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” →
