Often, the path of transformation and healing can be dominated by solar metaphors and images - those of growth, moving upward, rising above, and transcending the messier, more chaotic, more unknowable dimensions of our human experience.
An alchemical perspective, while not denying that organic, upward movement of the spirit, includes and at times privileges the lunar current - the descending, earthy, soulful return to the mud and the ground.
The alchemical imagination honors this movement out of the clouds and the high mountaintops of crystal clarity, the movement downward into the valleys, gardens, and richness of the rotting logs and green moss.
It’s not as clear here. Not singular, perhaps not as focused. There is paradox and irony . . . and the mystery of sensory perception is alive . . . it is vital and pregnant with color, fragrance, and essence. It is rich and multi-layered and contradictory. And utterly unresolvable.
If we’re interested in the felt experience of wholeness, where we’re able to touch and breathe and move within the entirety of what it means to be an open, sensitive, embodied human being, it’s essential to include both solar and lunar dimensions of the spectrum of consciousness in our practices and in our lives.
Wholeness includes not only a solar, heroic movement upward into spirit, ascending and transcending, but also a lunar, endarkened, rich, subtle, nuanced movement downward into soul, into dream, fantasy, imagination, and creativity… into the soil, the mud . . . and the womb of the earth.
Go outside and lay down on the ground . . . go on now . . . go . . .
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