The soul is tired

One of our members remarked recently her ‘soul was tired’ and this spoke to me also.
 It’s not just the soul but the heart, brain, nervous system, spirit and body.
How can they be anything else? 

After the intense upheaval that encapsulated 2020, the terrain has shifted dramatically under our feet. Perhaps everything feels effortful because not one of us knows this new land, or how to chart our way safely across it.
Our minds are wandering and oh how the mind loves to wander unregulated.

Last year I came close to burn out. It was gradual and incremental but the slow smoulder often generates more longterm damage than the sear of a superficial burn. 

As the year closed I became alert to a self attempting to bed into seriously boggy ground. It was not working. As each wave of global news came, the effort to recalibrate yet again drained more from a source I found hard to replenish in the usual ways.
 The merest puff of air would upend me.
It was as though my roots had been ripped from the Earth and what remained was insubstantial and incapable of receiving necessary nourishment.

When any plant or tree sustains damage to its roots, there’s a very good chance it will not reestablish unless it receives specific care.
Without strong roots all the energy shot up to my head.
The more I tried to think, reason, plan my way out of discomfort and fear, the less I felt resourced to do so.

Underneath all of this, remained an inner voice resolutely attempting to break through and make contact.
But in my panic, and without grounding and adequate care, I was not listening.

We simply cannot live in this fragmented way.

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

- Eden Phillpotts

The Wandering

Eventually, in utter desperation, I began to walk.

Not the sterile daily dosing of government prescribed exercise but long ambling, non-productive walks. As I walked I allowed my mind to download its fear into the terrain beneath my feet.
It felt more often than not like the onset of complete madness, intensely uncomfortable and disorientating -
the rambling thoughts of a mad woman, circling and spiralling her way through a labyrinth of never ending thoughts and emotions. 

At first it was simply a case of putting one foot in front of the other.
There was rarely a plan, other than to walk off the madness in nature. But very quickly I noticed a call to wander further and more aimlessly.
And the more I wandered the more I observed myself unravelling. As if nature were wrapping its arms around me and gently rocking me into release. 

We live on a strip of land that edges The South Downs National Park and The English Channel.
 Sometimes I turn right and head for the water, at others I am drawn left, up into the fields.
Often I ask my dog Duke to lead.

Turn right and the coastline sits proudly at the top of the road. It regularly appears peaceful and still; bright white cliffs project against a backdrop of sparkling mediterranean blues. At other times it is bleak, threatening and relentlessly wild.
It snaps unpredictably between the two. At any moment the waves can appear without warning from the undercliff, rising up over our heads and raining down freezing cold, salt water.

Turn left and The Downs will also shapeshift, transforming swiftly between the classic idyl of English countryside and a barely recognisable, mist enveloped bog land.

I have been learning to lean into the inclemency of the weather, letting the wind and rain rip into me and erode some of the harder skin I’ve grown. It’s been a conscious intent; to plug in, to draw from the Earth’s energy source and somehow heal the part of myself that has temporarily forgotten I am part of this vast living field of energy. 

“It is hard to care for something you do not know.”

- Alice Starmore

What’s been revealed to me is an astonishing and quite shameful realisation that despite an appreciation, I’ve never genuinely formed a connection to this remarkable land I call my home. That all my privileged wanderlust has drawn me elsewhere; chasing Indian sunsets and Eastern philosophies, an edgy basement bar in Berlin, or The Old City walls of Jerusalem.
Anything and anywhere but the land I have actually chosen to live.

Through my wanders I have found a new understanding of what it is to come home and be in place. I am reminded to feel.
I have found myself walking and wailing, sobbing rivers of tears that appear to spring from nowhere rational. I sing, laugh, talk to myself or any of the passing animals.
Being in this land has offered a unique sense of freedom - from the constant striving to produce and accomplish, to be seen and celebrated as successful, to have a voice in the mix, to be elsewhere.
 And in its place there has been a slow dawning of a passion for creating necessary change. Change that has its foundation in stronger community and ecological roots. That we all deserve to walk on this Earth, that we should all feel safe enough to make it our home and that we are each one of us responsible for its ultimate survival.

“The voices of future grandchildren
I hear them asking
What were you doing?
What have you done?
What were you doing?
What have you done?”

- Nick Mulvey

It has become apparent that this is a time for seeing what is still to be done and tuning into the how. And the how is stripping me back of all that I had previously cherished and returning me to the land.

Life is not over, it will carry on regardless but our roots need to grow again and this time much deeper and much wider, with love as the source.

It might seem that life is disappearing, that there is too much to wrap our heads around, that we simply don’t have the capacity in our hearts to experience more ache. And it really is tempting to disappear and disengage.

  And yet if we can learn to stop reaching up for the light and allow ourselves to be taken down into the dark of the Earth’s mystery, if we can learn to embrace where we find ourselves, for now, maybe in this place we can begin to learn how to tend to our individual and collective souls once again?

We still have time. We still have some time.