Raw Heart Of My Tale

Where might the story take us?

Dear Friends

I am excited and also nervous about the possibilities of where ‘The Story’ might take us. 

What might we share? How might I be of service to this community?

After a recent ritual that shared the raw heart of my tale, in a setting that typically works counter to the essence of our truth, I’m now certain there are jewels waiting to be discovered. That it’s possible to actively work to find a deeper essence in the forms of communication that takes place online.

In my experience, the moment you feel like you’re offering too much of yourself, is the moment that you’ve reached a resonate depth of meaning and the work has begun in earnest.

A few facts:

This next chapter will follow my journey to undertake a wilderness vigil in six months’ time, it will reflect my experience of working with the West Country School of Myth, and in particular my immersion in the ‘Stalking the Rebel Soul’ programme over the last year. It will offer my personal experience of faith. Of building a sacred language of wonder through ritual action of exploring the transition into middle age and beyond.

To begin, the Wilderness Vigil I will be undertaking is a form of ritual initiation, and while I’ve been blessed to transition through other forms of initiation, I have never placed this process into the hands of an intermediary or guide. The foundations of my own practice has always been in the experiential learning that comes when we work outside the confines of systems that already exist. When we learn unbounded through a marriage of intuition and art, in the creation of hierophanies, and the manifestation of our life story into living myth.

The vehicle of my exploration of the sacred has been primarily through my work with F00lishPe0ple. As I reached my fiftieth year last October, it felt like a unique opportunity to reevaluate and mark the movement of my life into a new season, into one of life’s deeper chapters, of growing older and hopefully wiser.  

The other area of focus will be in sharing my work towards the non-fiction book that I’m currently working on.  

“I can still feel the sensation in my body. How my skin felt hypersensitive, the feeling of acrophobia, as if I’m a hundred feet up, even though I’m standing waiting for a train, while simultaneously looking down on an emotional map of my life, the mistakes, the multitude of emotions. The ebbs and flows of the functional narrative of existence. Love, hate and horror all converging into a critical node in my story. I felt sick and excited. Terror: my stomach lurches, my head is dizzy, struggling to find a sense of what is right. Guilt and happiness spin into one another, fragmenting out into the flow of my story and the indescribable awareness of the importance of the moment I exist within.”

I’m humbled to be able to share this journey with you.  My aim is to find new ways to be of use. At fifty, I see the shape of the journey to date. For good and bad. 

I have been offered many blessings on my path, through the challenges I’ve been forced to traverse and the wonders that have been revealed. I want to honour these experiences by shifting my focus to become a curator, picking through the strangest and most complex memories, to reveal how the fundament of meaning and experience might be of use to others.

I’m not worried about growing old, I’m looking at the act of ageing as an exciting new stage in my story. I'm sure that there will be many secrets and challenges available, if I’m able to look with the right set of eyes.

Speaking of eyes, my eyesight has deteriorated quite a bit over the last couple of years. That alone has forced me to experience the world in new ways. And perhaps this is one of the first ways I can help others, by speaking honestly and openly about the ways in which my spiritual journey has changed my relationship to the act of growing old, of witnessing our bodies diminish. How might we become an active partner in this process, instead of seeing this loss of ability and vitality, stricken with grief and denial for all that we believe we have lost from youth. I am interested in the adventure of ageing in ways that society could never imagine were possible. Of breaking out of the limited confines of what is perceived acceptable, to age in a radical manner, in collaboration with the story the universe has attempted to tell through my life. Perhaps I can be healthier now than ever before? So that I might be as vital for as long as I am needed in the world. 

I’ve lived what feels like a hundred different lives through my path. I have no sadness or fear of the journey. Only what and who I leave behind when my time is eventually over.

The River Runs Through it.

Taken on the 21st of July 2021 - Dartmoor National Park

Next week I want to share one of the most illuminating experiences I have had over the last ten years. This occurred during my first visit to the West Country School of Myth at the summer school last year on the 21st July. On the hottest day of the year, I entered dream time and began a medicine walk across the moors. It was suggested we pose one question, and we were told in no uncertain terms, that this would be answered during the ritual.

This was the question:  

How do we protect our poetic essence from the ceaseless day to day demands of the increasingly voracious and dangerous materialistic concerns of modern society?  

I’ll share my experience from this walk and the answer I received including videos and audio with paid subscribers next Sunday.