Author: Monique

 

Painting by Monique Gaboury, Winter of 2020-2021 Acrylic on Wood Panel 35.5” x 46”

 

 

In Our Incompleteness Is Our Authenticity:

Tending the Journey of Soul

 

 

I Ching Hexagram 23 Po Stripping Away/Splitting Apart—

Keeping Still, Mountain over the Receptive, Earth belongs to the months of October and November.

 

This is the time where yin/dark energies rise from below, leaving only a small amount of yang/light, just enough to stay connected to the upper realms of spirit like the north star guiding our soul’s journey on earth. As we descend with the leaves and compost down to the bones of those who came before us, we may find old wounds that need tending and are in need of further metabolism. There is also medicine here in the dark fecund soil, and a wisdom as old as time supporting and nourishing the journey.

The natural energies inherent to this season can help us enter the realm of soul. By cultivating stillness like mountain and surrendering to the solidity and generous giving of earth who cares for and holds us, we can discover more about what remains after all that isn’t us or true to our authentic nature falls away like meat splitting apart from the bone. Like the seed being released from its shell and sinking down into the generative soil, awaiting its timely return.

There is nothing to ‘do’ at such thresholds as descent and resurrection. The doing is in the non-doing—in our presence, stillness, surrender, watching, listening and tuning in to the wisdom of the wild instinctive animal body who carries us through such territory. We learn to live both in the mundane world and the world-beneath-the world in favor of living a soulful life.

This is a time ripe for nourishing the parts of us that have gone and have never returned, were lost along the way, never allowed expression or even to exist, or are still gestating and forming. This time of darkness and not knowing requires that we make ourselves available to other ways of knowing and experiencing so that we can hear the song that sings life back into the bones of lost and forgotten things. In this way, we bring to birth our truest, wild self. Continue reading “In Our Incompleteness Is Our Authenticity: Tending the Journey of Soul” →

 

 

Drinking Sky: An Autumn Ritual for Deepening

 

There is an exquisite poetry in the ways heaven and earth devotedly flow back into one another, like divine lovers losing and finding each other over and again. Through their undying love, the Ceremony of Life continues through the turning of each season. Each one of us is a participant in this great love affair.

We have just crossed the threshold into fall and the full moon is pulling the ocean of our inner tides in ways that can be unsettling. Yet amidst this turmoil is a quiet reflectiveness under the grey sky. A light breeze is lyrically undressing the yellowing leaves from Weeping Birch’s smooth, silvery body while rain spills all around like gentle tears, embraced by earth upon its return home. I feel how this simple witnessing opens some movement within and I find a way to let go into this transition, settling more deeply into my body. Stillness. Quiet. Completion. Continue reading “Drinking Sky: An Autumn Ritual for Deepening” →

 

 

Becoming Human

 

And the moment arrives when I reach the limits of my mortal heart. A murmuration of starlings burst from the inside out through lips, eyes, and ears while my body dissolves into all six directions.

I can finally see what I have been missing all along, although it has never left me. Mystery’s ears harken to the sound of silence and I hear my own voice for the first time, singing. Rivers of tears gather into oceans of unfathomable depth, and dismembered flesh transforms into a Land of Plenty.

Something uncoils from deep within moving me to carve pathways down into the fecund soil. My tongue smells what my nose cannot as I feel my way on my belly through the dark, not knowing what I am looking for but trusting this pull that guides from the inside. Continue reading “Becoming Human” →