Tree of Many Feathers:

I went to a workshop this weekend hosted by Adam Davis and Sundance Metelsky of Connecting with the Land (for more info, see: Connecting With the Land).

The event had a simple format–a few techniques and conversations about communicating with the many different faces of spirit and the natural world all around us. We were then led to a power spot where we sang (or intoned, as we were moved), before being given the space and time to sink deep into the site. It was a lovely day, the morning gray and wet (a Seattlite’s favorite weather), following a full night of rains. By noon the sky had cleared and the temps rose–a perfect late spring day. At the power spot, we could sit upon the earth, put our feet and hands in the water, breathe in silence, or walk our own path through the green. After a moment or two, we settled and sank in. The sounds and the stillness claimed and calmed us, and we let go into it, reveling in the sweetness of breathing,  casting disturbing thoughts aside. The winds stirred the lush canopy above us and the river roiled and chuffed, wide and powerful witness and keeper of healing.

As we danced and chanted and shared and meditated over the 7 or so hours of this gathering, I was reminded again that the most profound spiritual experiences are often the most basic. A simple calling to spirit can be profoundly moving: through it we humble and ground and shed ourselves, demonstrating our recognition and openness to what may wish to show itself. (As Sundance called the spirits of our first circle, geese and heron called out and strafed the treetops above us. Strangely, at no other time of the day, did we see or hear this exact sort of response, though we were visited by other geese and heron, a young doe, a water snake, many dragonflies, and other amazing creepy-crawly/flying things.) The day was gentle, honest, and moving, allowing us to intuit the space and take the time to go inward, slow down, slow down some more, and. . . to let the mind  uncurl to stillness. It was an act of deepest magic.

Through the day, I was reminded again that sitting quietly, resting gently upon the earth is one of the most powerful acts that we can undertake as spiritual beings. How easy to forget this simple reality. In the afternoon, we lay on our bellies with our foreheads/psychic eyes to the earth–and I felt myself falling, falling, falling into the deep, rich home below me. (“I could have fallen for hours,” I said to others as I rose.) I remember as a child doing this, too. And, laying on the grass looking down at the world below my feet. Grass stem and insects and tiny beads of sand in the dank earth. Or, conversely, looking up at the clouds. Lost in blue and white.

We sat with our feet in the feeder creek or near the river and made the journey our own. Sharing in the deep power of silence, the value of sitting/walking/being. . . and the goodness of listening.

Listening. . .

At one time, I once thought long and hard about becoming a professional listener. I was invested in the idea of social work and personal therapy. I believed that most people grew sick of spirit and heart and mind because of a lack of human connection and that if we had stronger communities around us, more opportunities to reflect and revise our life stories as we went along, less judgement of one another, less isolation from others, we might find a way to heal ourselves one-by-one. And, like a pebble in a pond: healthy people meant a more healthy society.  A healthier society meant a healthier planet, and so on. . .  I loved this mythos so much that I nearly completed my undergraduate work focused on counseling/social work, as I worked full-time in group homes, family counseling centers, and behavioral health housing, which all worked on this model of listening and support and crisis management.

At one point, I realized that I was not really the listener I thought I was. My work in mental health agencies and with clients exhausted me. At times it seemed that sessions with trained specialists did little more than allow people to vent spleen without any real intent to make change. (Venting can be crucial to some degree, but can also just be ugly and a re-entrenchment or dismissal of important interventions). And, I was realizing that I could never actually CHANGE anyone (but myself). And, the system, the world, our broken US culture, seemed far too big, too broken, too cold to be redeemable. Eventually, I couldn’t believe in the possibilities of change through listening anymore. I switched career trajectories and. . . have luckily found that I still do a good deal of listening and supportive work as an academic and a researcher. But it is of a different style altogether.

The reality I’ve learned as I’ve worked on listening these many years. . . I am honestly not so good at it. I have several friends who are remarkably good listeners and they remind me of the skill that it is, the practice it takes, the mindset necessary for it to occur. They are more adult than I am. And more balanced. Altogether better human beings. Not cynical or jaded or terrified or broken. At least, I don’t think so.

The challenge of listening to others (for me) arises because I have so much I want to say. And, yes, I desperately want what I have to say to be validated. I want to share. I want to be heard. I want to be seen as smart. As kind. As thoughtful. As playful. As provocative. I love problem-solving and evening the kinks out. Especially if I’m excited or enlivened by what we’re talking about, I may be carried away with the joy of my own process of working it through out loud. . . and soon, I’m forgetting to relinquish my turn because I know that next point or the next point has the possibility of being better or even better. And, what if, what if, what if I did not carry my thoughts out to their very raggedy ends? We might lose something we didn’t know we had.

Yes. I’m full of myself. Or desperate to be, at least.

And, what happens, then. . . is that the magic of connection in effect shuts down. In racing for the connection, I lose the connection. I find myself alone in the center, performing some aspect of who I am and what I need–WHAT I NEED–as if what I need is who I am. My mindlessness derails the actual listening, the calm, still process of letting another have their space and building something about both people together. The need to be seen, heard, important drives me.

. . . See look, I’m doing it now. . .

It takes a good deal of time to really listen. It requires that we slow down. Slow. it. down. Breathe. Rest. It requires that we let go of the need that feels urgent and the self-purpose that is all consuming. It requires that we accept that being “seen” is an illusion to begin with.

Listening is a gift we choose to give others. Like our presence. Or our focus.

Listening is a gift we can give to the spirit world, as well.

I came to understand at the workshop on Saturday that starting with reverence, humility, and listening. . . listening not to gain, or to lose, or even–though it is a gift–to actually give a predetermined something. . . listening without expectation or desire. . . opens the inner ears, the psychic eye, the heart in a whole new way.

It is not a listening to, or a listening for. . . it may better be described as a listening with.

Listening with spirit is and is not like listening to a person.

In conversation with a person, it is polite to engage with questions. Questions demonstrate your interest and keep your partner’s interest. It is not at all like critical listening (the center of my current career-work), where the sharp-edged questions that arise in a conversation are the measure of its value.

Listening with spirit takes more patience, a willingness to wait, a willingness to simply hold space for what may bubble up or uncover itself. . . It takes a commitment to finding the now, finding presence, and then–release, release, release–allowing yourself to loose all of that intent, mind, and self. . . into the promise of simultaneous all-ness and nothingness. It may begin with an act of service or an offering. . . it must be grounded in a true desire to lose the self. I did ask questions, but they tended to be open ended. . . or a request for permission to sit longer, to learn more, to rest with the spirits I encountered.

Some might say through this patient and careful opening of our awarenesses, we are seeking an inner peace, like one of my favorite Druid authors. Kristopher Hughes, a native Welsh speaker and all around kickass fellow. Hughes writes eloquently about “finding deep inner silence” (and so peace; in Welsh: “Hedd”) in natural places. From his post on WitchesandPagans.com:

In the Welsh language the term Taw can be seen as a component of a myriad of words that express its spirit such as distawrwydd (quietness), tawelwch (tranquillity). Taw allows us the opportunity to be still, to find an inner silence where eventually the busy chatter of the human mind is hushed temporarily. Taw is traditionally engaged with outdoors, within the natural world. It is a process by which we consciously stop, settle and disengage with the humdrum of ordinary life. In Taw, we start by observing our surroundings, and flooding our senses with all the available data that bombards us. The sounds of the elements, the whispering of trees, distant traffic, the light of stars, the sound of crashing wave. We permit it all to infiltrate the senses like a symphony, attempting as we do to not isolate any particular sound or instrument. In Taw we stop, we are not actively listening to the Gods or to the spirits of place, we are not offering prayer, but rather moving into a state of simply being, of finding stillness. . .

Hughes ends by noting that “Taw” leads to “Hedd”; that is, through listening with, we create the capacity for deep inner peace, a place of sacred rest, renewal, and being.

The Welsh are not alone in naming this form of sacred space. In Scottish Gaelic, the most similar term is “Sith” which also means “Peace.” (Those who’ve studied fey-lore will notice the connection to “an Daoine Sith” or “Sith” one of many nicknames–a similarity I will explore at another time.)  And, anyone who has studied Buddhism, Yoga, or other forms of meditation will be familiar with the adages that “a still mind is an open mind,” that a focus on breathe, awareness, mindfulness, or attention to the moment, the “now” offers some advantage. . . that we can be witness to our own wild minds and so come to understand, appreciate, and change them.

There is more than a germ of deep truth in each of these truisms (which is likely why they have been so easily coopted by the mediation/wellbeing franchises that have increasingly commodified yoga- and meditation-cultures, helping corporate executives to destress and more strategically mange their emotions.) Some cultures find this deep stillness through dance, some through work, some through chanting and prayer, others through the sort of sitting that we engaged in on Saturday. . .

The work of listening is no small matter.

And so now, I’m thinking about how I take the lesson of listening with to the places that seem to crave depth and reinvention in my Druid practice. How can I take it to those who hike with me? How can I bring it into the sacred circles I cast? How can I integrate it into my ritual practices that involve others?

The small lessons of the day that surrounded the bigger realizations: it took almost an hour of sitting for many of us to really dig in; an hour may not be enough for many of us; I could have gone longer, but I also tend to gravitate toward walking meditation and I might have benefitted from more movement; company is helpful and enriching, but socializing may distract from the depth of the spaces to be found; touching the water, the earth, the winds, the leaves, the flotsam, the sunshine also helps, as does grounding, calling on spirit with intent, choosing to, as Sundance said, “dive deep.” I must keep thinking about how I will create the conditions that allow others to dive, dive, dive into themselves and the sacred.

For a long time now, I have hoped to find a place of deep sacred space within the ritual spaces that I collaboratively create with others. I wonder, too, after this reflection whether it is possible to gear the big 8 rits to a form of listening with? How might we trust that those deep spaces in the material realm all around us will open out and speak to our circles that have gathered for celebration? Is simply slowing down and creating the conditions for the sacred song of life to be heard enough to carry a solstice ritual, Lughnasadh, Samhainn? Questions I will keep thinking on in coming days. . .

And, so my take away from a day with my fingers and boots in the Potomac, which is only big and bold in its utter simplicity: I must make more intentional spaces for listening with–and so deep magic– to live and continue to teach me.

So whispered the river as it opened to me.
So whispered the dragon fly.
And so whispered the trees. . .