Smoky Path from PDPhoto
Smoky Path from PDPhoto

Most of us have experienced it at some point: “There’s no going back.”

That’s one of the big differences between change and transformation.

With transformation, there is no ‘back there’ to return to, because ‘back there’ is rubble. Probably smoking rubble. Well-burnt toast.

We’ve been places, created things, experienced relationships, lost much, and have left (or been wrenched from) things and people as Life took us into radically new territory and explorations.

If we’ve been traveling a transformation path, our very way of perceiving and believing has been irrevocably altered.

We’ve crossed through threshold after threshold.

Sometimes these Wisdom-initiating shifts and transformation detours come via more radical means: the archetypal ‘shamanic lightning bolt’ (and shamanic ego ‘dismemberment’ and/or death), or  by way of what the vision-poet writer Fiona MacLeod called the  ‘dark and starless roads.’

View of our galaxy from its outer reaches. PD via NASA.

If we’re lucky, in hindsight we see these life-altering events and seemingly meandering paths with refreshed eyes and a transformed mind. Maybe even with a bit of new wisdom.

Suddenly our seeing opens and we can discern the connections — the path of breadcrumbs through the forest we meandered and muddled our way through.

We hear the Deep-Soul whispers, as David Wagoner wrote in his poem, Lost:

“You are surely lost. Stand still.
The forest knows Where you are.
You must let it find you.”

We may begin to see that our crazy-wisdom ‘detour’ or ‘off the map’ four-wheeling adventure has allowed us a deeper experience and understanding of old conditioning and its patterns, and certain ideas or values that we truly hold dear.

We ‘get it’ more than we ever did. It’s a form of rebirth.

This is a vital remembering in these highly transformative, threshold-rich times, when more and more find themselves — ourselves — for the first time, or yet again, in the Dark Forest or Dark Night or Starless-Night-Sea, where we learn to see and hear with the eyes of the Heart.

We learn to see with our Other Eyes, as I was told in one vivid archetypal dream. We begin to remember, deeply.

A favorite image: Rafael Sergei Levitsky’s Bridge in the Woods. Public domain – {PD-US}.

There are a lot of people I know — and many I don’t know yet or may never know — who feel or have felt like they’re off-road or off-path, on that unexpected detour without map or compass. They feel like they’re muddling their way through the dark forest and “know it not” (as Dante said).

I’ve known this place, too. I know it now.

Perhaps for some of us, it is the ‘new normal’.

After all, someone needs to be leaving shiny breadcrumbs, lighting candles, standing vigil, and holding lanterns for other Forest Walkers, yes? Perhaps long ago, before coming into this life, you volunteered, too?

If you’re one of this Soul-remembering ‘transformation tribe’, I share this for you, so you can know that even though it feels muddled and directionless, there is a path, and there will be a place where you’ll look back and see the path with new eyes and a new understanding, aware of the the gifts you picked up along the way.

The Wild Bees of Wisdom [Image from the Telegraph U.K.]
The Wild Bees of Wisdom
[Image from the Telegraph U.K.]
In the midst of one of my own long, meandering dark-forest walks, a sparkling gem of a message found its way to me from a little book by Fiona MacLeod (William Sharp), and I’ll pass it along to you now:

“But you … you are of the little clan, for whom  this book is: you who have gone  upon dark ways, and have known the starless road, and perchance  on that obscure way  learned what we have yet to learn. Let me be not only of your fellowship but of that  little  scattered clan to whom the wild bees of the spirit come, as  secret wings in the dark, with  the sound and breath of forgotten things.”

The wild-bee wisdom and the ‘forgotten things’ you’ve been gathering and remembering along that ‘dark and starless road’ are the medicine for these times.

If you’re looking for a ‘been there’ lantern-holder as you travel the Via Transformativa … the Epic Transformation Path … send me an email: jamie ‘at’ sophias-children ‘dot’ com.

Big Love,

Jamie

P.S. Gather your wild-bee wisdom, reclaim your compass of Wild Knowing, and cultivate your unique ‘medicine’ for the world — check out the Special Offerings for Now in the Current Specials – Readings, Consultations, Programs.

This post is an updated version of one of my earlier blog posts from early 2011 and in 2013.