🌹 🎶 The Disappearing Path

Rambling into the unknown under the light of the New Moon

Picture Pixabay

“How do you know that you are on your path – because it disappears. That’s how you know. How do you know that you are really doing something radical? Because you can’t see where you are going. That’s how you know. And everything you have lent on for your identity has gone. And so you are going to enter the black contemplative splendours of self-doubt, at the same time as you are setting out on this radical new path.”

―David Whyte

When the moon is just a smiling slither in the sky, it’s easier for us to perceive the sparkle of the Milky Way. Astronomers will be scrying the darkened skies for a smily conjunction between today’s crescent moon, Venus and Saturn. A little reflected Earthshine allows us to glimpse the crescent moon, whilst her full face is turned towards the sun and hidden from us. So our lunar phases are governed by a cyclical game of planetary hide and seek, an endlessly revealing and concealing dance of light and dark.

Vincent Van Gogh - Landscape with Couple Walking and Crescent Moon (1890)

My Beloved
Know that my beloved in hidden from everyone
Know that she is beyond the belief of all beliefs
Know that in my heart she is as clear as the moon
Know that she is the life in my body and in my soul”
― Rumi, The Love Poems of Rumi

One of the quickest ways to make a baby smile is to play peekaboo and my young nephew’s favourite game is still hide and seek. We love and crave mystery - just consider how many billions of love poems and songs orbit the absent lover. Yet in Western culture, we are conditioned to believe that things should be seen, predictable, linear and possible to control. We are encouraged to build identities on visible tags and status symbols - our vital statistics and worldly belongings. Social media endorses this obsession with visibility, encouraging us to post everything from breakfast to breakups. The wisdom of the lunar dance, however, teaches us to balance phases of full frontal visibility with times of invisibility.

When the path disappears ahead of us, and all is cloaked in uncertainty, the conditioned response is to freak out. Yet how can we ever have anything new unless we voyage cyclically into the unknown? The new moon is traditionally the time to plant new seeds, to sow intentions into the soil of our unconscious and see what emerges. So, phases where we feel lost or ‘in the dark’ are natural precursors to fresh discoveries and are supported by natural forces. In the fascinating interview, quoted above, David Whyte shares David Wagoner’s famous poem inspired by the teachings of Native Americans navigating the Northwest American cedar forests.

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

- David Wagoner, published in the collection Riverbed (1972)

Cedar Trees - Pixabay

The constantly inconstant rhythm of life, change is the midwife of our growth. Whether we are actively seeking or hiding from it, change will find us. Beneath the Old French changier, Latin cambire - to exchange, barter, we find a PIE root word kemb, meaning to bend, crook - so the twists and turns in our paths turn us towards change.

A few things I’ve noticed about change processes:

1. Change comes by design or by delivery - if not by our own design, destiny will deliver change. Oftentimes, when we dither, delay or procrastinate, something eventually happens to deliver change.

2. Change by design is often powered by an inexplicable sense of knowing. A chorus of voices may ask, “Why are you changing?” to which we may answer, “ I don’t fully understand myself, I just know it’s time.”

3. Changes are often precipitated and accompanied by a period of discomfort. As we are jettisoned out of our comfort zone, what is familiar no longer fits - we may feel at odds with everything, and experience self-doubt, anxiety and grief. So it’s important to allow time to wander about feeling lost, whilst remaining active, alert and awake to signs of new life emerging.

4. Everything we have experienced is fertiliser for change - including that which we find challenging or seek to hide. Change causes us to dig deep for sources of support externally and internally, growing our trust and faith that life will turn through its phases and the new will arrive.

5. Change requires stillness - anxiety is noisy, whilst knowing is quiet and calm. Stilling down gives us space to both receive and transmit the torchlight of our knowing and dream into that which is hidden.

6. Even when irreversible, changes are refinable - and will be followed by a myriad of ensueing changes which allow us to adjust course as we go.

Moving Through Our Changes

As I was writing this post, the song Move on Up by Curtis Mayfield came to mind. Written in 1970, it was one of his much-loved songs of encouragement, which helped keep the fires of the Civil Rights Movement burning. May it inspire us to shake a tail feather and take a brave step into the unknown this New Moon.

Move On Up - Curtis Mayfield

Hush now child and don't you cry
Your folks might understand you by and by

Just move on up
Towards your destination
Though you may find from time to time complications

Bite your lip and take a trip
Though there may be wet road ahead
And you cannot slip

Just move on up
For peace you will find
Into the steeple of beautiful people where there's only one kind

So hush now child and don't you cry
Your folks might understand you by and by

Move on up
And keep on wishing
Remember your dream is your only scheme so keep on pushing

Take nothing less
Than the supreme best
Do not obey rumors people say 'cause you can pass the test

Just move on up
To a greater day
With just a little faith
If you put your mind to it, you can surely do it