The tree of grief bears the richest fruit. She inspires a palate of inquiry that positions us to find meaning in places previously unseen. Her fruit renders possibility; not promises. Such is the quality of our learning rooted in the soul. If we find pause amidst the breath, therein unfolds scenes becoming, framed by orchestral harmonies interrupting our illusive theatre, calling us towards heart-wisdom.
When I heard the call, its gentle supplication echoed against the caverns of my mind, a mind empty of life-force, a mind resigned. Whispers echoed in my mind asking are you open now? Symphonies of synaesthetic hues and tones infused me with the courage I thought had died with my broken heart. I became deaf to my saboteurs, and within a quieted mind of whispered, sign-less languages of intuition, I submitted to the agony of loss and the ghostly absences that haunted places once familiar. Now, I was now open to my chorus of emotions. Memories transformed into wistfulness, and dispiritedness replaced longing. Somewhere during these cycles, my home became full with wisdom imparted by various teachers and healers. Some spoke of initiation, whilst others narrated the journey of sacrifice, and rites of passage that lifted the veil. When I honoured the pain, the fog dissipated and I glimpsed a new, previously unforeseen path of joy. Grief emptied me of delusion, disillusion and confusion about my purpose and place in this world. With this restored sight, a sense of rhythm in balance with the world inspired a dance down an unmarked path towards deeper perspicacity. And yet, doubt weighted each step of the way asking that I choose the darkness of delusion or the light of insight. Deny the pain and blind the in-sight, or welcome the pain-body and nurture my somatic awareness. Stymied by confusion and guilt, how could I find joy amongst intense grief? It felt like a betrayal. Marked by trauma and stolen prophecies, my wounds granted me entry into a labyrinth of connected consciousness. This signified a profound opening that bestowed upon me a lens which revealed the gradients of color that infuse the world with patterns of beauty. Through the juxtaposition of grief and gift, I found the clarity necessary to cut through my disillusionment with the material world; a fool’s errand deprived of heightened consciousness and deeper awareness. The orientation towards clarity does not render it a constant presence in my life; rather, it requires nurturance and attentiveness. Life demands that we are sustained through an umbilical cord of technological dependence, believing that we are preserved through serfdom disguised as work ethic. Such distractions distort perception and nourish exhaustion, and gradually, the aperture closes and the light of clarity fades. As I turn towards inner healing, there ensues a dance between the shadow and the light. This dialogue between selfhood and otherness, a composition delicate in its rhythms and meter, calls me to create. What could have engulfed me in a black hole of torment sparked a flame of knowing that continues to guide me towards heart-wisdom. When I see the flame, I am reminded to tend my dreams, extract my musings onto the page and follow my creative callings. When the world unfolds as poetry, the written word demands that as both reader and writer, we interpret the languages of the collective soul. This is where my joy resides. ©Sophie Steele
0 Comments
Stories are medicine . . . They have such power; they do not require that we do, be act anything--we need only listen. The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in stories. Stories engender the excitement, sadness, questions, longings, and understandings that spontaneously bring the archetype, in this case Wild Woman, back to surface. -Clarissa Pinkola Estes- Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype Throughout the tides of life, we receive calls to action, calls to inspiration, calls to illumination. If we allow them to fade into the background unanswered, they grow dimmer and dimmer until only a fragment of their message echoes in our minds. My calls to write began as an impulse to document my childhood, and later evolved into a palliative measure that sought to make sense of teenage tumult. During both periods, my letters were torn from their pages for fear that, when found, they would incite mockery or patronization. The birthing of my innermost anxieties and joys onto the page was intimately bound to my sense of value. I cultivated an ability to compose academic essays, and troubled by the prospect of intimate creativity, I ignored the calls to write for none other than myself.
As Saturn returned, I heard whispers upon the breeze entreating me to write, quickly muted by the turbulence of work and commotion of ontological unknowns. The tension of creativity denied laid the foundation for a blinkered resolve that hardened my focus in the direction of quantifiable success; the joy of creativity was thus an indulgent, hedonistic affair. It seemed that only tragedy could be violent enough to penetrate my fortified tower of emotional petrification. In the months that led to tragedy, I fashioned my mind into a fortress, isolated and replete with a bastion of sentries myopic in their identification of threats to a disconnected existence. As the waters of grief washed through me, my defenses eroded against waves plunging with slow ferocity. Stones of fear and uncertainty crumbled to the depths, revealing a vulnerability that anchored me in a new truth: trauma was an initiatory rite that marked entry into a land of unknowns. Storms of overwhelm and numbness ebbed and flowed, transforming me into a castaway drifting along an ocean between, hoping for new shores. Held within the liminality of existing in a pregnant state of becoming, I reached for a pencil and journal. I found solace in the medicine of words, a paramedical response to the unravelling of spiritual and existential trauma. A contortion of conversational stream muddled by the shifting topography of selves, the osmotic energies of others, and a landscape of lineage, my mind does not always seem to be my own. It is in a perpetual state of unfolding, of deepening and releasing of selfhoods past, and sometimes I find that I am more bystander, and less empress. Like a puzzle thrust into the air, my mind is at once coherent and chaotic. The ambiguity of confused connections can render me lost in my own mindscape. As a way to discern the constellation of connected pieces as meaningful images, writing is a faithful practice of self-knowledge. It has empowered me to be purveyor of my mind animated by a desire to architect the rocks of concepts and trees of meaning. The practice of bearing witness to cycles of growth, pressure and regrowth blossoms with the sign-less languages of intuition, guidance that must be trusted and heeded. Through writing, I pen my way back to my spirit. ©Sophie Steele |
AuthorWriter, teacher, and activist working to explode barriers and correct inequity. I aspire to enrich our ecosystems of learning and growth by integrating creativity, healing and wisdom. ArchivesCategories
All
|