Some four years ago, when i was in Australia, my friend Thalia gave me a book entitled Soulcraft, by Bill Plotkin. This book impacted me significantly, by putting me in touch with my soul.
The last week I have been on the Soulcraft intensive journey, held by Animas Valley, an organisation set up by Bill Plotkin. This journey impacted me significantly, by fully calling in my soul into my embodiment.
It was a journey of descent, which can only be done with the support of the natural world. The world I have been so disconnected from in this domesticated life I was thought to live on this planet.
I was thought to fear the wilderness – in nature and myself. Raised with a belief that it is better to be safe than free, the belief played out collectively so intensely during the corona pandemic. This was the time when I started seeing.
I have seen so much last week. My inner vision has never been more opened, my mind never as expended.
I have seen the nature lighten up when a woman talks about love (I have seen this previously on plant medicines), I have seen symbols appearing on my walks. Walks I was not sure I can make, as I was thought not to trust myself. So I made my wanders pilgrimage of communion with the spirit that is alive in me and all living beings. With each step, the path was opening with more magic and beauty, as I stepped into my inner knowledge, my inner gnosis. I felt my animal nature which opened the path to the direct communion with the nature. Just when I got a bit lost on my way, as the night was falling, I was met by a deer who brought me back to the retreat centre.
There were many deers and does in the Dragoon Mountains. It was the first animal I saw in the centre, the animal with which I deeply related. So I chose to be called SRNA (doe) these five days of intensive, to connect even more deeply with the medicine of this animal. Her medicine was to listen to my heart, to be led by its beat even when there is noise of guns firing at my direction.
I connected also to the stone people. On my walk the first day, after the council gathering revealed that I was ready to heal my sexual feminine being, I came across a boulder in a form of a yoni. At this sacred place I was able to connect with the pain of my female ancestor and released it for the benefit of generations to come.
Next day, I craved for the feeling of safety. I found a cave on my way, which had Native American carvings (this Apache’s land). I sung in this cave the song of sacred union (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSPXWYEQxJg), another topic prominent for me at the intensive. I was shown how to sing from the womb and how to engage both vaginal and throat muscles simultaneously.
The day after the intensive as my sadness deepened I went into another cave, a cavern cave, and spent some time in pitch darkness.
I have been thought to fear darkness, and my own shadows. But on this intensive, at the trance dance ceremony, I met my shadow of a lunatic, prompted by a trigger. I finally integrated this shamed and feared outcast. I had the most amazing dream of belonging that night. It was the night when I met my star. I have never felt such an attraction to the star. It felt as if we were of the same essence.
I re-established my connection to magic. The external authority and social conditioning started loosing its force and with it my focus on my small self, my ego.
The deep longing has awaken in me, the longing of a childless mother. I gave a promise to my unborn children that I will mother this new world into being. This brave new world of oneness. The world where soul is valued and life revered. The world of inter-connection, where each of the living beings brings a unique beauty, contributes to the melody of this life sung through us. The world where we consciously create, and dream the world into being.
I am so ready to strip the I from my name, with respect for all that made me as a person, all the ancestral stories written in my birth name. But my soul’s descent teaches me to keep stripping the layers of personality, to fall more deeply into my true nature. It teaches me to die so as to be reborn times and times again.
At the opening ceremony I offered my fear of death at the altar. At the closing ceremony I gave a birth to N’Innana, a name I was called by my beautiful sensitive niece when she was little and still free to trust herself.
