Drink the Waters of Life in Dark Times
To go deeper into ourself requires a brush with death we fear
‘Finding the waters of life requires tasting the waters of grief and death.’ Michael Meade
If you really want to learn about life, read some of the old Celtic myths — they weave silken tapestries of trouble, abundance now lost, fallen kingdoms, spells, magic rides and talking creatures who often are the only ones who know the road home.
These are tales of exile, of falls from grace and span the archetypal human themes which you may be more familiar with in the stories of ancient Greece.
Some of us — those who have tasted the waters of grief and death — can be blown away by the resonance with our own experiences.
But be careful who you tell, or at least understand that those living on the surface of life, those who remain in abundance, will likely be terrified by your story of descent, close the door to you and prefer you remain in exile.
There is a reason for this, perhaps many, but one is that those who have had golden childhoods, have not experienced the fall from grace, know deep inside their time will come. Often, those who have had it easy are mean-spirited, pinch-hearted, and wish only to live on their own outer rim focusing solely on their own interests.
They are often generous to those who fit their definition of what it is to be human — successful, ambitious, materialistic — but are dismissive of those who would take them deeper.
In the old stories, it is the strange creature by the side of the road, who can provide directions to the prince seeking initiation, but often — by the brothers of the hero or the wicked stepsisters — they are rudely brushed aside, judged by their appearance and dismissed as of no value.
When we only value our own success and our self-image, we are unable to see and fathom the wisdom that lies beyond the horizon of our limited vision and experience of life.
I like to work with clients deep in archetypal wounding — betrayals, abandonments, exile — because I have a deep and personal understanding of their plight, having lived most, if not all of it, myself.
Mythology teaches us there are conditions on the soul of each person, some of which we will become acquainted with through our family and childhood, some will become evident later as generational and cultural forces sweep into our lives.
These are matters of fate and destiny, things we are bound to experience, challenging us to the core of our being in our response to these vicissitudes of life. We can choose to stay within the familiar orbit of our limitations and knowledge, or we can follow the signal to deeper life, accept a brush with death and, as Carl Jung said, move up a chakra.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” CG Jung
The paradox is that in order to move up we have to descend, move into the unknown and accept there are forces outside of our control.
There is a fate worse than death, and that is to live on the surface of life, never question the values we were taught and simply perpetuate the status quo, becoming another cog in the system’s wheel with all its need to oppress what is different.
On the other hand, if we take courage in hand we could mutate and create a new, much healthier branch of the family tree.
Initiatory events in tribal cultures marked the soul and risked the body, but only after the individual had known and been held safe in the warmth of community and society. It was understood that initiation — particularly for adolescent men — presented a risk of death so there had to be a good bit of life in the belly before venturing out, a self-esteem and assurance often lacking today.
Nowadays, initiations are uncrafted and unplanned and many of us receive sudden wounds and losses which we never fully recover from. If we meet an elder who could help us, instead of respecting what they have to offer, we push them away.
I experienced that recently from a young man who told me my words did not make the cut, were not of high enough quality.
It was total nonsense of course, but both inexperienced and insecure, he did not know how to handle me and so simply erected his false shield to keep me out. If he had understood that I was not enemy but ally, I could have been of great support.
Instead, I found myself looking down the barrel of a familiar story in my life which began long ago with attacks from my stepfather who would rubbish everything I said or did because of both a deep fear and a lack of depth.
When we are not initiated into specific relationships in our family and community, we simply do not know how to be with the next or previous generation, have less concern for those coming after us, and should not be surprised when things fall apart.
The old stories tell us when the kingdom has been taken over by dark forces — clearly seen in the world today — those who come bearing truth are sacrificed by those gripping on to power, although the conditions on the soul may demand we tell our story in any case.
Often the conditions on the soul are intended for our destruction and we need to find ways to circumvent our fate, which often we cannot do with our existing toolbox. This is when we need the advice of mentors and roadside creatures we might normally ignore.
We are being broken down and remade, smelted in a fire that changes the very nature and direction of the soul:
‘When the soul is plunged in the fire of divine love, like iron, it first loses its blackness, and then grows to white heat and becomes like the fire itself, and lastly, it grows liquid. And, losing its nature, is transmuted into an entirely different quality of being. And as the difference between iron that is cold and iron that is hot, so is the difference between soul and soul, between the tepid soul, and the soul made incandescent by divine love.’ Richard of St Victor
We also, of course, have to call on the unseen because we may have moved beyond human aid into the territory of the deep soul.
For our descent- told as the abundant kingdom falling into ruin - and our ascent remake and re-orientate the soul. Life is never seen the same way again.
The word education means to draw something out of someone and the mentor is not telling us anything new, but reminding us of what is known yet long forgotten.
You may have noticed in initiatory moments, when everything has fallen away, we are too exposed to hide our pain and our feelings, the conditions on the soul becoming visible for the wise eye of the mentor to see.
The great sadness of modern times is that we have moved on to the surface of life, have adopted superficial values and aspirations and so there are few mentors around to help those who are lost.
A true mentor can discern when you are ready for your next initiatory move and when you need to return to the garden of childhood before being able to move forward once again.
The person who lives on the surface of life does not understand the wisdom of surrender and retreat but continues to push forward, becoming a danger to themselves and others as they become more and more divorced from reality.
We have all worked for people like that. Their toolkit is brittle and limited, always cutting and thrusting, thus destroying relationship, never stepping back into the ground of their own being where there’s hope of at last gleaning some wisdom.
This is the way the world is going, the waters of life, the waters of feeling, soon running dry.
But there is always hope. As Roethke tells us:
‘In dark times, the eye begins to see.’
© Simon Heathcote
