This audio blog is based on a dream that I had some years ago. It has to do with a ‘canoe lesson’ and the difficulty that an exquisitely advanced teacher had when he took me on as a student. It has prompted many insights over the years, but recently I’ve been thinking about it in terms of consciousness and empathy.
Of course, I invite you to have your own interpretation of the dream-myth. As P.L. Travers once said, what is important about a myth is not what it means in any absolute way, but what it means to you, to me, and to us.
Enjoy!
This is timely Michelle. In my artist’s retreat I have found a similar kind of waking dream and nightmare. The indigenous image of being so at one with all the currents and movements so that one can both give over and trust and at the same time rely upon the developed skills of navigation. While in this creative crucible and finding my way with being able to be the canoeist of grace, I have been humbled by it’s opposite. Like the image of him after when he is anything but surrendered and so lost in trying to manage and control and manipulate it all.
The parallel for me – the relationship with attempting to create from the latter place, and some deeply painful somatic manifestation in my rt. hip and leg, suddenly became the same issue. I began to realize my body’s pain was a direct mirror to this spiritual state. It is/has suffered having to live in any way that goes against the flow of life. The push and force and stridency of wherever I believe I have to maneuver with force because I don’t trust and let go into the flow of life and thus let it carry me. My body has been attempting to cry out the pain of this Way, the consequences of it….and offers if I listen, a more feminine way of living from the inside out. Not imposing from the outside in.
Thank you. Of course the canoe metaphor is close to my heart…
Thank you for this reflection, Sage. I completely understand the issue. It’s hard to practice that flow in our deadline-oriented, frenetic world. But the body is wise. And you’ve paddled many a canoe!