And here we are back at the beginning again, the turn of wheel, as it spins once more heralding the Spring Equinox, the Pagan New Year.
This represents the beginning of all things; the new year, the birth of the human life, indeed, all creative journeys.
I love this time of year when the buds are bursting into view, the energy is powerful and vital. It is concerned only with its purpose, a singular mission, rocket fuelled by that burst of inspiration. Here, there is no room for judgement, self-doubt or fear. When rooted in Mother Nature as all of the natural world is, then the act is simple. However, when we are uprooted, disconnected from Mother Nature, like many people living in our modern world, then we come into being without the love and support of the universal love and are born into fear.
Our Western culture has its roots in the Old Testament, whatever your beliefs or non-beliefs. As a collective this is our oldest story which most of us are brought up with. You would have to work quite hard to avoid it entirely, and if atheism is your chosen path you wouldn’t have to go back far in your lineage to find ancestors who truly believed. This is all part of what makes us who we are. We can come into life believing whatever we feel inspires us, but deep in our ancestral DNA these stories pervade our subconscious and our mindset, whether we like it or not.
I have been exploring this over the last few years and this has brought me back, time and again, to an image, the image of a tree. I find I cannot escape it, for it is the embodiment of all that we are and all the journeys we have taken.
I see our journey starting in the roots, in the trunk of the tree, connected and whole in our understanding of the world and our part in it. This is represented by the Garden of Eden.
As we believe we were thrown out of this place of love, of oneness, we began a journey built on trauma and shame. We felt abandoned, separated from our home, our hearts and this separation created our new reality, steeped in duality. This was a journey that created conflict within, as our heart was separated from our head, and our head, or rather our ego, lost the wisdom of the heart and began to think itself superior. This is also represented by the masculine over ruling the feminine. - It is important to state that neither is good or bad, right or wrong but when we fall out of balance we can become judgemental. - In this way, we have lost our ability to live in right relation between the two.
As the centuries turned into millennia, the conflicts within continued to manifest the conflicts without and soon we moved from the trunk of the tree into the initial three branches with the three Abrahamic faiths and then with the conflicts within these faiths into the many branches and twigs. Soon the battles between race, the different religions, and sexes found their way into communities and even families until we have more people living alone than our society or our sanity can handle.
Here we are, living as the very leaves on the ends of the branches as far away from the root as we can possibly be. Our inner conflict has created an ego so fearful and fragile, so stuck in its righteousness and self-belief, it becomes increasingly hard to conceive of trying to reconcile some of the mounting issues with the ‘others’ in our life, who may be many and growing.
It seems to me, we are standing at the top our castles, looking at other cultures who might do things very differently to us, feeling greatly superior and that our way of life is completely normal. As other cultures seem to become more extreme, I ask, isn’t that because we are sitting on the opposite side of the see-saw. As we teeter, either at the top of the see-saw, or on the tips of the branches waiting for the fall (excuse the pun) I wander which way we are going to go. Are we willing to recognise the position we are in and stop pointing fingers at others, believing ourselves to be completely in the right or are we willing to climb down off our pedestal and find a more harmonious way of existing with others in this beautiful world while it is still beautiful?
