Living into the mystery

A beautiful meditation ritual in which we give our questions back to the forest, from Mary Reynolds Thompson, adapted from her book Wild Soul Woman…

Under dense cover, tender saplings bide their time, often for many decades, waiting for a break in the canopy. Only when the canopy opens, and light pours down on them do they begin to rise and reach their branches to a beckoning sky.

You, on the other hand, may be impatient to get on with your life. Inaction is a challenge for many of us. Our culture values expediency over natural timing, pushing us ever onwards. You may feel that you've already put your dreams on hold for too long. After all, haven't women spent centuries waiting for our gifts to be recognized? It's hard to stand still, and yet when you stop rushing, you may realize that waiting strengthens you.

As young trees hunker down in the darkness, their wood becomes stronger and more flexible, all the while the mother trees feed them sugar and other nutrients to help them thrive. In your willingness to sit in the unknown, you too will be gaining strength. This waiting is a part of actively learning, discovering, and engaging with the world. This inner work is preparing you to take advantage of an opening when it arises, you are pregnant with possibility, but you must nurture these possibilities before they bear fruit.

In this quiet, sacred place, you have faith in your future. You trust that you will move instinctually when the moment arises, but first you bide your time and wait for the right conditions to act. When you see a clearer path forward, you will be ready. You are learning to balance the desire to act with the need to wait, to dance in the space between being and becoming.

You are strong enough to hold opposites, to embrace shadow and sunlight, earth and sky. You do not feel fragmented or forced to choose between possibilities. You can hold your centre. So much depends on right timing and the ability to hold the tension without opting for superficial answers or falling back on your old ways. Living with uncertainty, paradox, chaos isn't easy. Tension is integral to transformation.

You have to be willing to sit in the unknown long enough for something new to emerge. Can you find a quiet place now to stand between your outgrown past and your unseeable future, can you make space for what is yet unnamed, even unthought of, to emerge? This is how you begin to incubate a new life, a new world.

One day, like an old-growth forest, you will evolve into your magnificence. Your destiny is already contained within you, as the mighty oak is contained within the acorn. Hold still, bide your time, heed the wisdom of the woods, of your wild self. Your authentic strength comes from waiting until action naturally arises from the depth of your being.

Your time will come, and when it does, even the most frightened, vulnerable parts of yourselves will rise up and reach for the light.

As you sit here now, think about a question you hold in your heart. It may have been seeded in you long ago, or you may have only just become aware of it. Let this question be big, open-ended, not a simple one with a yes or no answer.

We are living into mystery. Consider these questions: What am I being called to? What is it that I cannot see?  What is the most important thing for me to recognise now? Take a moment to let these questions find their way within.

What am I being called to? What is it that I cannot see?  What is the most important thing for me to recognise now?

Sit with it for a bit. Roll the words around on your tongue and in your head. Is it worded in the most powerful way? Does it feel like the right question? Keep checking in until you have your question.

What am I being called to? What is it that I cannot see?  What is the most important thing for me to recognise now?

And so, when you question arrives, write it on your leaf or your bark, so you can feel it rooting itself in you and in the wisdom of the earth, of this place.

Now,we’re going to place that question into the heart of the woods, in the hollow of a tree, under the leaves, by a great root, nestled within some fallen branches, wherever you feel called to place it. You are entrusting your question and its answer to the woods to your wisest woodland self. Ask the woods to hold your question for you, trusting that when the time is right, she will grant you the answer your soul is seeking.

The question will stay here, held by this sacred grove, this ancient land. For those of you who plan to return to this space in the autumn, it may still be here, woven into the woodland in a slow, organic way, or it may have disappeared entirely, and how will you feel. But you will know it is here, held safely in this sacred place. As you walk, take a moment to reflect on your experience of handing over your question to the forest, what do you notice? What do you fear? What do you hope for?

What would it be like to live our lives as travellers with roots in ourselves? As you learn to take your wild dreaming seriously, to burrow into the woods far away from the scorching glare of patriarchy, you meet the creative ground of your own being, while society strips you of meaning and thereby denies your imagination and innate wisdom. The woods insist that you regain your sovereignty and conjure a great vision for your life.