When you go out, please refrain from knowing where you are going. Resist having a plan or a strategy. Leave your controlling mind at home! It will be waiting for you when you return ;0)
LOST
Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask it permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
David Wagoner
Threshold
Let your intention guide you to a place that feels like a threshold. It may be two trees that you pass between, or a shadow on the ground or a stick or water way to pass over. Speak your intention to why you are out in the wild world and what you are up to. When you cross over, let your consciousness shift and your deep Earth connected imagination awaken.
Being found by a place
Once you have crossed the threshold, let your intuition, your heart guide you. Perhaps you will follow a butterfly or a sound or a hunch or a pull in your gut. Wander until you arrive at the place that is calling you, perhaps without your being conscious of it. You’ll know you have arrived when you have a sense of the veils between the worlds being thin, or as if you have been invited there, or you are in the right place at the right time.
Greet the place and the beings and introduce yourself
When you arrive, please open your senses and greet the place; you might share what you see, hear, smell, notice in your body of emotions and images and memories. Share with the place about itself. Then, share with the place who you are- in a way you normally don’t; your longing, your emotions, share a dream you had. Then share about why you have come and what you are up to and ask permission to be there. Note here: permission is not because you are “less than” or not good enough, rather because you have entered someone’s home and are being kind and polite.
Deepening in to the conversation
Once you have made your greetings and introductions, you may have a particular practice or ceremony that you would like to do there. Go on and do it! And imagine it as part of a conversation with Mystery and with the place. You are not there only for yourself or in your psyche. Your psyche is embedded in Earth’s psyche and the beings there are participating in whatever it is that you are up to (as you are participating in their lives as well!). Pay attention to what is happening in the space- who shows up, how the weather moves etc. Let the conversation take as long as it takes in the way that is right for you and the place/wild beings. Please write in your journal anything you do not want to forget, our beloved protectors will try and spray us with amnesia spray, so that we do not remember the things that might change us and bring us more alive. (They want to keep us small and safe, remember?)
Gratitude and offerings
When you are finished, offer your gratitude- you may sing or gesture or read a poem or offer spontaneous eloquence. Or you may have brought something with you to offer, a libation or something you made.
Some suggestions of what not to do
~ Use the world as an oracle- they are not here for you. Please do not project your inner world onto the outer world. We are all part of one another’s dreaming, but it is a fine line here to “consuming” or “using”.
~ Doubt what is happening and make it small or meaningless. Magic is real!
~ Interpret right away so as to control the story, let yourself be surprised and disturbed and changed by the experience.
~ Tell everyone about it. Perhaps you might keep the experience close in or choose to share within a container of being seen and heard (like mentoring or council practice)
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