Shaman's Crossing

Well here's a ramble after a bottle of wine and some 3rd time around Game of Thrones.. I finished my Medicine Wheel book a couple of weeks ago, and while there is still tweaking to do, the horizon has opened out again. Waiting on a bit of feedback and maybe one or two endorsements, then try some publishers. In the process I feel I've incarnated something, given birth to myself, spoken a whole book's worth of something that has been growing over four decades. This path is like an oak tree, it takes a long time and it's slow and I'm probably still at least 10 years shy of the serious wisdom. If I get there.

I feel closer to death these days, what I do or don't do doesn't matter so much, it's all a dream anyway, a small part of a vastly bigger design. But it would be meaningful to have put something into that dream in the form of a book that might last for a year or two before the tide of human life moves on to something else. And built those connections with people and rocks and trees, and maybe cats and dogs and polar bears also, that will rock on with me after death.

And being one of these late middle-aged guys, I have what some might call my anima in the room with me, and she's not going anywhere. From another point of view she is an old spirit who is pretty much inseparably with me, and she has no shortage of wisdom and power that comes straight from the earth - what Jungians call the Sophia archetype. I'm not too keen on 'archetypes', they can seem a bit abstract, and she is anything but. She has been in my dreams for years. There is a radical new phase opening up in which she will play a central part, and I don't know what that is yet, all I have is the sense of a ship setting out onto the open sea to god knows where, and that prospect is radical enough and thrilling enough to get me on board. I think that what is possible can open out, rather than narrow down, as we age.

So with Sophia making herself unmistakeably felt, but not knowing her very well yet, I can get into a bit of a funk about who am I and what am I, and could I ever be with anyone again, would I even want to, is there an electrifying new synergy to be around, or have I been there and done that? Spirit takes care of these things. If for whatever reason you have had a long-term relationship come to an end, you will find your Soul has something big to say about it, and did so for some years beforehand: there is a new you to encounter, a new way of being with just you, even if it didn't seem to be your choice. Such is Fate.

Big as all that is for me, I think I just need to let it take care of itself, sort of, and meanwhile start dreaming up more of those things I like doing, like Medicine Wheel Zoom groups and astrology and tarot readings and walking with the guys on Dartmoor. And maybe getting myself a slightly ramshackle place with annexes and an acre of land that people can come to. But maybe that is all beside the point. It all feels very unknown right now, and that's one of the best places to be, because it's going to be like that all the time once I've shuffled off this mortal coil. Which may not be for 20 or 30 years yet, who knows? As Rabindranath Tagore said, "And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well."

Meanwhile sleep has left me, I am awake till 6am at the moment, so just as well I have Robin Hobb's 'Shaman's Crossing' trilogy to get on with. The title kind of suggests where I am, though I'd rather not call myself anything.