceremoniously flushed down a huge toilet - I laughed at this but that knowing kind of laugh - I related to it. But a portal can just as easily be a very gentle entry into a deliciously creative process, as this Musing's arrival turned out to be.
~The Universe is a creative field, and at every level of life, we can find the sacred geometry of a spiral and portals of transformation~
Southward - Full-bodied Feeling - Emotional Embodiment & In-formation
The pull of this portal feels very gentle at this point, so it's not difficult, but I work to remain present with these slightly dysregulating forces. Inviting them. I locate the corresponding sensations in my body, resisting the urge to escape them through suppression, distraction, performance, or rationalization.
I breathe. And let them move.
I invite these emotions to work on me, tenderizing places of egoic fragility and rigidity. My body rocks slightly as this medicine, made by the earthen forces of my body and for my body, seeps into the cracks.
This emotion is subtly transforming me, my perception. Gently altering it. Perhaps making way for new insight. I feel some anticipatory excitement knowing that in time, something that might want to be shared with me (and perhaps with others) may find it's way through this process and into the light on the other end.
I return to listening.
I wonder from where, or what, or whom these crickets are taking their cues, and how they know what to respond with. I can't imagine a world without crickets. And don't want to. But oh shit, it's too late, I have already begun imagining this and a grief is opening in my chest.
I breathe through the sensations, easing them.
But then I begin considering the idea of echo-chambers of disconnected, unrooted human interaction around the world as more and more wild places and beings disappear, and the wild is being exiled, exterminated, eradicated from places; as the increasingly soulless creep of post-modern, capitalistic, technological, viral-load spreads, survival instincts pump out unmetabolized emotion, reverberating in unmitigated escalating social tensions and a seemingly insatiable and incurable insanity. I'm pulled into thoughts of ongoing global-geo-political immaturity... psychopathy... and its long-standing trajectory of consuming lives. I think of kajillions of earth resources being pumped into, for example, explorations off-planet as collapse of life unfolds on earth. I feel fear's grip on my soul.
Another dilation and flood of emotion. Something has tightened in my throat.
Where am I headed here?
The crickets draw me back into my body and to the earth. I draw deep breaths letting waves of emotion move.
Gestation
These spirals, as I experience them anyway, are forces that seem to operate beneath the surface of everyday embodied life that we humans experience, even without having a degree in the physical sciences.
Sometimes we're aware of the imminent arrival of one of these journeys and feel ready for it. But many times, at least in my experience, we don't feel particularly agent in life's creative plans for us, and it might only be in retrospect that we can see that we've gone through something.
At least at the outset, the process is not necessarily generative-feeling in nature, and in fact, it can feel distinctly like things are really not okay. Sometimes we get stuck, or spit out, or lost along the way, unable to piece things back together in healing and wholing ways. And of course, we never know how long the full journey might take, and possibly where or even if it will end. But with sufficient and right resources (inner and outer ones), this flowering stage makes it very clear that life's abundance is in full swing and might possibly later bear fruit.
This is the southward gestation stage, the place of the full-day sun and intense growing and expanding phase (here in the northern hemisphere).
Westward - Deep Imagining - Insight
As my dream world experiences from the night before begin blending with my morning reveries (and terrors), the rhythmic cricket hum, and increasing light, ironically, some deeper reflections begin to emerge.
I remember how bathing in this sound for an entire summer years earlier had fed me, mainlining these steady healing frequencies into my jangled nervous system, untangling my vagus nerve and restoring my body's natural biorhythms.
I sense or perhaps just imagine that even where these creatures can not be directly heard, their vibratory fields still offer this fundamental sustenance the world over.
I imagine this medicine also reaching all of us lost beings caught in the machinery of soulless voracious systems of oppression, offering an antidote to our insanity and inviting deeply transformative journeys towards greater health and maturity that restores and protects precious life on this planet.
I reflect on the evolution of my life since that summer: the growth and wealth of life's riches that have come to me since, including the depth of meaning and understanding that now informs my practice and the birth of Into Soul. I feel such deep appreciation.
The crickets seem to respond.
And it occurs to me that the cricket song sounds different than it did even a few weeks ago, and it seems they might now be signaling or responding to a westward movement into autumn, which will then move into the depth, stillness and darkness of the winter.
I now begin reflecting on something of a westward movement I sense as I pan out to the larger world view again and consider the stage of development our human civilization seems to be in and rapidly heading into... as what might have for some felt like the eternal summer of abundance (and perhaps for some still does) seems to be moving swiftly towards the large-scale darkening horizon.
The crickets seem to grow louder for a moment here, drawing me inward and downward again, and back into this morning. They seem to invite me to consider the question, "what do I most deeply want?"
From this place, the answer comes quickly and easily, followed by the realization of the premise of this Musing. It's mostly just a feeling at this moment - something still formless, but the insight has arrived. I begin writing it into being.
The crickets carry on, seemingly following what they most deeply want this morning too.
*this westward question is one of at least 3 potent questions one might pose to oneself when in the west of things, and is invited by Bill Plotkin in his book Nature and the Human Soul, from the section on the Emotional Skills Wheel in the chapter called The Thespian in the Oasis.
Contractions
This is a powerfully alchemical stage that in our quick-to-get-the-action-phase culture, often gets rushed through or skipped entirely, but not without consequence. This is the westward contraction stage, the place of the setting sun and lengthening shadows.
It's here that the self-as-we-know-it begins to be pulled downward into the underworld journey of transformation, that when fully effective, leads to a death (of one form or another). It hopefully also leads, at least eventually, to a rebirth upon return from the journey. More on the Westward journey according to the Animas Valley Institute.
Northward - Heart-centred Thinking - Action
It's been four days since I began writing, and editing, and writing some more, and editing some more. Oh, ya, and I also did some other life stuff in there in too. But I think this piece might really be coming together now.
It's 7 pm at night as I write this, the time of the day that supports me finishing things (not starting them). I can feel the north energies gathering for this next stage. It's almost entirely pushing me now, but I'm deeply engaged. It feels really good at this stage. It flows more easily. Words seem to easily line themselves up in a way that best conveys the deeper meaning. And it's easier to tell if something is not right. But it's very intense. Emergent. It. Won't. Let. Me. Go. I have no idea when it will release me from this hold, so I can move into sleep.
Wouldn't you know it though, the crickets are up too... still... and just givin' 'er!
Transition (a death and grieving of old forms) & Pushing
This is the mastery phase of the journey, the place of deepest, darkest, most contracted energies (here in the northern hemisphere), ancestral forces, knowledge, and skill. These are the darkest hours before the return of the light of new day.
When we act from the fullness of the energies of this stage (are actually ready to push, rather than just want to), our work is guided by something deeper and much more likely to be incredibly generative and productive. But there is a death before we reach the fullness of this northern stage. There is a releasing of a previous form or identity and a new one embodied.
The west and north-west energies are deeply humbling. If these energies have served us well in our own lives and we arrive fully in the north, we may have reached a healthier, soul-rooted form of adulthood. Bill Plotkin identifies the northern archetypal resource in our own personal psychology as 'The Nurturing Generative Adult'. True adulthood, it seems, is a rare achievement in dominator cultures, those pervasive in the world today. But The Nurturing Generative Adult one of us wants us to not just blossom, but also to produce our own unique fruit.
Eastward Again - Reflection - Illumination
Five mornings later, I rise again with the sun. This piece of writing is complete, and I will send this Musing out as the sun comes out the next day.
I feel a sense of awe, given that only days earlier I was sitting outside talking to crickets and had absolutely no sense of what I might share, or that anything might arrive that I'd want to share. I reflect on this little journey over the past five days, and how this spiraling fractal has informed my perception in new ways.
The crickets are with me, their magical symphony somehow an affirmation.
I wonder how to offer them my love and I find myself extending these feelings to them through my body, whispering words of appreciation into the morning air. I imagine these vibratory emanations spiraling outward from my own body reaching their cricket-y sensory receptors, offering them an affirming existential boost too.
I continue listening, listening to them and to the movements of my own soul in response.
Birth
Birth/rebirth is never a foregone conclusion with any journey, but should sufficient resources (internal and external) of the right kind be accessible and available and should the mystery see to it that an upgrade, transformation, or a new creation is to be, never-before-seen things begin to emerge from the other side of the process.
If we think about it, our entire lives up until this very moment (even if we are currently stuck in something) might actually be living evidence of this wild evolutionary process. Despite all the entropic forces that have pulled things apart over the years, here you still are, the latest and most updated version of you!
Into Soul
The upcoming workshop, Into Soul, explores the wild mysteries of human relating, and animates what might be considered an earth-based spiraling, 7-directions type of healing, wholing, and divining technology, but one that is found at the heart of a wild, wise depth psychology and understanding of healthy psycho-spiritual development.
This workshop gently amplifies our individually unique, generative, and relational capacity. Among other things, it offers a deeper understanding (and direct experience!) of power, intimacy, agency, and belonging.
This workshop invites questions like:
what might be trying to be created and cultivated through your relationships?
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" ~ The Summer Day, Mary Oliver
If you feel called by this workshop, please be in touch.
IT’S STILL POSSIBLE ~David Whyte
It’s still possible to fully understand
you have always been the place
where the miracle has happened:
that you have been since your birth,
the bread given and the wine lifted,
the change witnessed and the change itself,
that you have secretly been, all along,
a goodness that can continue
to be a goodness to itself.
It’s still possible in the end
to realize why you are here
and why you have endured,
and why you might have suffered
so much, so that in the end,
you could witness love, miraculously
arriving from nowhere, crossing
bravely as it does, out of darkness,
from that great and spacious stillness
inside you, to the simple,
light-filled life of being said.
…
Excerpt From STILL POSSIBLE
in ‘Still Possible’
Many Rivers Press Jan 1st 2022
*Images from https://pixabay.com/