Category Archives: Remembering

Skeleton II

This life,
ever fought for,
sought for, sacrificed for,
runs fresh in my veins,

It shifts my body before the notion to do so arises.

I am alive.
What I gained on the other side,
this glowing rock,
this molten lava,
this star bursting from my chest,
is not meant to be beared, but shared.

In stillness, I would cave and fester.
In movement, a booming echoes around me, from me somehow.

The magnet of my compass has grown so strong,
it is more trouble to ignore, now, than to follow.

What will I do?
What will I do?

I will discover in the doing.


[photo credit: https://downtheforestpath.com/2013/03/06/little-pagan-monastery/]

Skeleton

Once you have fallen down and rotted upon the earth
and dreamt your dreams
and picked yourself back up,
you cannot remain a skeleton.

The wind that blew through your ribs
to teach you its song
will only keep singing the same song,
and you have learned it already.

The ravens will not come back
because the have sated their hunger
for the dead.

Child of this earth,
the guardians give you a home now.

Grow flesh,
choose garments of color,
hum your song
and listen for the wind
when she wraps herself around you
on a late summer day.
She has secrets about being whole
as well as being dead.

We pass through a door
into nothingness
and as we return through another,
all the rest close.

It is the way of being mortal.

It is a good way,
for without song we cannot express.
Without song we cannot swell and beam,
shape and teach
what has come through us.

This time you will be different.
This time the terrain will be taken more carefully.
This time your ear will be attuned more keenly
to the authentic.

That which comes without warning

And then there is the time when after the long awaking, after the split, the sleep and the recovery, after the faith has been held for so long, that sustenance seeps up from the ground. Things look the same but the doors are open. Medicine pours into the dry wounds and pleasure for living returns. The fallow period has passed. All the dreams, the prayers, the offerings to the mother have been heard and the answer is now in your blood.

Live. Live the life you wanted. Defend the new life as if survival depends upon it, because it does. And you know that now so there is no more deliberating. It is a fresh page and you are not a young thing, so take the pen and stroke from your life, the tapestry which cannot be undone yet can always continue.

Not knowing has become fun again, only because of the rock inside. This rock which has been formed through so much hardness, this hardness which has become your strength. To trust in that strength is to find the will to be gentle again. To know that you have become your own protector grants freedom to be able to choose to be open again. This child, inside is safe and brings a joy to carry you forth.

Blessed be the seasons that pass. Blessed is the ground beneath our feet. Blessed is the food and the wake and blessed has been the silence.

We do not run, nor push nor fend. We stroll into a new world with the patience of time. We savor and we test. We choose again and we go for what we always wanted. With skill this time.

Blessed be.

Final Reprise

PART ONE:

When the warrior finally reaches the green pastures and sunny meadow,
when the warrior puts her weapons down,
she feels the heat rise from the ground beneath her and lies down to rest
under the high grass,
smell of lyrical flowers.

Further no purpose, no quarry in sight, she dreams of battles
and then when she rises, all comforts greet her body
and she sighs, and she sleeps again.

When the warrior has found her way out of the darkness
into the light of her own heart
there is no longer need to strive

for arrival is come
and the land is still.

There is nothing left to seek,
yet the song still awaits,
and she waits for the song.

Soothe the jagged remembrances of evil.
Remember the misplaced soothing of jagged affairs.

Awake she is, like never before and
like never before, she draws from her sleep,

every fiber,
her being whole now,
glistening and listening to the holy voice within.

PART TWO:

I asked, “Once the debris has been cleared, the demons faced and transformed, what is left in the sacred vessel, in the shadow within us?”

and I heard the reply,

“That which one is connected to
but has no words for.

That which gestates and must not be disturbed,
lest it be damaged in the process.

The Great Mother, who holds us, who nourishes and weeps and cheers for us.

This is also the realm of the White Raven, she who has been burnt through and still lives. She who is Grace with a thin cloak of iron unseen and unshakeable. She who is container, soft as feather, hidden power capable of those very things she yearned to do when in pain but put down as soon as she was able. She is Death, she has seen and understood every aspect of Death and yet she has no need to bring on Death. She holds forgiveness, her compassion gently touches us with the naked light of presence aware.”

Once the stagnation is broken in the sacred vessel of shadow,
once the river is flowing freely,
dreams of the Gods quickly,
our journeys clear in the slipstream of their inspiration.

Then when we tell, we tell from a place of the Gods.

This is all I know and I pray for.

After a Soul Retrieval

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After a soul retrieval, a person can feel elated, buzzing with energy, emotional, having a sense of ‘being in their body’, a shift in physical sensations, a wonderful sense of groundedness. Of coming home. Home to self. It is beautiful beyond words.

Directly after a soul retrieval, a person can also feel nothing at all. Feeling nothing at all means..pretty much nothing. It can take over a month to really feel the settling happen in order to notice any kind of shift. That is what is was like for me after my first soul retrieval. After a month, I realized, holy moly, that hole in me is gone and I am no longer going to need to fill it. I lost a bunch of friends that were not serving me and the direction of my life changed course.

In the time that ensues over the several months, there can be epiphanies, increase in energy, restoration of qualities particular to that person, such as artistic expression, ability to communicate clearly, to be organized, to complete projects, to be filled with a bursting need to sing, to cook, to love.. you name it.

There can also be grieving, if the event that caused the soul loss was never grieved. This is something that people often have fear about before going into a soul retrieval ceremony, but it really isn’t that common. If it does happen, know that the emotions are not about rehashing; they are truly about release. What a blessing to be able to give honor to something that happened by being present enough to honestly grieve it, rather than trying to live around it, pushed down somewhere in our psyche for the rest of our lives. Grieving is not fun, but grieving is beautiful, like a river that cannot be stopped or hurried up. It just is, and it will continue and it will end.

This all takes time. Healing is a process. Soul retrieval can take over a year to fully come into.

Bottom line is, when we are finally returned to our bodies, we are home. We are able to make better decisions in our lives. Soul retrieval can be viewed as the first step of a long journey because now that we are home, we might not like the way the furniture has been arranged or think that there is a bit of cleaning up to do. For instance, a job or living situation may need to end. Boundaries in relationships may shift. Certain dynamics may immediately become unacceptable. There may be an ability to change emotional habits that one has been warring with for years.

There may be a new ability to be more open and loving, now that we know that we cannot be hurt anymore. Because we are finally present to take care of ourselves.

If I am confusing you with the variety of reactions, it is because we are all on our individual path and the event of coming home will be received uniquely for all of us.

There can be a feeling of finally getting traction in life. A newly returned power that is up to us to decided how to shape into the world. This is a glorious, glorious event in life, for some very dramatic, for others, subtle yet sure. Something worth sharing tears of joy over.

Blessed Be.

by Tasara