Apart from learning how to listen for the answer, the tricky thing about asking for guidance from the universe is knowing when she is being metaphorical and when she is being literal.
I have recently started studying t’ai chi in a form that bears very little resemblance to the one I dallied with a couple of decades ago. This form has more depth and more meaning and I have not yet found my feet in it. The relevance here, is that for a few weeks a phrase from my former (half-hearted) practice that had echoed through my head: return to mountain.
I don’t know if that is a concept in the form I am currently learning. If so, it is not an expression that has been used by my teachers. It is a metaphor that I like however. So I assumed that was why I was hearing it…I was trying to figure out where it fit…where in this form do I return to mountain?
Wrong. That wasn’t the message at all.
A couple of weeks back, I had had a bit of a week. It had been a glorious joyful week, and yet it had also been a week in which I allowed myself to be swamped by someone else’s energy. Beautiful energy. Nurturing energy. Caring, loving, light-filled energy. But theirs, not mine.
Words that emerged in my journal practice included stunned and awe-struck. Initially it felt good – what’s not to love about being awe-struck? Think of the unexpected view, the sudden rainbow, the lightening flash, the volcano, the depth of clear water, the glory of a good-looking face as one song has it, or a truly open heart. That oh, wow! moment.
What’s not to love is when it stops being a moment. Volcanoes and avalanches and tornadoes and tsunami are majestic, but best viewed from afar, or for a very short moment before getting the hell out of Dodge.
In life, we do need to share our energy. We need to absorb the positive glow from those around us. And yet it is a fine-judged thing not to lose our self in the process.
My warning signs were flashing. I wasn’t dimming to fit in, but I was being outshone and allowing it to happen…allowing myself to be blinded by the light. That’s not how spirit works. Spirit allows us to shine our own lights into each other’s darkness; she does not require that we create a darkness for someone else to shine in.
I ended that week in a dimmed state. Drained. Uncertain. And asking what it was I needed to know. The answer came clear again, as it had been badgering me all week when I hadn’t been paying attention: return to mountain.
I didn’t know what to do with it.
Eventually, I did the only thing I had not yet done, which was to take the question to the river. I used the walk along the road to let my monkey mind tell me everything it had rattling around. I opened to Spirit as I entered the park and used that space and the meadow to settle into my stride and soften my gaze and then I stood by the bridge watching the light on the water.
Ok: tell me what I need to know. I’m listening.
Return to mountain.
???
I walked. I talked to the river. I had some lovely moments.
The reflection is not the tree, nor is it the river, and yet it is.
Only still waters reflect truth.
Ripples and waves create another beauty.
The swans refused to be photographed, turning their heads away or diving for food. The berries in the trees insisted on being un-picturesque. The river insisted that I stand still and listen.
Return to mountain.
Oh! What if there is nothing metaphorical about this at all?
Is a gentle Norfolk river capable of an exasperated sigh? Finally!
I remembered being on Ben Nevis. Me, my Dad, the man, the dog, the snow. It will always call you back.
There is nothing remotely metaphysical here. It is very simple. I have been looking for a solution without clarifying the problem. The problem has nothing to do with the people around me.
The problem is simply that I have been in the lowlands for too long. It is too many years since I slogged up a serious hill. It is too many years since I experienced the adrenalin rush of being geographically challenged to the point of admitting I was lost, and getting out the map. It is too many years since I heard the true silence of the mountains: the silence that speaks in the drop of the wind, the silence of a bird between wing-beats, the silence beyond the technological world of man. Silence that is not silent, but breath, the world breathing. Silence that is the faith of the people who live in the high places, flapping in a scrap of cloth against a bamboo pole, or drawn upon a stone placed upon a cairn.
In this locked down year, I have fallen into the trap of thinking that I have been too isolated, when the truth is that I have not been isolated enough. I am starved of wildness. I am thirsting for emptiness. Again the difference between alone and solitary, between isolation and solitude.
I need to get back to the high places…among the unscalable peaks…among the bogs and the heather and the rocks or among the sanded trails walked for years or forged anew for a single season to disappear again when the folk move on. I need a dose of above the treeline barren. I need the icy song of the hidden cascade, or the russet scent of peat-risen springs.
I need, simply, to return to the mountains.
And simply, right now, I cannot do so.
