The completion of the last moon cycle on the 15th saw me on my knees, raking through the deep sand and mud in the subterranean waters I have been visiting of late. I swam with the dark fishes through underwater caverns, navigating dark, narrow passages as I searched for missing pieces of my life.
It has been a challenging few weeks for me; Thanksgiving kicked off some wild feelings of powerlessness, a waft of a former age, when I used to be a child. Catching the scent of those crazy holidays with my family of origin and all of its ghosts was enough to trigger my inner child into being very present.
She (my inner child) is alternately delighted with the holiday time, and so, so, so fearful and anxious and sad. The old days were scary. The evidence of that is her terror. My job is to hold her hand and be as loving and capable a parent as I can to her. Sometimes, it is hard to remember that I am both the parent and the inner child, though….when the little me has feelings, they can seem so big as to blot out the rest of the world. It then becomes apparent it is time to don the trusty diving suit, plug into the oxygen machine at the surface, and go down into the depths with her, because she IS trying to show me something. It is always the trick to remember not to dive alone.
In shamanic work, we know that retrieval of disenchanted parts of ourselves is a healthy and necessary expression of our wholeness. This is seen in psychology, too, where the desire and intent of therapeutic work is to integrate the compartmentalized aspects of self.
This is exactly what I have been doing when I elect to follow my inner child’s call down into the dark waters. A kind of waking shamanic journey, we enter the earth through openings in the mountains, holes in the earth, and travel quickly through the rocks and soil, passing moles and earthworms, until we emerge into the caves and caverns deep underground. There, we then must swim the great black seas that exist where the sun doesn’t shine, for at the bottom lies treasure.
There are dangers, though, to this work. Sometimes, the immense pressure of this deep inner environment is enough to make my eyes want to pop out of my head. I can feel the pressure of the vast waters and the miles of earth on top of me in my body, as I walk here on the topside through my day, shopping for groceries or driving my children to orthodontist appointments. How interesting, I think, as I merge safely into traffic, while underneath I am reaching through dark crevices to see if a gem, or part of myself, is inside. How odd, I notice, as I kiss my husband while I am digging through the primordial slime and hitting something of note with my fingertips. I live in many worlds simultaneously.
In shamanism, it is important to have your lifeline attached when you go into the other worlds to retrieve those parts, or you can get lost. I have fortunately chosen some very able and supportive helpers in my life who hold me and love me as I writhe around and wrestle with those dark creatures under the water that threaten to hold me down until I give up. Just when I feel I am going to lose my life or my mind because something powerful and I have gotten ahold of each other, either my own soul and spirit give me the strength suddenly to bring the great beast to the surface, where I can look at it in the eye and see it is not going to kill me…..or some grace-filled creature or person in my life senses I am floundering and reaches a hand down through the layers of reality and pulls me up. Thank Godde for love.
Now that the new moon cycle has begun on the 16th, I experience a release of pressure. I am back topside. I retrieved some great bounty from the depths these last few weeks, and have now emerged with the spoils, breathless but alive and jubilant, at the surface. Navigating the multiple worlds that I do, they all collapse into one world, the here and now, and I am more powerful because more of me is here, playing happily in the sun.
