On the first day,
You don’t really notice,
You’re head’s too full of human. Continue reading
Ecospirituality
Spring Vision Quest (Victoria)
“You know after any truly initiating experience that you are part of a much bigger whole. Life is not about you henceforward, but you are about life.”
― Richard Rohr
Vision quest is a powerful way to surrender to the greater whole. An opportunity to step into the wilderness, letting go of the expectations and roles that hold us in place Continue reading
Queer nature
My girlfriend has been doing a learning journey called Right Relations in Rites of Passage. She just made me watch the seminar ‘Archetypes of Gender and Sexuality Beyond the Binary’ and it has blown my mind. Continue reading
Subjugation
There is a force that has gripped the planet for hundreds of years. It is the force behind every marching army, every man who raises a hand against his wife, every school yard bully, every iron-fisted leader. It is the force behind slavery, behind colonisation, behind prejudice. Let’s call it… subjugation. Continue reading
Questing
There were a bunch of things that came out of my last vision quest but I’m wary of trying to capture them. Some seem like elegant nuggets, they can be named and shared, there is a temptation and a danger in reducing the experience to these.
Other things happened that have a felt impact on me but their meaning is elusive, Continue reading
Wild Mind 2015 – shame is a gateway
Wow, what a weekend. Last year’s Wild Mind was a transformational experience for me so my expectations were running fairly high for this one. As the day drew closer, I began to get a sense of exactly who would be there and my excitement levels rose and rose. It was looking like an impressive bunch of folk, not just for their skill and talents but for their big hearts and courageous ideas.
Something about having all those conscious, open minded people in one place at one time, inspires your heart to open no matter how much you want to resist. The emotional core for me was a two hour conversation about shame. It was beautifully, courageously facilitated, blending individual stories of shame (led by the facilitator and drawn from the group) with a more intellectual conversation about the role of shame and how to handle it.
We started by talking about how we each define shame. “Shame is born of our relationships and can only be healed in relationship, even if it is through our relationship with our self.” is one that has stuck in my mind. My own definition was based on a recent experience of psychodrama where I discovered that my sense of shame obscured my vision and the object of shame turned out to be something of a gateway to transformation and wholeness.
There was good consensus in the group about the need to hold ourselves with compassion in the experience of shame. People used a variety of different words to describe a similar process of observing our feeling of shame with compassion. I use the words ‘large self’ and ‘small self’ (where the ‘small self’ is not inferior but inspires me to give myself the compassion I would give my son in the same situation). Others used the word ‘home’ to describe their large self and avoided giving a label to the self that experiences shame.
There was a profound insight for me in the observation by one group member that ‘shame’ and ‘vulnerability’ are adult words that most children don’t understand, including the child in us. Vulnerability is a wound that stands in the way of our self expression but to get past the wound we must express the feelings of the child we were when the wounding took place. That might require us to find a simpler language to describe our feelings of vulnerability. For example rather than saying “I feel vulnerable” saying “I feel scared of saying how I feel because I worry that you might not talk to me anymore.” This takes more courage but when I used it with my partner later that evening I found she was much more able to offer me the compassion I was craving and I was more able to identify my feelings.
Even the fact of talking about shame seemed to inspire feelings of shame within the group. At the end of the conversation there was some lengthy discussion about how to ‘end the session’ without ‘leaving people in shame.’ Some of the suggestions seemed to indicate a desire to make everyone feel better which really jarred with me (I being one of those who had opened up a raw experience). It’s quite hard for me to allow myself to feel so raw and I was wary of shutting myself down when I was surrounded by such a loving community. I knew that if we closed the circle I would be able to keep processing and possibly release something powerful. In the end we agreed to sing together, a song about light shining on us, not fixing or healing, just shining.
Fox walking with Maya Ward was another highlight.
I spent the evening further processing the experience with fellow Wild Minders, dancing to gentle music and participating in cuddle puddles. I am deeply grateful to all at Wild Mind for cocreating such a beautiful space for our mutual unfolding.
You can read another slice of Wild Mind on Geoff Berry’s blog White Fella Dreaming
Space between stories
I found this beautiful circle in the gardens on my way to work.
Charles Eisenstein is running an online course. I am quivering with excitement. His book, The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible (which you can read online for nothing), is the most transformative thing I’ve read in the last year. Below is some writing that captures my initial response:
I talk to strangers now. Not out of any sense of duty or obligation but because I appreciate our shared humanity. The universe in me recognises the universe in you. I acknowledge our beauty.
It extends to the more than human also, to the trees, birds and other creatures that cross my path.
All these little interactions matter now. Having shared Eisenstein’s vision through his writing, I can see that each of these little moments, even if they never emerge from the cloud of ponderings within my own skull, are important. Each moment is contributing to the creation of the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
I pass over the great Birrarung/ Yarra River, twice a day and the view never fails to move me. Since reading this book I’ve begun to pay attention to my fellow passengers in the moments after crossing the river. I have noticed that I am never alone. There is always someone else paying attention to the beauty of the river, just like me.
Charles’ online course is called the Space Between Stories and the invitation is open to anyone if:
- You are in some way stuck in an old story (work, relationship, bodily condition, etc.) but you can feel it is unsustainable, that a change is on the horizon, that it is starting to break down. Or…
- You are in the space between stories. The old world isn’t coming back, but the new one hasn’t arrived yet either. Or…
- You are living in a new story, and it feels maybe a little tender or fragile, and you want support and a frame of reference to help navigate its challenges.
I think I’m somewhere between the second and the third category, depending on the day and the people who are around me at any given moment. It’s been a long slow transition over a couple of years now, sometimes it feels incredibly fast and sometimes painfully slow. Mostly I am grateful for the pace, it has allowed me to slowly transform each part of my life in turn yet been overwhelming enough to force me to surrender!
Let me know if you’re interested in coming on the journey, perhaps if there’s a bunch of Melbourne folk who are doing the course we could all meet up at some point. I have discovered this week that there are people reading this blog that I had no prior awareness of, it’s kind of thrilling and makes me really curious to know who’s out there.
Survival Day
My ancestors came by boat to this country
With arrogance and violence and ignorance
They made their home without regard for the spirit of this land
Without respect or care for her people
In 200 years very little has changed
Always was, always will be, aboriginal land.
My placenta is buried under a lemon scented gum in Mitcham
I spent my childhood holidays among granite mountains and wide beaches
Ormond point oversaw my first spiritual awakening
The great trees have guided and comforted me
When I have travelled I have yearned for these landscapes
This land has raised me, it is in my blood and bones, in the depths of my psyche.
The horror of our history is overwhelming
As much as I feel love and connection to this land
I am as a child playing by the ocean of indigenous understandings
All my life I’ve carried an ancestral guilt
The deeper I connect to this land
The more keenly I feel the damage done to the first peoples
The more I feel the personal loss of the knowledge they hold.
I love this land and I feel its claim on my heart
But it doesn’t belong to me
I can’t own the spirit of the land
I can only listen and serve and pay my respects
My spiritual connection gives me no rights
Only responsibilities.
And if I ever have the privilege of sitting with the elders
I would want them to know
As deeply as I love this place
I would give it up for our healing.
What I feel called to do is harder than that.
In giving my heart over to this country
I open myself to all the grief and love it has to offer
I feel the injustice of the ongoing process of colonisation
I see how my own spirit is dominated, controlled and subdued
Entwined with the land I love.
Surrender
Earlier this year at the Wild Mind festival I attended an embodied writing workshop with Maya Ward. As a poet I expected to write poetry. Much to my chagrin what came to me were some cheerful words and a snippet of melody. A week later it was still running around in my head so, even though I didn’t really like the melody, I took the time to sing it out and write some more lyrics.
The resulting song has been a prayer, an affirmation and a blessing. I have sung it to myself and to other people in my life whenever the reminder to surrender was needed. It has brought numerous people to tears (which I count as a good thing) and brought me enormous peace. Now I finally have the courage to share it:
Serenity, wonder and peace are yours
The infinite mystery of life
Wholeness, connection and balance are yours
If you surrender to strife.
Let go and let come
The earth will keep turning
The work will get done
Let go and let come
The universe is waiting for you.
Kindness, compassion and love are yours
Softness of a warm embrace
Happiness, humour and joy are yours
The laughter of children at play.
Let go and let come…
Silence and stillness and solace are yours
Because sometimes you must go within
Nurturing, comfort and weeping are yours
If you can learn to give in.
Let go and let come…
Envy and anger and greed are yours
Because they too have something to teach
Community, family and friendship are yours
If in your heart you make peace.
Let go and let come…
The universe is waiting
Your own heart is waiting
And we’re all here waiting for you.
Your tears are sacred
Some things are so big you can’t possibly write about them.
Three months ago I flew to Colorado to spend a week in the wilderness on a vision fast with a group of magnificent women. All the way there I wondered why I was flying halfway around the world to connect with the Earth when I feel so connected to the Australian landscape. The whole journey was about surrender, about feeling called and acting on impulse, about letting myself be helped and carried by the people around me.
When I arrived in Colorado my heart broke open with the beauty of it. Those mountains!! Those delicious, incredible, magnificent mountains. “No wonder” I said to my generous host “American’s like big cars and big houses, anyone would feel insignificant next to that!” I enjoyed feeling dwarfed, having a real sense of my humble place in the scheme of things.
Somehow the long journey, the altitude and the jetlag conspired to leave me vulnerable and weepy but rather than fight it, I saw this as a blessing. It stripped layers of reserve off me, here on the other side of the world, far from family and broken relationships, I could lay down the burden of grief I’d been carrying. I spent much of the first two days in tears, I was beginning to feel self-conscious about it when one of our guides, a woman of few words and an impressive herstory of wild Earth love, looked me in the eye and said “your tears are sacred.”
I cannot tell you the relief those words inspired in me. “Here you are safe,” they said, “Here you are enough. Just be.” I have had the great honour of offering those four simple words to a number of people in my life. Each time I have witnessed the gentle sag of shoulders as they relax into their grief. Recently as I cried in the arms of my new love, she offered them back to me. What a beautiful place the world would be if we were all able to hold this understanding in our hearts and minds – your tears are sacred.
People seem to fear tears, fear the discomfort of grief but I have found it is only repressed emotion that is truly discomfiting. After and between and through my tears, up there in the mountains, was a boundless joy. The remote valley where we stayed was alive with new creatures and I was in a perpetual state of wonder. Thrilling to the sound of chipmunk chirps, delighting in their feathery tails and observing their movements with rapt attention. Every bird and butterfly was a visitation, the whole valley seemed to rise to my attention, almost showing off.
Around the circle I laughed at myself, bashfully admitting that I felt like Snow White, surrounded by birds and small mammals. Our guide looked me in the eye once more and said “You have come here, across the world, and offered your loving attention, why would the land not respond to that?”
Last Friday I had the great priviledge of watching Tanderrum, the ceremonial coming together of the five language groups of the Kulin nation, the local Aboriginal people and custodians of the land where I live. It was beautiful and moving, only the second time the ceremony has been carried out since colonisation. I cried most of the way through for reasons that are difficult to articulate. I kept wondering if it was wrong to cry, disrespectful or embarrassing, but our guide’s words rang in my head and my heart “your tears are sacred, your tears are sacred, your tears are sacred.”
