Gekko
27th November 2013, 16:16
Monday morning, I was on a plane overlooking Washington state. As the plane torqued in its final preparation for descent, I noticed the rivers written plainly into the landscape...
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Like a snake, the river winds back and forth, weaving itself through the trees and rocks, finding the path of least resistance, ever-flexible. The river fills every darkened crevice, leaving none untouched.
What is it about the animal which scares people? It bites and eats things, but so does anything with a mouth. Maybe it's the way it moves - slinking, the creepy-crawly.
Symbolically, the snake touches everything we have hidden. Its slick frame can wriggle itself through the smallest opening, you have no idea where it will come from or where it will go. Sliding across your skin, it resists attempts at defining or restricting its movement. It is the unknown; a cold-blooded experience of which we have trouble conceiving.
We don't like being reminded of the things we've hidden. And we feel insecure in the darkness of the unknown. What's been left for dead beneath the surface of our waters? We can't quite remember everything, but here and there a phrase, a glance, a circumstance twinges some painful reflex. We retreat from the pain; we throw up the shields we've perfected over time. And so life hardens us.
Of course, there is something about the snake which is sexual, sensual
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Our deepest wounds are sexual in nature. Even if no rape or physical abuse has been suffered, all emotions hook into that tender, vulnerable place we hide at all costs. We become rigid and inflexible, the armor outliving its usefulness as hardened edges cut ourselves and each other.
The dance, the flashes of skin are tempting, titillating. It can inspire the most awful forms of harm and selfishness in those unwilling to go deeper, to ride the snake. Versions of rape. They loot and pillage in search of something unnamed, an insatiable desire, a hole which will never be filled as long as they flinch from their vulnerability, refusing or unable to surrender to the tears.
For this reason, religion tucked sexuality away in a small corner, making lists of rules governing its expression, something to be avoided at all costs but for the propagation of the species. On the other end, it became an excessively superficial distraction, bearing none of the depth of feeling which once was sacred. We abandoned the darker space in lieu of its companion, the exalted heights of daylight and holiness. And so our full joy, our full expression lay somewhere out of reach.
Somewhere in the gut, somewhere in the core from which this being radiates, lies the missing half of what we've sought.
Swadhisthana, the sacral chakra... warm in its embrace.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Swadhisthana.svg/457px-Swadhisthana.svg.png
What if we allowed our experiences to soften us, to remind ourselves of our connection to other humans and nature surrounding? Exploring our differences, the dirt, the taboos. Quietly questioning, probing, feeling, exploring the cracks. Getting to know our warts. Abiding the tenderness. Gently, with a lover's sigh.
For beneath the pain and danger lies unspeakable beauty... and the raw, refreshing power of honesty.
Gekko
27th November 2013, 17:35
From Kissing the Hag
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THE SELF AND THE DARK
In a religious tradition focused upon the importance of relationship, maintaining our edges is accepted as crucial. Needless to say, I am not referring to personal boundaries that keep us defended to the point of being closed: such would be entirely counterproductive to any interaction. The edges I speak of naturally protect us, helping us remain healthy and strong, our soul energy cohesively intact. Without edges we are vulnerable to intrusion, to wounding, or being overly influenced; we can lose our sense of identity.
Of course, the edge we show the world is not always an undiluted expression of who we feel we truly are. We paint our edges with textures and colours as a glamour that protects our tender truth, presenting various personas for different relationships, adjusting how we are for every situation. Though this can be wholly manipulative or deceptive, doing so is not always dishonest or dysfunctional; at times it can be an expression of respect, altering the way we are in order to communicate more effectively.
Every creature of nature has many layers. Those I am concerned with here are the edges that delineate the area of the soul within and immediately around us into which we allow nobody but those we absolutely trust. Here lies our raw self, naked and vulnerable beneath the protection of guise and pretension. Our flaws and imperfections are all to evident and, though the hag shrugs, very often this inner self is rejected and abandoned. Staying busy, always in company, painted as we'd like to be seen, we find ways to keep her hidden. It is, of course, possible to do so for very many years, but in time her lack of nourishment becomes obvious; we start to look spiritually pale and thin, our essence fading, leaving the mere husk of a persona.
Allowing someone to get close enough to see through those painted edges is what we call intimacy. And if we are hurt by someone within that vulnerable space, the wounds are the worst of our lives. For most [men and] women, the number we let into that place of trust we can count on our fingers, and often those of just one hand. Mothers share their intimate space (in healthy circumstances) from conception until the child starts to find its own edges, usually between the age of two and three, skidding on tantrums of alternating frustration and fear. Where a father is accepted into the mother's intimate space, the child feels that closeness too. Yet, being human and struggling with their own issues, our parents make mistakes, emotionally backfiring, and most of us grow up with that intimate space already scarred.
Finding our independence, growing into [men and] women, we crave that intimate connection so deeply, longing to be held in perfect love and perfect trust, warm and secure, naked and flawed. In our hag truth, in the darkness of our inner self, we dream of the knight [or princess] who would accept us for all we are: that perfect kiss... Yet as adults, confusing love with that need, intimacy all too often doesn't extend beyond the first flush of a relationship when, blinded by emotion, for a while we forget our fear. When the blaze of fireworks fades, we step back, too afraid that an old cut may be repeated, and the relationship falls apart.
Where scars are still seeping, the edges of the intimate space become barbed wire or opaque barriers, screaming with protective aggressive signs saying: 'KEEP OFF', don't touch, stay away, as we defend our ugly broken self from further pain and rejection. In others, the intimate space becomes so damaged by abuse (drugs or violence) that the edges are vague, tattered or shattered, leaving no personal protective boundaries at all. Such people remain open to violation. In a world where trust is broken, intimacy becomes terrifying.
If the intimate space is so flinched that it is held completely within, the physical body can be abused while the individual feels still somehow untouched. You can hit me, but you can't hurt me anymore. Where the edges are permanently tight, the physical body reflects that tension as pain or disease. Scars on our edges develop rigidity in muscles and joints, down to the cellular level, creating areas vulnerable to damage.
In a healthy person, the edges of our intimate space are thoroughly flexible, flinching to evade intrusion, relaxing when the moment passes, allowing the body to relax in turn. Indeed, whatever the damage, with sufficient hard work it is possible to heal those edges, regenerating our soul's natural cohesion.
To describe the circle of our intimate space, I use the word nemeton. Coming from one of the oldest language roots of Britain, the word can be translated as a place in time and space that is both sacred and safe: a sanctuary. This was the temple grove of the ancient Druids, and those practicing the tradition today still use the word; yet each one of us also carries that temple within our own soul. As we find healing and strength, experiencing our own integration within nature, as if rooted deep into the rich earth and freely breathing the skies, this personal sanctuary shines with the energy of our life force, vitality flowing unhindered, free.
Where our personal nemeton is whole, offering us such vibrant confidence, it is easier to make relationships with others, whether edges simply touch edges or we are open to share our sanctuary in a state of intimacy. The experience of connection, soul to soul, fills us. This is the greatest source of teaching and inspiration.
Of course, protecting ourselves usually appears the sane priority.
* * *
I move the curtains slightly, to breathe. They are heavy, dusty, obviously never stretched across the windows. Nobody's looking my way, everyone noisy and busy, running, laughing, pushing each other, trying to get to a chair. Another girl's out; she wanders off with a sigh and sits down at the side of the room, watching with big eyes, wishing she could still play. Her mouth moves as if she's still in the midst of it all, as the music starts up, the chaos of the game. I gaze at her, forgetting to hide myself again.
A heavy hand touches my shoulder. "What are you doing in there? Come on out and play with the other children, go on." I'm pushed out into the noisy room. I drift in my bubble, touched now and then by the hot breeze of the game, making my way to a patch of quiet in an alcove by the stairs. And there I stand, and watch, dreaming of stardust and the wide-wide dark of empty space.
He stands beside me for a while without saying anything, then speaks without looking at me.
"You shouldn't worry about what they say." His voice is soft, almost husky. He's a bit taller than me, a bit older. Maybe about eight. I shrug. I can feel him beside me. He's calm and quiet. "Why do you limp anyway?" I shrug again, not willing to gather up the words to tell him. "They think you're odd, that's all." And he looks at me.
His eyes are green.
"Have you ever sat in a space bubble?" I whisper.
He frowns, shakes his head, and smiles.
* * *
In our modern society there is a pervasive current... that encourages each of us to find ourselves. Yet many mystical traditions teach that at the very core of our being there is no self to find. At our centre, there is simply the empty darkness of nothing... It is why deeply esoteric journeys can indeed take us to the brink of madness: searching for who we truly are, we discover we are nothing. Yet here too is our dark goddess, she that is the formless unknown of complete release and pure potential. Deep within us, she is a well of serenity. Perceived through fear, however, she is the ugly horror of our eventual and inevitable annihilation, and another reason why we craft ways in which to deny her presence.
For the [man or] woman who has not hidden the hag within, that darkness at the center of the soul is a magical sanctuary. In Druidry, we speak of it as a nemeton deep within the soul, a place of exquisite peace and natural healing. Indeed, it is often referred to as a great dark cauldron; it is only when a [man or] woman is able to sit, balanced and grounded, upon the three feet of that inner cauldron, that she is able to find the strength of her soul's creativity, an ancient and bottomless pot containing that infinite universal darkness, this is the great cauldron of myth and legend, and mumbling beside it is her inner hag who, like Cerridwen, the old witch goddess of the sickle moon, stirs her brew of transformative inspiration.
Branwen, another goddess of the Welsh tales, has a cauldron that possesses the power of rebirth, dead warriors thrown into its abyss coming back to life to fight another day. The connection is the same in mythic tales all around the world: from the mystical depths of the cauldron, the wonder of new life emerges. Radiating the exquisite brilliance of life-potential, shimmering with miracles waiting to happen, this cauldron is the womb, both magical and physical. As nemeton, it is both the sanctuary and the source of true creativity. The more we are able to identify ourselves as centred within it, the richer our experience of life becomes.
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