It has been a long while since I have sat down to press words to these pages. My journal is filling to her edges with unorganized musing of these past months. Elaborate expressions of ecstasy and decay, of ritual experience and the dance of unknowns, of beauty and heartache. Yet, to write to you, to write words that find their way into the hearts of the ones that read these stories, to share this practice of expression that has always felt so graceful and fulfilling.. to share has felt daunting. It has felt daunting to even express words aloud to those dearest to me. There has been no language to suffice the dwellings of my inner world. No words or sentences, no songs or poetry, no paragraphs that felt adequate or alive enough to reflect what stirs within. There has been fear of being misunderstood, held too firmly in language expressed that may not have had precise roots. And still, as I sit here to write, finally feeling this ripple of language begin to flow from my heart, still, it feels foreign. So bare with me.
Bare. That seems like a precious place to begin. Bare, my skin, my heart, the tenderness of my soul. Bare, my bones feel bare. I am in what feels like an ancient and delicate process of becoming bare. Naked, exposed, empty, revealed. It is as if life is slowly and tenderly stripping away such an old way of being. As if I were standing alone in the wild night, with only the stars and the holy hum of silence holding me as I entered the sticky dew drenched earth of the evening. I am taken to a moment in the middle of March. Night three in communion with Mother Ayahuasca, after two precious ceremonies of dancing in the doorways of her bliss and beauty, she invited me into the realms of a deeper exploration. She held my hand as I entered the bareness, the stripping away, the painstakingly beautiful and challenging ritual of recognizing a wide new path ahead. I gazed upon this path, into all the trails of unknowing, all the trails and doors of new becoming. She welcomed me into aloneness. There still seems to be a lack of words for this experience, which I believe is important. The deep intimacy of this ceremony and what it is unfurling within me is one I am holding close to my own heart. But this, this is when the bareness began.
Well, I could say the ritual of becoming bare began over a year ago. When stories and identities began to drift away. When external chapters of life began closing. It was a period of time when certain outer extremities of life were finding their way to ashes. It has been a time of unraveling into a deeper current, the chapters of life closing were the beginning invitations for the goddess to take me into wilder and more uncharted territories of inner initiations.
It is a wild thing, trying to express the inner landscape of the soul. Is there really ever language to express it? No, I don’t believe so. But there is a goddamn desire in the fire of my belly, in the butterflies that bubble up from this belly and into my heart to find a whisper of expression. There is a billowing of smoke that feels like both a prayer and an exhale in the simple writing of words for the souls experience.
This inspiration to write was kindled by the following musings of Rainier Wylde. One of those moments that unlocked and activated the language to beginning dripping from the corners of my being and into these pages.
“And it could be in those quiet moments, when you sit alone that you understand how much of you was built by others' hands, how much you need to peel away, to find the unpolished gem that is your soul. Growing might be this gentle unfolding, a tender reckoning with the imperfections that dance beneath your skin. It might be seeing the beauty in the chaos, recognizing the strength in your scars, and learning to love the sound of your own heartbeat. Growth could be the soft whisper of your own voice, finally heard over the angry din of the world--a voice that speaks in poems, not in certainties. And perhaps this is how we grow, not in loud declarations or grand arrivals, but in whispers and sighs and in the slow grace of the setting sun reminding us that endings can be just as beautiful as beginnings. Don't you think?
I wonder if real growth might not mean becoming much of anything special, in the end. Not getting anywhere fast or going to a paradise in the sky; getting all enlightened. It might mean letting go of what's not really you; losing your certainty, taking off your masks. Growing might mean realizing just how beautiful and fragile this moment is--how you don't get it back.” - Rainier Wylde
That night, in the glow of the medicine, as I gazed upon the star filled night overlooking Lake Atitlán, as I sat alone after the ceremony in a bundle of pain and beauty, grief, sadness, strength, confusion, knowing, trust, forgiveness, a depth I had not yet known. Sitting there, I gazed into the parts of myself that are the unpolished gems of my soul, the places that are not carved by others hands or stories, I sat there in the beginning of a gentle unfolding. And that is what this is. A gentle unfolding, becoming bare, so delicately bare that perhaps you can’t see the layers peeling away, the deep deep layers that go beyond the surface. I sat there, I sit here now, not in the loud song of transformation, not the fireworks that explode, but rather a slow burn of a deeper embodiment.
How could there be language suffice for something so delicate and subtle as real growth? How could one explain such deep inner stirrings? For me, it has felt like both a tidal wave and a soft drip of summer rain, like lightning striking the ground and the cool mud of the earth on my toes. And also, so much more, and so much less. It has been the utterly real understanding that we will lose things in this life, things we love, things that mean so much, things that make so much sense. We will face death again, and again and again. And yet, we have no other choice but to keep opening our heart to love, to keep walking forth on the path that feels unknown and trusting that there is a reason to keep going.
Today, I faced the almost certain imminent death of my current beloved hive of honeybees. A relationship that has been humming in my heart for this past year, that has felt so strong and alive, that has reminded me time and time again of the beauty of this life. They made it through the long dark winter. Their essence is healthy and singing with joy. They have kissed me a thousand times over with their sweetness and medicine. I have sung their praises to anyone who would listen. I relive the memory of them arriving to me as their gorgeous swarm amongst the late June rush of life-force, a prayer answered in the most beautiful way. They are a force carrying me through this strange and delicate time of becoming bare, their honeyed whispers dripping nectar into my heart when I need a reminder to keep having faith. And yet, this evening I type these words with a swollen hand full of venom, the medicine of a sting flooding my veins. I type with grief in my heart, for my visit amongst their essence today revealed a queen-less hive. A hive without a queen, a colony without a mother, it becomes a directionless dream. A story for another day would be the reasons why this may have happened on a mechanical level, but for now we will dance in the realm of poetry for its reflection and relationship into my life. And to echo Rainier again, “..a voice that speaks in poems, not in certainties. And perhaps this is how we grow, not in loud declarations or grand arrivals, but in whispers and sighs and in the slow grace of the setting sun reminding us that endings can be just as beautiful as beginnings.”
The certainties that I once carried have been replaced. And even the claims that I lay my certainty on are like vapour, like smoke, like elusive prayers so rich in their depth that they hold almost no weight and yet the entirety of this existence itself. I am being invited into a life rich in prayer, so strong in prayer, so alive in prayer. Being asked to hold a faith so delicately that no matter what arrives in my path I will be able to love, to know love, to trust love, to continue with love. And let me tell you, it is stretching me. I am being pulled to my inner edges, invited into places of communion that I have yet to know. Today was this moment of meeting the unraveling of something that has held such medicine and beauty, such love. It doesn't make sense, it doesn't feel fair, and yet I know that the slow dying of this hive is a deeper reflection of this chapter in my life. Can I continue to love something in its process of decay? Can I love something right up into its final moment of letting go? Can I love it beyond the letting go? Can I love it enough to trust the letting go? Can the ending be just as beautiful as the beginning. Because fuck, the beginning of this dance with this colony was one of the most beautiful things in my entire life. Can the ending be such as well?
If you are still here with me, and if you have not yet realized, this story of the hive is a wild and profound metaphor and representation of what feels like a thousand other chapters of my life in a deep process of ending and beginning. I feel like I am walking into that wild night, alone and alive, full of heartbreak, wonder and ecstasy, full of confusion and beholding, out into the sticky dew of the earths night to strengthen into this deeper prayer of life. I am treading this soft path, walking with a torch of intimacy for self that I have yet been offered in this way. And as Wylde expresses, “a tender reckoning with the imperfections that dance beneath your skin”. I am here. Alive and tenderly tending the parts of myself that are bare and becoming. That are ending and beginning. That are being held and are holding.
“It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.”
–Kahlil Gibran, "Fear"
What would it be like to become the ocean? To become that which is so deeply destined for us, to become the fated prayer of our soul, to become the cosmic embodiment of our deepest potential. There is no other way. There is no other way than to move forward, to dance on the path that reveals herself to us. To take that torch full of divine essence and carry forth into that wild night, into that flowing river. Life, her baskets full of uncertainties, her baskets full of inevitable death and decay, her baskets full of irrefutable beauty and wonder, her baskets full of unbelievable depths of love. Life, I love you. And I will wake up each morning with the prayer to live with you fully. Even when it hurts, even when it doesn't make sense, even when the beauty becomes so much it seems to bring ache to my heart, even when the grief brings me to my knees and almost drowns me in the sorrows. Let me wake each and every day and say yes to the unwavering awe. Beyond the fear of becoming. Into the soft and fragile moment that is this right here, that is this one rare and precious life. Let me be bare.
Beautiful poetic musings, Kate.
I particularly enjoyed these reflections on death, love, and trust:
"It has been the utterly real understanding that we will lose things in this life, things we love, things that mean so much, things that make sense. We will face death again, and again and again. And yet we have no other choice but to keep opening our heart to love, keep walking forth on the path that feels unknown and trusting that there is a reason to keep going."
"Can I continue to love something in its process of decay? Can I love something right up into its final moment of letting go? Can I love it beyond the letting go? Can I love it enough to trust the letting go? Can the ending be just as beautiful as the beginning?"