Glistening in tiny raindrops that resemble silver balls of dew, Arachne sits queen of her web, which has appeared overnight across my doorway. Usually i wouldn’t turn an outdoor light on before dawn, as i am comfortable in the darkness and keen to take in as much of the night sky as possible before Aurora shimmers silver across the horizon from the east. But i’m not at home. I’m staying in a rustic retreat centre in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, south east Queensland, leading an intensive for ecopsychotherapy students. There’s no sunshine, though. The rain of our Australian La Nina continues. Hopefully there’ll be no more flooding, although Mullumbimby residents are meeting again, in preparation for ‘Severe Weather’.
The light goes on and i step out, carefully, mindful that each step is a moment in time, not rushing to see if there is any chance of glimpsing the sunrise through the clouds. And there she is; i see her just in time, so that the door doesn’t take out her web, she doesn’t feel panicked as her airy world is shaken apart, and doesn’t end up crawling across my face.
Because i was moving slowly, i don’t have to clear silky strands from my face and help her back into her broken web. Instead, i take the time to stop in awe of her beauty. I know i should go and help my co-facilitator set up the hall for our morning yoga session, but i can’t drag myself away from this stunningly beautiful vision. Tiny crystalline balls of water glisten in the electric light, across her body and web, which is a spiralling cage of death to smaller insects, but a geometric pattern of wonder to me. My door has broken one long strand, which connects the web to the ground, so when i finally walk away, she is working on repairs.
There is no dawn glimmering today, so i can’t perform my Sunrise Ceremony, and the heavy cloud cover means no Venus, Jupiter, Mars or Saturn (or Aphrodite, Zeus, Ares and Kronos) either. I’ve been tracking this predawn planetary alignment for weeks, as i perform my morning prayers at home. It is good to be visited by the gods and goddesses, occasionally.
Back inside for yoga just after dawn, then out on Country after breakfast. What do we find when we reconnect with nature? Participants speak lovingly of rediscovering childlike delight in little things, of the watercourses they visit when they are stressed and how much calmer they feel after some time there, or of a rock in a special place that recreates a feeling of stability and confidence that has been eroded by modern reality. We speak of encounters with butterflies and ducks, of when we sense a grander scheme of things, when facing the ocean or the sky, or how we get our breath back with a walk in the bush.
We start with reality. Where are we at today? We probably shouldn’t have to work to find solace in nature, but we do. So, we create that space, sharpen our ears, make time and allow ourselves to sink back into connection. Many find deeper rest here, some feel more enlivened. All note the way their sense of separation from nature is dissolved, how they return to a feeling of being in relationship with the land, other animals, the elements. The rain has its magical rhythm, even for those who have been traumatised by the recent floods. Tears flow, wounds are reopened and healed over again, genuine smiles come easy … the earth sings and we tune in.
We sit in the Temenos, the sacred and safe space where all sharing is valid, where our vulnerable, soft, sometimes broken animal selves can peep out and find comfort in others. We practise walking therapy, deep listening to each other as well as nature, not talking over or waiting to respond, but being there, offering authenticity and the ‘unconditional positive regard’ recommended by person-centred counselling godfather Carl Rogers.
We choose Sit Spots, where we can become more aware of changes in the natural landscape from day to day, moment to moment. We open up the doors of perception and come back to our senses in the moment. We draw the mind back from its monkey-like grasping and from the machine that captures us all, all too often. Guided meditations draw our awareness down into the earth’s hum, into our unique being and our universal flow at the same time, into animal totems old and new. We learn from nature, like we always did. It provides endless metaphors of healing, empowerment and flow; the grass bounces back after being trodden down, a river flows around the rocks that seemed like barriers at first, a gentle breeze brings us back to our bodies in the here and now.
We let nature tell our life story for once, and sing around the campfire, like people have always done. It is all so easy, smooth and natural, we wonder how we ever lost this feeling in the first place.
*NB: boundless thanks to the participants and my co-facilitator Charlotte Brown. All photos by the author. If you feel moved by these words, please consider Subscribing, Sharing or Liking this post.
Initiation makes us into something we weren’t before. Successful ritual transforms our consciousness, expanding our minds beyond a little circle of desire and gratification, connecting us to the more-than-human world of nature all around us, the ecosystem we depend upon, the creatures who are our earthly kin, as well as connecting us to the spirit of life in the cosmos itself. This is what we used to get consistently in premodern society and what some people in more traditional societies, which are more resistant to the modern disease of disconnection, still get.
For those of us born into large-scale modernising cultures, religion tries to fill the gap, which is left as we turn away from this world of animistic life, but it gets so cold in those dusty halls and generally misses the meaty, gristly, blood-pumping point of the matter. That is, the living matter …
The best book I ever read on this subject was “Nature and Madness” by Paul Shepard. He pointed out what we had lost, how the turn towards technological domination of the planet came at such a great cost, as we allowed our initiation rituals to become severed from the word around us, and led by new types of elders, whose loyalties were to king and army rather than our fellow animals, our ancient homes in the forests and the mountains, the deserts and the seas. It’s a great book, but like my PhD on the meaning of light, it spends most of its time diagnosing the problem, leaving us to find solutions.
So I wrote this song, as a hint towards some things we could be doing to take our power back, as a signpost, a call to arms, an ecopoetic symbolic evocation of that world, as it calls us back to ourselves and to its living significance, within and without …
I stood in awe, inside the sacred space inside Notre Dame, after walking the circuit around the building and its impressive gothic architecture. While we tourists gawked, the faithful worshipped, as they did every day, as they did regardless of our other, more secular interests. The smoke rose from the Catholic censer, the light shone down through the majestic stained glass, and the place emanated divine presence simply because so many had called upon it for so long. Their God shimmered through the space because they called upon it; because they took solace in it; because they made it real.
I have a complicated relationship with Christianity and no desire to absolve it for its heinous crimes against those I consider to be my people; the heathens, the pagans, the natural healers, the Druids, the ones who worship the Old Ones. But calling in the sacred is something that should be beyond religious differences; beyond your cult or my mythic reality; beyond conflict.
Sacred flames for departed souls
When I was Director of Studies at the Phoenix Institute I decorated my glass office wall with these abstract images, all taken from a set of photos I took from within Notre Dame that day. I felt like I had accidentally made modern art out of sacred art, which had been captured out of focus. Maybe it was meant to be; maybe I was reframing coincidence for meaning. I don’t mind which – that is matter for everyone to interpret for themselves. (Those pictures are lost in time now, like the Notre Dame we remember is.) Regardless, at the time, it seems that while we were studying holistic counselling and creative arts therapies, we were all trying to tap into that inner light that gave us the insight to find guidance in healing – for ourselves and for others. That’s something I want to remember today, as we grieve for this loss of the sacred dimension in Paris.
The faithful – and the not-so-faithful, in my case – in the sacred hall
Although I cleave much more closely to the sacred in nature – to what some call ‘the church not made by hands’ – I recognise any space made sacred by the attempt to be in conversation with the creative face that is beyond the human, that is greater than anything we can conceive, that puts us back in touch with the divine spark behind all life and the very existence of the cosmos. I give thanks for this space and what it meant to anyone exposed to its magnificent Gothic beauty and the way it gave access tot he otherworld within and beyond this one. Amen, Om, Aum, Aho, Home: may all the scared words be spoken in reverence on this day of mourning for one of the great sacred spaces of the world.
It’s gloomy, compared to a sacred grove, but the effect is inarguable.
I feel a little tug on my heart, as i find this creek running into the sea in Tathra today. It is the first time it has made it this far since i started staying here regularly a few years ago. Today is exactly one year since the devastating bushfires in this seaside community, so there was a lot of resilience and reconnection to celebrate, as well as a lot to remember in mourning. Recently it was also the 10 year anniversary of the Kinglake bushfires, which at the time shocked the world with their unassailable ferocity and loss of life, both human and non-human. My brother lost his property that day, but he narrowly escaped with his life, along with his wife and 1-year old son. Life is creation and destruction, birth and death, shut down and break through all the time.
But today, seeing this little creek making its way out to sea made my heart glad. So often it’s the subtle touches of nature connection that can make a difference to the way we feel; and, more importantly, to the way we act. Continuing to work with this foundation of ecopsychology (or ecospirituality) enables us to tune in to our part in the more-than-human life that we are part of. We’ve changed the world and damaged its fabric in this new era of the Anthropocene and, as a race, we haven’t yet proven able to pull out of the slippery slope of materialistic capitalism and take better care of our planetary home.
So why celebrate such a small matter today? Because the stream made it, the flow created breakthrough, and some days our hearts hurt and we need to be reminded that this is the ancient way of life. We take what we think we need and sometimes this is too much and we do damage. Then, we need to let the waters flow, to give away and to give back. Sure, it is natural for us to want to draw fresh water from a sparkling stream; to be refreshed by its soothing qualities and to give thanks for its gifts. But this is not what the military/industrial complex is doing. It offers engineering infrastructure to suck the rivers dry, to create mega-dams and turn the taps onto crops of cotton and rice and whatever else are doused in the chemicals designed and pushed by Big Pharma, to be sold and controlled according to the machinations of predatory capitalism. We all know this, but it is proving to be a ‘wicked problem’, to dislodge the machine and allow the earth to regrow from beneath such withering machinations and their shadow.
I grew up in Port Adelaide, which meant that my school holidays were spent on local beaches, in the desert fringes of the Flinders Ranges, down the Fleurieu Peninsula and along the Might Murray River. I always felt deep kinship with the salty sands and gentle dunes along my friendly beachfronts, and was never quite so much at home along the river, with its spooky dead trees in places, and its steady one-way flow. But then i visited the Coorong for the first time, and my heart sang for the river and the sea at the same time.
The Coorong in South Australia, where the Murray River meets the sea – sometimes.
Here, when i was a kid, a mighty river flowed into the sea, with much of its overflow captured in salty lakes and lagoons surrounded by my favourite landscape feature of all, the sand dune. There were mysteriously quiet coves, dead flat crystalline beds of salt, endless blue skies and crashing oceanic waves on the other side of a fragile dune system. It was many years before i would learn why the Murray stopped flowing into the sea, how the river mouth was closed up and the inland lake system dying. The story of criminal irrigators stealing vast quantities of fresh water upstream, in other states of Australia, is now coming further into the light, as the tragedy of millions of dead native fish hits the headlines and the public become outraged at the stupidity and recklessness of the ‘system’ again. It’s no coincidence that the remote communities mostly affected are largely Aboriginal, while it is wealthy industrial farmers (not the caring smaller scale ones) that profit. Again.
Local fish death tragedy, Wallagoot Lake, caused by low water levels, drought and heat.
The fish death phenomenon is largely out of the 24/7 spectacle of news media already, although it has just hit home (albeit on a smaller scale, thank goodness) in our local area. Since then, we have enjoyed a dense bank of rain such as we haven’t seen around here in ages. It’s been sweet to fall asleep to the sound of raindrops on the roof – and maybe even to wake up to it too. And so, this little creek flows into the sea. Something seems right about this; something we have missed. Like so many of the symptoms of the runaway climate destruction we are now witnessing, it’s as if part of our souls have been splintered away, as the earth groans under the weight of modern industrial capital and its inevitable commodification and degradation of every ‘resource’ it can get its greedy hands on.
In ancient Mesopotamia, the place where the two waters – fresh and salty – mingled was renowned as a place of fertility. Many Aboriginal Australians know the same truth; that such places are rich and should be protected. Rivers are meant to run and we should take their fresh water for use and not for greed. If they don’t make it to the sea for too long a period, death follows. It’s just another ancient law we ignore at our peril. Long live the spirit of flow and letting go and allowing for breakthrough, both in our fragile environment and in our souls – which end up being the same place, when we open our minds and bodies to our place in nature.
What are the shapes and spirits, the dreaming creatures and elemental characters that appear to us when we turn to the natural world and ask for its teaching? We can look to the mythologies of traditional cultures to get a big picture story of some of the things we might expect – the cosmic serpent and the animal powers, the plant spirits and hybrid forms – but none of these may appear when we do the actual work in the world with real people. So, following on from my lecture on this subject to the Jung Society of Melbourne this March, it was a privilege to explore the Archetypes of Nature with several participants in the workshop that followed. And what appeared for us in that beautiful space?
It was a very windy day. A wind that had kept me up at night, so that I felt compelled to ask it: what have you to teach? It said: you must lift yourselves up to match me. You must draw on your work, not be afraid to project your voice, lift the group’s energy so that they join forces with the Archetypes of Nature and allow themselves to be evolved by the experience. There is no turning back or turning away from this challenge. Awaken that power, meet it head on and fulfil your promise.
And it meant it. The wind kept up. I thought that a tree could come down and crash through the roof of the building we used as our base for the day. I was worried we wouldn’t even be able to go out and do the work in the natural environment, amongst the tress on the hill, with the breeze in our faces and the scent of pine needles and the sunlight glinting through the clouds. So we stayed inside and shared enough of ourselves to build a little community for the first hour. We dropped into that trance-like state available to us when we allow constant drumming, like a rhythmic heartbeat, to modify our brain waves so that our guides, guardians and allies can appear in our psyches. We shared, when comfortable, what appeared to us and what it meant, how it opened us up to new levels of consciousness that integrated parts of ourselves that had dropped away through the process of socialisation. We broke for lunch and then – the day opened out to our presence in the great outdoors.
We left the building by marking our presence, as embodied beings in a living planet, with mindfulness of every step. We breathe as if the atmosphere nourishes us; each breath entering our lungs to enrich our blood with oxygen, to fill our bodies with life, and then to return to the world to be part of the ongoing cycle. Each footfall reminds us of the miracle of walking, as we balance on one leg before the other makes ground, like monkey paws holding us up as we feel the earth with our heels and toes, gripping and rolling us along the landscape. We stood still on that hillside and imagined the place before the buildings went up, before the streets were laid, sensing the landscape beneath for its rolling hillsides and valleys, ‘placing’ ourselves rather than just assuming we live on the land as strangers: cooped up in buildings and cars all the time, walking in straight lines and looking at the straight walls of buildings … remembering instead how to be primate bodies in relationship to the earth around us.
The stillness that ensues requests our silence, but the wind continued. When we go to practice active imagination, to enter into conversation with whatever spirits of nature appear for us, or Archetypes that have entered our dreams, I have to project my voice at nearly full capacity to be heard over the gusts, as I offer guidance in the protocols of giving thanks and requesting insight. Pay your respects at all times, I remind the group; send your blessings out to the spirits as if they were real, this is what we learn from the venerable traditions. Nature is full of intelligence, so it must be treated and approached with respect. Better to always approach the numinous with a hospitable door open to the spirits that work for the best outcome for all (and the door shut to other types of energy). These are simple rites, but not to be overlooked. They are the safety net for those with the courage to allow that we are not alone on earth.
Say hello to the sun, salute the moon, give thanks to the spirits of the air and the waters, place yourself in the middle of all the directions, up and down as well as all around … be prepared for the conversation to get real and for the appearance of anything. We had wind, all day, challenging us to rise up in response. We had mountains, still and permanent, implacable in the background. We had bark, more than once, speaking of layers: protecting the tree, stripped away to reveal more depths of being, letting go to fall to the ground. We explored the sense of displacement that has marked many of our lives, as we have shifted around the world, by choice or not: an archetype, or meaningful pattern, of modern life if ever there was one. Feeling as though we are alone at the edge of the desert, or looking down into the minutiae of physical life, coming here from Europe or Asia or the Middle East, wanting to feel we belong here and seeking reconciliation with the people that called this place home for countless generations before they too were displaced by the force of modernity. Appreciating the gentle little things, the drops of water that evaporated throughout the day, the flowers small enough to fit inside an acorn cap, the way a stone lifted leaves an imprint on the ground. Flying with a magpie, swirling around the integration of black and white feathers in the mind. Awakening to the way a spider can teach us to overcome our anxiety.
But finally, how can we remember this stuff in everyday life? How do we take the images that appear, the lessons we remember, the messages we receive from this sacred time together, where we carve out a space that Jung would have called a Temenos, to relink our unique selves with the greater reality of the one great Self, in daily life? If we can do that, from our encounter with Archetypes of Nature, then we have truly begun the next phase of our journey towards individuation: towards becoming more truly our own unique, embodied, unrepeatable selves so that we can let go of our attachments to the smaller self of learned responses, defensive patterns and old dreams. Letting go into the infinite potential of the universe as it becomes what it will be, in every moment.
