Fallowness

Fallowness

"All Nature seems at work,

Slugs leave their lair -

The Bees are stirring - birds are on the wing -

And Winter Slumbering in the open air,

Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!

And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,

Nor honey make nor pair, nor build, nor sing."

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "With Without Hope"

When fallowness strikes, it is important to place it in the context of the creative cycle. After the period of conception - an exciting period during which we sparkle with ideas - comes the time of gathering and preparation, when things get moving. This is followed by a period of growth, which cannot be hurried, and then by the moment of ripeness, when the idea must manifest or the project get off the ground. This is followed by a time of enjoyment and appreciation, when we can share our manifest idea or plan with others. Then we must let our idea go to make its ways through the world. After all that has happened, we come to the time of fallowness.

To honor our own creative cycle and patterns, we must respect this period and learn to be as empty and receptive as we can. After any birth and manifestation, we are too tired to immediately re-conceive: we need this time of rest when we lie as fallow as the unplowed field that the farmer sets aside for several seasons to regain its fertility. Let us honor fallowness, our uncreating emptiness, by cutting ourselves some slack and giving mind and heart time to recover their former savor in a new season. Fallowness is the ground of conception: when the soil is ready, the seed will fall and germinate.

"Consider helpful strategies to sustain yourself through these empty times

in ways that honor fallowness creatively."

[From Caitlin Matthews' "The Celtic Spirit"]

Advice

Advice

"He who won't take advice will take the crooked track."
-- Scots Gaelic proverb

It is often said that advice is a two-edged weapon: it can both harm and help, depending upon how and whether we take it. Young Peredur (Perr-EDD'yr) of the Mabingion who was brought up in purposeful woodland seclusion by his mother, sought to go to the court of Authur. Peredur's mother gave him advice so unwordly and indiscriminate that it subsequently led him into the discourtesy of the grossest kind.

Without discrimination, advice can be worse than useless. When good and thoughtful advice is offered to us, we must have the wit to weigh it for its worth and implement it as sensitively as we can, balancing it with the prevailing circumstances that surround our case. When we offer advice to others, it must always be set within the context of our experience rather than based on someone else's criteria.

Age and wisdom tend to give advice to youthful inexperience, but it is not always welcome. The reactionary stubbornness of youth often chooses to take the longer road of personal example in order to gain wisdom. The crooked track that then unwinds may be like that traveled by Peredur - a road fraught with obstacles and difficulties. Only when we have traveled such a road and labored to clear the obstacles can we finally have a true context for advice that is offered.

"From the experiences of your life to date, what are the three best pieces of advice that you could offer someone about to make her way in the world?"
[From Caitlin Matthews' "The Celtic Spirit"]

Solitariness

Solitariness

"It is a good thing to be happy alone. It is better to be happy in company, but it is good to be happy alone." -- Thomas Traherne, "Centuries"

Among tribal and traditional peoples today, few choose to be solitary. Purposeful periods of solitude or seclusion are normally experienced only by young people facing their rites of passage - times during which they are taken from their families to be instructed in tribal lore and adult responsibility. In such rites, each young person generally endures an short period of isolation wherein he encounters the spirits of the tribe in a visionary way. Awareness of the otherworld and the way it impinges upon our own reality is one of the fruits of solitariness.

When we are far from the interaction of society, when the chatter and comment of our minds is stilled, then it is possible to enter into a deeper relationship with the universe that we inhabit. The revelations of solitude are often profoundly moving and though we may share them in conversation with friends afterward, we do not find it easy to reach into the depths that we have inhabited within our solitude nonce we return to company again.

To be content with one's own company is an art that cannot be taught; it is something we each have to learn as our lives unfold. When there is nothing to distract us, we return to the primal ground of our being, where we can begin to learn who we truly are and discover our context within the rest of the universe.

"Whether you are naturally solitary or gregarious, enter the spaciousness of solitude and be aware of your true self and its context."

{From Caitlin Matthews' "The Celtic Spirit"]

In Our End is Our Beginning

In Our End is Our Beginning

"Our final bliss, perfectly passionate, perfectly kind;
It is our first love, long since left behind."
--Ruth Pitter, "Good Enthroned"

The surprise, delight, or astonishment that passes over the face of the dying as they glimpse what lies beyond is frequently remarked upon by those who attend a deathbed. Those who have kept vigil feel a sense of shared privilege when they observe this, a feeling of exaltation that rises up above sorrow, weariness, and bereavement. What has happened here? At the very verge of consciousness, the dying see briefly beyond the horizon that lies between life and death. What they recognize there is not a barreness or an absence of everything; rather, it is more life, a recognition of whatever they once thought lost to them forever. That which they relinquished or neglected in years past, as well as the very potential of the soul, is rediscovered in an instant.

The wise treat death as a friend who will restore them, not only in body but also in spirit, to everyone and everything they have ever loved. Living with death as a friend, as a daily companion, is not a morbid practice. It helps to reconnect us with our beginnings, when our hopes and potential were still strongly flowing; it casts aside fear and strengthens the life that we still enjoy. If we substitute the image of our soul's beloved for the popular image of death, we will immeasurably help ourselves. Death is the soul's friend, the turner of the key, who liberates us to inhabit new freedoms and who reintroduces us to old loves so that we can find our way back to the primal beginnings of our soul's story.

"Consider what hopes you have for your own death, even though hopes is not a word you would normally apply to dying. If you have a strong fear of death, ask help of your soul's beloved - your deepest spiritual source of assistance and support - in redefining your view and creating a more confident attitude."

[From Caitlin Matthews' "The Celtic Spirit"]

The Doors of Perception

The Doors of Perception

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infite." -- William Blake - "A Memorable Fancy"

The doors of perception are the senses - not only the physical senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, but also the subtle senses of inner vision, resonance, instinct, discrimation, and empathy. Without the cooperation of these two sets of senses, we cannot perceive truly.

To be able to perceive everything as it really is means retraining and exercising senses that we have often neglected. Meditation can hone our subtle sense, as we reach beyond the physical for the unseen reality and its meaning. Using a range of senses, we rely on our tactile and empathetic senses to combine with our hearing and resonance so that like a bat or a whale, we have a sense of space, distance, and mass. Or we may find that our sense of smell/taste combines with our instinct and discrimation to give our visual field a sense of color and quality that is both accurate and surprising.

When the doors of perception are cleansed, we receive earlier warnings of m matters that are likely to be dangerous or problematic for us; we are subsequently able to make better decisionhs, draft more accurate forecasts, and read the character of the universe in an altogether better way.

"Practice using your subtle senses in combination with your physical senses today. Your eyes tell you one thing about a person, but what do your ears tell you? Is the message different? What do your deep instincts and discrimination have to say?"

[From Caitlin Matthews' "The Celtic Spirit"]

Nature's Power to Heal

"Your pain and sickness

Be in the earth's depths,

Be upon the grey stones, F

For they are enduring....

Be upon the clouds of the sky,

For they are the rainiest,

Be upon the river's current

Cascading to the sea."

-- Scots Gaelic prayer for healing (trans. CM)

A common treatment of illnesswes in Celtic tradition involved invoking the help of the elements - the sky, the earth, the sea - to disperse illness harmlessly. For mysterious or persisting conditions, the patient would seek out a sacred site and ask for spiritual assistance from the guardian of that site - a saint, spirit or deity. This custom still endures throughout the Celtic countries, where it is believed that pilgrimage to a sacred site, in conjunction with prayer, is a sure form of assistance. On arrival at the site, the pilgrim makes a 'turas' (sunwise curcuit) around the perimeter, with prayer or invocation. If the site is a well, then the pilgrim takes the waters and anoints the afflicted part, again very intentionally and prayerfully. Then, if a tree hangs over or near the well, it is customary to time a piece of cloth to a branch and pray, "I leave a portion of my illness in this place." As the cloth fades and withers in the sunlight and wind, dispersing in the elements, so fades the illness.

Applying to the wider web of the universe, to the spiritual sources of help, is an eminently sensible course of action: the powers of spiritual allies - from the great elements to our own personal helpers - have a wider influence than those of doctors. Their power to transform pain, disorder and infection into health is miraculous.

"Ask your own spiritual allies to help heal your infirmities."

[From Caitlin Matthews' "The Celtic Spirit"]

The Underground River of Creation

"Apart from sleep where the creative act seems involuntary and instantaneous, it does appear that a creative process goes on all the time beneath the level of conscious thought."

--- Neil Gunn, "The Atom of Delight"

The underground river of creation curves on beneath the surface of life., its inspiring waters ever available to refresh and bring sparkle to daily life. People who feel that they are uncreative often complain that they do not know how to get access to these waters. Surely, these people assert, creative waters run through particularly gifted people only.

The way to find the ever-flowing creative river is to dig an artesian well by means of engaging actively and consciously with our creativity. By so doing, we allow the water to rise swiftly. The moment of creative conception happens in the dark, in sleep, in moments of forgetfulness, in lapses of concentration when we have been beavering to bring something wonderful to fruition - but to no avail. As we continue to work, suddenly our project starts taking shape, though progress is still gradual, inching forward day by day. The creative process cannot be hurried without loss or miscarriage of our project. However much we want it to manifest, it has to have organic space and time. It has to rest like the dough of good bread 'proving' in a warm place to double in size. The frenzy of kneading and pummeling will not hasten its arrival. The moment of manifestation, when we share our creation with others, is only one among many moments of deep satisfaction, wherein we have drunk of the sweet waters that flow deeply through us.

"What are the processes of the plan you currently foster? At what stage are you at the moment?'

[From Caitlin Matthews' "The Celtic Spirit"

Restoring The Enchantment

"Without the enchantment to kindle the beckoning flame of mystery and wonder, we lose touch with the on-going story of the soul. "

--- Caitlin and John Matthews, "The Little Book of Celtic Wisdom"

The ancient bards of Britain maintained 'perpetual choirs of song' that kept the land harmoniously connected and whole. As long as there was one voice, the Land and its inhabitants remained within the enchantment. We now think of enchantment as a malign magickal spell but the original meaning of 'to echant' was 'to infuse with song,' which is what the ancient choirs of song once did, maintaining the interconnection between this world and the Otherworld. When awareness of this sacred link is severed, we lose the enchantment and fall into a sorry condition of disconnection.

Disenchantment happens to us all, takking the familiar forms of depressive illness, addictive behavior, and malaise from which there seems no escape. It is important to act quickly when these states begin to set in, to realize that our soul's story is out of phase with its sacred connection.

How can the soul or the world be re-enchanted once it has lost the enchantment? Only by returning to the story of the soul and retelling it up to the point of fracture; only by placing our own story within the context of the greater song. When Myrddin (MER'thyn), now known as Merlin, is exposed to the carnage of battle, he runs mad through the forest. Many try to calm him and bring him back to society, but only when the Welsh poet Taliesin (Tal-ee-ESS'in) comes and sits with him does Myrddin respond, asking the old question, "Why do we have weather?" This seemingly trivial query is all that Taliesin needs to help his friend. He begins to recite the creation of the world. At the end of Taliesin's recital, Myrddin is restored as the sacred context of his story is given back to him.

"Consider the enchantment that keeps your soul's story on track."