Let us not forget the descendent current, flowing into the unlit places, the underworld, and the dark caverns of the psyche. The realm of dream, fantasy, imagination, and creativity. The invitation here is one of embodiment – into the contradictions, the chaos, and the deflation we must confront on any journey of depth.
There is a cultural fantasy that we are supposed to know what to do with our lives, that things are supposed to be clear, that we are supposed to feel solar and heroic and in control of the feelings that wash through us. But love is full-spectrum and will equally employ the energies of not-knowing, disappointment, and reorganization as part of its revelation here. The process of dissolution is non-negotiable. It is by way of this sacred washing of the known that new forms can find their way here.
Inside the vessel of life, encrusted, worn out ideas and opposites are washed away, such as silence over noise, oneness over multiplicity, quiet over inner revolution, crystal clarity over shaky uncertainty, and power over vulnerability. While we may have our conditioned preferences, love does not share these biases and will use the entirety of the emotional and phenomenal world to reach us. Even in the darkness, the numbness, the chaotic, and the mud the wild, untamed activity of the soul erupts.
It is natural and ordinary to disconnect from the downward movement as we overly identify with the ascending, the upward, the light, and the transcendent. In the rush to exit immediate experience – for something that is higher, purer, less messy, and less contradictory – we turn from the waters of life and lose touch with essence.
While it is natural to have a bias for one current over another, let us not do so at the expense of fragmentation. In ways the mind may never fully understand, there is a luminous middle place where the currents intertwine. It is buried in a secret chamber inside your own heart. Enter there. Rest there. Dance there. Play there.
Art by Krista Marleena
The next two events are a five-day retreat, The Place the Light Enters, with Jeff Foster, April 4-9 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, CO
and
The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, CO
and
The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, CO
