It has been bugging me for a while now - this feeling of going around and around - sometimes spiralling down a little and then up. Is this the human experience I wonder - is this life now? Some days it is more: how might I escape this?
The march of the days and years seems to be the only element that is linear. Simplistic narratives and the ‘hero journeys’ that litter social channels bore me.
From my lens, everything appears interconnected and circular - cycles, holons and repeating patterns. There is a depth and richness in this.
My longing is still drawing me forward (although sometimes down and back). It is a longing for truth, for goodness, for creativity. The goodness of regeneration, of nature, of the collective. It is here/there I am sure of it. Round and round I go.
Standing out by the car early this morning I was doing my best to wait patiently for independent 2.5 yo to get into carseat on her own. It was cold and my precious work time was slipping away. To remain calm, I focussed on the mature paperbark tree next to me, shedding it’s layers (image above). I noticed it had lost a few lower branches many years ago. The circular pattern of the missing branch seemed to speak to me - a tree wound, a lost limb. See my rings, I too have circles, it seemed to say. Trees round out. We round out. The cycle of life/death/life is everywhere as Clarissa Pinkola Estes would say.
Later I finally sit at my desk, ready to write - filled with the longing of moving past this thing/ glitch/ block/ IT that is holding me back.
What is in the way is the way.
Perhaps things feel the same because they are somewhat the same. More though I sense it is because I/we can’t yet hold a perspective that would allow us to see and feel where we are differently. There is a way of seeing/feeling being that we are not yet able move beyond or move into.
But I want to be able to rise above IT - or dissolve IT. Enough I say.
At the recommendation of the fabulous Frith Luton, I have been reading Mary Louise von Franz’s Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales.
Towards the end of the book she suggests this notion of eradicating the parts of us that are wounded or protective, or in shadow is misguided. I have read this before, Thomas Hubl writes on this. I’ve known it intellectually and even advised others not to pursue this approach. And yet I have still been longing for this scar/block/IT to be gone - to have the wound dissolved.
Perhaps trying to eliminate an inner wound is like trying to pretend a tree has not lost a limb. Or that it didn’t suffer a tearing break as a sapling? Even if it appears to have grown beyond, the scar - on close inspection - will still be found. The key seems to be that the tree - with the cultivation of the right conditions, light and nourishment, can still grow and flourish. It doesn’t decide to stop growing - it keeps working to fulfil the completeness of its biology and its destiny, its inherent truth. As can we.
So if we cannot eradicate IT, how do we soften this feeling, what might be a scarring, wounding, fill the hollow that has been left?
A path of healing von Franz illustrates, is looking out for all the goodness around you, in the briefest of moments, the metaphoric crumbs on our path - as all should be treated as precious.
The goodness I have been seeking (and perhaps we all are in our own unique way) is not necessarily and perhaps unlikely to be a whole thing - nor is a destination. It is the little things as well as the moments of awe, wonder and creation.
And so, on your journey be sure to collect these snippets of goodness, and hold them close. Then with time, practice and good intent you can merge them into you larger pot of goodness. Which you can use to weave and merge through, in and round your other parts that may be darker and more challenging. When you wholeness is melded together with goodness, the wounded parts lose their potency.
Individually and collectively we need to do this work it seems - to seek, cultivate and hold together goodness. Perhaps this very act of weaving, bringing together, holding can then be a key part of the goodness itself.
A few months ago I had a dream where I was trying to assemble a raft in a fast moving river - I had all the parts I needed and should have been able to make it work but I wasn’t. As I abandoned the mission and walked back up the river bank, my dream narrator said “you are forgetting the river grass all around you.” I could’ve used this abundant resource to bind the raft.
Back then I though perhaps the river grass represented self belief and inner faith - in my work - in myself. I pursued this approach with little success - holding on to the threads of self belief remained as challenging as ever. After the dream I discovered and read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful and wise Braiding Sweetgrass - different meanings abound across cultures and the collective.
Now I am rethinking this, perhaps the river grass was symbolic of goodness itself? So with the river reeds I can weave, bind and bring together all different aspects of both me and community.
I sense von Franz wisdom is right for now - that this is a way for me to go forth, by connecting the parts, by weaving them together with goodness.
We go searching for the goodness as though it is a destination and it is not. Goodness is found in the moments of being. And and it seems true that goodness is everywhere - it is creative energy and the very nature of life.
In our haste - our desperation to reach a goal or some societal expectation - we can too easily miss all the goodness on our path - only to find that we reach our destination and are still lacking/searching.
When we are trying to follow a more soulful path a path of authenticity, to work with shadow - it seems these are the reminders we might need.
Surrender - you are on the right path.