Caroline Carey Writings, Prose & Poetry

The best thing about nature is knowing it is always there. There is never a time you cannot just be within it, unless of course your house stands on concrete and there are roads adjacent to where you live. There are no paths or walk ways amongst trees or grassy edges. But nature can be found in the cracks, in the small gardens and with the birds that fly over head. It is in the wind and rain and the sun that shines upon us. It is deep in the earth even if it is hidden from view. Fire can be found in a candle flame and the hearth. Even when we turn on a light switch, fire is involved. The water from the tap, that fills our bath tub, its all nature and all deserves a prayer or two and a mention of gratitude.

And here we are now, surrounded by beautiful country side, in a farmers field next to a flowing river. The rain pattering on the roof top, the smell of the cut grass and occasional sunshine. It feels good and I ask myself if this is enough?

We are house hunting, looking for a new home with a different view to the one we had before. A new life, preparing for and beginning a new adventure. As we look at houses I realise how un-keen I am to put myself once more into those four walls and block out the nature that smells so sweet, that sounds so inviting. I feel the calling to live with it rather than apart from deep within my bones and find myself avoiding the structure and bricks and mortar that I know at some point I must succumb to.  Or must I? We have a yurt, a beautiful yurt and we have a motor home that is cosy and warm.

Talking to the land, I am curious about what it would like from me. Where could I be useful, where might my roots feed those of others where we collaborate together, to gently meet in the delicate issues of human and natures interactions.

As time goes on I might yearn for the four walls once more as my bones feel the cold and I tire of so little space. But the ‘waiting to see what happens’ is somewhat delightful and I am indulging it a little. There does not need to be a rush, to find, to make happen. All in good time I hear myself say, for the right opportunity, the right moment, when all will be made very clear to me, to us and to the circles that surround us.

For now I feel very grateful that we have this time and space, to be together in our little pod of a home, in the womb of nature, exploring who we are together and what it is that we ‘really’ want from life and living.

So we decided on one year in the city. It’s been a good experience in many ways but too unfamiliar for me and hard to get roots into that concrete!

I grew up in a rural environment and that has been my choice ever since. City life never appealed to me. For sure the odd visit, here and there. I quite liked the buzz! And the material shops where you can buy unusual buttons and off-cuts that no one else wants. Oh and embroidery thread that has many amazing uses!

But its not quite enough to live in a city to visit fabric shops. So we headed away and landed on a camp site in our comfy home from home camper van. Which is a bit more than just a camper. Its full of my sheepskin rugs, my drums and a few plants. I can make tea and cook veges and listen to music, and outside there are big old trees and a river running past and I feel at home.

There is no internet but nice coffee shops in the town so I can visit on occasion, have a de-caf latte, just for treat and send a blog to people i love to connect with.

The year of staying in the city has passed us by and we are stepping out of that particular box, with no idea where we are going to land fully and without any knowledge of how life might be. We are driving away from what has been and what does not fit any more. It’s a mandorla process for sure and it has it’s uncomfortable moments, but is mingled with great excitement!

I’ve plenty of thread and buttons, veges and tea bags. I’ve books and lots to write. I will be off I know visiting different countries to offer my work, but in this moment I will listen to bird song and the river, do my own work of letting go and waiting to see where the universe wants to take us. Yes I am still a bit of a hippy at heart, but quite a grounded one who understands that in order to really manifest what is needed, there needs to be a letting go of what does not serve! Sometimes there is a bit of a risk involved, but the rewards are plenty. I’ve done it many times, usually with my children who are all grown up now. So it’s a little easier this time, with no nappies to wash! But the hope they will visit and sit by the river with me, watch the steam train go by and ponder on life for a little while with their Mum.

The next step…I’ve no idea, some work with the dance, some editing to do and life to be lived.

I will let you know… 🙂

Guilt and shame. Two very powerful emotions that we often and usually try to avoid. Guilt can mean that we have done something wrong. Shame means we feel there is something wrong with us.

Ok so we get that. But how necessary is it for us to feel these emotions as a concern for the way we live on this planet? We often hear talks about how to eradicate these feelings, let them go and move on. But actually if the human race took more notice of these emotions and related to their inner conscious in a healthy and connected way, we could actually be much more effective in making changes in the world. How do we awaken the consciousness of the planet? How do we learn to be more gracious and grateful for what we have here and what the earth gives to us, rather than keeping on taking it for granted?

Fact is we are guilty!

For example, if we actually felt guilty for buying and eating meat that had come from an extremely abused animal, could we bare to indulge in it. If we knew fully the suffering that an animal had undergone, would we consider eating free range, organic meat that had not spent the last weeks of its life suffocating and dying of thirst in the back of a lorry.

If we really took our time to understand the harmful effects of factory farming, deforestation, polluted waters, fur trade, over fishing, fracking, massive oil consumption, rape of the land, the list goes on and on…..would we stop for a few moments and ask ourselves ‘what is my part in this and am I responsible?‘

Guilt and shame could actually be the saving of many lives!

If we woke up our own innate consciousness, that we all have whoever we are, reminded ourselves we are all guilty and even adopt a little shame over what we are doing, then so long as we ACT on this we could make a significant change in what we do.

We can empower ourselves to be responsible. We can then be responsible enough to live the dream of being authentic humane, human beings with integrity. Living the dream we live in harmony with the planet. Individual consciousness, leads to community consciousness, leads to the effective realization that is needed to heal ourselves and our attitudes to the world.

There are many things we would not do if we allowed ourselves to be truly guilty and ashamed, and we cannot really begin to celebrate our lives until we can honestly say, ‘I am not guilty for any part in the wrong doings of mankind.’

Where do we begin?

I journeyed out yet again to the little broken-down house out in
the forest, where no human lived, where nature had taken over and
lived amongst its stone, within its damp walls open to the sky above.
Its two fireplaces were still cold and unlit. I knew my ritual now
and stepped a little fearfully into the darkened space. Sitting on the
ground I took my drum in my hands and played a gentle beat.

I called
to my guardians, my angel being, my allies and friends to be with
me. I called to the spirit and the creatures of the land here to support
me. The nature spirits and the sounds of the river and her ancestors,
all of my ancestors, this was their work as well as my own.
In my drum bag were two candles left from a previous time in a
ritual. Here they had remained. I took them out and placed one in
each of the empty fire places. Sharing a few words about the two
areas of tension in my life that I was bringing soul-fully together, I
lit each candle with a blessing. Sitting back against the wall behind
me I drummed with my eyes centred on the wall in between the two
fires. I could see each little flame from the corners of my eye. I was
afraid that one may blow out, but they both stayed alight and burned
brightly.
As I drummed a song began to bring itself out from my heart.
I am of a mother tribe
I am of a mother tribe
Its heart and its wisdom alive in me
I am of a mother tribe
I am of a dancing tribe
I am of a dancing tribe
Its heart and its wisdom alive in me
I am of a dancing tribe
I am of a sacred tribe
I am of a sacred tribe
Its heart and its wisdom alive in me
I am of a sacred tribe
Stepping up and standing against the wall between the fires I
became the ‘almond’ of the Mandorla in the centre. Singing my song,
tears rolling down my cheeks, playing my drum I felt the weight of
that tension lifting from my shoulders into the universal energy of
love that was above me, held and supported by the ground, the earth
beneath my feet, the deep love of the mother.
I was all of this and more, I was awake and aware of what moved
inside me and around me. Fascination for the path I had chosen, no
matter how challenged or how cursed I felt at times.

Rocked by The River
True adults make changes; they rock the boat in society. They
are ‘change agents’. We will not rock the boat by simply healing.
We can keep on working out our shit and becoming more whole,
but we need to get on with everything else as well. There is grief to
be cried and wounds to transform but there is much ‘other’ work to
do as well. We need to express our deepest longings to the world, to
find fulfilment by being of service to the world. We need to become
a bigger part of our tribes and communities.
There is a place within us all that longs for this, it is our ecological
identity and will keep calling to us as we live our lives. For some
it is easier to shut ourselves away from this calling. To close down
what is pulling on our ‘soul strings’, for some it is a longing that
cannot be ignored. We have to express this deep longing. Allowing
it to pour through us, without demanding that it be a certain way,
not demanding from the world to make it right, but to get our acts
together and step up to the challenges it brings.
The mystery calls and we learn to inhabit our own unique place.
There is only one way to prove that it is what we want by being
heard in the world, by rocking the boat, by making waves in the
lakes around us.

We make ourselves so alluring that the mystery
cannot help but want us. There becomes a longing on both sides
of the lake of mystery. We often do not know exactly what we are
courting; it is often simply an instinct, stepping forward endlessly
to meet with the unknown. Sometimes it does not help to know, for it
would no longer be a mystery.
We are hunting the sounds, the gut instincts, the scent, the passion
and the desires. Each day and each night offers a new vision, a new
sensation and a new dream. We fail many times and must be willing
to fail, for here we learn more, experience more and learn about
what it is we do not want from life.

Pursuing the dream we fall many times, willingly stumbling from
hillside to mountain, from rock to brook, becoming beautiful as the
sacred hunter. It is incomprehensible that the divine may show its
face and that we would know what it is that we seek, for the journey
may be over and all our hard work to be in vain. There would be no
more need to dance, to hunt, to explore the legends of our tribes.

from Reclaimed Innocence;  MyVoice Publishing

http://www.alchemyinmovement.com/index.php/written-work/

‘The tension is fierce but I cannot fly so I sharpen my claws.’

The soul’s initiation is the beginning of true adulthood. The westernised world in many ways would keep us small and childlike. In fact the mature adult is not great for business; this adult will cause stirrings in the more powerful world, it will learn to speak out and make demands. It will want to make changes to the structures that have been applied for the benefit of those in power. We become brain washed with what is offered to us. This will keep us wanting more, keeping us in the shopping malls, in the menial tasks of our existence. We allow ourselves to be influenced by others ideas of beauty, we become brainwashed as to how we should look and feel. Our bodies become a root to deep dissatisfaction when we desire to look a certain way; the way that gets thrown at us in glossy magazines. Our own ‘look’ becomes something that we want to change to become what others admire within the fashion consciousness minds.

We will learn to blame and dishonor others in our scramble to be seen and heard; instead of simply being at peace with ourselves and our own growth. When we can become our animal being, when we can seek out that tremendous primal force within us then we can step up, grow up and be the mature adult who is unafraid of authority, their own or that of others, who can take their place in the world and have a voice.

Our bodies are as they were born. They if paid attention to fully, will guide us to be more of the being we are meant to be. Each body fits into its own destiny perfectly. We have exactly the right body to take the ‘quality of us’ into the world that we are meant to be. This is the body of our own archetype. If we can fully embody it we become beautiful. We are beautiful because we are our selves; we are embodying and manifesting who we are in the world. Young children are so beautiful because they are so much more themselves and are not trying to be anyone else. As they grow we tend to try to form them into being more like others. They begin to lose their innocent beauty that they were born with.

Our body is manifesting who we are in the world long before we know what we are  manifesting ourselves.

A true adult has discovered what her place is within society; she can experience herself fully as the member of that community. She is a member of the earth community, a nation and a family. This is how she begins to embody her true identity. She lives within that place and serves her people from it. She visibly and tangibly manifests her gifts to the world. She stumbles onto the truth that she makes every day with her body, with her dance and her poetry. If enough adults take this journey then we can be sure that there will be enough elders to teach us in the future. If there are enough elders, then we can be sure that there will be enough true support for the adults who take on that journey of the soul and for the children who do not need to lose their innocence.

*

There I was stuck on that plinth high up in the air, no wings to fly me down, fearful that the claws will not hold to the straight edges of stone that hold me up. My fierce body dealing with the tension that was lessening as I came to terms with my life. I took a lump of clay and ran off into the woodland, finding my ‘home’ within those stone walls I began to manipulate it through my fingers, I took it into the garden where it gathered leaves and twigs, sticking to its flesh. As my hands did their work with no idea as to what would be uncovered I saw a form beginning to emerge. A slight woman sat by a large cauldron, her head became tall and pointed, she was like the Witch from a fairy tale. The cauldron was cradled by her legs and her arms wrapped around its edges. I set to work, carving in as much detail as I could. Tiny twigs became fingers and small stones became her toenails. Her breasts hung loosely, aware of the gravity beneath her. Heather’s became her hair and her cloak was made from moss. As I took her into my heart I saw what she had become, what I was becoming, what my own identity was transforming to. My sweet dark angel of the night, my wise woman, my witch of the skies.

I created for her a broomstick to fly with. Maybe that was how I needed to leap down from that great height, from my plinth in my dream. A simple broom, leaping off into the mystery. In the cauldron I began to put wild berries, a little animal fur and pieces of coal for her fire. I wanted to find bones. She needed bones I felt. Every Witch needs a few bones in her cauldron. There were none to be found. I was hungry; time had slipped by, as I was engrossed in this work. I ran to the kitchen knowing I was probably too late for the lunch that would have been prepared. I was right. Nothing left and my tummy rumbled, but our resident cook went back into the kitchen to see what may be available. A few pieces of the local free-range chicken menu had been left and so they were piled onto a plate for me with a little rice. Gnawing at my bones each one savoured by the need for nourishment, I placed them very gratefully into the witch’s cauldron. She needed her bones to make the story complete. The story of my own fascination with death.

I was ready to die to all that I had become and I wanted to change. I wanted my boat rocked and toppled. I wanted to begin again and crawl my way onto my new path. I wanted to take the myth of my own life and create poetry, write my words and blossom myself from this mysterious ride. I knew my gifts, I knew them well and I had my own delivery system to offer it to the world, but now I had fresh knowledge, a new wildness in my bones and flowing through my veins. I remembered the times as a child the fascination I would have for death. A lover of animals and of having my pets, I would care sweetly for them and it pained me hugely when they passed away. However, there was a side to me that held a very curious fascination for death. Their little bodies buried in their graves I could not help but take a peek to see what had happened to those bodies, how had they decayed, what became of the skin, the bones, the fur?

I collected small bones, dead frogs, fossils and feathers and whatever I could hide away in cardboard boxes. I would spend my time at the bottom of the garden, searching under the shed for signs of life, or maybe death. If there was a tunnel to be found I was there. I loved the dirt and the grime, playing with mud and creating pathways through clearings and hedgerows.

The mystery conspires to bring us into our own true profession and mine seemed to be one of learning to be with the process of death; to be with the shadows of evolution; the changing and transforming process of birth, life and death; the dance of creation and ultimately the reclaiming of our innocence.

There is a difference between what we have as our gifts and offerings to the world and how we then offer it to the community. We have our gifts and we have our delivery system. These are two very different things and we need to become aware of both of them. One is connected more deeply to our soul the other is connected to our ego. Our soul holds the gifts; it is rooted in the depths of our psyche, from our wounds, the stories of our childhood and all we have learned along the way, the journey so far. The delivery system is what we learn from our engagement with society and community, how well we are able to contribute and how we go about contributing. Some may have a strong sense of how to deliver something. We may learn a technique, a form; we may be good at speaking and have much knowledge to impart. This can work well as our delivery, but if we do not have the gifts that go with it then there is something missing, it is not complete without its soul.

If we are aware of our many gifts and the beauty of them, but do not have a delivery system, then they can be lost. They remain unknown to others and become only a way of self-gratification. Our task is to explore our offerings and gifts from the world of soul and to engage with the ego. Together they form a way of being in the world and know how it can develop its own delivery system.

From ‘Reclaimed Innocence’ published by MyVoice Publishing