Wise Words: True Maturity

I believe … that true adulthood is rooted in transpersonal experience — in a mystic affiliation with nature, experienced as a sacred calling — that is then embodied in soul-infused work and mature responsibilities. This mystical affiliation is the very core of maturity, and it is precisely what mainstream Western society has overlooked — or actively suppressed and expelled.

(Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: A Road Map to Discovering Our Place in the World, Finch Publishing: Lane Cove, 2008, p. 3)

The Words Of The Wild Soul

Weary of all who come with words but no language

I make my way to the snow-covered island.

The untamed has no words.

The unwritten pages spread out on every side!

I come upon the tracks of deer in the snow. 

Language but no words.

~Tomas Tranströmer (1)

What can be spoken without words?

Once, everything was spoken without words, though the world was made entirely of stories, and all of the stories were told in wordless languages written across life’s pages. To read these stories was to see them, to hear them, smell, taste and touch them, and to participate with them in reciprocal relationship. To tell stories was to live them—to grow, unfold, bloom, make, procreate, kill, eat, and die.

The stories were sacred, were steeped in the effortless beauty of life on this blue-green world, floating like a drop of preciousness in a soft and enfolding darkness, studded with stars.

Why did our focus turn outwards rather than remaining inwards? I don’t mean inwards in an arrogant, self-referential way. I mean inwards in the sense of knowing that everything we need, everything we are, and everything we could ever want, is right here, not out there. 

Why do we feel the need to seek other worlds, to colonise them? Why are we never satisfied with what we have? When did we lose touch with reality? When did reality become not enough, something considered malleable and subject to our human whims?

* * *

Recent events have been making me feel quite angry. Not in an overwhelming or uncontrollable way. It’s more that I just feel fed up, so sick and tired of what is happening in the world: the contempt that is shown for women; the contempt that is shown for the earth; the lack of action on climate change (though any action will never be enough, and will never be what is actually needed, because what is actually needed is not even considered an option, if people are even aware of it—and this in itself makes me angry).

I feel so frustrated. I don’t want to sit back and do nothing, but what can I do?

I believe that there needs to be real, direct action, structural change, the destruction of certain harmful institutions and infrastructure. But I also believe that this must happen concurrently with spiritual and psychological change—a complete alteration to our perception and consciousness. We need to fall in love with life, with the earth, for we cannot, and will not, protect what we do not love. But how do we find and foster this love?

That is part of the reason why I am going to be Writing the Wild Soul. I want to find ways to fall in love with the world, and in particular with my own small part of it—these mountains, escarpments, forests and hanging swamps. And then, when I have felt that love, formed that relationship, I want to do my best to speak for the earth—to use language to speak for what is, not just for myself. That, perhaps, is the most important thing I can do with words.

Self-expression is easy. Expressing what is 

is a little more difficult.

~Robert Bringhurst (2)

We will not fall in love with the earth via scientific facts or statistics—for all the importance of such things—but only through poetry, myth, story, and art. It is only though the poetic and visionary, the sensuous and emotive, that we will really begin to feel love for life in its wholeness, its completeness, its enoughness.

‘Technological solutions’ will not save us. I do not believe that they exist, though many people like to think they do.

It is poetry that will save us; art, stories, local mythologies and new cosmologies founded on principles of biophilia, and human humility. All of this needs to be communicated, at least to begin with, with words. Thus the challenge is to find a new way of using language that de-centres ourselves, and re-centres the wild; that speaks for the needs of the earth, rather than the selfish wants of human beings who have lost any connection with the Real.

This is the challenge I am facing, with fear and apprehension, but also with a seed of joy in my heart. I only hope I can live up to it. 

References:

1. Tomas Tranströmer, quoted in Andreas Weber, Matter & Desire: An Erotic Ecology, Chelsea Green Publishing: White River Junction, Vermont, 2017, p. 96 

2. Robert Bringhurst, from his poem ‘Xuedou Zhongxian’, in Selected Poems, Jonathan Cape: London, 2010, p. 91

Wise Words: Sensuous Language That Makes Sense

Barbara Christian urges us to write, to remember women’s writing, and to remember why we write: “I can speak only for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally. For me, literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is. It is an affirmation that sensuality is intelligence, that sensual language is language that makes sense.”

(Somer Brodribb, Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism, Spinifex Press: North Melbourne, 1992, p. 137)

~

… a story must be judged according to whether it makes sense. And “making sense” must here be understood in its most direct meaning: to make sense is to enliven the senses. A story that makes sense is one that stirs the senses from their slumber, one that opens the eyes and the ears to their real surroundings, tuning the tongue to the actual tastes in the air and sending chills of recognition along the surface of the skin. To make sense is to release the body from the constraints imposed by outworn ways of speaking, and hence to renew and rejuvenate one’s felt awareness of the world. It is to make the senses wake up to where they are.

(David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, Vintage Books: New York, 1996, p. 265)

A Prayer To Her

If you are here always, and a part of me, will you help me? Will you send me what it is I need to live, to survive, to create? I do not want to always be asking questions. I should be listening to the answers, knowing them within me.

Why have I been made this way if I was not meant to be this way?

We must learn to be thought 

by the gods, not to think them.

           ~Robert Bringhurst

Do you think me? Am I thought through you? Thought Woman—Creatrix—She-Who-Is. Please think through me, let your thoughts become my thoughts, calm and profuse.

Earth, teach me. Darkness, teach me. I want to learn from the ground beneath my feet. I want to descend, to fall below the rational, the known, to find the core, primordial ways of knowing—the earth/water/air—all-one knowing. The love that binds and holds all together, like a prayer muttered, an incantation, a mantra that chants the world’s being. In my dream is a circle, a wholeness, a wondering within the Mystery that is my own life, in-held … blessed and born into flesh. A circular dimension, womb-like, the yonic shape of eternity’s folds. Veiled from matter, yet behind it all, like a fire, a warmth that suffuses life.

The Wise Woman must assert herself, her knowledge and ways. Have courage, she says. We are returning. We are within you, held in blood and bone, in genes that speak of past lives, of who we were. You know us, like you know yourself, and we can speak through you, direct you towards fate, destiny, life that is full of living. You must trust us, must simply listen, and rebel against those who would belittle and silence. There is so much more you need to know, and can, if you open your heart, open bodymind to our voices. We are all around you, in the ground, in the air, in the trees and birds. We whisper on the wind, we weep in the rain. Water carries us far.

In the mountain there is a heart, a core of being that is yours. It belongs to all, a gift from earth to her people. An opening into the earth can be found, a bountiful hollow that is filled with source, filled with essence, elemental energy. You feel it within you, like a name, a word, a practice of living, open to life and spirit—inspired and enthused. She-Who-Is compels you to try, to keep trying, to live and love and create from your body, like a star, an essence-filled fleshly being, a life of triumph, of power with the Others. Shared. Opened. 

I feel you within me and want you to grow, to strengthen, to gift me with what it is I seek: A wellspring that flows endlessly, to guide me through life. A torrent of aliveness, like a blessing, a bounty, a cornucopia of gifts and nourishment.

Hagia Sophia, by Meinrad Craighead (1987)

There is a blade I must use to cut away extraneous matter, to destroy thoughts that deaden and constrain. Cut away all that is not truth, is not woman-thought, is not love for what is. I defy the patriarchs: I sing out my curse over their dead lands, their prisons of suffering and despair. We will escape, back into the wild, with wildness in our hearts to replace the drug of civilisation.

Carrying this torch, this light that endarkens, bringing what is missing to the world, I step beyond myself and towards what is necessary, what is desired by earth-fast stone, tree, the greening life and the waters. All hearts yearn for this—the drumbeat of being that dances inside everything—I hear it, feel it, beckon it. It will enliven me, consecrate my actions, so they burn with a power that has not been seen for centuries. To be part of the turning—come what may—is a privilege—one of pain and sorrow—but we are alive within these times, and striving to become more so. To let love flow out over the land like a balm. 

I will defy the proscriptions of the masculinist world. I will defy and defy and defy. There is a strength in me that is more than I know, that is hidden and biding its time, but so powerful, it will awaken me from sorrowful slumber and turn me inside out, dismember and re-member this broken, wounded body, this self of confusion and hopefulness.

Creation is a cauldron of possibility. My body is a womb of light—blood-red and sensuous, of itself, made and formed by the Mother, blessed by her blood. 

What foremothers have made me? Who are my people? How do I find them, my ancestors, my spirits?

Listen. Pay attention. Be still. Look out at the world around you, the mountains, the trees, the blessed air, the winged ones, and the water.

Trust. Know you are held, loved, and born for something.

* * *

I wrote this several weeks ago, and gave it the above title when I turned it into a blog post; and then I read Sarah Elwell’s beautiful piece, A Hymn to Her, which I thought a beautiful and extraordinary synchronicity. It seems She really is returning, sung out by different voices in different ways, but needed and longed for no matter Her words.

Wise Words: Shape-Shifting

For indigenous people everywhere, nature is an enlargement of your mind and body, not a curse on your soul, as the Christian West has too often seen it.

…

For Amazonian people, there are spirits or essences within reality, and this essence takes different forms—human, bird or animal—but since the essence is the same, the spirit in one form can transform into another form in a kind of Ovidian metamorphosis known throughout the forests. The same life force is in everything, animating you and the eagle, the glossy leaf and the kingfisher, the jaguar and me.

There is a tender familiarity in this, a gentle ontology. The difference between creatures is just a trick of the light, a superficial thing, for underneath we are made of the same stuff. On the surface there is an obvious difference between you and the daffodil, the catfish and the monkey puzzle tree, but what animates each is the same vibrancy and immanent energy, the one life force expressing itself in differing guises. This understanding is learned through the language of metaphor or through the intense experiences of the soul. For Amazonian people, knowledge comes from communicating with the wild world, through its plant teachers or through shape-shifting—that strange, beautiful and entirely wild way of knowing.

(Jay Griffiths, Wild: An Elemental Journey, Penguin: London, 2006, pp. 68 and 69)

Leaping, & These Mountains: A Poem

As my writing practice, and creativity in general, has been stuck for some time, I’ve decided to take a rather large leap of faith. 

Early next month I will be participating in a writing program called Writing the Wild Soul, run by Soulcraft Australia, in partnership with the Animas Valley Institute (founded by depth psychologist and wilderness guide, Bill Plotkin, in Colorado, USA). I am a little scared and apprehensive, for this will be a physical, psychological and emotional challenge; but I am also excited and hopeful. I want this course, however difficult it may be, to shake myself out of stagnation, and propel me into a new psychic and creative landscape, from which deeper work may emerge. This is not only important for my own health—as I have found writing to be such an important healing practice—but also for my participation in the larger web of relationship, both human and more-than-human.

I am looking forward to finding out what the land has to tell me, what songs the mountains sing, what wisdom the trees can offer, and writing down what I hear and feel. Perhaps I will return transformed, ready to speak with a renewed voice.

In preparation, I have already been writing some intuitive pieces, responding both to words/images from poetry, and to nature, as I sit on the deck of my studio and scribble away in my notebook. I will share some of what I have written over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here is something to whet your appetite. In addition, one of my previous poems, ‘An Everywhen’, has just been shared on the Soulcraft Australia blog.

These Mountains

These mountains which were never mine 

year after year have remade me.

~ Robert Bringhurst, ‘Jacob Singing’

These mountains that form my skin

my flesh and bone. What part of me 

do they not make? My eyes see 

through mineral facets, crystal shards 

that absorb light and create colour

Elementary particles are all that I am

in body; yet there is an animating force—

the mountain’s heart, the breath of the 

green world, sustaining and cultivating life

Small beings lift themselves towards the light 

while rooted in darkness, the source of our yearning

The unknown is where we speak from, bowing low 

to the original language of being, the inherent meaning 

that resides in matter

Year after year we are remade from earth’s source

from mountaintop, dust, tree, feather

from wind and song

To be sourceless, unmade, is to be adrift in meaninglessness

the only permanent death

My source is the mountains, the heights and valleys

the caves and cliffs: sandstone, granite, clay

Ancient and eroded, mist-kissed and sun-warmed

often impenetrable, holding back secret places

hidden worlds that feed us with mystery

My own body does not belong to me, though 

it is mine, and is me, my own small mountain

mineral-laden and sky-filled. I bleed just as they do

and will one day return to them what I had only 

borrowed

Wise Words: We Need Animals In Order To Breathe

… the reason people once could talk to animals was not because people understood a language that we have since forgotten, but because we and the animals were and are aspects of the same being(s). This is what we have forgotten or forsaken.

The repression of our knowledge of this original kinship with animals constituted the primal moment of splitting that has enabled humans to erroneously imagine ourselves as separate from what we have corralled off and designated as “nature.” This splitting has led some of us to think that we can destroy “nature” without destroying ourselves. This initial moment of fission made possible all subsequent ones, including rape, atomic fission, gene splicing, vivisection, and so on.

The word animal is derived from a Latin word meaning “breath” or “soul.” Many human cultures, particularly my own, participate (along with our machines) in the torture and annihilation of animals. Yet as we do, it is our very souls that we are sacrificing. One of the great dangers of deforestation is the attendant depletion of the oxygen content of the atmosphere. According to Alice Walker, humans are “connected” to animals as closely as we are to trees. She warns us that by destroying animals we lose “the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.” Without wild animal life, “‘Magic’ intuition, sheer astonishment at the forms the Universe devises in which to express life—will no longer be able to breathe in us.” 

… it is only when we are living in harmony with “familiar values”—when there is a communion between animals and people—that we can work magic.

(Jane Caputi, Gossips, Gorgons & Crones: The Fates of the Earth, Bear & Company, Santa Fe, 1993, pp. 152–153)

Capturing The Sky

Capturing the sky in a net as large as universes, complexity within its folds, its weave of colours, forms—light and energy made flesh. The sensuous is the sacred, the mother-matter that is all, and we dwell within Her body like cells of Herself, our own fire mingling with Her’s; our hearts beating with Her’s, blood flowing like rivers, ocean tides, a great breath—in and out, within and without, over and over, inside Her eternity. A constant unfolding is what She is, the change that never ends, the process that draws forth life, and beckons death, and makes the Wheel of Fortune turn, revolving on its axis of Love—the energy of Life, the gravity that merges all together. To hold love in your hands, to feel it in your bones, surging through your blood—a love-stream—is to know true joy and wonder, to have truly lived. To feel is to know, to have words of truth on your tongue. Truly, there is nothing more important than the language of life, its sensuous fabric.

Rivers run and free themselves from the constraints that bind them. They flow where they will, at will, and into my heart, which is nourished by the gush of liquid life, the purity that writes across the landscape in curvaceous lines, the serpent-body of which there is a small part in everything—the double-helix, the blueprint for life, held inside every body, to twist and dance through time, spiralling around in a lover’s dance, rhythmic and Eros-filled, pulsing inside flesh, blood, bone. The breath is a bond that opens us to All, that suffuses our bodies in invisible connection, with each other, and the Divine. Crossing boundaries is how magic happens, to influence events, to know what is beyond us—to perceive the ancient symbiosis of Life. Perception becomes Truth: the sensuous world is what leads us to wisdom. Small beings dart within us—the birds of emotion—winged and glorious, bathed in beauty. What is is sacred, it is whole, and we carry it within ourselves, as it carries us within itself—that great body of reality—full of storm and calm, a terrible beauty, that enlivens and nourishes. We live and die inside Her flesh—and there is nothing more nor less.

Singing the Sky, felt tip pen and gold pigment ink (2018)

Wise Words: Two Dimensions Of The Same Thing

The way humans lived before civilization was a lot less work, because the planet naturally produces, naturally renews itself. It offers itself to us not only for food, but in the sense of offering wonders, and its presence. There’s none of this separation of the sacred and the secular in the natural world, both spiritual and physical well-being are offered at the same time, because—and this is what is most important—the physical and the spiritual are two dimensions of the same thing.

(Thomas Berry, quoted in Derrick Jensen, How Shall I Live My Life?: On Liberating the Earth from Civilization, PM Press: Oakland, California, 2008, p. 49; my emphasis in bold)