Navigating Inner Landscapes
Seeking Wholeness in Cycles, we are absolutely complex beings, full of a wide array of diversity within each of our characters. We’ve been given a unique set of gifts and challenges (these words may as well be interchangeable!) that we have the privilege of discovering and transforming as we go through our life.
Often times, the pendulum of our mind and being swings from one corner to another, widely casting out into the field of our subconscious to reveal the truths of what we carry on this journey, yet not the truths of who we intrinsically are. We often forget our programming has little to do with us, but reflects more on who raised us (and who raised them), and the ideas of our culture, generation and communities. Beliefs, for better or for worse, are the templates in which we navigate our lives, and like a mouse in a maze, sometimes limit us to what we believe is possible.
Building upon the metaphor of the subconscious mouse maze, we may have been taught how to go straight, backwards and how to turn left and right, but no one ever told us how to go up, down, diagonal, or more revolutionary yet… inward. If those who walked before you, or those currently around you have never done so, how would anyone ever know it was possible? We’ve all been given maps drawn by someone else, and no one ever told us that if we truly desire, we may go off trail and begin designing our own maps. Or for those who are even more determined, that you may ditch the map all together.
As we cultivate this deeper awareness of our being, the pendulum that once unconsciously, aggressively swung through our forests in whatever direction it so chose, crashing and causing chaos as it flew along, begins to slow down. The swing becomes lighter, more subtle, leaving less destruction through the forest floor, until one day we learn how to stop it completely, right smack in the middle of your being. It is in this place that a stillness begins to arise.
It is from this place that the magic of navigating our inner landscapes takes on new meaning and form. For the first time, you can hold awareness of all of your landscapes at once. You can see who planted what where, and when, and decide if you still want it. If you do, great! If not, like mother nature, we uproot, make sacrifice and compost what is no longer needed, providing the nutrients for what future ideals and ways of being we intend on cultivating in our inner space (oh hey, check out last week’s post on Conscious Composting!). What we collectively decide to choose, regardless of our unique differences, becomes wholly based in love, compassion and insurmountable creative potential.
“Breath of Gaia,” Josephine Wall
Tending to our inner landscapes is a beautiful, life long journey. There will always be the change of seasons to move through, the pruning of what has ripened and then one day begins to die off, new goals and dreams to give nourishment and support to. But when we begin to understand the deep well of divine stillness within us, the pendulum will no longer need to swing so wildly and, unless you want it, the map will no longer be needed (or maybe you design a really super awesome personal map. You do you!).
What is your relationship with your internal pendulum? Is your map still in hand? Have you begun to see yourself as the caretaker of your own personal, beautiful garden/forest/ or even planet? You are so special, the culmination of such a big, gorgeous cosmos. What we see outside of us cannot even compare to the grandeur of that which you hold inside of you.