Awakening the Soul with Community, Ceremony and Solitude
Deepening our relationship with this more-than-human world
I hadn’t planned to go out on a solo myself that night.
I was sitting by the spring after a dip, drying off in the late afternoon sun.
I was watching this enormous green and black dragonfly circling the pond, hovering and lowering itself to the surface and then dipping its curved body into the water.
And then repeating the cycle.
What was it doing ?
- was it drinking, re-fuelling , an act of creation ?
It was mesmerising.
The Sun was dropping, I felt a slight chill on my bare skin and a distinct pulling sensation in my gut.
It was an invitation from the land.
Come and join us.
So off I went for the night.
Three weeks ago about 7pm on a Sunday evening I put myself out on the land at Ghostwood Down near my home in Bath for a spontaneous overnight solo, settling under twin oaks trees - Twin Oak Standing as we call the spot.
The solo is an ancient practice, a rite of passage, an invitation to go out onto land on our own, and sit with presence overnight, often carrying our most alive questions and intentions, opening ourselves up to the intelligence of the living Earth before returning to community the next morning to listen and share stories around the fire.
That Sunday I’d been on the land since midday hosting and guiding my friend Jon who had returned to do another overnight solo after taking part in our Community Solo weekend in April with a crew of fellow humans.
The Community Solo experience had impacted Jon significantly and he wanted to return to the same spot a few months later to deepen his inquiry with the land and in the presence of the beings there.
I’d seen him off across the threshold a couple of hours earlier following some preparation work together.
Arranged to welcome him back around the fire at sunrise the next morning.
I’d taken a dip and was watching the dragonfly in the pond, and that’s when the land called me out.
I settled with the twin oaks and quickly dozed off for a couple of hours.
The spaciousness and stillness was an instant unplug.
My engine is not easily turned off.
But the Oaks were holding me and my body shut down
I hadn’t prepped for this solo, no intentions, no questions.
A spontaneous participation.
But I was comfortable with the not knowing and the curiosity of a night alone with the land.
I meditated for a while, focussing on Jon who I knew was nestled down by the stream at Oak by brook.
I watched the sun gradually setting to the west, accompanied by the voices of woodpecker, buzzard, kestrel, wood pigeon and owl as darkness fell.
I was gifted with all kinds of mystery and material during that night.
Winged beings visited, shadow encounters, strange warm winds shaking the great Oak, inter-species communication and future ancestral murmurings.
Weaved with dream, startle, groggyness and moments of deep sleep.
I made my way back to the round house just after dawn, lit the fire and prepared for Jon’s return.
Over the last few years I’ve been carving out solo experiences more regularly for myself, because they continue to provide me with a depth of connection, insight and intelligence that I can’t find anywhere else.
Moments where I can show up with all my messyness, weirdness, fears, feelings and vulnerabilities and feel seen and welcomed.
Where time and space stretches and opens up.
And where letting go often comes more easily.
Where the soul awakens.
The Earth feels like a true elder to me.
Solo experiences can be powerful fuel for cultivating resilience, imagination and empathy for other life.
They grow the humility muscles like nothing else in my opinion.
They offer space for processing and honouring the things that really matter and invite us into the practice of self-generated ceremony.
The knowing is felt, embodied, grounded in your own experience and the meaning making is yours.
Although perhaps it’s co-creation in its truest sense,
Becoming with the land, with the more than human and when we commune with others, as we do with the Community Solo with our fellow humans
Becoming Crew.
I’ve written here before about finding trusted intelligence in these unravelling times when the constructed world of modernity makes less and less sense.
I’ve come to believe that if we don’t open ourselves up regularly to more than human connection and intelligence, then…
Not only are we missing out - the growing impoverishment of the soul, the emptiness of the individual modern human
But we’re also closing ourselves off from the possibilities of mythic intelligence, valuable navigation support in a hyper rational culture built on an illusion of certainty that is falling apart.
As mythologist Martin Shaw says..
“The correct response to uncertainty is myth making - it always was”
It’s very likely that our culture will continue to dominate with a human-centered bias, carrying blind spots and limitations in our approaches for regeneration.
Earth is a more-than-human planet after all.
We are just one species, the human species, in a more than human majority.
Without regular and intentional time for more-than-human entanglement and exploration surely the separation logic will continue to dictate.
Continue to inform the cultural narratives, design approaches, technologies, policies and governance and ways of responding to the meta-crises.
In our work with Becoming Crew these experiences are essential practices for cultivating regenerative patterns and mindsets.
Providing ways to open up to the more than human world, to explore our relationality and interdependence with other life, other beings, other time dimensions.
To tune into trusted cycles and patterns from the most ancient of systems.
To re-member that intelligence in our bodies,
Learning to let go of the illusion of certainty and to step more into trusting the mystery of life with courage, compassion and insight.
We put deep focus on the community as well as the solo experience because there is so much medicine, beauty and intelligence to be received in witnessing, listening and supporting each other.
Learning to love ourselves and each other as part of the Earth.
This is why we offer these Community Solo experiences.
We are hosting our final Community Solo of this year on the Autumn Equinox 19th-21st September at Ghostwood Down near Bath, we still have places available.
Follow the link here for more details and registering your interest
We’d love to welcome you around the fire.
This video is reflections from some of the crew who took part in the Community Solo in April.
