“The heart is turned to God by longing, and longing is the hearts remembrance of God, and as we live this longing, so we remember our beloved. Longing turns us back towards God and our tears wash away the veils of forgetfulness.” LVL
Oneness
There are these subtle moments that come to us in nature. Moments of primordial oneness where life is revealed in a living fractal of absolute oneness. These moments are blessings that are not to be missed. These are moments of sacred opportunity where the head is free from the tyranny of cascading thoughts and there is an emptiness on the screens of our mind that allows a glimpse of the world as it really is. This transcendent state reveals a oneness that pervades everything and it is good and true and beautiful.
It is in these glimpses of eternity that I have seen nature’s unveiled form and known firsthand that She is intrinsically mystical. Looking upon Her face reveals a secret weaving of the holy alliance between matter and spirit. She is an awe inspiring reflection of the beauty and mystery that reveals how matter is the veiled face of God.
We live in this mystery, inside this sacred and magical revelation of God. The folds of Her skin are where we live our lives, unaware that we are so intimate and close, unconscious of the holiness of our habitat, but we have forgotten this spiritual secret. We are travelers who have fallen asleep in the caravanserai of her body, believing falsely that we are separated from our beloved Earth Mother. We have forgotten a deep spiritual truth that all the universe, the Earth and humanity, are one living being. We have neglected to nurture the intrinsic knowledge that we are the living pulse of the universe and a fragment of God’s seamless wholeness. We are a microcosm of the Earth and She is a microcosm of a greater form of worlds within worlds, layers of consciousness embedded within deeper and wider webs of life.
The living heartbeat
Every thing we can feel, see, hear and touch is alive and it resonates with a song that is the music of the universe. This mystical music is heard by our inner ears. It is a sacred symphony that measures the dance of life unfolding in space and time. This is the deep rhythmic pulse of all life. All life exists by virtue of this fundamental rhythm which is the heartbeat of life, of the Earth, of ourselves.
The Earth is an infinitely small part of an infinitely large unfolding universe. Her heart beats in unison with the heartbeat of the universe in an utterly ancient rhythm that weaves and dances with light throughout all of creation, from the nothingness before time to the present moment.
We see and feel this pulse of the Earth in our daily lives, it is all pervasive. It is evident in the simplest things: the ebb and flow of the tides, the mysterious cycles of falling rain, the reliable cycle of the sun heating and cooling the ground, complex ecosystems of plants in states of growth and decay and in our own cycles of life and rebirth. In our own bodies, in our cycles of life and death, we mimic this heartbeat that measures the passing of time in a universe where time is simultaneously nonexistent. These cycles cannot be comprehended by our rational measuring of life in pinpoints and way-stations. They are a rhythm, a beat, a song and a dance that is forever changing and fluid. This is the fundamental heartbeat of all life.
Fertile emptiness
Within the rhythmic heartbeat there is a natural pause between beats. The pause in this heartbeat is an unknown, unseen and un-manifest substance that is the living substrate of the beat. The pause exists in the empty spaces of this heartbeat and it includes the heartbeat too. This pause between beats is not really a pause at all but an aspect of the wholeness of the breath that is moving between two poles in creation. It is the strange nothingness, the fertile darkness upon which the relationship between opposites manifests.
Our hearts, entrained to her heartbeat, also contain this emptiness of creation and so we too are this fertile darkness upon which the songs of life are orchestrated. This means that our hearts contain the same formless fertile emptiness that is present throughout creation. Our hearts are assembled from this same deep mystery of all life. There is no separation, only a magnitude of infinite diversity which is part of one seamless whole.
Being attentive in nature, in meditation, we hear our hearts singing this song that is sacred and holy. We hear music emanating from the unbound totality, a universal symphony resounding throughout the created world. This is the strange silent symphony that emanates from the emptiness of a seashell, the silent whistling of a desert, the inner flowing stillness of a meditation.
This heartbeat is also our breath as it is drawn and exhaled, drawing our souls into and out of the created world. This dance of opposites upon fertile spaces of nothingness is the very essence of all life.
An Axis of Love
There is an ancient wisdom which says that the heart of the Earth, like ours, is held between the fingers of God and gently turned by His will. God’s will is the axis of love and all life oscillates around this axis. God is also this strange nothingness that is the pause between the poles of creation. God is both the pause and the poles, both the being and the non-beingness of the heartbeat of life.
In vision I see that as the heart is turned in the fingers of God, so it dances this partnering of opposites in long sweeping rhythmic cycles of life unfolding unto itself. This dynamic flow brings to mind a beautiful image of Earth, alive and deeply conscious, Her heart turned in the fingers of God, ever present in the eternal moment, dutifully unfolding life unto itself.
Miraculous humanity
We (humanity) are the miracles that live by virtue of this universal heartbeat. We are a mystery of self-consciousness and free will, able to look back upon creation and reflect upon our very presence within it. We are Adam and Eve, the archetypal humans who were born into creation and live in the primordial oneness of the Earth imbued with the gift of self-reflection, but in truth we are Her mind reflecting upon creation.
The Goddess Earth gave birth to self-consciousness in the form of humanity so that she may come to know the dynamics of her own duality. Through this process of consciousness she is witnessing the aspects of herself that appear to be separated from Her beloved creator. And in witnessing this separation she comes to know the emptiness that is the primal substrate of all creation.
It is through this act of witnessing the emptiness of the void that her heart cries in pain and so calls the light of her beloved to fill the emptiness with His love. Through her emptiness she may receive more of the pure light of the creator and reflect it back to her beloved. The purpose of humanity is to be the vehicle of Her knowing.
All the world is a play of light. From light it comes and to light it returns. It is light upon light.
This beautiful earthly existence is so captivating but it is only one aspect of the primordial light of creation. It takes soft eyes and an open heart to see the world as it really is, to recognize the light that is at the center of everything, the light that is the living substance of creation.
A Vision of Light I have had a vision of how the earth is born from light. It was a potent vision that seemed to reflect an ancient understanding of the earth, a way of seeing the earth that we have collectively forgotten. It felt like a mystical vision merged with a shamanic trance. In this vision I saw that God is a seamless wholeness without beginning or end. God was imaged as light that is at the center of creation, a living, flowing light that is permeating everything. In this center of creation there is only a fertile nothingness and the light of creation flows from it. There is a sense that this image of creation is simultaneously both form and formless.
Creation is a deeply mysterious act that is constantly in process of becoming. It is an act of subtle magic, something we cannot measure and weigh or even give a name to. Yet it has been so heavily laden with our imaginings and projections.
We think that creation is this planet, this material realm, but on the inner planes it is far more mysterious than that. Creation is like a continual process of God manifesting in this world and then simultaneously vanishing from it. Creation is at its essence something that has no form, it is a void of potential that is covered in veil upon veil, light upon light.
Creation emerges into existence from this void and manifests in successive layers of subtle form. Our very consciousness of creation, our need to understand it and engage with it in our minds and hearts, changes it.
With intuitive sight one can see how creation is woven together into a web of silk-like threads made of light. As this light is woven into this web, it is like a Mandelbrot fractal which contains every single possibility of this dimension that we call the universe. But even this living fractal, pulsating with infinite spirals of life unfolding unto itself, is just an aspect of the oneness of God.
When peering behind these veils into the realms of light we see things as they truly are. The veils of the material world become thin and the immutable laws of matter themselves become soft and permeable. Matter reveals its fractal nature, it becomes a living being and shows us the presence of the light within it, interacts with us as though a god in its own right, revealing its multiple forms. This web becomes the primary screen upon which all creation manifests through a projection of the light. This web is the fertile substrate in which form appears, and it operates by different laws and principles to the material world we are so entranced with. Every single atom of creation is a particle of light, and in each particle of light there exists a reflection of the entire universe.
Time and Space In the realms of light, everything takes on an archetypal meaning. Time and space are not immutable laws but rather living archetypes, or living gods. Like all archetypes they carry the power of the gods, they are imbued with a consciousness and exist within their own right, make their own choices, fulfill their own destinies. The constructs that we have made them into are dissolved in the realms of light. Time and space show us the deeper dimensions of their being, their true archetypal faces which are so much more mysterious than we care to see in this world. In these realms it is made obvious that our human conditioning about the permanence of time and space is a construct that is self-limiting. Here the world shows us that it does not have a beginning or end, cannot be weighed or measured, cannot be understood with the rational mind, because its real nature is this light that is pregnant with infinite possibilities.
Seamless Wholeness When seeing this realm of light we are reminded that life truly is a mystery that we do not and cannot ever understand within our human condition because life is a dynamic and ever-changing pattern of light merging with light. In these planes of light there is no separation between us and God, only a spectacular unfolding of life from the planes of non-manifestation to the planes of creation, in a continual pattern of emergence. In the planes of light everything reveals itself as a seamless wholeness. Everything is a unified wholeness, everything is one.
Hidden Treasure It is said in that God created the world in order to know himself:
“I was a hidden treasure, and I wished to be known, so I created mankind.” (Hadith Qudsi)
In this hadith there is secret wisdom, hidden treasure, that points to a profound truth. But like most good treasures, it is hidden and the path to discover the treasure is disguised in a riddle that needs solving. The riddle has the power to awaken in us the realization of something that is good and true and beautiful.
I have pondered this saying, written about it, meditated upon it, gazed into the clouds and drifted into daydreaming with it. I have brought it into my art, coaxed it out of a good few sunrises and wrestled with it. I have come to think of it as meaning that the divine light of God is present in every atom of creation and that through the eyes of humanity God looks back upon Himself.
The light in creation, the light in a flower or a tree, a mountain range or a stream, these are all places where the mystery of this Hadith is revealed. There is a substance to this light that we can dance with in nature. This light seduces our senses, like a bee is seduced by the patterns of light emanating from a flower. All of nature seems to witness this light in creation where it is present in every single thing. Even the rock is a living being that is made of this light. It is simply a seamless wholeness of light upon light.
In the inner worlds of oneness and on the planes of mystical light there is only oneness and love, a seamless wholeness that pervades all the created worlds. When looking at the world and seeing a seamless wholeness throughout the fabric of creation which is saturated with the presence of God, one cannot see anything other than something truly holy and deeply sacred, something profoundly connected and seamless. With the eyes of a mystic, through the lens of oneness, one cannot see God as something separate from creation because there is no place where God is not present. When we see the world through our hearts, when we engage with the world in love, then the mysteries are revealed.
The important thing for me in this deeply complex subject of the origin of life is that it makes us wonder. It is through wondering that we open the portals to mystery and through our passion and longing for truth that we are softened enough to receive this wisdom.
Shamanism knows and breathes nature in Her entirety. Shamanism is fed by the spirit of nature and in return it feeds nature’s spirit. The shaman and nature are like one breath, they inhale and exhale one another throughout time. This breath is a bond of love. Life breathes through the shaman in order to live life more fully so that it may come alive and the shaman cannot live unless it is through the breath of nature.
Journey inwards The shamanic way is a path. It’s not written in any books and taught at a school. It’s an inner journey that one must be initiated into, a journey where one is helped by a teacher to retrieve an ancient relationship between humanity and the soul of nature.
The path exists already inside the heart and when we start to walk this path it begins for many as a love affair with the living earth, the mother goddess, Gaia. For a person to become a shaman they must first lose themselves in their own hearts, because there they will discover is the heart of nature, the heart of the goddess, alive and inside us.
To walk this path of the shaman we must fall in love, become spellbound by the earths beauty, allow the heart to be seduced and led to a place where the feet no longer touch the ground. This journey of love brings a person inwards, into the softness of the heart, where there is a space of longing and wanting, a desire for connection, and it is this very place of longing that we must reach into and experience with our whole being.
Gaia asks first that we cast aside the small self that resides in the mind and enter into the sacred silence of the heart. When the mind is the servant of the heart, then we become free to walk in spirit alongside the spirit of nature. This journey is one that does not reach outwards and upwards to a sacredness that is beyond this world, but is rather a journey inside, into the depths of the fertile darkness within the self. It is a journey into the underworld where the inner emptiness, the void of darkness, takes the seeker deep within to a universe reflected inside our own selves.
In this fertile darkness is the nothingness from which all creation emerges. This is the void present inside each of us, a dynamic centre of emergence, where the earth mother, Gaia, is present. The shaman journeys inside, into the heart and is taken by longing and love to the goddess who resides in these depths. There she encounters the world of the dead, alongside the fountain of life that gives rise to all that is living.
This is the shamanic path in its essence. Through an attitude of longing, an open heart filled with deep love for the earth, the shaman is taken through the heart and into the depths where through her intuition and her attention she navigates the path home to the goddess within her own being.
We find the earth mother through this practice of travelling along this ancient trail, this path that one walks inwardly, spiralling into ones self, deeper and deeper into the fertile nothingness within. As we go deeper into this fertile darkness we discover that there is light in this darkness and that it is our own light within the earth that we are walking towards.
Finding the thread At the centre of creation the shaman sees the light inside the fertile nothingness. This light is of course the light of the self that is embedded within the material world, within the body of the earth. That light is like a thread that ties them to the source. They see the threads of connection to the earth mother that they followed down here into the depths and so they realise that there is a unity in all creation, the connectedness of all life forms, the primordial oneness of being. This is the umbilicus that gave rise to all living things and it is a living thread of connection to the web of all life.
The witnessing of the umbilicus, the remembrance of this connection, then frees the shaman to return to the world and to be this place of inner fertility in the outside world. She becomes a conduit for the emergence of the light that resides deep within the heart of the earth, the light of the self now consciously brought into the world. But now she is transformed, no longer human, conscious that she is a divine being in whom the goddess Gaia resides.
The shaman is one who has travelled to the depths and seen the source of life, then returned, back along this thread to the world of form. She brings with her stories from the other side, the inside, the realm of the dead who are so much more alive than the living, that carry the life force of this living connection, so that her words may bring the magic of creation into the world of form.
And so the shaman is a healer because they bring this thread alive in the world, deepen the connection, strengthen the flow of light between the deep inner worlds and the outer world of the tribe. She has lit the pathway between tribe and the soul of the earth. And as the path is once again walked by the shaman, whilst she sings the songs of creation, so the heart of the earth is nourished.
In its purest form the shaman who has returned from the depths comes back with lungs filled by the breath of nature. She breathes from within, not desperately sucking the prana from the air, but absorbing the living essence of creation in every breath from within, remembering the name of her beloved mother earth. And so it is that with her breath she becomes more alive and the soul of the earth becomes more alive too. Breathing with the spirit of the earth the two enliven each other. They are one breath and the shaman has become the axis of creation between the inner and the outer worlds.
The Axis of Creation A shaman embodies both the darkness of the deep earth and the surface of light that reflects the sun. The space that a shaman holds is a dynamic center that is able to embody both poles of the light and the fertile darkness. A shaman can’t be forced to live in the darkness or the light exclusively because a shaman is the pole between these two worlds, the axis of creation. Her role is to be a pivotal place of transmutation that can unify both worlds.
When there is no place on earth for the shaman then her alchemical powers of uniting heaven and earth have no place to be practiced. She is a tree without a trunk. She has roots to draw the darkness from the depths of her being and leaves to imbibe and transmute the light of the sun, but there is no form in-between that can marry the energies of life’s light and darkness.
A Medicine for the Earth The shaman’s heart is like a medicine for the earth, a medicine that aligns and restores energy that flows between the poles of creation. She is the place of fertilization between the pure light of spirit and the dark recesses of anti-matter.
In her body there is a special place that can hold these energies and fertilize life into new forms. Her womb is not just a place for the growth of a child, but it is the center of creation, a dynamic center that holds life and gives birth to what needs to come into this world. Our transcendent prayers have no place to be answered if we do not have the womb of the shaman to give birth to its outcome.
The transcendent spiritual traditions can’t achieve anything without the shamanic wisdom that knows how to weave together the sacred transcendent light with the fertile darkness of the earth mother. She is the body of life through which a certain type of grace can be born into the world. Certain things are born through the body of this woman alone and cannot be born into this world unless it has the sacred place of the shaman’s womb. Any transformation we are hoping for in life will not happen until we create the place for our shamans to take their position at the center of society, where their trusted role has been since time began.
With the memory of our shamans who were cast out in the previous era, let us all create a place in our hearts, in our groups for the re-emergence of the shamanic spirit so that the earth may blossom once more.
“I walk the earth with my feet deeply rooted in the soil. My heart beats in unison with the clouds, the thunder and the rain. As I give myself to the moment I become the tide that ebbs and flows. I am the sun that rises and the moon that dances with the stars in the night sky. I am the pain and suffering of our planet, choking on the poisons in the soil and sick from the polluted waters. I am the wind in the trees and yet my consciousness is also embedded in the eternal rocks. This morning whispered to me and my soul answered the calling by being present. When I am still and listen to the whispers of the inner worlds, the language can be heard, seen and tasted in every moment. An ancient language beyond this time and place. In this state, no separation exists. Everything is holy, everything is One.” – Journal excerpt.
Within each of us is the nature soul, an aspect of ourselves that is rooted within the fabric of the living earth. The nature soul is an embodiment of the continual remembrance of our earthly mother. It is the inner silent witness to the earth’s sacred nature. It is a part of us that is the living connection to the soul of the earth, the animamundi as Carl Jung called it. It is the remembrance that we are a spark within Her soul and an inseparable part of Her being. This nature soul remembers its own essential nature, the sacred oneness of earth, the sacred wholeness underlying all creation. It is a living connection to the universal presence in all things great and small.
The nature soul is present in each of us. The heart of nature is alive inside of us because we are nature. This is the umbilicus that makes us human. We commune with this nature soul when we connect to the presence of intelligence in nature, when we go to nature in a sacred way. Through deep longing we can find the thread that leads us back to the source, where the nature soul lies present inside of us. When we lower our heads in humility to this inner presence we can invoke the potency and power of this ancient archetype and invoke the ancient language of the nature soul again.
In these days where ecological destruction cascades into apocalyptic scenarios of the collapse of entire ecosystems it has become more important than ever for us to reconnect with our nature souls, to enter into conversation with the wilderness within, to trace that thread of our nature back to its source. The connection to this thread of the sacred in nature is something that our indigenous ancestors took for granted in their daily lives which were so intimately close to the earth, but in today’s world we have entire generations who are lacking a sacred connection to nature, who have not been able to experience a fundamental initiation into the ways of the wilderness.
The Green Man The nature soul is the archetype of the Green Man, that part of us who is wild, green, born from the earth. It is the wilderness within. This archetype stands at an ancient doorway of the inner worlds that leads us back to the sacred origin of creation. The archetype of the Green Man is our higher self reflected in nature, it is the part of us that is an earthling, a child of the earth, made from the very body of this green being that we live within.
Through love and attention we can grow this connection to our nature soul and invoke the reflection of the Green Man in this world. It happens when we are in the forest or on the mountain, but it can also happen by just simply sitting under a tree and being present. Establishing a connection with nature is an innate part of being human and She is present in every living thing, waiting to be seen, spoken to, listened to. And even in the complete absence of nature it can happen simply by facing the vast inner landscape of the wilderness inside ourselves. We need to fall in love with the earth again both inside ourselves and outside. We need to do this whilst at work, whilst in the midst of this civilisation and it’s madness, so that we can hold a certain note in the world. The nature soul needs to enter this world in the very places it has been most forgotten.
When we enter into a sacred relationship with nature, in a state of loving receptiveness, in a state of humility and respect, we create a living thread between our small self and the nature soul. This connection creates a certain quality of light inside us, it makes a place inside us where this light can be present. Just like in nature, this light touches seeds and awakens their potential to grow, so too does this soft light of nature touch something inside of us, nourish it and awaken its potential to grow. Nature wants to make this connection, it is the way that things are, the desire for growth, connection and unfolding of divine potential are Her ways. The tendrils of her longing to connect with us only need that fertile place in our hearts to take root and flourish.
When we make space for this light to be present inside of us then we become a place in this world where there can be an intercession of the divine, where the nature soul can be present in this world and can hold a certain note of the expression of divinity. The intercession of the divine needs conscious human beings to be the gateway through which the divine intercedes in this world of form. Said differently, the gods need our conscious participation in this world in order for them to be present within it. When we invoke the presence of the Green Man and create a connection to this ancient and primal aspect of our being we become a place where the gods, the divine intercession, can be in this world again.
It is especially vital that we remember the nature soul in these times of ecological devastation because it is only through remembrance of the nature soul that we will become conscious of the sacred possibilities for a future renewal of the earth. Only in this state of receptive consciousness will we be shown the seeds that are needed to rebirth this dying civilisation. It may be too late to stop the impending ecocide, but we can still nourish the seeds that will flourish in the future.
The remembrance of the nature soul gives us access to a living path which helps us find a way home again, back inside, back to the origins of life where we can begin again. The path is a spiralling perambulation in that it guides us towards our future spiritual practice, for a time that is yet to come when the earth will be renewed once again, but also it takes us back in time to the primordial moment of creation. By journeying inwards, into the depths of the earth whilst the outer world is in turmoil we return to the source of creation, to the nourishment of the fertile depths. We return to a place where stories of the future are being formed, stories that will show us how navigate these times. This is the circumambulation of the sacred and it leads us inwards again.
Dissolving the dark spell This act of remembering the nature soul also has an obvious gift for the present: it is the one thing that can help us disentangle ourselves from the dark spell of materialism.
Our global culture is in the throes of a deep mental illness imaged as a spell that has fundamentally altered our collective perception of the divinity of life. This spell is insidious and all-pervasive. It has infiltrated nearly all aspects of our life. There are few places in the world today that are not infiltrated by this dark magic and yet we seem blind to its presence in the world.
This spell is like an underlying fracture in our collective human perception. It has changed our ability to see the pure light that rests inside matter. With less light, with the fracturing of the light, we see less clearly and it becomes more difficult to witness the true nature of creation.
The true nature of creation is that it is a living being and an embodied face of God.
The spell has had a negative effect on the innate connection to our nature soul and in so doing it has caused us to forget how to see the presence of God in our beloved Mother Earth. This has allowed humanity to treat the earth as a material object which exists to fulfil our desires for material goods. This means we have related to the earth without respecting her sacred nature and therefore our actions have desecrated the earth.
This spell on our consciousness continues to grow stronger too. There was a time when it appeared that there may be an opportunity for a shift in consciousness towards a more balanced world, but instead things have become far worse. The spell of materialism appears to have become an autonomous entity that is thriving and growing. The signs that this magic is reaching its death grip are being witnessed in ecological devastation of a scale that we are now calling “irreversible”. Now we live in the time of the Anthropocene, where our very presence on this planet is leading to its destruction. We have become the antithesis of life itself.
As the spell continues to desecrate the bonds of love that are woven between humanity and Mother Earth it is as though it looks for a place in the subtle realms where it it can become a permanent veil that will shadow and further fracture the light that flows between God and humanity. In this fatal game of smoke and mirrors the dark magic seems to be finding its death grip. It has almost permanently stamped its power upon the psyche of humanity, capturing the light, fragmenting it, changing how we hear and relate to that primordial note of creation. But our connection to the nature soul can reverse this dark magic, unravel it, dissolve its grip on our lives. If not collectively, then at least within small circles of conscious caretakers who will hold the light of the earth in their hearts, sing the songs of creation.
There was a time when every human being was conscious of the oneness of the earth, when we related to the earth as a living goddess, a sacred being who was the face of God. But we no longer have the daily practice of connecting to the sacred nature of life, the practice of morning prayer, of listening to the voices of the birds at dawn, the giving thanks for a new day; these are all rituals that nourish the soul of the earth. Humanity no longer nourishes these threads of love which allowed the earth to give birth to new life, to new undulations of the unfolding pattern of consciousness. Each one of us that makes place for witnessing the sacred in daily life holds a vital connection that is needed in these times. It does not need to become a recruitment campaign, it does not need to become a proselytizing, we don’t need any more people attempting to convince others of the truth. That is a fundamentalism that is not needed. It simply needs to be an awareness held silently in the heart and maintained every day through prayers of love and connection to the earth. This simple act can hold so much light for the soul of the world in these trying times.
“The songs of creation weave the threads of the sacred into existence. These threads are nurtured by our remembrance of the sacred nature of life, the remembrance that we are on this planet to be guardians of the earth.”
The sacred songs Where once there were songs that brought the light in creation alive, the spell of materialism now drowns the song of the earth with its own dark lullaby. Our attention has been so utterly diverted from the sacred that we have forgotten the old instinctual song lines that brought life into existence.
The birds remember the songs and they greet the rising and setting sun with this remembrance every day. Their symphony of song, their prayer of remembrance at dawn, is their continual remembrance of the song that is at the heart of creation. But like the dissipating bird life, the songs of creation are receding into obscurity. Where there once was life, bright and abundant, now it feels like there is an absence of its presence. In nature where there once was a symphony of birdsong there is now a hollowness to their music that speaks of what has been lost.
The songlines of creation weave the threads of the sacred into existence. These threads are nurtured by our remembrance of the sacred nature of life, the remembrance that we are guardians of the earth. These are sacred threads of consciousness and wisdom that stretch far back into the original, primordial moment of creation. These are the golden threads of the unfolding of consciousness that have been nurtured by the mystics and shamans since the beginning of time. They know that these threads are the substance that holds the sacred balance of life intact. They understand that if these threads are not nurtured then the very fabric of creation is affected. This is because the life force that is continually being born into this world from the planes of light needs these threads to be present in order for it to root itself in this world. The sacred threads of creation are like an umbilicus that hold the light and bring it into this world of form, allow it to unfold in this world and nourish what is continually being born.
The songs are the prayers that incubate the transmission of the light in these golden threads and they nourish creation. Through these songs, the shamans and mystics know how to nurture these threads of light that emerge from the source of creation, they know how to build the light bodies in the subtle world that will allow the light to manifest in this world in a sacred manner, aligned with its true purpose. These subtle light bodies are woven from the threads that originate from the primal source of being stretching all the way back to the beginning of time. On a deep mystical level it is these threads, these songlines, nurtured and woven by the shaman and mystic, that hold all of life in balance.
There must always be a nurturing of the energies that emerge from the centre of creation. This is the primordial place where light enters this world of form and it is filled with divine potential, unaffected by the collective psyche of humanity. This is why it has always been such an important aspect of indigenous cultures that we are continually in conversation with the earth whose centre is the essence from which all life is born. The light that is born into creation is in need of nurturing, holding, allowing it to emerge into the world to its full potential. It must be allowed to stretch to the four corners of creation and be woven into all aspects of the world.
Apocalypse If humanity continues to forget that the earth is sacred, that we are guardians of nature, then our current civilisation will simply come to an end. When humanity forgets its primary role of custodianship over nature then our beloved Mother Earth will forget us too. She will mimic us, forgetting her role as nurturing mother and she will reflect our own forgetfulness. The Mother Earth will turn into the dark goddess, Kali, violently aborting us from her holarchy. This is simply the natural order of life. By all accounts this is where we are now, our time has passed and we will witness the darkness of the earths psyche. As this happens, as the darkening unfolds, the forgetfulness deepens, our current civilisation will end and a new one will be born. But during the death of this current civilisation we are being given the seeds for the rebirth of the future.
The true meaning of the word apocalypse stems from the greek word apokálupsis, which means disclosure or revelation, because when a civilisation dies the mystic and shaman are given the seeds for the rebirth of a new beginning. They alone hold the answers to helping humanity avoid a deeper catastrophe, but they are also given the seeds for the rebirth of what has come to an end.
These times remind me of a prophecy I heard when meeting with Credo Mutwa, the high Sanusi and spiritual leader of the indigenous Zulu tribe of Southern Africa. We were speaking about the world and it’s uncertain future and he told me that he saw the African tribes leaving this earth to continue their evolution on another planet. He went on to explain that this world had become too desecrated for the African tribes to complete their soul work here. Their way of life was not respected, the simple fact that everyone was being forced to become a tax-paying, possession-owning consumer tore apart the very threads of community life. In the late 1990’s this seemed difficult to comprehend, but in these days of global ecocide I wonder whether this was a prophetic metaphor of the future he saw unfolding. If there are no cultures left to nurture and sustain the threads of the earth lore intact, then what hope is there for a sleeping humanity to remain harmoniously present in the global ecosystem?
The Anthropocene is our current era and it signals the time of the apocalypse. This is the time of revelation, the time to pack up our things, forget this culture of materialism and move inwards. As we move inwardly, spiral into ourselves more deeply and forget this world, there we will find the silence that rests at the centre of creation, where it is being born anew.
It is time, As Credo said, to leave this world and start anew elsewhere. That ‘elsewhere’ is within.
The Gift of our Nature Soul Credo Mutwa was speaking about this other self that rests in the greenery of the forest, the gentle nature spirit inside of us that has not been given a place to be present in this world. It is our own indigenous way of knowing that looks into the eyes of the great Mother and feels the cry of deep pain in Her heart. As environmentalists we witness the outer destruction of ecosystems but as children of Mother Earth we can feel the inner desecration of Her being. It is a deep and terrible pain that has forced our nature soul deep into the recesses of our consciousness.
The nature soul needs to witness the desecration of the beloved earth, needs to be present and needs to feel the deep sense of loss at this time in human evolution. This is an act of witnessing, a vantage point from which we can be present with the beloved earth in her suffering. It is a compassionate act, an act of love, to be present and to witness whilst this civilisation comes to an end.
By invoking the presence of the nature soul to witness the end of an era, we are also pointing our inner compass back to where our soul originates, to the primordial garden where life is endlessly unfolding and renewing itself. We follow the longlines inward and we invoke the distant memory where the earth was a sacred goddess and humanity were devotees, implicitly conscious of our divine role.
Our ancestors knew. Their sacred ceremonies remembered. They taught each generation to relate to the earth in an act of love, head bowed in humility, honour and the deepest respect for that which is truly sacred. We all originate from this sacred tribe, we all know this nature soul in our hearts which recognises that life is a divine consciousness unfolding and reflecting upon itself, a consciousness that can only be called a supreme state of primordial love. Their wisdom taught us to act as children of the earth, caretakers of this Garden of Eden.
Only through this inner journey, the journey inside oneself where we return to our source, where we must confront the depth and extent of our complicity in the damage done to our beloved Mother Earth, only there do we find the light that is present inside us and return with it to offer it back to Mother Earth, for her sake.
I believe that when we remember the nature soul we are each given a gift that is a special secret held in Her heart. It is a memory that we are both mystic and shaman, both of this world and the transcendent spiritual realm. It is something with roots that grow back to the first moment of creation where our mother was a spark that emerged into the nothingness before time. In remembering there is awakening and in awakening there is a fertilization of the vision that was prophesied by ancient women, many moons ago, that a new “Unknown She” would rise up and return to walk and dance love back into the earth. It speaks to us as a motion in the fabric of the earth’s psyche, a murmuring that the shamans interpret in the winds and unravel in their songs, the dawn chorus of the birds that greet the sun with their prayers. It contains that same primordial spark of the first dance of existence. It is something so profoundly mysterious but utterly simple and unseen to those whose gaze is fixated on the material world.
And in this deeply significant time of transition, this time of immense ecological crisis, there is a brief moment of possibility for us to receive this gift, to learn to sing to our Mother Earth again. For to know this secret is to understand life’s potential for infinite renewal. It is the secret lore that our ancient ancestors held in their hearts. It reminds us that the present moment is a moment of potential, a small portal through which a new light can enter the world and illuminate the God-given possibilities of this time. This moment offers us a shamanic practice for bringing the light into the Earth. Our nature soul is this gift given back to us in this time of need.
