Move Slowly Back Into the World

In looking back to This Pilgrimage We’re On, I was surprised to see I wrote it on May 13 when I was 60 days into sheltering at home. Now—in time—here I am just upon a month later when, in some ways, it feels like only yesterday. Yet, it’s been within my reach, even experience, to travel through galaxies—possibilities and probabilities—to come back to the place I am now.

 At some time in our lives, we receive a signal to arouse from a deep sleep. If we answer the cue, we set out on a journey toward authenticity that takes us into the unknown. We begin to separate from the selves we thought we were and search for who we are.*

Having made the monumental journey, albeit enforced, globally we’ve come to the next phase. It’s a precious time to be framed with thoughtful consideration…how to re-enter the world. Yes, it’s a consideration of safety measures and health precautions. But equally important is the measure of who you are and how do you want to be in the world moving forward. That means something not only on a personal level but collectively. What consciousness do you want to hold and act through?

If you’re like me, during this containment, you’ve visited lifetimes, incarnations you thought you’d left behind. Sometimes giving you a fleeting visit, or sticking around for a while, to let you know there are aspects of underdeveloped selves still contained wanting to fly free. Having habitually denied it, you don’t know that one is still there until you’ve jumped right into the middle of it, automatically entranced as you were when the inroads were made in the first place.

Isn’t it fortunate the pandemic has provided the conditions to shake us all up? There are no words for the tragedies that have occurred. Lost lives. Global grief. Righteous anger spilling out for all the historical and present-day inequities. Injustice. Devastation. Generational trauma. Calling for all to be righted.

Facing the Storm. Oil and cold wax. ©2015 Carla Woody.

Do not waste this. Do not let life go back to what it’s been.

For in this time, we’ve all been given a gift. If you can take it to heart then its expression will translate to right action.

It’s explicitly due to instilled solitude, crowding, whatever your situation, that gives space for exactly our strengths, yearnings and woundedness to arise.

In my contemplations, a memory came that provided me with a metaphor. It was from the very early 2000s. I was traveling in the Altiplano of Peru with Peruvian mystic Américo Yábar and a couple of friends. This remembrance comes from the hours spent on a sacred mesa  in the middle of nowhere.

Don Américo motioned, inviting us to follow him on a walk around the mesa’s edge. I followed closely behind him, the others straggling farther back enjoying the view. After a distance, he came to a sudden halt and brought me over to the very rim and gestured to a flat rock jutting out below, indicating I was to light there and meditate…

I didn’t want to think about the sheer drop of at least a thousand feet and preferred to look instead at the narrow ground where I would place my feet. I charted a short course and then carefully picked my way to the stone and settled into a comfortable seated position. Legs crossed, spine straight and ready to meditate, a bizarre urge ran through me. There was a strong part of me that wanted nothing more than to physically leap into the lonely, empty space in front of me that stretched for miles! Quickly quelling that impulse and pushing it from my mind, I closed my eyes…

After a while, I heard  a tranquil wind from the right, whistling softly, slowly coming along the perimeter of the mesa. Surprisingly, I felt it touch my body and instead of moving around me, it went through me on its way to the left. The wind was immensely long, its blowing gentle, but when its tail finally exited, it left me bodiless, having indulgently thrown me into the abyss I’d wished for after all. I dissipated into the dark nothingness of the Void while, at the same time, I merged with the totality of the landscape, covering it. The silence was such that I have no words for it, but a feeling of profound tranquility and yet expansive joy permeated the being that I call myself.

I have no idea how long I remained in that state, a minute or an hour. It was timeless. Somewhere in the midst of it, something compelled me to open my eyes, and I received a jolt. Not only was my consciousness not fully in my body when I did so, but I had also erased any awareness that I was seated on the precipice of a very high mesa rather than the usual ground! In addition, I had catapulted myself from the blackest black into the brilliant light of the high Andean sun. I slammed my eyes shut, unwilling to experience the colossal contrast.

Slowly though, I began to feel the outlines of my body and the friendly stone supporting me. This time I took my time raising my outer eyelids and gazed without fear across the miles of the Altiplano, all the way to the ring of mountains on the other side. I found that I was taken with the beauty of this place that many would consider barren and lifeless. I had discovered the richness hidden from casual eyes.

While my compulsion to jump into thin air was unexpected at the time, I’ve experienced it before in high places. After having talked with others, I realize that I’m not alone. This is a common urge. What I’ve come to understand is that it’s a petition from the deepest part of us. It’s the soul’s sense of wanting freedom. It’s a strong inner existential yearning that calls for merging rather than separation…

As though a curtain is drawn open to admit the sunlight, we discover that the Truth for which we’ve strived is revealed to be ever-present. We merely partitioned it off. If we’ve chosen to fully immerse ourselves, without fear, into the effervescent warmth of nothingness, we automatically want to remain there. The everyday world matters little in this flow…

If we’re going to travel the deeper path, we need to learn how to navigate it. If we were thrown into such a sea without any tools we would be seriously disadvantaged at best. So, there are the continuing series of re-entries we make to increase our awareness of the geography. If we pass back and forth over similar area enough times, perhaps we will become familiar enough with the territory to make the one transparent to the other. In the meantime, the transitions can be shocking until we recognize them for what they are.

…The silence may come when we make a space, take time out from normal activities. It can come through meditation, using the breath to empty the mind; finally inspiring the no-breath. It can come through a walk in the forest, mindfully, slowly placing the feet firmly on the earth, connecting in such a way that the body is no longer a body, but a bubble of energy skimming along the surface of life. It can come through intentfully opening the crown center of the head during times of creative expression. We only know that silence has visited when we return to our work later and wonder who has written the passages or painted an image nowhere in our memory to have done so. But oftentimes, no matter how we prepare the ground, it doesn’t come. At least not to the depth we would choose, or the habitual voice imposes instead…

Many have already begun to move back into the world with pronounced actions, clearly needed. Others—I fear—are unable to deal with the discomfort  found in a containment where internal and external voices are more apparently loud, and pain ever-present…and the old ways of numbing out appear the only solution.

Mythic II Oil and cold wax. ©2019 Carla Woody.

Soon it will be time for me to walk again in a world other than I’ve known over these last months. But not yet. I know I’m charting another path forward, and I know I’m leaving something behind. I can’t formulate words but can feel the energy slowly presenting itself.

In the meantime, I’m sitting with these questions.

• What are the choices you’re making in the moment—those that fulfill deeper values?
• What are you giving care to that you had forgotten or set aside?
• What has come to the forefront that you’re no longer able to ignore?

I’ve called upon patience. I know the answers will be given in stillness. Silence is the conduit for creation.

***

* Quoted portions are excerpted from Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage, my narrative nonfiction book of a spiritual path.