By Randy Morris, Ph.D
Preface: The goal of nature-based rites of passage work is to ‘wake up’ to the call of our deeper self in order to live a more complete life, in alignment with the unseen order of the earth and cosmos. In so doing, we fulfill the call of our destiny in service to a thriving planet.
Life-span rites of passage imply that discerning and fulfilling this call is not a one-time event but rather a living, dynamic process that extends across a life-time, from adolescence to mid-life to elderhood and death. This imagination of what it means to be a human being on this planet is often discouraged because it is subversive to the status quo, those forces that are destroying our planet. As a result, it is important that we encourage each other by sharing stories of our encounters with this unseen order, what Thomas Berry calls ‘the dream of the earth’, one of the multitude of names for The Sacred. I would like to share one of my stories of an encounter with The Sacred in hopes that you will be inspired to share one of yours. By sharing our stories, a Beloved Earth Community is constellated and a sustainable future of Justice and Beauty begins to emerge. — Randy
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I recently had an experience during the night that went like this: I dream of a long white vertical bag with precious stuff inside. Some kind of giant force runs their hands down the length of it, squeezing a single clear drop out of the bottom of the bag. It is caught in a beautiful gleaming golden chalice and the drop hovers there in the center. I woke from the dream with a remembrance of something I had read long ago in a book called Psyche Speaks. The author, Russell Lockhart, wrote the following:
“Aquarius is pictured as a water bearer pouring water into a pool. I like to think of this as the image of the coming time when each and everyone of us brings to a common pool the water we have gathered from our unique and individual sources, from our encounters with the unconscious. By pooling together what we bring from these moments, by telling one another what we have experienced there, by acting on the hints we experience there, by doing these things, we will, I trust, begin to create that song of welcome to the Coming Guest.” (p. 79)
As a Jungian Analyst, Lockhart is using the term ‘the unconscious’ to designate any experience that crosses our path that is ‘Other’ and, when made conscious, changes our life irrevocably. He is saying that if we act on the hints being given in these encounters, if we take them seriously as an ethical responsibility, and if we share our stories of them, we will create a song of welcome to a life-affirming future. Now in my elder years, I am being asked by this dream to consider the water I am bringing to the collective pool. What have been my encounters with The Sacred and how have they contributed to a ‘song of welcome’ to a thriving future?
And where do these encounters occur? They happen every day in our struggle to move beyond our ego identities so as to cultivate the ‘soul spark’ of our Authentic Self. They can be found in our daily efforts to work against our selfish desires, the better to purify our love for our partners, family, friends, community, bio-region and cosmos. I have found the most reliable guide on the path to Love and the cultivation of our Authentic Self to be dreams. Every night, we are given images of our psychic life that are generated by a wisdom far superior to our own and which have the uncanny ability to pinpoint the terrors and joys on the path of individuation, the way of becoming who we were always meant to be. The victories and defeats we encounter on that path generate the droplets that go into the Aquarian pool.
Another way to set up a deliberate encounter with The Sacred is to go on a vision quest, a 3- or 4-day solo fast in the wilderness. I have done 8 of these quests over the past 30 years, and the lessons I learned there are an essential aspect of my legacy. Long after I am gone, I can still be found in the transcripts of my big dreams and the records of my vision quests. So much Beauty! So much Love! So much Terror!
For example, in 1991, I sat in my vision quest circle in the midst of a desert, with the temperature climbing above 100 degrees. It was approaching noon on the day of the Summer Solstice. I was on the second day of my fast, so the hunger pangs of the first day had dissipated. That first day had been spent arduously grieving the death of my father. As the sun of the second day blasted its energy into my circle, I heard a very distinct voice say, “Be a guardian of the West door!” In case I didn’t hear it right the first time, the voice repeated itself verbatim. “Be a guardian of the West door!” “Wow!” I thought to myself, “A direct communication from the Sacred Other!” Or so I thought, until another voice in my head began to doubt what I had just heard. I recognized that voice as the product of 22 years of formal education into the scientific, religious and philosophical traditions of Western thought. That other voice, which was about 350 years old, told me that direct communication with The Sacred was merely a figment of my imagination, a mental construct of a mind that is separate from nature, encapsulated in its bag of skin, incapable of communication with the more-than-human world. I was caught in an opposition: do I trust the first voice, or the second? I was thrown into a tizzy. I realized that the answer to this dilemma had the power to shape the future of my life.
I get up to pray in each of the directions of my medicine circle, before sitting against a hot rock dressed only in shorts. Eventually, I write in my journal about how I think that, despite my doubts, I have achieved certain knowledge about the truth of the first voice, that it had indeed been a voice of The Sacred Other. But was it really? As I write the word “knowledge,” I see some slight movement to my left. Without moving, my eyes glance down to witness a three foot rattlesnake stretched out to its full length just inches from my bare foot. The snake senses me tense up. It stops and looks directly at me, its head moving side to side, its tongue sliding in and out of its mouth, smelling me. I remain absolutely still, as though my life depended on it, which in those remote circumstances, it did. After a few more flicks of its tongue, the snake moves on, slithering beyond the prayer ties that mark the boundary of my sacred vision quest site. The next words in my journal are “Holy Shit!”
In many indigenous traditions, Snake and Bear are the guardians of the West door. Was this really a visitation by an emissary of the spirit world? When I got up to trace the path of the snake in the sandy desert soil, I saw that it had entered my vision quest circle right next to the pole that marked the West direction. Be a guardian of the West Door! Snake had entered through the West portal and proceeded to curve around the center pole of my circle before making a right angle turn towards me as I sat in the direction of the South.
I was now confronted by two choices. I could believe that these events were a mere coincidence, or I could believe in a fantastic synchronicity, orchestrated by the intelligence of the earth, in which Snake revealed that the inner world of my experience and the outer world of nature were threads of one weaving, a holistic tapestry of mind and nature awaiting further discoveries. But it was still a choice to be made. A scientific explanation grounded in mechanistic cause and effect was still available. I consulted my heart … and chose the mind/nature tapestry. And by choosing a world in which magic like this could happen, the world made available to my eyes the capacity to see magic all around me. Mind-boggling synchronicities that I had previously explained away with my intellect as mere coincidences now became thresholds to new imaginal realms full of love, beauty and kindness. Lesson learned: by approaching the world with reverence, with expectations of encounters with The Sacred Other, marvelous things decide to approach me that would not otherwise be available to my inner and outer eyes.
This encounter changed my life. I had met the beauty/terror of the unconscious and it had blessed me. I have taken my guardianship of the West Door as a life-long task. It permeates everything I do, including sharing this story. Another droplet has been added to the pool of Aquarius. What drops might you be adding?
Postscript: If sharing our stories of our encounters with The Sacred, whatever that means to you, can serve as a basis for creating a Beloved Earth Community, then I hope you will be willing to share one of your own experiences. You are invited to send a description of your encounter – whether dream, synchronicity, awe-filled experience, nature dialogue, body revelation, artistic inspiration, or any other way in which you have encountered something Mysteriously Other – to blog@riteofpassagejourneys.org . Your gift will be gratefully read. If an opportunity presents to share your offering with the larger community, we would contact you in advance for your permission. It would be a real blessing to hear from you!
