Soul Initiation Guiding

Land and Soul

Within a human-centric paradigm we experience the landscape as a resource only for our enjoyment and consumption, or something to conserve as separate to us, and better off without us. In this perspective we lose the invisible thread of our own wildness, as well as the deeply personal sense of responsibility towards the place that feeds our life - the locale that holds us in its embrace day by day. This set of relationships includes trees, animals, mountains, waterways, mists and Indigenous peoples, all of whom carry stories of ancient origins, grief, praise and longing.

In a soul-centric paradigm, through cultivating personal relationship with the land in its animate nature - an abundant diversity of lives and stories - we come to find a different sense of ourselves. We experience ourselves as truly natural beings, ripe with the mythos of our own wild origin stories, knowing who we are, where we come from, and why we're here. In short, we find our place, not in the human community, but in the more-than-human community, and our deepest sense of home.

It is this relationship that reveals our deepest identity, "the truth at the centre of the image we were born with" in the words of the poet David Whyte. This is the most natural part of us, indigenous to the world. And it is from this place of soul that we can discover our greatest gifts, strangely familiar yet intimidating capacities that guide our unique path of service in life. These gifts will sustain not just the human community, but the ecology too, our home.

Soul and the Crises

Soul Initiation Guiding moves you from healing work into soul work. Once we're whole enough, stable enough in our ego, we're ready to be torn apart and transformed, to allow soul - our deepest identity, tied to Mystery and the land - to emerge and begin to guide us to fully embodying our gifts and unique role service to life in this time.

If you are feeling at a plateau in your healing journey - familiar with your woundings and "whole enough", wondering what's next? then you may be ready for the journey of soul initiation.

If you are feeling stuck in your healing journey, like the various modalities, groups and perspectives you have encountered haven't been able to meet the immensity of your grief and longing, then taking your "healing and wholing" onto the land may be the way to inhabit a greater, more wild, more real context for your continued growth.

If you have a deep concern for the state of the world, and a longing to be useful to these times of crisis and opportunity, that is the call of soul - to feel the heartbreaking reality of this moment in our history, and yet to know that as a collective and as individuals we matter greatly, and have the capacity as a custodial species to respond to this crisis, to be transformed by it into a greater version of ourselves, worthy of becoming elders and ancestors to those who will come next.

Soulwork

Soulwork consists of deepening relationship with Land, Self and Mystery. It can draw us into our personal mythos - an origin story unique to our being that wants to guide us through life, guarding our greatest gifts and deepest sensitivities until we're ready to use them well. As creatures of the landscape, this most natural part of us is brought forth in dynamic relationship with nature.

We will work in session with ancestral history, archetypes and internal systems, dreams, deep imagination, and the numinous experiences of your life to co-create practices for you to take out on the land, where the wild energies and forces of nature become your guides, your gods and even your beloveds. The land, and your relationship with the land, will become your greatest resource, and indeed your oldest home.

This work demands courage and commitment. We are not seeking to change the world, but rather to be changed by it, for which we have to give up our ideas about ourself. This is no quick or easy undertaking, but it is perhaps the most ancient and most necessary that we meet as humans. And the most fulfilling.

Client Criteria

The journey of Soul Initiation is a descent - into yourself, into the world, into mystery, complexity and possibility. It is dismembering and re-organizing: as destructive as a compost pile, but as fertile too. It's necessary to have a stable ego structure and strong internal resources to complete your descent. We can work on those resources as part of your Soul Initiation mentorship ("healing and wholing" work never ends for any of us), but it is important to have a good foundation, and to be stable in terms of any addictions, mental health diagnoses, or acute traumas prior to undertaking this journey. If you're in doubt about any of this get in touch for a free 15-minute consultation.

Lastly, this journey, if undertaken successfully, will demand total commitment from you. Please be ready to commit extra time to YOURSELF for tending to your relationship with the land, your dreams, and the griefs and longings that seek to shape you into a never-before-seen form as magnificent as the landscapes that birthed us.

Resources

​

My approach to this work is strongly shaped by the Animas Valley Institute, based on Bill Plotkin's work. His books are an excellent resource for orienting yourself to the territory and stepping in.

​

"Soulcraft" and "Wild Mind" will likely be most useful. "The Journey of Soul Initiation" and "Nature and the Human Soul" will provide further depth and perspective.

​

"Long Life, Honey in the Heart", "The Smell of Rain on Dust" and "Stealing Benefacio's Roses" by Martín Prechtel provide essential Indigenous and mythological perspectives on these themes.

​

"Of Water and the Spirit" by Malidoma Somé provides a compelling and rich Dagara (Burkina Faso) perspective.

​

Martin Shaw is a British mythologist and rites of passage guide with valuable perspectives, especially in "A Branch from the Lightning Tree" and "Courting the Wild Twin".

​

Mythology and folk stories from your ancestral tradition will be a great support to your descent.