Post by Craig on Oct 2, 2008 11:24:25 GMT -1
Not often, but sometimes, a person will ask me what lies at the heart of my spiritual practice? What makes me 'feral'? What rituals do I perform, and when and where and with whom? I struggled with this for a long time, eventually writing the essay that now appears in various places. So when people have asked me to explain I have pointed them at the nearest copy of that piece.
Upon re-reading it though I have come to realise that the essay was really an exposition on what it felt like to be a 'feral', not what I actually do. Given that I am quick to lampoon or criticise others practice (especially if it involves amateur dramatics) I think it only fair for me to say what I do and open myself up for a bit of the same.
As regular readers and friends know I am a resident of deepest Mid-Wales and much of my spiritual practice takes place in the valley of the Mawddach and the upper reaches of the river Severn. To me landscape is everything and my spirit is tied to these places. The Mawddach in particular has had a greater influence on my development than any book, course or human.
For those who don't know it the Mawddach estuary stretches nine miles from Dolgellau due west to Abermaw [Barmouth]. It contains the confluence of the Mawddach and Wnion rivers pressed between Diffwys to the north and the grim majesty of Cader Idris to the south. The sun rises over the pass of Dinas Mawddy in the east and sets into the Irish Sea. Its lower hills are heavily wooded and the higher land farmed by the hardy folk of old Merionydd.
My grandparents settled here after the war and I have been living on or visiting the estuary all of my life. I spent my teens and twenties walking, climbing and camping all over it, often for weeks at a time [the summers were endless then]. Now I take my children there and try and pass on to them my love for this unique landscape, and its streams, trees, animals and flora.
The Severn has formed the backdrop to my later life as I live only a hundred yards from her banks. For fifteen years now I have walked beside her, and to my children it is the main river in their lives.
The Mawddach began to intrude on my waking dreams when I was a teenager. A first she taunted my fumbling attempts at meditation and ritual with teases and tests. At last after I had asked what path I must take to learn her wisdom what seemed like a thousand times over five years, she gave me just one word - 'silence'.
I was shocked. Nobody of her kind had spoken to me before, not directly. So I stopped performing my little rituals, stopped meditating and asking questions. I just sat down by Llyn Llety and listened in silence. To pass the time I would watch the movement of clouds through the leaves, and the movement of leaves against the sky. I listened to the parliament of birds that holds court in every broadleaved Welsh wood. I inhaled the smells of decay and new life in the leaf litter. I felt the cool spray coming from little waterfalls, watched foam form, divide and eventually disappear over the next fall. I watched moss grow across rocks, read lifestories in the lichen. Season after season I sat whenever I could, for hours.
My first lesson was the realisation that I had been taught a new [to me] method of meditation. Utter awareness. Only in stillness can you feel the breeze, only in silence can you hear the whispers of the world. Only by allowing all the sense full reign and letting the world roll over you could you begin to recognize the pattern withins its complexity. Sometimes people say that I have a obsessive compulsive disorder because in a busy airport I spend the time counting the number of people who use an escalator only to turn back again, or how many flowers are on the nearby stall. At work I will stare at a spreadsheet for an hour until I can see all the patterns that lie within it. I count things all the time, and then recount them but in multiples and groups.
These are effects of opening yourself up to be utterly aware. No mantra's required, no special yogic breathing - just sit down, shut up and listen, see, feel, smell, taste... for hours.
By now I was reading Y Mabinogi again, seeking the patterns I never saw as a child, and hunting down books on folklore. It was here I found the empty spaces in the tales, spaces that began to fill in my mind and, as the many threads wove into a single carpet, I first tasted the bitter tears of Efnisien.
It was years before I was gifted with the second lesson. This I have described in my original essay on being feral - the change of perspective. The first time it happened I was leaning over a tree branch so I could watch sticklebacks darting back and forth in a pool. Suddenly everything changed and I could not only see the little fish but hear their heartbeat, damn I could see their heartbeat, and I fell in.
Later, lying on the bank drying in the afternoon sun I reached out again and I was surrounded by a surrealist's paradise. It was like having a second world superimposed over the first, but this world was brighter, noisier ... more, much more. For a year or more I struggled to get perspective change this into my control. I had to give up drinking for the best part of two years - not a good combination, alcohol and an utterly open perspective.
It was then that I first began to break the silence and asked questions. My first was typically naieve and it took and entire summer for an answer to appear in a form I could understand it. I had asked 'where had the old gods gone?'. The answer sent me away from the Mawddach for the best part of a season as I couldn't accept it. I was shown the faces of people I had met, briefly, at key points in my life, or people I thought I remembered but no-one else seemed to if asked later. The answer was that the gods hadn't gone away, they were still here, with us, by our sides.
The gentleman who always attend my family and friend's funerals, but no-one seems to notice even though he speaks to many. The little farmer who tends his sheep on the Robert's farm but they never hired, and have never seen. The teacher who encouraged me to explore poetry but doesn't appear on my school photo's or in my reports, or in my friend's recollections of the school. The doctor who held my hand when I had painful injections for a jellyfish attack in Malta and stopped me from crying, who treated me for hypothermia years later in Plymouth, then appeared at my son's bedside in Alder Hey telling me that Conor would be alright [and somehow got past unseen the isolation ward nurses station right outside the door] and later when I nearly died of an allergic reaction in Shrewsbury, and finally who looked in on me as I sat a vigil by my father's bed as he died in Dolgellau and shook his head.
These were not ghosts. These were not wishful thinking - after all I did not and still do not always welcome their presence. Through the intercession of the Mawddach and Sabhrina [the Severn] I have come to understand that these are my gods, or manifestations of them. I have no names for them, though I sometimes fancifully give them names from my reading such as Arawn, Taranis, Lugh, Gwydion etc. It helps me cope.
And then there is Loki. Before I go into this I must explain something - I am an immigrant, a third generation welshman at best. My family comes from the norse part of Cumbria, and their ancestors from Iceland and Norway. For all my attachment to this land I do have roots elsewhere, and ancestors. This came startlingly apparent when I visited the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo. It was one of those lifechanging experiences where you can feel yourself in two times at once. It seems I stood motionless by the Gokstad Skipp for over half an hour, yet to me I was there for just seconds talking to a young man, who no-one else can recall. What we spoke of I did not know but I came way feeling connected somehow.
Then a few years ago I was at a friend's house, a sword smith of some repute. He was asking for my counsel on a matter of mutual interest and we went out into the garden, both carry staves. I have been told since that I spent over half an hour dancing around him, prodding him with my stave, barking questions and riddles at him, questioning his 'right' to think he could do this and that. At the end of that time I collapsed and had to be brought around. All I could remember was the man by the Gokstad ship and him giving me his name - Loki.
This is why I have said to quite a few people over the years, if we are to restore the British Native Religions then we must consider all the layers, not just try to separate out the Pre-Roman Brythonic. None of us is pure blood and we each have ancestral lines that cross a number of layers. My first experience of Loki taught me that, and he has been back...
Hmm... I see that I have wandered off the original path somewhat, no matter all roads will lead to understanding if you follow them to their end.
If I was to try to conclude this ramble it would be by saying this: Each of us is on a journey of many lives. Within each of us courses the genetic and spiritual blood of many lives, many layers. We will not access these layers, nor these wisdoms through amateur dramatics, however much fun they are. We can only access them by being polite enough to put our ego's outside of the door of the hut, then sitting down and listening. There are many voices out there and it is hard to find one that makes sense to you, all you can do is wait until it becomes clear.
Of course the problem with the counsel of sitting and listening is that it really does not chime well with the society that we have wrought about us. To quote the blessed Freddie Mercury "I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now" - truly an anthem for our age. If we want to access that which came before we must learn patience.
Upon re-reading it though I have come to realise that the essay was really an exposition on what it felt like to be a 'feral', not what I actually do. Given that I am quick to lampoon or criticise others practice (especially if it involves amateur dramatics) I think it only fair for me to say what I do and open myself up for a bit of the same.
As regular readers and friends know I am a resident of deepest Mid-Wales and much of my spiritual practice takes place in the valley of the Mawddach and the upper reaches of the river Severn. To me landscape is everything and my spirit is tied to these places. The Mawddach in particular has had a greater influence on my development than any book, course or human.
For those who don't know it the Mawddach estuary stretches nine miles from Dolgellau due west to Abermaw [Barmouth]. It contains the confluence of the Mawddach and Wnion rivers pressed between Diffwys to the north and the grim majesty of Cader Idris to the south. The sun rises over the pass of Dinas Mawddy in the east and sets into the Irish Sea. Its lower hills are heavily wooded and the higher land farmed by the hardy folk of old Merionydd.
My grandparents settled here after the war and I have been living on or visiting the estuary all of my life. I spent my teens and twenties walking, climbing and camping all over it, often for weeks at a time [the summers were endless then]. Now I take my children there and try and pass on to them my love for this unique landscape, and its streams, trees, animals and flora.
The Severn has formed the backdrop to my later life as I live only a hundred yards from her banks. For fifteen years now I have walked beside her, and to my children it is the main river in their lives.
The Mawddach began to intrude on my waking dreams when I was a teenager. A first she taunted my fumbling attempts at meditation and ritual with teases and tests. At last after I had asked what path I must take to learn her wisdom what seemed like a thousand times over five years, she gave me just one word - 'silence'.
I was shocked. Nobody of her kind had spoken to me before, not directly. So I stopped performing my little rituals, stopped meditating and asking questions. I just sat down by Llyn Llety and listened in silence. To pass the time I would watch the movement of clouds through the leaves, and the movement of leaves against the sky. I listened to the parliament of birds that holds court in every broadleaved Welsh wood. I inhaled the smells of decay and new life in the leaf litter. I felt the cool spray coming from little waterfalls, watched foam form, divide and eventually disappear over the next fall. I watched moss grow across rocks, read lifestories in the lichen. Season after season I sat whenever I could, for hours.
My first lesson was the realisation that I had been taught a new [to me] method of meditation. Utter awareness. Only in stillness can you feel the breeze, only in silence can you hear the whispers of the world. Only by allowing all the sense full reign and letting the world roll over you could you begin to recognize the pattern withins its complexity. Sometimes people say that I have a obsessive compulsive disorder because in a busy airport I spend the time counting the number of people who use an escalator only to turn back again, or how many flowers are on the nearby stall. At work I will stare at a spreadsheet for an hour until I can see all the patterns that lie within it. I count things all the time, and then recount them but in multiples and groups.
These are effects of opening yourself up to be utterly aware. No mantra's required, no special yogic breathing - just sit down, shut up and listen, see, feel, smell, taste... for hours.
By now I was reading Y Mabinogi again, seeking the patterns I never saw as a child, and hunting down books on folklore. It was here I found the empty spaces in the tales, spaces that began to fill in my mind and, as the many threads wove into a single carpet, I first tasted the bitter tears of Efnisien.
It was years before I was gifted with the second lesson. This I have described in my original essay on being feral - the change of perspective. The first time it happened I was leaning over a tree branch so I could watch sticklebacks darting back and forth in a pool. Suddenly everything changed and I could not only see the little fish but hear their heartbeat, damn I could see their heartbeat, and I fell in.
Later, lying on the bank drying in the afternoon sun I reached out again and I was surrounded by a surrealist's paradise. It was like having a second world superimposed over the first, but this world was brighter, noisier ... more, much more. For a year or more I struggled to get perspective change this into my control. I had to give up drinking for the best part of two years - not a good combination, alcohol and an utterly open perspective.
It was then that I first began to break the silence and asked questions. My first was typically naieve and it took and entire summer for an answer to appear in a form I could understand it. I had asked 'where had the old gods gone?'. The answer sent me away from the Mawddach for the best part of a season as I couldn't accept it. I was shown the faces of people I had met, briefly, at key points in my life, or people I thought I remembered but no-one else seemed to if asked later. The answer was that the gods hadn't gone away, they were still here, with us, by our sides.
The gentleman who always attend my family and friend's funerals, but no-one seems to notice even though he speaks to many. The little farmer who tends his sheep on the Robert's farm but they never hired, and have never seen. The teacher who encouraged me to explore poetry but doesn't appear on my school photo's or in my reports, or in my friend's recollections of the school. The doctor who held my hand when I had painful injections for a jellyfish attack in Malta and stopped me from crying, who treated me for hypothermia years later in Plymouth, then appeared at my son's bedside in Alder Hey telling me that Conor would be alright [and somehow got past unseen the isolation ward nurses station right outside the door] and later when I nearly died of an allergic reaction in Shrewsbury, and finally who looked in on me as I sat a vigil by my father's bed as he died in Dolgellau and shook his head.
These were not ghosts. These were not wishful thinking - after all I did not and still do not always welcome their presence. Through the intercession of the Mawddach and Sabhrina [the Severn] I have come to understand that these are my gods, or manifestations of them. I have no names for them, though I sometimes fancifully give them names from my reading such as Arawn, Taranis, Lugh, Gwydion etc. It helps me cope.
And then there is Loki. Before I go into this I must explain something - I am an immigrant, a third generation welshman at best. My family comes from the norse part of Cumbria, and their ancestors from Iceland and Norway. For all my attachment to this land I do have roots elsewhere, and ancestors. This came startlingly apparent when I visited the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo. It was one of those lifechanging experiences where you can feel yourself in two times at once. It seems I stood motionless by the Gokstad Skipp for over half an hour, yet to me I was there for just seconds talking to a young man, who no-one else can recall. What we spoke of I did not know but I came way feeling connected somehow.
Then a few years ago I was at a friend's house, a sword smith of some repute. He was asking for my counsel on a matter of mutual interest and we went out into the garden, both carry staves. I have been told since that I spent over half an hour dancing around him, prodding him with my stave, barking questions and riddles at him, questioning his 'right' to think he could do this and that. At the end of that time I collapsed and had to be brought around. All I could remember was the man by the Gokstad ship and him giving me his name - Loki.
This is why I have said to quite a few people over the years, if we are to restore the British Native Religions then we must consider all the layers, not just try to separate out the Pre-Roman Brythonic. None of us is pure blood and we each have ancestral lines that cross a number of layers. My first experience of Loki taught me that, and he has been back...
Hmm... I see that I have wandered off the original path somewhat, no matter all roads will lead to understanding if you follow them to their end.
If I was to try to conclude this ramble it would be by saying this: Each of us is on a journey of many lives. Within each of us courses the genetic and spiritual blood of many lives, many layers. We will not access these layers, nor these wisdoms through amateur dramatics, however much fun they are. We can only access them by being polite enough to put our ego's outside of the door of the hut, then sitting down and listening. There are many voices out there and it is hard to find one that makes sense to you, all you can do is wait until it becomes clear.
Of course the problem with the counsel of sitting and listening is that it really does not chime well with the society that we have wrought about us. To quote the blessed Freddie Mercury "I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now" - truly an anthem for our age. If we want to access that which came before we must learn patience.
