There is no guarantee in this process, in this work--no guarantee that you will have a transformative or even positive experience or outcome. It is certainly not a ceremony for spiritual or soul bypassing--quite the contrary, to be honest. The mysterious power of ceremony and nature will, unabashedly, illuminate--in ways that are sometimes messy, quivering, and uncomfortable--all of the habitual ways you've been bypassing, blocking, repressing, projecting, and/or traumatized patterns of relating to life and death. The intent is for any or all of these patterns to come up above--from the depths of darkness--and break through the layers of the surface, so you can see, experience, and face them--empty, alone, and exposed. Ultimately, the uncomfortable and traumatized parts that have been buried beneath a moment or a lifetime of armoring arise for you to let it go. But, the dissolution and disintegration beckons the courage and willingness of the quester to face it; no one else can do it for them.
Enacting ceremony and being immersed in nature moves prana; it moves energy; it moves our habitual defense; and in that movement of prana, we can see and expereince all of the emotions, memories, and experiences that you have been suppressing--ultimately, they arise within the ceremony so they can die a good death, and for you to choose to let them go (or not). The repressed emotions and memories are stored in the body as congealed energy or blocks, where prana is not flowing; so, when the prana moves there into those places, the repressed parts will come up, and in a cathartic way of surrender, they will dissolve, if one lets them. However, if one tenses around them and continues to project the experiences, inward or outward, the repressed emotion, stored memories, traumatic experiences or parts, will stay and reiterate the congealed places.
Whatever it might be that activates our defenses--whether it's encountering a frozen waterfall and a lifetime of self-doubt or a mountain lion who trembles in your own presence, for example--it is all part of the story of liberation--part of the story of alchemizing prana, if we allow it.
Consider a storm, for instance: The wilderness storms have a way of untethering us from our ideals and agendas--perhaps habitual mechanisms that contribute, in unsustainable ways, to making us feel secure and and in control; but that's the purpose of the storm becoming embodied: to untether and reorient the pressure in the atmosphere. The question becomes: how to you respond to the presence of the storm? Do you tense around it and project your defenses upon it, thereby reiterating the stuck places inside of you and reinforcing the spinning cycle of suffering that is so attached to feeding the hungry ghost of control--a false attachment? Or, can you experience and face the full pranic power of the storm to bring to the surface all of the repressed emotions, traumatic experiences, and parts where energy has been congealed and allow it to be released? The latter vignette summons immense courage to face ourselves; and in facing ourselves, we face life; and in facing life, we face death. The first vignette reinforces the story of separateness and deepens the "experience-dependent-neuropathway" that shuts you down from responding with compassion and freedom and deepens the rut of ignorance and pain that the storm was ultimately passing through to support you in alchemizing.
Ignorance is not bliss; it's a spinning cycle of suffering.
text copyright colleen bishop, 2024 | image copyright thompson bishop, 2024
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