Becoming Immense
“…one no longer thinks of the Return to the One in terms of survival of the self but, rather, the survival of the One.”
The Alchemical I Ching, William Douglas Horden
We have been living for centuries within structures which separate us from the earth, our bodies, hearts, souls, and one another. We are dancing in the flames of a troubled world where ancient wounds are continuously re-triggered amidst the on-going traumas that have become routine to everyday life.
There is no where left to hide. We feel the effects in body, psyche, spirit and soul, even if we are unaware.
Healing can no longer be approached as an individual matter, but one in which relatedness, interconnectedness to the earth, and other-than-human beings is central.
The alchemical fires are burning hot and there are ways to stabilize in the immensity of the changes happening. We can learn to become large enough to endure the chaos of change while sensing into what is trying to emerge through it all—to follow the creative spirit endlessly creating and recreating, mutating and sporulating through embodied life and listen for what is true at the heart of it all.
Through simple, consistent devotions we can develop the capacity to become immense 1. We become vessels of transformation through tending our true needs, by prioritizing time to inhabit our body fully, stilling ourselves for periods of time, disengaging from incessant mind chatter, and by engaging in a reciprocal on-going relationship with the earth and our ancestors each day.
Our lives depend on it.
Can the small self step aside long enough to include something more? What would it look like, breathe like, feel like to orient in terms of the “survival of the One”?
The practice of becoming immense is an on-going prayer and act of devotion which can help us remember to take pause and wait instead of reacting—waiting with openness, curiosity, and presence. To let things ripen before speaking or acting. To practice deep listening and hearing with the heart. To question our knee-jerk reactions and wait for something with roots and wings to arise from the body, soil, rock, raven, wind, mystery. We can become like a womb nourishing new life, and in so doing we “Return to the One”.
It can be intensely uncomfortable to wait in the heat of a trigger and refrain from reacting, yet wildly creative possibilities can and do emerge from this practice—things that would never have had time or space to exist from a place of posturing and contraction. We can become the still center of the storm. It is a gesture that disrupts the old paradigms that keep us trapped in repeated cycles and creates space for something entirely new and ancient all-at-once.
We practice the ability to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Instead of trying harder to solve an unsolvable impasse using one’s will alone, we can recognize that there is more happening here than our own personal reactions, desires, and experiences. That there is a larger will that includes and is larger than all of us. We can begin to let go. We can begin to recognize the habit patterns that foster disconnect and listen for new ways of nourishing connection.
How do one’s thoughts—reactions, wounds, beliefs, desires, emotions limit growth and change? Are there ways in which they also contain medicine? How are privilege and status quo oppressive? Can these things be set aside long enough to include other possibilities or realities?
Summer’s Invitation
As summer’s heat helps us expand beyond the border of self to commune with all life, sensual pleasures enliven body, heart, and soul.
Amidst the cacophony of activity, heat steadily melts and slows the frenzy of doing and I awaken to a lightness of being.
From this place of being-ness I move slowly along the forest floor and find snake sunning herself in the middle of the path. I notice that she is moving counter clockwise and I recognize this movement as the Path of Reversal, known by Taoist alchemists as the beginning of the work of inner alchemy and the process of transformation.
By turning away from the impulse to perpetuate the same cycles over and over, we can create new possibilities by slowing down when feeling rushed, breathe into what is uncomfortable instead of contracting or turning away, and become curious about what we do not know or understand. Instead of compulsively doing ‘out there’, we can disrupt Modernity’s frantic, soul-less pace by going within to nurture the seed of our original nature—our authentic self while breathing and sensing into other kinds of wisdom within and around us, allowing change time and space to organically evolve.
Rather than reaching toward the light we know above, we can move down into the depths of what we do not know and sense into the womb of the Dark Goddess while we wait. We offer spaciousness and presence to what is hidden. Here, the inner light of consciousness is nourished until it has ripened and is ready to emerge. By returning to this inner place regularly, slowly, over time, our medicine grows in harmony with that which is larger than ourselves.
As I continue to watch snake, I am entranced by her way finding skills, the deliberation and thoroughness with which her tongue smells for direction, how the scales of her belly propel her on the pathless path, how vibration informs her long, legless body, and how she responds accordingly.
She doesn’t know where she is going and meets each moment as it is.
As I feel my way into these upside down times and into what the intention to become immense is teaching me, I continue to look within and to what life around me is expressing for clues as to how we may evolve individually and collectively. I wonder about what must be sacrificed in order for the small me to become a larger we, and offer myself to the hard work necessary for creating a world that honors and cares for all beings.
Nothing less will do.
Death and Birth Live In One Skin
As snakes grow, their skin cannot stretch. The small skin undergoes a process of shedding which can last for several days. Snake must rub its body against something hard to slough off the old skin. Through the process, a milky film covers its eyes and it cannot see. This process repeats itself many times though the course of its life. Transformation is snake’s medicine, earth is its pulse, surrender to not knowing is its genius.
Today in the forest I sense into a growing hunger of soul pulling humanity through a loophole, inching along preternatural trails between realities while our skins grow tighter.
The heartbeat of Gaia penetrates the underbelly the world body, attuning muscle memory to a rhythm as old as time, while starlight burns though the veil of time until everything blurs together. Where our bodies end and everything else begins is becoming unclear and we are losing our sight. Seeking shelter, there is refuge in stillness where we wait.
In the vulnerability of not knowing, there is nothing to do but stay present to what is happening.
At the center of the chaos, our hearts beat steadily, so that we may re-member something true. Something that we have forgotten. Something that has been waiting for us.
The discomfort continues to grow and the tightness becomes unbearable until something ruptures. An impulse causes us to rub against something solid. We rub against the oppressive concretizations of colonization, the calcifications of white privilege, fossilized institutions, the frozen records of othering, and the rotting story of a human-centric society.
We rub against all that is life-draining, soul-sucking, dispirited, loveless, careless, arrogant, violent within and without. In the rubbing, our old, too-small-skin sloughs off to reveal something new.
Something immense.
Vision is restored and re-storied as we continue along the backward path toward the unknowable. Centered in that thing that is true which remains through it all, we are attuning to a rhythm never heard before.
“As I go into her, she pierces my heart. As I penetrate further, she unveils me. When I have reached her center, I am weeping openly. I have known her all my life, yet she reveals stories to me, and these stories are revelations and I am transformed. Each time I go to her I am born like this. Her renewal washes over me endlessly, her wounds caress me…”
Women and Nature: The Roaring Insider Her, Susan Griffin
1. In the Grief Ritual Training I took with Francis Weller last fall and winter, he invited us to ‘become immense’ in reference to holding space for alchemical change at the level of the individual, collective, cultural, and planetary. For me, these words are like a key that unlocks my larger Self—when I hear them or remind myself of them, all my senses awaken, I feel myself step back from what is heated or triggering and become large like the Great Mother or vast space holding all of existence. In this way, there is room for all polarity. It is by no means an easy practice in the heat of a triggering moment, yet there is great ease that exists within it. I have been awed by the changes I have witnessed which have emerged from this place. For me, the practice of becoming immense changes everything.
About the Author: Monique Gaboury is a licensed acupuncturist, in Freeland, WA, specializing in Alchemical Acupuncture. She loves sharing her passion for natural healing at her clinic and through writing her blog ‘Re-membering Wholeness, Belonging and Kinship Through Changing Times’.
Juniper Medicine Alchemical Acupuncture serving the greater Seattle area on Whidbey Island. To schedule an appointment call 360-672-1506 or EMAIL.
