Emissaries of the path

The next time you find yourself caught in a repetitive loop of thinking, spiraling, and falling down the rabbit hole… slow the situation down.

Feel your feet on the earth. Sense the aliveness in your hands. Breathe deeply from your lower belly.

Shift of the rabbit hole and into the vessel, where things are not quite as they seem. A more sensual, imaginal place where wisdom figures stand by to show you something behind the veil.

With your presence, interrupt the momentum. Stay close. Stay in your body. Feel. Sense. Listen.

Something important may be emerging, longing for contact, to be illuminated and held, just underneath the threshold of consciousness, surging out from the intelligence of the somatic field.

Inside the very core of the emotions, the images, the pure feeling, the felt sense, the Ally incarnates and embodies itself, with a secret hope that conditions ripen for it to be known.

The invitation is to provide sanctuary and safe passage for the unlived, the unfelt, and the ungrieved to be touched and to be held.

What is it that I need right now? What is it that I have not been wanting to feel? How can I meet this moment and take care of myself in a new way? One that is spacious, loving, and even wild.

The emptiness in my heart, shakiness in my belly, constriction in my throat… the sadness, the shame, the rage, the lost joy, the lost capacity to play and to imagine, to dream a new dream… these are the emissaries of the path and allies of wholeness and integration.

I will not abandon myself. I will not turn from my embodied vulnerability. For just this moment, I will step into the unknown, and listen.

As the alchemist in the depth and containment of the vessel, I will allow spirit to matter and for matter to reveal its nature as spirit itself. And in the mystery of that union, I will go.

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Relational alchemy and the internal Other

Usually when we speak about the “others” in our lives, we are referring to those on the outside who we are in relationship with, that we care about, that matter to us.

It’s important to attune to them and to what it’s like for them - to see the way they see, feel they way they feel, listen to what keeps them up at night, and what opens their hearts.

While we each bring our own unlived life into the psychic space where our subjectivities intersect, there is also a third thing, the field itself, that has its own autonomy and intelligence, and is an equal partner in the relationship.

Whether we call this the interactive field, the analytical third, or the mystery of the Friend, this one is there with us in the liminal in-between.

This is the realm of Hermes, the one who guides the alchemist in her work, which is one of devotion and love – love of the materials in the vessel, and of the vessel itself.

In addition to the external other, there is also an “other” who is moving inside us, an unknown piece of soul who has become split off from the totality. Just like the external others, these ones also long to be known, held, and loved.

They are shape-shifters and will manifest in an infinite number forms – as vivid emotions, dream images, somatic tenderness, even as color, music, and poetry as they seek us as a vessel in which they can come alive.

In this way, relational alchemy, unfolds not only with an external other but simultaneously with the dissociated figures of psyche and soma, who carry light-pieces of our wholeness and essence.

It is to the degree we are able to empathically attune, listen to, feel, sense, and hold the emerging inner Other that we will be able to truly accompany those in our lives.

If we’re not able to attend with devotion to the inner darkness, chaos, and contradiction, we will never be able to practice intimacy with these same qualities as they inevitably emerge in our most intimate relationships.

Photo by Pietro Merola

Inside the secret places

Inside the body the lost ones travel, carrying our dissociated experience and unfelt feeling, taking up temporary residence in our muscles, cell tissue, organs, and breath.

Scattered pieces of soul gather in our eyes, shoulders, and bellies, and in the secret places within our hearts.

They’ve become frozen and crystallized there, and display their longing to come Home by way of our dreams, bodily-felt emotions, and the variety of symptoms we experience.

If we’re unable to access them, to feel what they feel and tend to their tears, they will make their way deeper into the underworld and into the soma, awaiting a future moment when conditions are ripe.

Even if our primary interest is in spiritual transformation, we can’t separate out any unresolved relational trauma, attachment wounding, and narcissistic injury we may have experienced.

This unheld and unmetabolized material shapes our perception and forms a psychic template through which we’re able to imagine ourselves, others, and our world. But this happens outside our conscious awareness, from within the depths of shadow.

As we’re invited to “just be in the present moment,” we have to remember that in the present moment the ancestors are there with us.

They not only take up residence in our bodies, our hearts, and deep in the soul, but they are our bodies, hearts, and souls. Psyche is multiple and polytheistic.

They arrive invited or otherwise, along with the lost, crystallized orphans of psyche and soma, the spinning figures of our unlived lives, and the rich landscape of our implicit memory.

We’re not alone in that “present moment.”

What does the Other have to say about us and our meditation practice? Have we asked them and listened carefully to their response, with devotion and care?

Have we lamented their tears and grieved their pain?

To what degree have we met them, and accepted them with love? And sought their wisdom on the nature of past, present, and future.

Photo by Paul Davies

Learn more about Matt's online group and community

View Matt's YouTube channel here